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CEO Picks - The best that international journalism has to offer!  S18Americaâs Wildly Successful Socialist Experiment - The Atlantic (No paywall)   I did not think much of this while on holiday from London when my wife and I escaped the city’s steaming, unbearable heat to look through the Memphis Grizzlies’ (gloriously air-conditioned) fan store. The Grizzlies are the city’s professional basketball team. Their mascot is Griz the Grizzly Bear. Their crest is a Grizzly bear. It’s all about the bear.Puzzlingly, in one corner of the store were shirts and other merchandise for a team called the Vancouver Grizzlies—one whose name made much more sense. In fact, the two teams were the same franchise, which in 2001 relocated 1,900 miles, across an international border and three time zones. Vancouver had not been able to support a professional basketball team, so the Grizzlies left for Tennessee. This is not unique in American sports—even in Tennessee. In 1997, American football’s Houston Oilers moved to Nashville, where they played, incongruously, as the Tennessee Oilers before becoming the Tennessee Titans. The most absurd example remains the Jazz: a perfect name for a basketball team from New Orleans, where it was based; less so from Utah, where it now resides.
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S11Effects of geoengineering must be urgently investigated, experts say  “My own belief is that we need to get a better understanding of what the impacts are,” he said. “I suspect some aspects of geoengineering are going to be an important component of the solution to reducing global warming, and all of the impacts of global climate change, like ocean acidification.”Spinrad said understanding the potential impact of geoengineering on the oceans was vital. “If we were to undertake an effort in some things like iron fertilisation [of the oceans], what are the consequence to the ecosystem of doing that? [Also important is] building good predictive models … and supporting decision-makers,” he said.
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S12How to Prepare for Rise of Digital Learning - Inc.com (No paywall)  There is no industry today that isn't tech-dependent in a sense, from automated processes in manufacturing to the agrotech space, media, finance, healthcare, and more. As innovation continues, we are finding new and better ways to integrate tech to streamline and enhance business processes.Education is one industry where technological integration is at its highest. Schools were already finding new ways to spice up the learning process and make it more engaging for students. This need brought about the growing digitization of the classroom experience. But the Covid-19 pandemic was a huge wake-up call, causing the education industry to go full throttle on making education as digital-leaning as possible.
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S16Oodles of noodles: how a global favourite became an economic red flag - FT (No paywall)  Instant noodles sit among the most potent weapons ever devised in the unending struggle against starvation: a product that towers, among processed foods, at the extreme value end of the cost-per-calorie scale and which its makers now proudly classify as a piece of “social infrastructure”. They are a portable, resilient and long-lasting store of nourishment in times of need — from dire to impulsive and all points between. There is a reason that instant noodles have replaced cigarettes as the primary currency of the informal economy in dismally catered US prisons. This ready-to-eat grub, pioneered in the late 1950s to feed a ruined Japan in the protracted aftermath of war, takes the prize for being cheap and fast, but delicious.
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S14Research: How Subtle Class Cues Can Backfire on Your Resume - Harvard Business Review (No paywall)  Research on the effect of social class on hiring found that elite law firms’ hiring practices discriminate strongly based on social class but that, surprisingly, an advantaged social background helps only men. In the studies, attorneys viewed higher-class candidates of either gender as better fits with the culture of large law firms, with some attorneys even steering lower-class candidates to less prestigious sectors of legal practice, where positions tend to be more socioeconomically diverse. But even though higher-class women were seen as just as good “fits” as higher-class men, attorneys believed these women were the least committed to working a demanding job of any group (including lower-class women). The findings confirm that the social class people come from greatly shapes the types of jobs they can attain, regardless of their achievements. There are ways to combat this discrimination, however: applicants can ditch the extracurricular activities on their resume, eliminating cues about their backgrounds. Hiring managers can help keep women in the pool by blinding evaluators to first names or substituting with initials.Every fall, tens of thousands of law students compete for a small number of coveted summer associateships at the country’s top law firms. The stakes are high: getting one of these rare internships virtually guarantees full-time employment after law school. The salaries are unbeatable, six-figure sums that catapult young students to the top 5% of household incomes nationally and are often quadruple of those offered in other sectors of legal practice. These jobs also open doors to even more lucrative employment in the private sector as well as prestigious judiciary and government roles. For these reasons, employment in top law firms has been called the legal profession’s 1%.
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S15Neurological conditions now leading cause of ill-health worldwide, finds study  The analysis in the Global Burden of Disease, Injuries, and Risk Factors study suggested that the total amount of disability, illness and premature death caused by 37 neurological conditions increased by just over 18% from about 375m years of healthy life lost in 1990 to 443m years in 2021.In the UK, figures from Brain Research UK show one in six people have some form of neurological condition, with 2.6 million people living with the effects of traumatic brain injury or stroke.There are more than 944,000 people in the UK who have dementia, with the numbers expected to increase to more than a million by 2030.
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S13Deepfaked Celebrities Hawked A Massive Trump Scam On Facebook And YouTube - Forbes (No paywall)  The ad begins with a grainy but unmistakable video of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. Soft, tense piano music plays in the background as he speaks: “We’ve been told again and again that we cannot vote for the man that did more for the Black community than any other president. If a Black man dares speak out in support of Donald Trump, a Democrat is always there to call that man an Uncle Tom, a house negro, or even worse.”The fake King continues for more than two minutes, praising Trump and trashing Democrats as photos and short videos of Black prison inmates, Democratic politicians and scenes of civil unrest cycle in the background. Then, the voice changes abruptly and implores viewers to take a free poll to support former President Trump. Complete it and they’ll be sent a free Trump flag, it says; they’ll need only cover shipping and handling.
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S22How to Boost Health Product Supplies in Developing Regions  One of the most important messages that global pandemics brought home is the severe healthcare gap in some parts of the world. With news and videos circulating around the shortage of vaccines, test kits, oxygen and even hospital beds in some regions when Covid-19 struck, it became impossible to turn a blind eye to the heart-wrenching realities of healthcare inequity. Even though the demand and supply dynamics during Covid-19 were extreme, one fact remains even for routine health products: Developing country healthcare markets require a different business model to that of industrialised markets. The absence of robust healthcare infrastructure, very limited coverage by third-party payers and a considerable population subsisting on incomes notably lower than those in developed markets prevent pharmaceutical, vaccine and diagnostics companies (both global and local) from serving these markets by themselves. They need financial support from national, international and philanthropic organisations. And many such organisations have stepped up, including governments of developed and developing countries, development finance institutions such as the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and the European Investment Bank (EIB), or philanthropic foundations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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S31U.S. Retail Sales Miss Expectations as Producer Prices Accelerate  The signs of slowing economic activity are, however, unlikely to spur the Federal Reserve to start cutting interest rates before June as other data on Thursday showed a larger-than-expected increase in producer prices last month. The labor market also remains fairly tight. Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week and annual revisions to the weekly claims data showed laid-off workers were quickly finding new work and not spending as long a period of time on jobless benefits as had been previously thought.
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S32To Connect With B2B Clients, Treat Them Like Real People  For many businesses, success depends on putting customers at the center of product design. That means they need to develop an intimate knowledge of the preferences and motivations of the people they're trying to serve.Customer-focused companies have long hired social scientists (including anthropologists like me) to gain insights into how people think and what they want. But B2B companies have yet to embrace the concept as widely, in part because businesses don't have pain points and emotional struggles the same way that humans do.
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S37Founders at SXSW Get Real About Use-Cases for AI  Entrepreneurs from a variety of industries recently discussed the possibility, predicted by OpenAI founder Sam Altman, during a panel conversation this week at SXSW in Austin. Ann Hiatt, founder of leadership consultancy Hipergiant, predicted that an AI-powered solopreneur unicorn will emerge, but only if that solopreneur can use AI to not just automate work processes but also be laser-precise about divvying up his or her time to accomplish everything they need to in a given day.While it may be some time before we know whether Altman was being prescient or overly optimistic, the panelists did have examples of how they've integrated AI at their companies, and shared some of their favorite AI tools. Parsley Health founder Robin Berzin, a former doctor, founded the company in 2016 to provide data-driven health care services to patients dealing with complex chronic diseases. She told the panel that Parsley has found success using generative AI to quickly digest large amounts of patient information.
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S27What happens to your body when youâre in loveâand when youâre heartbroken - National Geographic Premium (No paywall)  The mind and body use a vast network of neurotransmitters and molecular chemical messengers to coordinate different functions and influence our emotions. These chemical messengers, called hormones, are part of the body's endocrine system. The endocrine are linked together though important structures in the brain that include the hypothalamus, the hippocampus, the amygdala, the thalamus, the basal ganglia, and the cingulate gyrus.It allows various hormones "to reinforce our desire to introduce ourselves after a simple glance, reduce our fears of being vulnerable when we first meet a new partner ... and feel as if we are soul mates with someone over time," says Cynthia Kubu, a neuropsychologist at the Center for Neurological Restoration at Cleveland Clinic in Ohio.
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S28When will the Earth meet its demise?  If you have ever read the news, you’ve likely seen stories that announce our impending doom, usually brought on by some apocalyptic event that strikes fear into our imaginations. Various incarnations of the reported end of the Earth has come in a variety of forms, including from:Every few years, or maybe even every few months (depending which corners of the internet you’re perusing), a new story, speculation, or conspiracy will go viral, claiming that the end of the world is near. While some claims are very specific; in general these claims are more vague, making them difficult to disprove or debunk.
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S20Gray Whales Went Extinct for 200 Years in the Atlantic, Until This Recent Spotting - Discover Magazine (No paywall)  For years, whale watching enthusiasts have flocked to West Coast shores to catch a glimpse of migrating gray whales. These gentle giants inhabit waters in the Pacific Ocean, while their numbers in the Atlantic Ocean gradually dwindled to the point of extirpation, or local extinction, centuries ago. It came as a colossal shock, then, when a single gray whale was spotted on the other side of the country near New England earlier this month. On March 1, aquarium scientists first noticed the whale diving and resurfacing during an aerial survey 30 miles south of Nantucket, as explained in a news release. This turned out to be the fifth documented observation of a gray whale outside the Pacific in the last 15 years. One was previously seen off the coast of Florida in December 2023, although scientists now think this is the same whale just seen near New England.
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S10Tinnitus nearly drove me mad - The Economist (No paywall)  Some years ago now, I learned to love the rain. I was in my mid-20s and had recently noticed a ringing in my left ear and I was not in a good way. I wasn’t exactly sure when the ringing had arrived, but I remember assuming that it would disappear of its own accord, then realising it hadn’t. I remember not sleeping for nights on end. I remember thinking I would lose my mind.
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S9Scientists are finding signals of long covid in blood. They could lead to new treatments. - MIT Technology Review (No paywall)  For many people, covid is an illness that blusters in and out of our lives as cases spike and recede. But for tens of millions of others, a case of covid is the beginning of a chronic and sometimes debilitating illness that persists for months or even years. What makes individuals with long covid different from those who get infected and recover? According to a new paper, an often overlooked part of the immune system is unusually active in these people.None of the existing research proves that these changes drive the disease. But they offer up a new avenue for treatment exploration by helping doctors pick the best people to trial certain drugs “There aren’t really any effective therapies,” says Aran Singanayagam, a respiratory medicine specialist who studies lung infections at Imperial College London. “So we are quite desperate, and it’s a big problem.”
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S17Alan Cumming Wants Us All to Let Go - The New Yorker (No paywall)  Over a thirty-year career, Alan Cumming has been a stage star, a cabaret performer, a memoirist, a night-club owner, and a political activist. Animating many of these endeavors are his talents as a raconteur and an m.c., perhaps most famously in his Tony-winning role in “Cabaret” on Broadway, a show he starred in twice. This past Monday night, Cumming brought the latest of his numerous one-man shows, “Alan Cumming Is Not Acting His Age,” to Studio 54, in Manhattan. Between torch numbers—including Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” and “Mein Herr” from “Cabaret”—he talked about the time he drank a handle of liquor that Florence Henderson sneaked into Carol Channing’s ninety-fifth-birthday party. (Henderson died a few months later, Cumming said, but he has not forgotten her advice: “You never take chances with vodka.”) He talked about how he and his fellow-Scotsman Sean Connery developed pet names for each other (Connery was King, Cumming was Prince), and about the night when his “Battle of the Sexes” co-star Emma Stone brought the tennis legend Billie Jean King and Paul McCartney to Club Cumming, a cozy boitê and queer performance space that Cumming opened in the East Village, in 2017. “It sounds like a joke,” he said. “Emma Stone, Billie Jean King, and Paul McCartney walk into a bar!”Cumming packed similar stories into his second memoir, “Baggage,” from 2021, which charts his varied adventures in Hollywood. His highly eclectic film and television résumé includes everything from early breakout roles, such as a needy suitor in “Emma” and a recovering social reject in “Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion,” to parts in franchises like “Spy Kids” and “X2.” He donned a tailored suit to play the campaign manager Eli Gold on a hundred and twenty-one episodes of “The Good Wife” on CBS; though he is queer and married to his partner, Grant Shaffer, he told the crowd at Studio 54, “I can butch up when I have to!” Most recently, though, he made a flamboyant foray into reality TV as the host of Peacock’s wildly popular competition show “The Traitors,” in which a group of scheming reality stars play a game of Mafia in a Scottish castle while Cumming presides in a series of plaid kilts and bejewelled capes. Season 2—whose finale aired last week—included betrayals, ultimatums, and several contestant-eliminating “murders” under cover of night. As Cumming aptly puts it, “It’s called ‘The Traitors,’ bitch!”
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S44Gig workers on delivery apps rent accounts to get around bans  Every day, gig worker Carvalho bikes around the northwestern Brazilian city of Manaus for five hours, delivering for iFood. But at the end of the week, only a part of his earnings is transferred to his bank account. He loses at least 50 reais ($10) on the “rent” he pays to the real owner of the iFood account that he uses for his work.Carvalho, who requested to be identified only by his last name for fear of reprisal from Brazil’s leading food delivery platform, told Rest of World he’d prefer to work from his own account and bring home his entire wage. But iFood banned him in early 2023. He said he was blocked from the platform after he failed to return an order that his client did not collect.
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S33Graduate Hotels Sells to Hilton for $210 Million  The iconic hotel brand is acquiring the boutique hotel chain Graduate Hotels for $210 million. Founded in 2014, Graduate Hotels grew to 32 locations in "university-anchored towns" across the U.S. and U.K. during the past decade. Founder and CEO Ben Weprin started the company after realizing that parents, alumni, and prospective students visiting colleges might want to stay somewhere with more character than a generic hotel chain.Graduate Hotels was launched out of Weprin's Nashville-based real estate investment management company Adventurous Journeys Capital Partners, which he founded in 2008. The company creates design-oriented properties, primarily in secondary markets, and is currently valued at $5.3 billion, with more than 100 properties. In a press release, Weprin called Hilton an "ideal partner" to grow the brand.
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S38Should Small Businesses Weigh in on Politics?  ââWhen entrepreneur Bianca Lesmes was asked to join a candid session about how small businesses navigate political tensions for the SXSW Inc. Founder's House in Austin, Texas, her marketing team had concerns. Could this backfire on the organization? What if she says something -- or nods or smiles at a comment -- that could be interpreted as either leftist or rightist? What if the public suddenly mistakes her personal view for the company's?The marketing team had good reason to be concerned. Talking about politics can be divisive, even in business: nearly half of Gen-Z employees would consider quitting if their CEO's support for a political candidate didn't align with their beliefs, according to an October Glassdoor survey. And, as Gallup has reported, the general public is nearly evenly split on whether corporations should take a public stand on political issues.Â
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S34EV Charging Stations Could Be a Boost to Retail Businesses and They Might Not Cost as Much as You Think  Electric vehicles are growing in popularity across the U.S. but a lack of charging stations makes many would-be buyers think twice about the purchase. Small business retailers could step in to fill the gap, providing chargers in their parking lots, and turn a profit in the process. A recent Consumer Reports study shows that retailers see an average increase of four percent in foot traffic and five percent in revenue as consumers shop and run errands while they charge their vehicles. It also states that 89 percent of EV drivers make a purchase while charging their vehicle.Â
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S36Tom Ford and Adrian Grenier Win SXSW Sustainability Award for Climate Change Efforts  The Tom Ford Plastic Innovation Accelerator, a collaboration between the American fashion designer and the Entourage star's nonprofit, Lonely Whale, won the SXSW Innovation Award for Climate Change, thanks to its work to prevent plastic pollution. It represents one part of a broader effort to help entrepreneurs develop and scale alternatives to plastic through a competition, business accelerator, and marketing campaign."We like to talk about this idea of radical collaboration and doing things differently. And so this award for us was recognition that we had done that," says Emy Kane, managing director of Lonely Whale.
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S26Why We're Spending So Much Money  My credit card is a mangled thing. Its blue plastic backing is peeling so much that it doesn’t work in swipe machines; it looks like a dog chewed it up and spat it out. It seldom leaves my wallet anymore. But that doesn’t matter. In the two weeks before I wrote this story, I spent more than $4,000 on my card without laying eyes on it. Each of these transactions was made online, where my card number is stored by Uber or Walmart or Google Chrome. That’s probably why I didn’t flinch when I spent $333 on groceries for a weekend with friends, or $48.34 on a pizza through Uber Eats, or even $1,533 for an Airbnb when my extended family comes to visit. Without having to type in my card number, the pain of the purchase was dampened.
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S21How neuroscience can help you make tough decisions - with no regrets - New Scientist (No paywall)  LIFE, it could be argued, is like a long game of blackjack. In one common version of this, each person is initially dealt two playing cards. The aim is for your hand to add to 21, or as close to this as you can get without busting. Players can either “stick” with their existing hand or “twist” – asking to be dealt another card to add to their total. The risk, of course, is that you exceed 21 and are eliminated.This may sound far removed from everyday choices, but many of our most important life decisions boil down to such dilemmas. Should I stay put or take the leap and move house? Should I remain in my job or start my own business? Should I put up with an unsatisfying relationship or try my luck at love another time? In each case, we must weigh the security of what we have against a riskier, but potentially more rewarding, alternative.
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S4The Ozempic Pushers - The Cut (No paywall)  Othella Esposita had been on her period for four months straight when she went to the gynecologist last January. The sales administrator from Kansas City has polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), a hormonal imbalance that messes with her menstrual cycle, and was trying to get pregnant. Esposita asked her doctor how to regulate her period, but instead the OB/GYN brought up a “new drug on the market”: Ozempic.The 38-year-old, who calls herself “super fat,” was confused. “My goal was not to lose weight,” Esposita says. “The whole reason I was there was the bleeding.” She told the doctor she doesn’t have diabetes and thought women trying to get pregnant weren’t supposed to be on the medication. “With your weight, you can’t get pregnant anyway,” the gynecologist said, adding that even if Esposita did, she or the baby would likely die from health complications. “I was shaking and tearing up,” Esposita says. “I was trying to still advocate for myself.” She worried that her insurance wouldn’t cover Ozempic, but her gynecologist kept pushing. She told Esposita that she and several of her staffers were on it, offered to prescribe alternative weight-loss drugs if Esposita’s claim was rejected, and told her about a voucher that would bring down the cost. “I could not keep fighting,” Esposita says. She left the office with a prescription that she didn’t plan to pick up.
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S8S23Defining the skills citizens will need in the future world of work  We know that digital and AI technologies are transforming the world of work and that today’s workforce will need to learn new skills and learn to continually adapt as new occupations emerge. We also know that the COVID-19 crisis has accelerated this transformation. We are less clear, however, about the specific skills tomorrow’s workers will require.Research by the McKinsey Global Institute has looked at the kind of jobs that will be lost, as well as those that will be created, as automation, AI, and robotics take hold. And it has inferred the type of high-level skills that will become increasingly important as a result.1For more information, see “Skill shift: Automation and the future of the workforce,” May 23, 2018. The need for manual and physical skills, as well as basic cognitive ones, will decline, but demand for technological, social and emotional, and higher cognitive skills will grow.
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S39Without Saying a Word, Taylor Swift Just Taught Everyone a Masterclass in Smart Business  You probably already know that you can stream Taylor Swift's Eras Tour concert movie starting tonight at 9 p.m. ET on Disney+. You probably also know that the streaming version of the movie includes content that wasn't available in the theatrical release. That's actually important because--it turns out--the streaming version of the concert also has a different name. Officially, the Disney+ version is called Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour (Taylor's Version). That name should sound familiar--the parenthetical is what the musician has added to all of the albums she has re-recorded over the past few years. It's a signal to fans that they are the versions owned entirely by Swift.Â
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S40I Just Watched the 'Masters of the Air' Series Finale. With 12 Short Words, It Taught a Crucial Leadership Lesson  ââLast month, Apple revealed that Masters of the Air, the long-awaited 9-part miniseries about World War II bomber crews produced by Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, and Gary Goetzman on Apple TV+, had more viewers than any series launch in the channel's short history. Personally, I've been looking forward to this series for years, and I've watched every new episode as soon as it dropped. So when I realized that Apple had released the show's finale a bit early -- 9 p.m. on Thursday, instead of midnight Friday -- I had to set aside my plans.Â
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S41Harnessing Imagination to Drive Innovation  The decay of rules-based trade means that companies can no longer find growth as easily by expanding to new locations, or expanding demand through low-cost single point sourcing. In this context, companies seeking growth must develop innovative offerings to expand demand. These offerings are, essentially, products of imagination — conceiving of and realizing new possibilities — a challenge that companies struggle with. In this article, the authors present a six step-cycle that is at the foundation of a corporate “imagination machine.”
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S48S49Craig Wright Is Not Bitcoin Creator Satoshi Nakamoto, Judge Declares ![]() A judge in the UK High Court has declared that Australian computer scientist Craig Wright is not Satoshi Nakamoto, the creator of Bitcoin, marking the end of a years-long debate."The evidence is overwhelming," said Justice James Mellor, delivering a surprise ruling at the close of the trial. "First, that Dr. Wright is not the author of the Bitcoin white paper. Second, Dr. Wright is not the person who adopted or operated under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto in the period 2008 to 2011. Third, Dr. Wright is not the person who created the Bitcoin system. And, fourth, he is not the author of the initial versions of the Bitcoin software," he said.
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S25How to Reset Your Thinking Around Spending Money  The number of Americans who reported money as a stressor, has only increased since before the COVID-19 pandemic. Of parents who said they have multiple stressors causing significant strain on their lives, nearly 80% said that money is one of those factors. Single adults pointed it as the most significant source of stress, over housing costs and personal safety. The report comes despite a resilient U.S. economy. Job growth seems to be at a steady pace—although numbers fell short of the gains seen in 2021 and 2022—and the unemployment rate has remained below 4% for the past two years. However, inflation has remained persistently high, with rising energy, food and housing costs putting a strain on households.
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S43It's Time to Reconceptualize What "Imposter Syndrome" Means for People of Color  The recent pushback against the imposter phenomenon in the media has largely focused on how and why it’s inappropriate for people of color. In this article, the author argues that, while there is merit to these arguments, getting rid of the idea entirely for Black students and workers is a disservice. Instead, he recommends reconceptualizing the term to include new research on how imposterism affects people of color, and urges organizations to better understand how racism, bias, and imposter feelings are intertwined.
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S35Meghan Markle Is Launching a Lifestyle Brand: American Riviera Orchard  Meghan Markle just announced the launch of her brand, American Riviera Orchard, with a mysterious Instagram profile and website on March 14. The pages are scant in terms of details--save for a film-style Instagram story that shows the former actor in what appears to be her Montecito, California home--arranging flowers, ostensibly mixing ingredients for some kind of baked good, and petting a dog while dressed in a black evening gown.American Riviera Orchard's pending trademark shows that the brand has intentions to sell a number of home goods, including, but not limited to, tablecloths, placemats, dinnerware, napkin rings, tableware, tea sets, and cookbooks. The trademark also includes food items, such as jellies, jams, and marmalades--the makings of a solid high tea, with a California twist. Santa Barbara, after all, is colloquially known as the "American Riviera."Â
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S47Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Targets a Generation of Politically Disaffected, Extremely Online Men ![]() In his continued quest to become either the president of the United States or else a very interesting footnote to someone else's reelection, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has enlisted a number of celebrities and influencers. On Tuesday, he expanded those ranks, confirming to The New York Times that he is "considering" NFL quarterback Aaron Rodgers and former Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura for his vice presidential pick; Politico reported that he' has also "approached" Senator Rand Paul, former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, and motivational speaker Tony Robbins.But it was Rodgers and Ventura who drew the most attention from the press, and it's their roles in the information ecosystem who most signal what Kennedy is doing. Outside of their careers in the NFL and WWE, Rodgers and Ventura are known for, respectively, promoting anti-vaccine views in conversations with sports podcasters and Joe Rogan, and promoting politically contrarian, occasionally conspiratorial views on cable TV and Substack. By publicizing his interest in them, Kennedy is making overtures to a very specific potential voter: the highly online and politically disaffected young man.
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S50The Small Company at the Center of 'Gamergate 2.0' ![]() The accusations began around the release of Spider-Man 2 last October. More came when Alan Wake II hit a week later. They were all over the replies to the social media accounts of Sweet Baby Inc.: hateful comments, many of which hinged on the idea that the Montreal-based narrative development and consulting company was responsible for the âÂÂwokeificationâ of video games, recalls Kim Belair, the companyâÂÂs CEO.In the months following, the noise only increased. âÂÂYou made this character Black, or you added these gay characters, or you ruined the story,â Belair says of the comments, the tone of which, she adds, never changed. Neither have the demands of the people behind them. âÂÂItâÂÂs usually, âÂÂleave the industry,âÂÂâ Belair says, or admit thereâÂÂs truth to wild conspiracy theories about being involved with investment company BlackRock. (Sweet Baby is not.) Or, more succinctly: âÂÂDie.âÂÂ
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S29Would you trust big work-life decisions to an AI coach?  The coaching industry has been growing fast in recent years. The success of online coaching platform CoachHub — which has raised $333.5 million since its launch in 2018 — shows that tech investors agree it’s a sector worth paying attention to.Coaching — a form of professional development that focuses on improving skills in areas like critical thinking, problem-solving and leadership skills — typically relies on an experienced coach talking directly with individuals or groups. But those human coaches are seeing the first signs of disruption by the emerging generative AI revolution. Apps like Rocky.ai and Wave point towards a world where business professionals hone their skills by talking with an AI rather than a person.
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S2Einstein's Mother: A Poem by Tracy K. Smith  The forces of chance that chisel reality out of the bedrock of possibility — this improbable planet, this improbable life — leave ghostly trails of what-ifs, questions asked and unanswered, unanswerable. Why do you, this particular you, exist? Why does the universe? And once the dice have fallen in favor of existence, there are so many possible points of entry into life, so many possible fractal paths through it — so many ways to live and die even the most ordinary life, a life of quiet and unwitnessed beauty, washed unremembered into the river of time after this chance constellation of atoms disbands into stardust. There are, after all, infinitely many kinds of beautiful lives.Every once in a very long while, chance deals a life out of the ordinary, islanded in the rapids of collective memory as one of lasting and profound legacy — a life that has seen far beyond the horizon of its own creaturely limits, into the deepest truths of the universe. Such lives are exceedingly rare — think how few of the billions of humans who ever lived are remembered and studied and revered a mere hundred years hence, how few the Euclids and Shakespeares and Sapphos.
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