The non-obvious blog
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Be More Interesting Since 2004.
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18 2025 July
7 Tips for Making Your Website Non-Obvious (and Interesting)
Updating a website is one of my least favorite things to do as an entrepreneur. It just takes so much time. But if you’ve ever...
Read Now01 2025 July
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: The Problems in the Art World by Brainard Carey
Being an artist is hard. When you choose to do it professionally, you’ll likely face many problems. According to Brainard Carey, the renowned director of...
Read Now30 2025 June
How One Museum Is Reinventing the Way Collections Are Shown
Imagine spending a day at a museum without seeing the actual exhibits but instead visiting the warehouse where they keep everything that isn’t on display....
Read Now27 2025 June
Inside the Relentlessly Cheerful Campaign of Zohran Mamdani
Amidst all the coverage of what some news outlets described as a “political earthquake” with relative newcomer Zohran Mamdani defeating longtime NY politician Andrew Cuomo...
Read Now26 2025 June
The Perfect Astronaut of the Future Is Changing—Here’s Why It Matters
In the late 1950s, NASA recruited 11 men aged 25-48 for a unique experiment that has today been mostly forgotten. The participants, known to history...
Read Now25 2025 June
New Event Planner Survey Suggests Celebrity Keynote Speakers May Be a Waste of Money
I have “shared the stage” with Jay Leno. That’s industry lingo for saying that I was the second (much less expensive) keynote speaker at an...
Read Now24 2025 June
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: The Power of Onlyness by Nilofer Merchant
Starting with her own powerful story of standing up for herself, this book from author and thinker Nilofer Merchant is a play-by-play guide on how...
Read Now23 2025 June
Denmark’s Radical Archaeology Experiment Is Paying Off in Gold and Knowledge
It is a beach cliché to see random idiots with metal detectors and sifters trying to find everything from loose change to diamond earrings. Using...
Read Now20 2025 June
The Dangerous Fiction of the AI Reality Filter
It seems like the perfect hack. A series of prompts that anyone can input into a generative AI tool like ChatGPT in order to ensure...
Read Now19 2025 June
A Lesson In Marketing Strategy From the Cheetos Shape Hunt
Searching for Cheetos that are shaped like anything is a fairly idiotic way to spend your time. It’s also surprisingly popular despite its idiocy. The...
Read Now17 2025 June
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: All the Living and All the Dead by Hayley Campbell
The first time I read All the Living and All the Dead, it was an easy pick for the Most Original book winner in the 2022...
Read Now16 2025 June
How To See Through a Manipulated Headline (A Retailwire Case Study)
One thing I often talk about in this newsletter is honing our media literacy. This week I found a perfect case study to illustrate how...
Read Now13 2025 June
The Secret of Optimism and the New Peruvian Airport
Earlier this week when I arrived in Lima, it was in their brand new airport that is less than two weeks old. People in the city had...
Read Now12 2025 June
The Consequences of Being An Asshole While Flying
Sometimes life seems to offer sadly few consequences for being an asshole. And rarely are they irreversible. Unless you happen to exhibit that bad behavior...
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