The non-obvious blog
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23 2026 July
The Non-Obvious Future Word of the Week: Fauxstalgia & The Lost Goal of Pelé
Fauxstalgia – The ache for a memory that was AI-generated and never actually lived through. The most legendary soccer player in history once shared that the best...
Read Now05 2026 May
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Foreign Fruit by Katie Goh
There is a shelf in my office stacked entirely with books about the history of the banana (and one about tulips). These sorts of books...
Read Now04 2026 May
How AI Analyzing Your Writing Style Might Kill Online Anonymity
When we used to talk about your digital identity, it was the sorts of personal information that are easily quantified like your date of birth...
Read Now30 2026 April
What We Can Learn from the Complex Legacy of Tim Cook
One of the biggest tech stories this month was related to Apple CEO Tim Cook’s decision to step down after 15 years leading Apple into...
Read Now29 2026 April
What If the Biggest Threat to Human Thinking Isn’t AI?
Most conversations about the future threat to human reasoning start and end with artificial intelligence. That misses a big threat that’s finally getting more attention:...
Read Now28 2026 April
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Custodians of Wonder by Eliot Stein
There are people keeping ancient customs alive and their stories are in danger of being lost to the world. This is a book about how...
Read Now27 2026 April
This Is the Age of AI Sabotage … But How Big of a Problem Is It?
According to a range of new surveys, somewhere between 29% to 44% of employees are admitting to finding some ways to sabotage the adoption of...
Read Now23 2026 April
Heinz Shows the Underappreciated Power of Manufacturing Significance
Brand positioning is usually all about what makes your product or service different. Usually that’s based on something real, but it doesn’t always have to...
Read Now22 2026 April
Skimpflation and Why Hershey Is Quietly Going Back to Using Actual Ingredients in Reese’s PB Cups
Brad Reese is the grandson of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups inventor H.B. Reese and apparently has spent much of his adult life going out in...
Read Now21 2026 April
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: Enough is Enuf by Gabe Henry
If you enjoy dissecting the quirks of the English language, then you’ll appreciate this book from author Gabe Henry that not only looks at why...
Read Now20 2026 April
How One Man Lowered the Price of Guinness by Using AI to Call 6,000+ Pubs Across Ireland
Here’s a story that has everything: an entrepreneur’s frustration, an immediately useful idea, game changing use of technology … and a great brand name. It...
Read Now16 2026 April
Four Brilliant Marketing Stories from the Coachella Festival
It’s the middle of the “consumer wonderland” of The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, the desert experience drawing over 125,000 visitors annually across two...
Read Now15 2026 April
The Tragedy of American Taxes Isn’t Actually the Taxes
People hate taxes and filing their taxes, yet the tax refund check is the biggest single payment most Americans get all year. It is tax season in...
Read Now14 2026 April
The Non-Obvious Book of the Week: How Things Are Made By Tim Minshall
How did the stuff that made it into your life get made? For most of us, the manufacturing process is a mystery, but if we...
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