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Scientists Regrow Teeth, Americans Need Chaos and Why Your Next Flight Might Be Delayed On Purpose | Non-Obvious Insights #181

This week the dual themes of selfishness and unselfishness emerged in the stories I’m sharing below. On the selfish side – Instagrammers sharing tone deaf posts about the Bahamas, a study finding a disturbing portion of America simply wants to destroy things and the dire side effects of Amazon’s quest for faster delivery. On the … Read more

Prosperity Preachers, HBO’s “Feel Terrible” Hit And Why Your Vacation May Worsen Climate Change

Why HBO’s Chernobyl Is The Feel-Terrible Hit Everyone NeededLike over six million viewers I have been completely engrossed in the storytelling of this startlingly accurate hit mini-series about the 80’s era nuclear disaster. The lessons for today are profound and despite casting that oddly seems to avoid any actual Russian actors in lead roles, the five episode series is … Read more

How Millennials Became Workaholics, Japan’s Big Hacking Experiment and Why People Believe Tabloids | Non-Obvious Insights 01.31.19

Millennials Glorify #Hustle,Take Unhealthy Workaholism Mainstream As we live through the rise of “#hustle culture,” this article provides a much needed reminder that we need to stop celebrating workaholism among Millennials and instead describe the workplaces which foster this culture for what they are: toxic and inhumane.   Japan Hacks 200 Million Devices In Pre-Olympic CyberSecurity Test  To prepare … Read more

Selfie Dysmorphia, Celebrities Abandoning Social Media and the World’s Biggest Universal Income Experiment | Non-Obvious Insights 01.24.19

Why Every Ski Map Looks The Same This past weekend was a big one for skiing and so this article was interesting and timely – all about the life and work of a man who has drawn hundreds of ski maps for resorts. It is a fascinating reminder that there is beauty in the details of … Read more

How To Separate Meaningful Data From Quantified Bullshit

Last year I got my test results from the 23andMe genetic testing and found it to be fascinatingly useless. The numbers told me I was 99% South Asian and offered head-scratching “insights” like that I have an “average chance of hating chewing sounds.” This week an excerpt from a new book called A Brief History of … Read more

Why The Brazilian National Museum Fire Matters

brazil fire

The story of the devastating fire this week at the National Museum of Brazil made me unexplainably sad. Yet on three different trips to Brazil, I never went there. So why am I so upset about it? Experts estimate nearly 20 million artifacts may have been lost. Even though many museums have ways to protect their … Read more

The Passive Future Of Learning: How To Learn Piano In An Hour

Imagine learning a new skill such as playing the piano or reading braille in as little as an hour. That may soon be a reality according to this story which introduces a concept called “passive haptic learning” where people were taught the finger patterns to play a song on the piano simply by wearing a … Read more

Nokia Wants To Be Known For Digital Health And VR

Though most people still think of Nokia as a cell phone maker, that unit of their business was sold off to Microsoft years ago and the brand has slowly been focusing its attention elsewhere. Now the brand wants to build its reputation around digital wellness and VR. Yet changing this type of long held perception … Read more

Writer Of Str@nge% Password Guidelines Finally Admits He Was Wrong

If you ever wanted someone to blame for having to change your password every 90 days – last week the world found out who that person is. Former National Institute of Standards and Technology manager Bill Burr recently admitted to the WSJ that his 2003 password guidelines were unnecessarily harsh. The new guidelines suggest removing the … Read more

How Brands and Small Town America Are Cashing In On The Eclipse

As the highly anticipated solar eclipse approaches, there are plenty of towns and brands finding creative ways to cash in. Chiquita created a humorous video about the impending “Banana Sun,” there are “eclipse chasing” flights selling for $10,000 and Krispy Kreme even created an “eclipse donut.” This article takes a deeper look at the windfall that seems to be approaching small … Read more

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Rohit is the author of 10 books on trends, the future of business, building a more human brand with storytelling and how to create a more diverse and inclusive world.

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