(Brain Ticklers, Ed. 49) Perspectives Unveiled: A Kaleidoscope of Knowledge and Opinion
Inspiresting links for April 2024 that [carnivas thinks] will tickle the brains [of his (purportedly) intelligent friends].
Hiya mate, hope all well. So, we have two issues within the month, ha. Because I didn’t want this To-Do item for the next weekend when I am booked for a couple of other things. But April is so near, right? And yeah, Q1 is over, in case you didn’t realize. You had one more day (with 29-Feb). Hope you did something useful with it. I didn’t, and am alarmed that Q1 is over, in case you wonder. In some conversations, I have actually started using 2025. Don’t know why. Too early for that, right? Even the annual planning exercise hasn’t begun at the workplace. Some strange thing is happening in the brain.
Btw, we are hitting 50 next month. Suggest ideas on what I could do, not for that edition, but in general for subsequent editions. I have been meaning to add Book Reviews, Podcast suggestions etc. In fact, I have a bunch of them bookmarked, but haven’t figured a neat workflow on how they would reach my Joplin, from where I could easily copy-paste into this (as I do for text links). So, any suggestion or nudge from you that such content would be interesting, would help me break the laziness in that respect. Even an “all good, continue doing this” would go a long way.
PS: Btw, the title/subject line of this post/email was recommended by ChatGPT with the content below.
Now, on to the links.
History (or its first draft)
Early humans first developed rudimentary language around 1.6 million years ago – somewhere in eastern or Southern Africa.
Trump launched a covert influence operation against China (using the CIA, of course). Hilarious to think they tried to break the great firewall, but maybe they did.
The monster under the sink. Hey, can we have this again, please?
An interesting obituary for Frans de Waal, who taught the world that animals had emotions
Brookings Research: Official data now confirms that India has eliminated extreme poverty, as commonly defined in international comparisons. This also means that the time has come for India to graduate to a higher poverty line, much like other countries. (I have no clue how much of this paper is politically influenced. It does say it relies on "official data", which by itself might mean anything to you, depending on which side of the political divide you are on).
Jimmy Donaldson (MrBeast) warped YouTube in his image — but YouTube is warping him back. (Proud and ashamed at the same time to say I haven't watched a single video of this person)
In Japan, relations between men and women are shifting as marriage rates decline and more women enter the workforce. Old men who have nothing to do post retirement are also called "wet leaves" - like the wet leaves which stick to shoes, apparently. Sad. Makes me afraid, actually. Ha.
Society
QR code menus are out. What a relief.
For some reason, public mishaps – stumbling, knocking something over, spilling something, pushing a ‘pull’ door, realizing you’ve gone the wrong way and turning around – provoke an anxiety that compels us to engage in curious behaviors. (I finally realized that the field of my interest is micro-sociology).
People are starting to get interested in boring, big companies that are stable and has decent leaders, even if they move slowly. But I do think there is a need to find ways to rekindle and amplify the excitement, fun, challenge, and joy.
Menopause evolved, so grandmothers could help their daughters' offspring, without competing with them for mates.
The hot new thing in proselytizing is an app that allows Christian conservatives to collect data on whole neighborhoods of potential converts. (Ha!)
Story of a non-native speaker working for an American company. Ha, again.
Ready or not, AI chatbots are here to help with Gen Z’s mental health struggles. (Hey, who said human therapists were better)
The famous Playboy image "Lenna" from 1972 gets banned from IEEE computer journals. (I don't know man; I have mixed feelings about it -- Should it be banned, or continued to be used, even by women scientists, and laughed off as how things were just 50 years back?)
Interesting-Perspectives
The environment in which kids grow up today is hostile to human development. (Techno-pessimistic, but worth a read to remind ourselves and scale back a bit in our personal lives). Related research: Most teens at least sometimes feel happy and peaceful when they don’t have their phone, but 44% say this makes them anxious. Half of parents say they have looked through their teen’s phone.
A review (in Nature magazine) of "The Anxious Generation" (by the same author who wrote the post linked in the bullet above): The book’s repeated suggestion that digital technologies are rewiring our children’s brains and causing an epidemic of mental illness is not supported by science. The bold proposal that social media is to blame might distract us from effectively responding to the real causes of the current mental-health crisis in young people.
On the proposed TikTok ban in the US: Don’t let the authoritarians set the agenda. Liberal democracies (if they truly are?) should be better than that.
Prior to 2008, equity holders as a class were engaging in investments based on volatile expectations surrounding corporate cash flows. 2008 began an era of asset-allocation dominance. Equity holders, as a class, are no longer engaged in investments in cash flow outcomes. They just think of equities writ large as an asset that will always yield higher returns than other asset classes, at the cost that you must tolerate greater fluctuations in value. (Scary about when this party might come to an abrupt end).
Perso-Dev
There are some thoughts you should nurture, and some you shouldn't (not necessarily suppress or avoid, but discourage!)
Ram Dass on self-judgment; and why should consider people as "trees".
Random
Forget "seat at the table". There might not even be a seat at the building. A generation of design leaders grapple with their future. Did business really break up with design, or did it just break up with a generation of design leadership?
A very interesting read: A VC-backed startup’s push for growth left little time for actual engineering.