BIG QUESTIONS
Is your entire industry headed in the wrong direction?
If you’ve ever read the book or seen the movie “Money Ball,” you know the story about Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane and his novel approach to baseball. He ignored the big key stats that the rest of the industry obsessed over, thought about what truly contributes to wins (i.e. getting on base and slugging), and built a team of inexpensive players that happened to work spectacularly well together. Beane’s A’s became the first team to win 20 consecutive games. Thing is, other teams had used this approach before. Beane just did it at a time when the rest of the industry valued the wrong things. The whole lot of them, with their big money and “smart” managers, were headed in the wrong direction.
Could the same be true of your industry right now?
TOOL JOY
Introducing…uh… some weird AI Rabbit thing.
You know that feeling when you want something but have no idea what it is? We are yearning for this AI thingy called Rabbit. What does it do? No idea. It’s a pocket companion running a language model that understands what you want and gets it done. A little vague for ya? Yeah, us too. But apparently, it’s all the rage. We’re ordering two. Jon Stewart has a funny little bit about this kind of technology.
DESIGN WE ❤️
Birdie air quality monitor
Thanks to climate change and increasing pollution, air quality worldwide is declining. (In 2023, only seven countries met the World Health Organization’s air quality guidelines for pollution, while more than 90 percent of countries and territories exceeded them, according to IQAir, a Swiss research organization.) Seeking refuge indoors may seem like a sound decision when the AQ numbers start spiking, but many indoor environments are just as unhealthy to breathe. That’s why we love the Birdie Fresh Air Monitor, an ingenious product that monitors CO2 levels. What’s great about this product design is its whimsical simplicity – when CO2 levels get too high, the canary “passes out” until enough fresh air is let in, thus reviving the unconscious birdie. How fresh is that?
BEEP BOOP
Out of ideas? When it comes to content, marketers struggle most with finding ideas and creating high-engagement content, according to Hubspot’s 2024 State of Marketing Report (BTW: we have a million ideas, just ask).
College… barely worth it: The rate of return from a college education is 10%. ?
Survival of the…nicest? A new study of evolutionary biology reveals that cooperation, not competition, might be the more significant key to survival. Win win.
Time off(line): California is set to become the first state in the US to give workers the right to disconnect from work after work. Yes, you read that right.
Look ma, no humans: A Hyundai is the first driverless car to pass a standard driver’s test and get its own license (video here). Hope they got their good side.
WORD TO THE WISE
“Flaws are human, and the attraction of art is the humanity held in it. If we were machinelike, the art wouldn’t resonate. It would be soulless. With life comes pain, insecurity, and fear. We’re all different and we’re all imperfect, and the imperfections are what makes each of us and our work interesting.”
—Rick Rubin, American Record Executive
ICEBREAKER
If you were able to chat with an animal for 5 minutes: which one would it be, and what would you tell or ask? (can’t use your pets)
Melissa: My daughter has a radio show called “Something Fishy” on kups.com (Saturdays at 11am). The theme of the show is to pick a sea creature and then create a playlist on what she thinks the animal would listen to. I would love to check in with the blue whale and see if they agree with her playlist (which I thought was perfection).
Todd: On a morning row the other day, we passed by a sea otter mom and her cub. They just stared at us for a long moment. I’d love to ask her what she makes of this weirdly long floating object with eight sticks in the water and how she explains it to her cub
John: I thought it would be fun to pass this question along to my daughters. My younger one says, “I’d ask a hamster why it’s so fat.” My older daughter says, “I’d ask a lizard where it goes when its tail falls off. And the lizard would say, ‘To the retail store!’ ”
Sarah: I’d love a few minutes to apologize to all animals for how humans have really jacked up their habitats and the planet in general. But if I could only talk to one – definitely an orca – since they seem to be the most mad at us.
Laura: I would ask a bear if they really do get scared when we make ourselves big. Or do they do a deep belly laugh at our folly.
Marielle: I would ask dogs to explain their understanding of human behavior and their understanding of our relationship with their species. In other words, I’d want to find out if dogs know exactly who rescued who.
FALLACIES, PARADOXES & THEORIES…OH MY
Oubaitori
An ancient Japanese idiom. It means that people, like flowers, bloom in their own time and take their own individual journeys. It is accepting ourselves as we are and focusing on our own uniqueness instead of comparing ourselves to others.
