Saturday 15th March 2025

“It’s Pretty Human, But It’s Still Bad.” - Vulture (No paywall)

Analyzing OpenAI’s ‘metafictional literary short story’ with an open-minded English professor.

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This annual shot might protect against HIV infections - MIT Technology Review (No paywall)

Promising results from an early-stage trial suggest that lenacapavir injections might offer long-lasting protection.

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Opinion | It's Not Nature. It's Not Nurture. It's a Mobius Strip.

Obesity, education, smoking — in more and more cases, we’re finding a nature-nurture feedback loop.

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"I'm Afraid We Are Automating This Work Without Really Understanding It"

AI is often touted as a way to handle busy work to free people up for tasks that matter. But in the race to add automation to pretty much every job, it’s rare that people question what, exactly, people are being freed from, and which tasks actually matter. This interview with sociologist Allison J. Pugh explores what she calls “connective labor,” why it’s under threat from automation, who will be most affected, and what we’ll lose as humans if it disappears.

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Research: How Gig Platforms Can Mitigate Racial Bias in Ratings

Online labor platforms increasingly rely on customer ratings to evaluate worker performance, yet these systems and their opaque algorithms can unintentionally introduce racial bias, impacting worker pay and opportunities. New research analyzing nearly 70,000 customer ratings before and after one labor platform switched from a five-star scale to a thumbs up/thumbs down scale found that workers of color received slightly lower ratings on average (4.72 stars) than white workers (4.79 stars) under the five-star scale, even though the company had no evidence that this gap reflected actual differences in job quality. The switch to a dichotomous scale eliminated the racial gap in ratings and income. Platforms can employ three strategies to reduce bias in their own rating systems: 1) Check for gaps, 2) keep it simple, and 3) provide clearer rating guidelines. These approaches can improve equity, better identify quality of service, and provide actionable insights to enhance worker performance and customer satisfaction.

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Why Successful Leaders Think with Intention

Every great business, every breakthrough innovation, and every career-defining success begins with a single thought. However, thought alone is not enough—it must be tied to the purpose of creating impact.

In Chapter 4: Thought and Purpose of James Allen's classic As a Man Thinketh, he explores a simple yet profound truth: Those who succeed in life and business do so because they think with clarity, act with purpose, and stay committed to their goals.


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Productivity and Happiness Work Together in the Workplace

In today's achievement-oriented culture, many of us subscribe to this fundamentally flawed equation: working harder + working longer hours = success and happiness. You relentlessly push your limits to achieve professional goals and boost productivity. However, you soon discover that success feels empty once you attain it. You're too burned out to enjoy it.

Emma Seppala, the science director of Stanford University's Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, draws from extensive research in neuroscience and psychology to craft a compelling alternative for today: Success follows happiness, rather than happiness following success.


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Apple Burns Down Its Benefit of the Doubt

The Apple Fifth Avenue store in New York, US, on Monday, Feb. 24, 2025. Apple Inc., as it seeks relief from US President Donald Trump's tariffs on goods imported from China, said that it will hire 20,000 new workers and produce AI servers in the US. Photographer: Michael Nagle/Bloomberg

Back at WWDC, Apple's developer conference, the company "showed off" a number of features, including the ability for Siri to be contextually aware of your personal information, as well as what is on your screen. This would be a game-changer, and it's an example of the type of thing only Apple could do.


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How to Squeeze More Joy Out of Everyday Pleasures

This is a lesson author Sasha Chapin learned young. "My childhood was unpleasant, and as a coping mechanism, I tried to love, hard, the passably pleasant moments," he wrote in his newsletter recently. 

This lesson applies equally well to adults living through periods of political and economic upheaval. You can't make those in charge behave better (until you vote them out) or stop artificial intelligence advancing. But you do control your immediate environment and your reaction to it. 


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Know Your Leadership Altitude: It's the Secret to Effective Versatility

One of the biggest lessons in leadership is understanding the idea of "altitude." As a leader, you deal with many different groups: your team, direct reports, bosses, peers, board members, customers, and more. Each of these relationships requires a different approach, similar to flying at different heights. Much like a pilot, leaders have to adjust to their altitude and adapt their engagement styles to fit the audience if they want to maximize their success.

Being able to adapt one's approach based on who you're talking to is key to being a great leader. Throughout my career, I've noticed this skill is especially important when moving from an individual contributor's (IC) role to a leadership position. This transition is often the biggest leap in leadership development. Some new leaders struggle with this change, and many regress into their old IC habits instead of stepping into an effective leadership mindset. Some never fully make the transition.


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