High on consumption, low on battery
A special kind of shutting up when you have nothing to say
Seven things
AppleTV’s Physical, a show that covers everything from diet culture and eating disorders, sexual traumas across the spectrum and how they shape our self-image, fatphobia in female friendships, men ‘doing better’, women hating themselves with that loud, gnawing self-talk, and so much more. I loved and inhaled this show for so many reasons.
It's me, but it's not me. It's just a voice inside my head. Sounds crazy.
Yes, it is. And she controls you?
Well, it feels that way, yes.
And do you hate her?
Intensely, but I am her too.
Who messed with you when you were a kid?
Friend of my father's.
Me too!
Ding, ding!
Grassroot and online activisim, on top of years of research and advocacy, led to a reduction in costs of diagnosing tuberculosis, the world’s deadliest disease. This is a huge win for healthcare access, with important lessons for what informed public activism (and invoking Taylor Swift as a strategy) can achieve.
A new, uncomfortable, yet fair way to consider the decision between a lab vs natural diamond. Plus, some harshly dished advice. Dude wants to get his future wife a lab-grown diamond. Except, he thinks it’s okay to lie to his intimate (soon, legal) partner because, after all, he is building a cruelty-free world. A real ethical dilemma.
First, let’s acknowledge that there is disagreement about the environmental virtues of lab-grown diamonds; they’re often made in China, using electricity that comes mainly from coal. And you can source natural diamonds from places that regulate working conditions. Even if your assumptions were correct, though, the worldly consequences of your individual purchase, by itself, would not be significant. What is significant is your willingness to consecrate your union with a lie.
The giver of a ring should be concerned, foremost, with what the ring means to the recipient. You’re free to tell your girlfriend that you’re unwilling to buy a natural diamond. But the deception you’re contemplating would be deeply disrespectful of her and her desires — and a wildly inauspicious step toward marriage. That ring is a promise, and you would be establishing that you can’t be trusted to keep one.
This little poem that made me giggle, especially when Shreya reacted by saying, “I love living..”.
A fancy consulting firm studied used AI to supplement its work and found, unsurprisingly, that productivity improved quite a bit. It brought ‘poor performing workers’ at par with the top crew. Yet, when the AI screws up, consultants using it can’t make up for its gaps. There’s a lot of insights from the study, nicely captured here.
“AI: it works as a skill leveler. The consultants who scored the worst when we assessed them at the start of the experiment had the biggest jump in their performance, 43%, when they got to use AI. The top consultants still got a boost, but less of one. Looking at these results, I do not think enough people are considering what it means when a technology raises all workers to the top tiers of performance. It may be like how it used to matter whether miners were good or bad at digging through rock… until the steam shovel was invented and now differences in digging ability do not matter anymore. AI is not quite at that level of change, but skill levelling is going to have a big impact.”
Small, potent observations made travelling as I was travelling to work on a less disruptive, rainy day in Mumbai.
Everything from this conversation between Amit Verma, Mohit Satyanand and Kumar Anand about the barriers to development in Bihar. Shownotes took me to Kumar’s blog, which is another special treat.
Thank you for making it so far. If you liked this, let me know. If you have ✨thoughts✨, let me know. If you hated it, please leave me alone.
~ Very exhausted,
Uno
You’re a champ for output on low battery. But hey, we love living - yours, in exhaustion.