Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 5

Starting with her own powerful story of standing up for herself, this book from author and thinker Nilofer Merchant is a play-by-play guide on how to craft your own unique identity in the world and use it to stand apart from everyone else. Nilofer calls this your “onlyness” and the book features the stories and profiles of many people who have done this in big and small ways throughout their own lives. Each chapter breaks down their stories, what you can learn from them and some actionable highl...

It is a beach cliché to see random idiots with metal detectors and sifters trying to find everything from loose change to diamond earrings. Using the idea of digging for treasure is reserved for the slightly desperate, mostly unhinged or overly optimistic. In Denmark, the ​government is encouraging these treasure hunters​ … and it may be working. Last year the government “deputized private detectorists to unearth artifacts buried in farm fields,” and the artifacts they are finding are unearthing...

It seems like the perfect hack. A series of prompts that anyone can input into a generative AI tool like ChatGPT in order to ensure that it doesn’t “hallucinate” but instead gives you responses based on reality. And it works … sometimes. Unfortunately, sometimes isn’t really good enough and there are many real-world repercussions that are starting to emerge. A piece in the NY Times this weekend was titled “They Asked an A.I. Chatbot Questions. The Answers Sent Them Spiraling.” It explores the gr...

Searching for Cheetos that are shaped like anything is a fairly idiotic way to spend your time. It’s also surprisingly popular despite its idiocy. The thing about Cheetos is that people love to see things that aren’t really there in the shape of their Cheetos. At one point, the brand famously created an entire museum to house the most unique discovered Cheetos shapes.

Now in a newly launched campaign there’s a cash prize attached for someone who gets picked because their Cheetos discovery bes...

The first time I read All the Living and All the Dead, it was an easy pick for the Most Original book winner in the 2022 Non-Obvious Book Awards. Fueled by a childhood fascination with death, the author tells the story of “people who have made death their life’s work.” In a time when the most frequent depictions of death we see are the fictionalized stories of near-heroic serial killers in TV shows and movies, this book offers a unique and no...

One thing I often talk about in this newsletter is honing our media literacy. This week I found a perfect case study to illustrate how you can do this. Let’s start with the story headline from a site called Retailwire.com:

Majority of Americans Aware of New Tariffs, but 40% Aren’t Making Any Changes to Purchasing Behavior: Will This Trend Continue?

Right away, I noticed the numbers seem off: 40% is not a majority. It also therefore seemed suspicious that this was already declared a “trend....

Earlier this week when I arrived in Lima, it was in their brand new airport that is less than two weeks old. People in the city had lots of questions. Did I have issues? All the local news apparently was focused on reporting about the problems. My experience was flawless. The airport was new, fast, easy to navigate and delivered a simple travel experience. That, unfortunately, is a boring story. So the opposite gets reported … and people assume everything is worse than it is.

On stage, after ...

Sometimes life seems to offer sadly few consequences for being an asshole. And rarely are they irreversible. Unless you happen to exhibit that bad behavior when flying.

This interesting piece looks at four examples of passengers who got banned for life from flying due to bad behavior. It shows the extreme consequences of making a poor choice while getting aggravated or drunk or simply having a bad day. While the punishments do seem extreme when it comes to banning them from flying (and nearly...

American schools and kindergarten specifically are not designed for boys … But they should be. That’s the conclusion from a piece in the New York Times this weekend that focuses on why boys are regularly falling behind girls when it comes to their performance in primary schools:

“Kindergarten has become significantly more academic because of the effects of a national law passed in 2001, with children expected to spend more time sitting still and learning math and reading — and many boys do no...

Ask anyone if they describe themselves as a tourist or a traveler and most people will say the latter. Seeing yourself as a “tourist” has become something of a bad word. Author Paige McClanahan dives into this topic and aims to reclaim the word and concept of being a tourist in her new book that is a timely read just before many of us head off on our summer travels. In her definition, a new tourist “engages with the people who live in the place they’re visiting, and ideally does activities o...