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About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I share a new “non-obvious” book selection. Titles featured here may be new or classic books, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great reads that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.

“Becoming a successful market trader takes years of hard-won experience: learning to price correctly, manage stock, control portions, and maintain cash flow. For younger women entering the trade, that learning curve is steep, and low literacy levels and limited internet access make it steeper.”

In a new campaign from Nestle seasoning brand MAGGI, this knowledge is translated into an AI-powered business advisor trained on the expertise of experienced mammies who were interviewed in person and recorded offering insights and answers to commonly asked questions from new mammies. Without relying on computers or wi-fi access, the entire platform is delivered via a toll-free number anyone can call in their local language to get advice.

Aside from being a great idea, the brand tie-in is clear and not obscured. In many West African countries, 75% of the sales of Maggi’s seasoning packets and other products depend on these mammies. As their brand video shares, MAGGI needs mammies just as much as mammies need MAGGI.

This may be the biggest insight from this rare advertising campaign that’s actually doubling as a social enterprise supporting the community. Just because something is advertising and created by an ad agency, it doesn’t have to be entirely self-serving or manipulative. Sometimes a great marketing idea can actually deliver life-changing impact.

The contradictions in human rights, chaos between teams, travel bans + visa issues and geopolitical tensions led The Atlantic to describe this as the “absurd World Cup.” and international media are accurately describing the event as “riddled with controversy.” Estimates of the lost income from businesses both in productivity and direct costs will be millions of dollars. And FIFA is actively under investigation for price fixing, monopoly practices and unethical ticketing practices. It’s hard to name one aspect of this chaos and controversy of this that doesn’t feel unrecognizably American.

It is also bigger (super-sized?) … no other World Cup has been spread over three countries or included an expanded roster of 48 teams and 104 matches. This World Cup is also the first where a host country has been at war with a participating nation and where “fans from more than a quarter of the 48 countries taking part in the World Cup are facing travel bans, tighter restrictions or high visa rejection rates.”

Given the rampant allegations of bribery when FIFA awarded the World Cup to Russia in 2018 and Qatar in 2022, the combined choice of the US, Canada and Mexico for 2026 was supposed to represent a safe, non-controversial choice. It hasn’t really worked out that way. And so today, just hours away from the opening matches, we are left with an unavoidably stained and corrupt World Cup, showcasing an estimated 180,000 empty seats, that no soccer fan can be happy about.

“This trend has been noticed across a large swath of industries such as automobiles, interior design, fashion, makeup, storefronts, and films … recently, in interior design, a turn to Minimalism and Modernism has occurred. This switch may be kickstarting the switch tom neutral colors. Gray represents pure material of steel and concrete, a key facet of modernism.”

This adoption of a more neutral color palette has perhaps been accelerated by the “sleek gray” vibe of expensive devices combined with an everyday focus on the mundanity of resale value (especially for cars and houses) rather than prioritizing the expression of personality. It turns out this isn’t just an anecdotal observation.

In 2020, researchers at the UK’s Science Museum Group “analyzed the colors in over 7,000 photographs of everyday objects in their collection dating from 1800 to the present day” and uncovered that from about 1900 onwards the color palette of these objects grew progressively more gray and less diverse.

For some historians, this phenomenon is an example of cultural imperialism where “the perceived loss of color and character in modern design could be seen as a manifestation of the cultural transformations brought by the spread of Western cultural influence.”

More than anything else, most cultural critics observing this shift lament the symbolism it carries. A world where people are afraid to live in full color through the colors they wear, the cars they drive or the homes they inhabit is one where our individualism is slowly eroding in favor of a blander existence.

Thankfully, this book avoids the ego trap and instead uses a compilation of true stories to illustrate exactly what it takes to survive and thrive in any culture — as well as what to avoid doing. For anyone headed overseas for work (or even for pleasure), this book will help you become a better citizen of the world. And a better traveler too.

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The book is a masterpiece of corporate whistleblowing, told from the perspective of someone who was in the room working alongside Mark Zuckerberg and Sheryl Sandberg for nearly a decade. The stories she shares in the book are eye opening, shocking, believable and infuriating. It’s no wonder Meta desperately wants to silence her.

The beautiful thing about this appearance, though, is what happened while Wynn-Williams just sat silently. Next to her, investigative journalist Carole Cadwalladr and academic Tim Wu had an entire conversation about her book and her work.

Introducing the panel, Cadwalladr said: “I think this might be a Hay first, in which we have an author in a hostage situation. Blink once if you can hear us, Sarah, twice if [Mark] Zuckerberg is an asshole.”

At the end of the conversation, Wynn-Williams received a standing ovation and the message to all conference-goers and anyone else reading the story of the appearance was clear. There are things Meta doesn’t want you to know. They are true. And you can read about them in Careless People. If you didn’t have enough reasons to buy and read this book before, this is the moment.

Philosophy, Linguists, English, Religion – these are all courses of study that were discounted and minimized for years. And it is true that graduating with a degree in any of these may have made it more difficult for you to get that first job out of college. As the thinking always went, what kind of employer hires a philosophy major? In five years, the longtime answer to that question may change.

The most valuable commodity in a future team member may be their capacity to think differently, adapt to change, and communicate clearly with the people (and machines) around them. As enrollment in computer science degrees continues to nosedive year after year, perhaps more students are discovering this new “golden ticket” for themselves. When AI can code anything you want, the most valuable skill anyone can have is knowing what to ask it to build in the first place.

The Equestrian events have never been my favorites. Any sport where your performance is dictated by the bond between a human and an animal might be fun to watch but has always felt to me like it doesn’t belong in the Olympics and typically generates considerable backlash every year. I was thinking about this after reading the announcement this week that the LA 2028 Olympics will be removing Equestrian show jumping and replacing it with an “American Ninja style” obstacle jumping competition.

​LA28 will debut Obstacle, which features a head-to-head race over a Ninja-style sprint course, taking the place of Horse Jumping. Athletes accumulate points in the first three events to determine their starting position for the Laser Run. This final event is a combined running and shooting event where athletes start with a delay corresponding to the number of points between them and the leader. The first athlete to cross the finish line is the winner. This multidimensional contest demands unparalleled physical and mental resolve, calm precision under chaotic conditions and provides spectators with an ever-changing, highly exciting viewing experience.

The move is another in a sequence of shifts by the LA28 organizers to add new exhibition sports that are likely to attract a new and younger audience to watch the Olympics while increasing the modern appeal of the Games. The criteria used to decide which sports get added has 35 different factors including a sport’s global popularity, youth appeal, gender equality, and operational costs.

Buy on Amazon

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About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I share a new “non-obvious” book selection. Titles featured here may be new or classic books, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great reads that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.

This week there was also a story about Etsy’s new marketing campaign focused on why human moments still matter. The effort works because the message feels true to what Etsy has always offered: a fair platform for real people to create things they are passionate about and sell them directly to customers. Then there was the story of former Apple tech guy Steve Wozniak getting cheers for his commencement address where he spoke about how students already have AI: “actual intelligence” …

Speaking to graduates earlier this month, the 75-year-old reflected on decades spent working alongside engineers attempting to recreate human cognition through software and hardware. He joked that despite all the advances in computing, the most reliable way to make a brain still “takes nine months,” drawing another round of laughter from the audience. Wozniak encouraged students to think independently and resist treating AI systems as substitutes for genuine understanding or intuition.

In future weeks, these sorts of stories will continue to pop into all of our feeds and reinforce the same idea. This is a great thing. The more we all hear this reminder that AI cannot and should not substitute your ability to think for yourself, the more likely it is that all of us will make better choices about how we use the tools that are available to us.

“Their faces ask the world questions we can no longer avoid: how many more millions of children will be harmed by products that, while innovative, are still designed without sufficient safeguards? When will children be able to enjoy the extraordinary potential of technology without it compromising their wellbeing.”

The memorial features 50 lightboxes each with the story of a child who died because of some form of online harm – cyberbullying, grooming, sextortion or exposure to self-harm content. It’s an urgent message as part of the movement to recognize child online safety as a public health issue and major societal challenge. This is a challenge that we can solve through demanding more accountability from the companies and leaders building the technology we use every day.

Tapping a larger retro trend, owner Tim Sparks is aiming to restore what he feels is the core identity of the brand and what sets them apart from their delivery competitors. The renovated restaurants in his portfolio include the iconic salad bar, stained glass overhead lighting, plastic checkered tablecloths, red vinyl booths and even the chain’s legendary “Book It” program that offered students a free personal pizza for achieving a monthly reading target.

It will be interesting to watch how this strategy plays out and whether nostalgia alone is enough to get diners to come back to the old school Pizza Hut they might remember.

Over 15 years ago, one student witnessed this annual ritual and decided to try and do something about it to help find a good home or reuse for all those curb-side possessions. His national non-profit is called the Post-Landfill Action Network (PLAN) and works to create a school-run, student-led, zero waste initiative on campuses that coordinates with over 200 schools around the US. At his former alma mater at the University of New Hampshire, volunteers spend 600 hours collecting and sorting items left by students departing for the summer. Items are cleaned, put into storage and then saved for resale when students come back after the summer.

This is the sort of non-obvious idea for a non-profit that I love to see stories about. Solving a problem, educating people and helping us manage our throw-away culture to make a change.