Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 45

Welcome to Fat Bear Week, Which Is Exactly What It Sounds Like

“Think of Fat Bear Week as a March Madness meets Nathan’s Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest.” That’s the way one article describes the annual habits of 12 brown bears in southwest Alaska’s remote Katmai National Park and Preserve who will spend the next week gorging on about 40 salmon a day as they prepare for their winter hibernation. You can watch their feasting in a live cam from Explore.org and there is even an entire competition bracket with matches between bears to see who can eat the most fis...

Is AI Creating More Monoculturalism?

The opposite of multiculturalism is monoculturalism – a society in which there is only one acceptable religion, mindset or system of behavior. Academic researchers around the world have warned against the dangers of monoculturalism for years, from the “thick” national identity of Bulgarians to political shifts in Malaysia. In the world of agriculture, monoculture (also known as monocropping) has led to disastrous results.

Recently, tech commentator Shelly Palmer shared his own reflections on ...

The Binge Blanket and More Of The Year’s Best Data Visualizations

Every year the Data Visualization Society considers hundreds of entries to select its Information Is Beautiful Awards Shortlist winners. This year’s honorees include some fascinating entries such as an illustrated explanation of Russia’s deportation of Ukrainians, a digital double infopoem “reflecting on the insanely specific and biased inferences algorithms make about us,” and a graphic of plastic bag usage at UK supermarkets over a five year period. 

Several projects took personal screen ti...

The Man Who Thinks He Can Live Forever

Bryan Johnson is technically 46 years old, but his biological age is eighteen. The life he leads to maintain this statistic has all the joy of an incarcerated monkey. For the past three years, he has built a life-extension system he calls Blueprint and combines extreme data collection with a mindset that considers eating a cookie or getting less than 8 hours of sleep as an “act of violence” against his body. The “system” for attempting to halt the aging process involves “downing 111 pills every ...

Can Shaming Agencies Create a Talent Rebellion Against “Unworthy” Brands?

A environmental activist group that calls themselves Clean Creatives is “once again calling out ad agencies that have contracts with fossil fuel companies in a series of billboards across New York.” The strategy behind this makes sense: shame creative professionals to pressure them into not taking work with certain companies and create a talent drain. The problem is, it is a tough sell.

The main reason is because when you work on these sorts of campaigns, your brain manages to find the nuance...

How Bottled Water Took Over the World

In case you’re wondering who to blame for the popularity of disposable water bottles and the environmental catastrophe they have fueled – you could start with Perrier, the brand that first launched the craze in 1978 with a huge advertising campaign in the US. But reducing it down to a single villain brand wouldn’t tell the whole story. The history of the rise of water bottles is much more complex and that story is explored in a new book called Unbottled which details how water bottles have “exac...

Necrobotics, Electrified Chopsticks and Other Winners of the 2023 Annual Ig Nobel Awards

You might be tempted to lump the Ig Nobel Awards in with the Darwin Awards as simply a celebration of human stupidity – but it’s much more. Back in 1991 they were created to honor “achievements that first make people laugh and then make them think.” The award ceremony has the memorably brilliant requirement that experts “explain their work twice: once in 24 seconds and the second in just seven words.” The entire program feels like both a parody of the Nobel Prize, and a celebration of human curi...

The Subscription-Fueled Future of Car “Ownership”

Last year, Mercedes launched a feature in their electric cars that would allow drivers to pay $60 per month for an “Acceleration Increase” that would boost their car’s acceleration speed by 1 second when going from zero to sixty. BMW announced (and quickly abandoned) their wildly unpopular idea of charging car owners $18 per month to use the heated seats in their cars. The car is becoming a modern-day battleground to define the future of ownership. What do (or should) you really be entitled to g...

The Inevitability of AI Trip Planners

A few months ago, I was planning a trip to Croatia and approached a few online travel agents offering a customized holiday itinerary. I took the bait and filled in a few online forms, which triggered a handful of immediate emails letting me know a “travel professional” was working on my itinerary. An hour later, I had a 15-page PDF sent to me with a full itinerary for all the things I could do. 

This was supposedly from an expert human travel expert, but the process was obviously highly automated...

The Creator of the Greatest Software Ever Invented Just Died

Dennis Austin just died and I feel like he deserves a bit of a tribute. Maybe even a parade. He’s the co-inventor, along with Michael Gaskins, of the greatest software product ever imagined: PowerPoint. Yes, I said it. PowerPoint is the best software for communicators. I use it for everything. Giving talks. Designing images. Laying out postcards. Collecting research. The only thing that I don’t use this magically flexible tool for is writing. It’s the technology equivalent of red chili powder. I...