Rohit Bhargava's Blog, page 46

“Brotox” and the Men’s Cosmetic Procedure Boom

The cheek implant was the fastest-growing men’s aesthetic procedure this past year, according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. This so-called boom in “brotox” procedures, which includes everything from lip augmentations to butt lifts, is evidence of a growing willingness and social acceptance among men to consider undergoing beauty procedures.

It may also be an example of how the beauty industry “reached a point of total saturation when it comes to making women feel insecure about the...

7-Eleven Japan Tests Palm Scanner to Check If You Are Eating Veggies

Radar speed scanners slow down drivers by showing them how fast they are going. The awareness creates the behavior change. Could the same idea shift how we eat?

In Japan, 7-Eleven is testing a Vege-Check palm scanner that “uses reflection spectroscopy to measure carotenoid levels in a person’s skin.” These are the biomarkers that can estimate the amount of fruits and vegetables someone has eaten. In 30 seconds, a palm scanner reads customer’s palms and tells them their “vegetable intake level” on...

The Magical Mashup of National Parks and a Nobel Laureate’s Poetry

Ada Limón, the current US poet laureate, is teaming up with the U.S. National Park Service and the Poetry Society of America to put two things that inarguably belong together into the same space. If you are a reader of poetry, you already know the transformative experience that can come from reading words woven with emotion. National Parks also inspire a sense of wonder and allow for deeper self-reflection.

The newly announced “You Are Here: Poetry in Parks” initiative will start with seven parks...

12 Wild Stories from a Nightlife Concierge in Ibiza

An alternate title for this article could easily have been: “Ibiza: Where Rich Assholes Go to Party.” That’s the impression you’ll pretty immediately have as you start reading these stories from a writer who spent just a week working as a concierge managing wealthy client demands at a top resort in “Ibitha” – as it’s often pronounced by those trying hard to belong amongst the cool crowd and fit in. Many of the stories, in fact, do seem to underscore the truth of this stereotype. 

His job entailed...

What Is Prada’s New $650 Underwear Designed to Be Worn Without Pants Really Saying?

According to fashion industry insiders, Prada’s latest release of a $650 pair of underwear is “no surprise” given the brand’s track record of expensive essentials. What was unexpected, however, was how the brand seemed to be positioning the underwear as desirable outerwear without pants. 

In conversation at a fashion industry event once, I recall hearing these runway designs that may seem ridiculous to outsiders as a “provocation.” Many are not meant to literally be a piece of clothing someone mi...

Abolishing Wilderness and Ten Things You Can’t Say About Climate Change

For most animals, life in the wild is “one overwhelmingly characterized by fear, predation, stress, disease, parasitism, exposure, hunger, infanticide, cannibalism, and early death.” And there is an active human quest to protect and create more wilderness where those animals live. So here’s a mind-bending moral question: to protect animals, should we be abolishing wilderness?

That’s just one of the contrarian ideas that comes up in this edition of the Breakthrough Journal which explores “ten word...

The Team That Has Lost 17,000 Times … And Counting

People love an underdog. Unless it’s the Washington Generals. They are the team that have played against the legendary Harlem Globetrotters for more than 50 years. In all that time, they have managed just one win and more than 17,000 losses. Their job is to lose, which creates a pretty fascinating scenario for professional athletes who are skilled enough to play in front of hundreds of thousands of people around the world, but are never allowed to take a victory lap. They are the basketball equi...

How Accessibility Is Getting More Tactile, Innovative … and Normal

Technology was supposed to make the entire world more accessible. It still can, but sometimes it seems that progress has stalled. This past month, the MIT Technology Review magazine devoted an entire issue to exploring the future of tech-enabled accessibility and how it may soon be more “normal” than you think. They spotlight everything from the sonification of science to the use of tactile images to end graphic poverty. As I read several of the articles from this issue, examples of the impact o...

Japan’s Solution to Its Labor Crisis? Hire More Workers Over 70​

Most articles you might read about the crisis caused by Japan’s aging population is usually coupled with some mention of the many ways technology is being designed to address the problem through workplace automation or robotic in-home elder care. Now it seems some employers are landing on a surprisingly unexpected solution: hire more workers over 70 years old.

This solution shouldn’t feel so innovative. After all, as people live longer, their capacity to work for longer also increases. In additio...

Will Photoshop’s New Expand Feature Lead to False Memories or Realities?

Maybe you’ve already heard of Photoshop’s new “Generative Expand” feature that allows users to “expand images in any direction and generate an additional scene for the space with a combination of traditional app tools and AI.” Most of the examples of use cases for this feature involve filling in background details or fixing a photo that was unintentionally cropped too closely. The potential future uses for this technology, though, are worth considering.

What happens when AI expands images from hi...