Why Subtitles Are So Popular, the Couch That Folds and Japan's Earthquake Vending Machines

Do you turn on the subtitles when you watch TV? Why are more cities appointing “night mayors” to create after hours policies? Can AI help create a couch that folds into an envelope? Is knowing when to shut up the most underutilized political superpower? What happens to sports when humanoid robots learn to play? How can Japan’s earthquake vending machines help make the world safer for the rest of us? Enjoy the non-obvious stories this week!

Why Is Everyone Watching TV With The Subtitles On?

No it’s not just you. But the rise of “always-oners” (people who use subtitles for everything they watch) is causing a “war” in homes across America according to writer Devin Gordon in a new piece for The Atlantic. He writes:

“… a Great Subtitle War. On one side: the bombastic visual effects of post–Game of Thrones mega-budget TV. On the other side: hearing the words. On one side: people like me, the purists and refuseniks. On the other: our friends and spouses, people who just want to follow the plot.”

Yet the real reason subtitles feel so necessary on TV might be because the dialogue actually is less audible than it once was. When AT&T bought HBO’s parent company in 2018, they used a new “loudness spec” which set the volume based on the loudest point – not on the dialogue itself. Netflix still uses a “dialogue-anchor spec,” while Amazon has a “dialogue boost” feature and Roku offers an “automatic speech clarity” feature.

Whether or not you want them probably comes down to how interruptive you find them. Sadly, there is still no feature that would allow you to customize the fonts or design of the subtitles to make them less jarring. I admit I use them for most shows, but when watching live sports, they are always in the way. As one show creator put it: “following the story is the most important thing … if you’re getting knocked out of the story because you can’t follow the dialogue, then by all means turn on the subtitles. It’s fine.”

More Cities Are Hiring “Night Mayors” To Govern After-Hours Activities

Amsterdam was the first city to appoint a “night Mayor.” In Philadelphia, there is a “director of nighttime economy.” Boston has appointed a “night czar.” Montreal has a “night council.” DC has the aptly bureaucratically named “office for noctural governance” while Atlanta has a “nightlife division.” Cities across the globe are starting to appoint divisions of government dedicated to thinking through what citizens need and want outside of traditional “awake” hours.

Beyond parties and nightlife, these night time bodies are charged with thinking through public transportation, nighttime lighting needs, public safety, noise restrictions, 24 hour food and entertainment options and just about anything else that happens when the majority of their citizens are asleep.

Perhaps most importantly, the initiative promises to help traditionally unseen and underprotected workers who take the jobs at times when most of us would prefer to be in bed. Making a safer city for them means going past the partying cliche of the “city that never sleeps” to have someone thinking through what it really means to have a city that works for everyone … no matter what time they are up.

Could A Couch Fit Into An Envelope? How Generative AI Helped Designers Solve An Impossible Challenge

It started with a prompt to Chat GPT: can a couch fit into an envelope? Short answer: no.

From there, a collaborative team of designers from Copenhagen-based design lab Space10 (IKEA’s product design partner) and Swiss design firm Panter&Tourron started putting “hundreds” of prompts into text-to-image generative AI tools. The goal was to come up with a viable flat pack design for a couch that was portable. The process that project lead Georgina McDonald describes offers some good insight for how generative AI really works:

“As soon as we removed the word couch and started looking at [terms like] platform, lightweight, tent, hammock, bed, and surface, we started to get closer to what we wanted … a key moment in the design phase was the inclusion of the term ‘conversation pit’ in the AI prompt, which led to the benchlike and more social shape of the final design.”

This was a design challenge the team had been working on since 2019. Using generative AI helped them uncover a key insight (people could face one another instead of staring straight ahead) that eventually led to the successful design.

Was it the AI that came up with the idea, or the humans on the team? Or both? Regardless of the answer, this is what the future of generative AI is going to look like. Collaboration.  

Japan’s EarthQuake Vending Machines and Natural Disaster Readiness

What do you get when you cross one of the world’s most seismically active countries with one of the most technologically advanced ones? Earthquake vending machines, quake-proof buildings and lots more.

The country has become a model in how to build resilient infrastructure to anticipate earthquakes and natural disasters. Unfortunately, there are many other regions of the world that lack the resources and knowledge on how to build back better in this way. Haiti, for example, has struggled for more than a decade to rebuild and continues to struggle. In a time when Chinese firms have aggressively pursued getting mega-construction deals across the world and then delivered substandard work, this seems like a golden engineering opportunity. What would it take to export Japan’s expertise in preparing for natural disasters across the world? And why hasn’t it happened yet?

Is Any Politician’s Superpower Knowing When To Shut Up?

One skill you don’t expect any politician to understand is when it’s better to say nothing. A NY Times Op-Ed this week suggested that this may be the key to some recent political success President Biden has enjoyed. Many political advances in countries around the world have been destroyed not because of disagreement over policy itself but by ego-driven squabbles over who will take credit by insecure politicians. When you have a government filled with people who’s primary motivation is making sure the other guy doesn’t get credit for anything, obstructionism and impasse is the most likely result. And that’s where government too often stalls.

It makes me wish there was a good way to rate and elect politicians based on this singular personality trait of a willingness to let someone else take credit aside from themselves. That feels like a game changer. There are plenty of voters (myself included) that would ignore party affiliations and vote for any politician who demonstrated a willingness to put aside their own ego just for a moment.

Even More Non-Obvious Stories …

Every week I always curate more stories than I’m able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:

How are these stories curated?

Every week I spend hours going through hundreds of stories in order to curate this email. Looking for a speaker inspire your team to become non-obvious thinkers through a keynote or workshop?  Watch my new 2023 speaking reel on YouTube >>