The Huckster Economy, Balloon Telescopes and the Non-Obvious Newsletter Honored In 2022 Webby Awards!

Dear <<First Name>>,

I have always thought the idea of a “humble brag” was stupid. You’re either humble, or you brag. Why try to put those two things together? Most of the time, it’s better to be humble. Today, I feel like bragging. This week the announcement just came out that my Non-Obvious Newsletter was selected as an Honoree in the 2022 Webby Awards! Often called “the Internet’s highest honor,” this email was chosen from more than 12,000 overall entries and featured alongside Morning Brew, the Skimm, and emails curated by The Washington Post, and CNN. Wow.

As most of you know, this newsletter has been a personal passion of mine for more than six years (300+ weekly editions!) and one of the great joys of my week to put it together for you. So thank you for your loyalty, and for all your support … whether you’re a longtime reader or just joining our Non-Obvious Nation community. I’m looking forward to continuing to do my best every Thursday to share useful insights with you. If you do find it useful, please do encourage a friend to subscribe as well. Ok, the not-so-humble bragging is over and now it’s time for some stories!

Dictionary.com’s Latest New Words Aim To Help Explain Our World Today

Do you know the difference between someone who is “houseless” versus someone who is “unsheltered”? Both offer a different context than the single word “homeless” and are examples of some of the latest words recently added to Dictionary.com to allow for more nuance in the vocabulary we use to describe certain things. “Nontaster” and “hypogeusia” were added to help describe symptoms for those suffering from so-called long Covid and “megadraught” plus “mesovortex” both describe the potential climate reality we will soon face. Nothing helps describe our culture’s evolution more than the new words popularly used to describe it. That’s an idea someone should probably “memeify.”

Why Colleges Ask Adjunct Professors To Work For No Salary

For six years, the least compensated work I did was teaching as an Adjunct Professor in a renowned University. I once disappointingly calculated that if I amortized the lump sum stipend that I was paid for a semester across the number of hours I actually spent teaching, grading and working with students – it would equate to about $15 an hour. It turns out that I might have been lucky to be paid at all, as a piece in the NY Times focuses on how Adjunct Professors are often asked to work for no compensation and simply for the prestige alone. The real problem, though, isn’t the money.

In many cases, professors like myself who own their own business, speak professionally and write books don’t need to feed our families through a teaching stipend. The problem is the precedent it creates for others who do rely on this income or can be held back and marginalized based on this assumption that they too can afford to work for the return of prestige alone. 

What if the Government Took Over Baseball and Ran It As a Public Service?

The average age of a baseball fan in America is 57. It’s no secret the sport has been experiencing a rapid decline and may soon be unable to justify the large player salaries and investment required to run thousands of games every season. One writer posed a non-obvious solution to the problem this week: have the U.S. government take over baseball. Before you dismiss the idea as crazy, you may want to read the article. Freed from the pressure to maximize revenue, the sport could be better to watch, prices would be lower, teams could be more fairly structured and public funding of stadiums would actually benefit all of us instead of greedy team owners. So maybe it’s not the craziest idea.

Telescopes on Balloons May Transform the Golden Age of Astronomy

With the successful launch of the James Webb telescope, many scientists are suggesting we may be entering a new “golden age of astronomy.” That golden age might be enhanced by clever efforts to put high powered telescopes on balloons to launch them into valuable positions far less expensively. One of the big problems with modern astronomy is the bottleneck of telescope time allocation. If this idea could increase telescope capacity, it would be an elegantly simple solution to a huge problem. The world could use more solutions like this.

We Are Headed Into the “Huckster Economy” and the Manipulators Are Winning

“This is my 36th year as a journalist. I spent that entire time learning how to tell stories that will make you care. But when we’re up against lies, we just can’t win, because facts are really boring. Hard to capture your amygdala the way lies do. … Social media brings out the worst of us.

If you’re my age, you remember the old cartoon when you have a conscience and you have a devil and an angel trying to tell you what to do on each shoulder. But what social media has done, what American tech has done … is it’s kicked off the angel, it’s given the devil a microphone, and it’s injected directly into your brain.”

These quotes come from the remarks of Nobel Peace Prize winning writer Maria Ressa at the Disinformation and the Erosion of Democracy conference just a month before a new election takes place in the Philippines. Every week there seem to be more stories about this erosion of trust. Another writer termed this the “huckster economy” – a place where the tricksters are winning elections, making money and shaping reality however they want it to be. The conclusion Ressa points to is immediately true and urgent: “we are all being manipulated in the same way.” Until we recognize that and collectively open our eyes, it will be nearly impossible to fight back.

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: 

• Experience What It’s Like To Be Slapped By Will Smith In Virtual Reality
• Coca-Cola Debuts New Gamified Drink That Lets Geeks Taste The “Flavor of Pixels”
• Brands Hit With Guidelines To End Greenwashing Amid Consumer Skepticism on Sustainability
• Who Gets To Tell Stories About India and It’s People? White Filmmakers.
• Amazon Workers Vote To Unionize at Staten Island Warehouse While Amazon Considered Banning Words “Fairness” and “Pay Raise”
• A New Campaign Calls For a Law That Gives Formerly Incarcerated New Yorkers a New Start
• PepsiCo Introduces “Cracker Jill” As Part of Campaign To Empower Female Athletes

How are these stories curated?

Every week I spend hours going through hundreds of stories in order to curate this email. Want to discuss how I could bring my best thinking to your next event as a keynote speaker or facilitator? Watch my new 2022 speaking reel on YouTube >>

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https://mailchi.mp/nonobvious/315?e=[UNIQID]

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