The number and variety of zero- and low-alcohol beverages, a once-lagging category that academics and the World Health Organization refer to as “NoLos,” has exploded in the past five-plus years. The already growing “sober curious” movement—made up of adults who want to practice more thoughtful or limited alcohol consumption while still socializing over a drink at home or at a bar—snowballed during pandemic shutdowns. Today, about 70 NoLo bottle shops like Hopscotch dot the U.S., along with several dozen nonalcoholic, or NA, bars, most less than four years old.
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2024/04/sober-curious-mocktails-teenagers-drinking-age/678016/
Culture Mapping: A Strategic Primer
We are launching our Culture Mapping Primer this week. In this guide, we explain our method of multi-modal research considering various factors like structure, time, language, context, patterns, and narrative. We also discuss our semiotic matrix as a structured analytic technique.
We hope our primer sparks wider use of structured analytics, especially now with the advancements in AI putting serious pressure on forecasting to deliver. By mapping correctly, the potential applications are endless.
Our intention in crafting this primer was twofold: to provide insight into our operational methodology and to highlight noteworthy advancements in the various stages of iteration we engage with. Recent studies in these realms have sparked compelling inquiries and discussions, underscoring their significance.
This ebook can be purchased and downloaded at the following link:
https://lnkd.in/eRRRZb9b
The Death of the Detox
Gen-Z are not into all-or-nothing health practices — the hallmarks of wellness that have become cornerstones. What’s left is something far more subversive.
https://www.businessoffashion.com/articles/beauty/wellness-detoxing-is-over/?utm_source=newsletter_daily_beauty&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily_Beauty_090424&utm_term=DQO4VWCEIRGANEL4FPEB45QWIY&utm_content=top_story_1_cta
Solarpunk started out as a speculative fiction genre. Now it informs sustainable architecture and design
Solarpunk is a futurist movement that began in speculative fiction and sci-fi films and has since spread to architecture and design. Practitioners envision a clean and green future built on principles of sustainability, social justice, and collective action.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-04-07/solarpunk-design-architecture-sustainable-future/103667452
Apple Explores Home Robotics as Potential ‘Next Big Thing’ After Car Fizzles
Engineers at Apple have been exploring a mobile robot that can follow users around their homes, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the skunk-works project is private. The iPhone maker also has developed an advanced table-top home device that uses robotics to move a display around, they said.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-04-03/apple-explores-home-robots-after-abandoning-car-efforts
Sorry, But Joe Biden Can’t Build Your EV Charger (Op Ed)
Picture a future of electric cars everywhere, including your driveway, along with the charging stations necessary to keep them running. Head downtown to mail a letter and pick up a latte? Slow chargers on every corner. Go to the mall to raid the Sephora? Chargers all over the parking garage. Go to work? There’s a place to plug in your car. Take a highway trip, say to visit an annoying family member, let’s call him Steve? You’ll pass Wawa fast-charging islands where gas pumps used to be. You might want to stop at one of those because, when you get to Steve’s house, he probably won’t let you use his charger.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2024-04-04/sorry-but-joe-biden-can-t-build-your-ev-charger
Artificial Intelligence and Biotechnology: Risks and Opportunities
Machine learning has the potential to truly unlock genetic editing capabilities and uses in everyday life, RAND’s study concluded. But that is going to require years of hard work to minimize the risks and maximize the opportunities—to balance restriction and regulation. With world-changing technologies, that’s always the case. “Cars kill tens of thousands of people every year,” Marler said. “That doesn’t mean they don’t also provide significant benefits, and even help save lives.”
https://www.rand.org/pubs/articles/2024/artificial-intelligence-and-biotechnology-risks-and.html?utm_campaign=randreview%2CAI&utm_content=1712345520&utm_medium=rand_social&utm_source=linkedin
Why has the ‘15-minute city’ taken off in Paris but become a controversial idea in the UK?
“My idea is to break this triple segregation,” he says.
Moreno thinks this segregation leads to a poorer quality of life, one designed around outdated “masculine desires”, so his proposal is to mix this up, creating housing developments with a mixture of social, affordable and more expensive housing so different social strata can intermingle. He also wants to bring schools and children’s areas closer to work and home, so caregivers can more easily travel around and participate in society. He also thinks office should generally be closer to homes, as well as cultural venues, doctors, shops and other amenities. Shared spaces such as parks help the people living in the areas to form communities.
https://amp-theguardian-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/amp.theguardian.com/cities/2024/apr/06/why-has-15-minute-city-taken-off-paris-toxic-idea-uk-carlos-moreno
How Not To Predict The Future
The first scientific study of judgmental1 forecasting was conducted in the 1960s by a gentleman at the CIA named Sherman Kent. Kent noticed that in their reports, intelligence analysts used imprecise phrases like “we believe,” “highly likely,” or “little chance.” He wanted to know how the people reading the reports actually interpreted these phrases. He asked 23 NATO analysts to convert the phrases into numerical probabilities, and their answers were all over the place — “probable” might mean a 30% chance to one person and an 80% chance to another. Kent advocated the use of few consistent odds expressions in intelligence reports, but his advice was largely ignored. It would take another two decades for the intelligence community to seriously invest in the study of prediction.
https://asteriskmag.com/issues/05/how-not-to-predict-the-future?ueid=c643ce38d00192ac3af250b1f893d410&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Today%20Explained%202024-03-12&utm_term=Sentences
The magic of the mundane
Goffman’s ‘microsociology’ reveals that even the most incidental of social interactions is of profound theoretical interest. Every encounter is shaped by social rules and social statuses; ‘whether we interact with strangers or intimates, we will find that the fingertips of society have reached bluntly into the contact’. Such interactions contribute to our sense of self, to our relationships with others, and to social structures, which can often be deeply oppressive. Never mind the dealings of the courtroom, the senate, or the trading floor, it is in the mundane interactions of everyday life, Goffman thought, that ‘most of the world’s work gets done’.
https://aeon.co/essays/pioneering-sociologist-erving-goffman-saw-magic-in-the-mundane
Analyzing Trends 