| | | | Dear Rim,
The skies around me are filled with smoke this week as I sit in a Lake Tahoe hotel room preparing for an outdoor keynote tomorrow. One golfer I talked to in the elevator today said he played 18 holes in the smoke while it was raining ash. It's easy to feel detached from these types of climate disasters if you only see them on TV. When you hear people coughing in the next room and feel the smoke under your fingernails, it becomes real.
That's just one of the stories this week, as you'll also read about the big week for potatoes, how AI gave Val Kilmer his voice back, virtually assisted home maintenance and why the naked baby from Nirvana's iconic 90s album cover is suing the band 30 years later, suggesting the image was child pornography. All of that and my new favorite paralympics sport that you need to watch. Enjoy the stories this week! | | The Photos That Show Everything Wrong With This Moment  | | | Golfing in the smoke may seem like an insensitive choice, but it's just one of the strange juxtapositions that you will see right now in some parts of California and Nevada as many proceed with "business as usual" while the Caldor forest megafire still burns and more than 2500 firefighters battle it back. What is perhaps most telling are the comments on the article linked above, which basically go back and forth between "if we're going to cancel plans because of climate catastrophes, we'd never do anything," and "we're trying to force something that that was never meant to be: a lush green environment in a desert." Sadly, both perspectives have some truth in them. | | Virtual Home Maintenance Is Here and It Is Just Part of a Bigger Trend  | | Last week I had an Internet issue that required resetting the router. The tech agent I called sent me a link to an app that allowed me to use my phone as a camera to show him the setup so he could guide me through the fix. This isn't new. It may, however, be expanding to just about everything in the home. For the past year since the start of the pandemic, Lowes and many others have been experimenting with an AI tool for home maintenance professionals to guide homeowners through fixes. Samsung just announced that they can remotely disable stolen TVs. Today you can get virtual interior design for the home, virtual home safety assessments, and even get your home office designed by a pro who never enters your house.
Many have predicted this for a long time, but what is most fascinating about it for me is just how much opportunity this trend seems to offer for professionals to provide their expertise virtually for customers ready and willing to pay for it. This isn't do-it-yourself. This is hire-a-pro-virtually. Now we just need a catchy DIY-style acronym to describe it. | | Potatoes Infused With the Human Fat Gene and a Potato Photo Contest  | | | I wasn't kidding about the big week for potatoes. There is a contest called The Potato Photographer Of The Year and the winners this year are some great photos. Slightly more significantly for humanity, a team of scientists announced a non-obvious method for growing bigger potatoes: putting a human gene related to obesity and fat mass into plants to supersize their harvest. It sounds scary and unhealthy and potentially game changing too if there is a way to supercharge harvests by growing vegetables bigger without additional land requirements. | | Hearing Val Kilmer Again  | | | Six years ago Hollywood actor Val Kilmer lost his voice to throat cancer. Now a startup called Somatic has build an AI-based technology that is helping him get it back. It works by recreating his voice based on past recordings and it is simultaneously offering new hope to other patients with similar afflictions, while worrying watchdog groups who immediately imagine all the potentials for misuse of this technology. It has become a common refrain with this type of recreation technology. The more ambitious and innovative it is, the more danger it seems to pose for misuse by those who will have more evil intentions in mind. | | The Paralympics Have Started and Some Sports Are Epic  | | | You probably think the Paralympics are about Wheelchair Basketball but the first few days of competition have already offered some pretty unusual sports that you might be surprised by. Goalball is like a cross between water polo (without the water) and handball between teams that wear eye shades to completely block their site. Wheelchair Rugby, perhaps the most epic Paralympic sport, is also the only one that allows full contact between the wheelchairs. Anyway, if you're not watching some of these sports, I highly recommend it - just to broaden perspective on what sports can be. | | Even More Non-Obvious Stories ... | | | Every week I always curate more stories than I'm able to explore in detail. In case you're looking for some more reading this week, here are a few other stories that captured my attention ... | | | 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 this thinking to your next event as a virtual speaker? Visit my speaking page to watch my new 2021 sizzle reel >> | | | Be Part Of Our Community ... | | | Join our LinkedIn Group for the Non-Obvious Nation to read stories and see the world a little differently. Join Now >> | | Want to share? Here's the newsletter link:
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