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How humanity nearly went extinct

According to NPR, around the year 70,000 B.C., a volcano called Toba on Sumatra Island in Indonesia, erupted, blowing about a thousand kilometres of vaporized rock into the air. It is by far the largest volcanic eruption we know of.

That eruption dropped roughly six centimeters of ash over all of South Asia, the Indian Ocean, the Arabian and South China Sea. With so much ash, dust and vapor in the air, science writer Sam Kean says Toba "dimmed the sun for six years, disrupted seasonal rains, choked off streams and scattered whole cubic miles of hot ash (imagine wading through a giant ashtray) across acres and acres of plants." Berries, fruits, trees, African game became rare. Early humans, living in East Africa just across the Indian Ocean from Mount Toba, probably starved, or at least, he says, "It's not hard to imagine the population plummeting."

Visuals: Consumer digital privacy

Digital privacy has come to the forefront of business news over the past five years. According to Gartner, a business research company, the combination of data ethics violations like the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and data breaches like Equifax, has led to increased sensitivity among consumers about what they share and how it is used.

Please have a look at the chart below and discuss what you see with your teacher.

The Dalai Lama on leadership

The Dalai Lama wrote an opinion piece for the Harvard Business Review about the importance of leadership and what makes a strong leader.

He says that the world is facing an emotional crisis where rates of stress, anxiety and depression are higher than ever. The focus on turning a profit often overrules a commitment to people and society. In organizations, he explains, people work closely together every day, but many feel lonely and stressed. This is because there is a lack of responsibility toward each other.

He advises leaders to be mindful towards each other, saying that the opposite of fear is trust, which boosts our self-confidence. Compassion also reduces fear, reflecting a concern for others’ well-being. He asserts that people are naturally driven by self-interest, but we need wise self-interest that is generous and cooperative, taking others’ interests also into account.

A strategy for early retirement

For many people retiring means hitting a certain age, usually above 65. It is associated with stopping one’s career and having grandchildren. Recently there has been a movement that changes the perspective on retirement. Retirement is not about how old you are, it is about a financial number you have.

This is what the Financial Independence Retire Early (FIRE) movement is about. The goal of this movement is to save and invest most of your income - about 50-75% - so that you can retire very early - in your 40s or even 30s. 

How do people do that?
In a nutshell, FIRE is about cutting your expenses down to the bare minimum and investing everything you save. The earlier you start, the more return you will gain. 

There are different types of FIRE:

Empathy and business transformation

According to The Harvard Business Review, studies on organizational change show that if you want to lead a successful transformation, communicating empathetically is critical. However, most leaders do not actually know how to do it. In fact, a survey of over 200 leading company executives found that 69% of respondents said that they were planning to launch or are currently conducting a change effort. Unfortunately, 50% of these same executives said they had not fully considered their team’s sentiment about the change.

Here are a few steps a leader must take to smoothen a transition:

Profile your audience at every stage. Change consultants typically advise leaders to create personas of various audiences when they kick-off a change initiative. Considering that people’s wants and needs will evolve throughout the process, managers should reevaluate these personas during every phase of the journey.

Roof gardens on taxis in Thailand

When the COVID-19 pandemic closed down tourism in Thailand, thousands of taxis were abandoned by their drivers. No tourists equals no taxis. Drivers lost their income and couldn't afford to pay the rental fees for their cars. Companies struggled to stay afloat. The Ratchapruk and Bovorn Taxi co-ops together ended up with 2500 (out of 3000) cars sitting idle in parking lots. The Thai government offered no financial support.

Faced with this situation, the Ratchapruk and Bovorn Taxi co-ops decided to join forces to create rooftop gardens on the idle taxis. They built bamboo frames and stretched black plastic bags over them. The frames were then filled with soil. Co-op staff have grown a variety of crops in these small gardens, including tomatoes, cucumbers and string beans. 

The idea of Universal Basic Income

According to Vox Media, the idea of a basic income was, for decades, something of a policy fantasy. However, the last few years have seen it become less fringe and more mainstream. In fact, we now have many limited basic income programs running around the world.

The general idea—that the government should give every citizen a regular infusion of money with no strings attached—has been around since the 16th century. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has given the idea fresh momentum, with the crisis generating significant financial loss and uncertainty.

Critics worry that UBI will disincentivize work and hurt the economy. They also say that it is unaffordable for the government to pay every citizen enough to live on, regardless of whether they work. So far, the evidence has not supported these critiques.

Diversity of research sources

According to PhysOrg, a scientific publication, scientific knowledge used in international studies is predominantly sourced from English-language documents, as it is assumed that all scientific knowledge is available in English. However, according to research scrutinizing over 400,000 peer-reviewed papers in 326 journals, published in 16 languages, scientific papers written in languages other than English may hold untapped information crucial to the conservation of global biodiversity.

These findings have important implications for global efforts tackling the biodiversity crisis, where lack of evidence is an issue commonly faced when trying to implement evidence-based conservation. The authors demonstrate that incorporating non-English-language studies can expand the availability of scientific evidence on species and ecosystems into 12%–25% more areas and 5%–32% more species.

Pinterest: safety over free speech

How much should tech companies regulate information? While Facebook and Twitter have up to now chosen to err on the side of free speech, an unlikely platform has taken an important step. Pinterest found that users were searching for information on vaccines, so CEO Ben Silbermann pulled all medical information from the platform.

Vaccines have been a contentious issue in social media, but not in science. While the science is clear that vaccines save lives, there has been a reemergence of previously eradicated diseases like measles. That reemergence has been linked to disinformation shared in social media. 

Women artists: Tamara de Lempicka

Tamara de Limpicka (1898–1980) was a key artist in the Art Deco period of the 1920s and '30s. Born in Poland, she also spent a lot of time in France and the U.S. Her real fame came when high-fashion magazines began to use her art for their covers. Soon she was painting portraits of the aristocracy, and even royalty. Although her name is not well-known today outside of Art Deco fans, de Lempicka was one of the most important and popular artists of the Art Deco movement.

Art Deco grew out of Cubism and the Arts and Crafts movement, adding elements of "exotic" Asian, Egyptian and Mayan art. It used simple forms and planes of color to create new designs representing luxury and wealth. The pieces also represented faith in social and technological progress.

Farm-to-closet fashion

For $200, you can now invest in the eco-fashion label Christy Dawn. The label is selling "plots" in the organic, sustainable cotton farm in India that provides the raw materials for their clothing. At the end of the season, you're paid back with store credit. If the harvest is good, you might get back more than the initial $200 you invested. On the other hand, if it's a bad year for cotton, you could lose most or all of your money. 

Greg Lemond's quote on effort

Professional cyclist Greg Lemond said, "It doesn't get any easier; you just get faster."

Lemond is a 3-time winner of the Tour Dr France. He also won a great many other cycling races. He is considered by many to be the all-time greatest American cyclist. While other cyclists have been caught cheating via blood doping, Lemond was so strongly opposed to cheating that he quit his team when his teammates were found breaking the rules.

Cycling is an endurance sport, meaning effort matters as much as strategy. The Tour de France is so hard that in 1967 a race leader died from over-exertion. So when Lemond says it doesn't get easier, he's speaking from experience. 

Women artists: Frida Kahlo

Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) is thought of today as one of Mexico's greatest artists. Her most famous paintings are self-portraits. Of her 143 paintings, 55 were self-portraits. She once said, "I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.”

Kahlo grew up during the Mexican Revolution and was part of the Mexicanidad movement, which celebrated indigenous Mexican culture. She painted in a Magical Realist folk art style, with the colors and imagery of Mexican indigenous culture. Magical Realism combines realistic detail with surrealistic imagery. In the painting shown above, Roots, Kahlo depicts herself lying on rocky ground with vines growing out of her chest. The details are very realistic, but the image itself is surreal.

Tips on asking for a promotion

According to the Harvard Business Review, asking for a promotion can be nerve-wracking. How do you prepare for that conversation with your boss? What information should you have at the ready? And how exactly do you make your case?

The first step is to think through what you want. Do you want more power? More money? More managerial responsibility? Also, consider getting feedback from a personal "board of directors" on your strengths and weaknesses. Speak to peers to try to measure your reputation. Find out how others successfully pressed their cases for promotion. 

Once you’ve clarified exactly what you’re looking for, build a compelling case for why you deserve to move up. Consider preparing a one-or-two-page memo that clearly outlines your track record. The memo’s bullet points should provide metrics of the impact you’ve had, descriptions of solutions you’ve delivered, and financial outcomes for which you’ve been responsible.

Sell something: Mobile phone

New smartphones come on the market at least every year. Each model has its own pros and cons, giving that company the opportunity to beat out its nearest competitors for a share of the market. But it's a tough market! If you were going to introduce a new phone, you'd need to make it pretty special.

That's exactly the task required here: you and your teacher are going to come up with a new phone and create an ad that will persuade consumers to buy it.

Try to include two or more of the following power words:

  • hottest;
  • effortless;
  • daring;
  • savings;
  • attractive; and/or
  • phenomenal.

Millenium-old mochi shop in Japan

In the year 794, Naomi Hasegawa's family started Ichiwa, a mochi shop, next to the Imamiya Shrine in Kyoto to feed pilgrims who had traveled to pray for pandemic relief. Over a millenium later, the shop still sells mochi to people struggling with a pandemic. How has it survived so long, through pandemics, wars, natural disasters, and the rise and fall of empires? By putting tradition and stability over profit and growth. 

The emphasis at Ichiwa is not growth. Profit is not the point. The point is to do one thing, and do it well. They focus on serving people and passing on the business to the next generation. Although it's not a dynamic business model, it obviously works. Known as shinise, these old businesses are a source of pride for Japanese.

When you become your career

According to the Harvard Business Review (HBR), many people with high-pressure jobs find themselves unhappy with their careers, despite working hard their whole lives to get to their current position. What happens if you identify so closely with your work that hating your job means hating yourself?

Psychologists use the term “enmeshment” to describe a situation where the boundaries between people become blurred, and individual identities lose importance. Enmeshment prevents the development of a stable, independent sense of self. You can become enmeshed with your career, too.

The work culture in many high-pressure fields often rewards working longer hours with raises, prestige, and promotions. Also, certain careers or career achievements are often highly valued in an individual’s family or community. When high pressure jobs are paired with a big paycheck, individuals can find themselves launched into a new socioeconomic class.

Fairly counting Olympic medals

When we hear about the number of Olympics medals each country wins, we usually hear the total. The top five or six countries are almost always the same: the U.S., U.K., Russia, Germany, France and China. When you think about the huge population and wealth of those countries, it makes sense that they would win the most medals.

But this leaves smaller countries who perform better than their relative size and wealth out of the spotlight. Think of Australia, a country of 25 million. Compare that to America's 328 million. You might expect the U.S. to win well over ten times more medals than Australia. But that's not what happens.

Dogs sniff out Covid-19

Dogs have already been trained to smell drugs, cancer, and even blood sugar changes in people with diabetes. Now they're learning how to smell Covid-19. In trials, dogs detected the virus over 95% of the time, more accurately than rapid blood or swab tests. The dogs have even been able to detect Covid in people who aren't showing symptoms yet, which taking temperatures can't do.

Several countries around the world are working to develop these skills in dogs. To train them, sweat from people with Covid is collected and put on cottonballs. After they've learned to identify the scent, they then have to choose the cottonball with the sweat on it from lots of untreated cottonballs.

Toyota's struggles with EVs

Toyota was the leader in eco-friendly hybrid vehicles for many years, according to ArsTechnica. The automotive company had a fuel-efficiency edge over its competition. However, it has recently struggled to compete with companies that sell electric vehicles such as Tesla, Nissan and Volkswagen.

Toyota has made two critical choices. First, it tethered itself to hybrids. Second, it bet its future on hydrogen. But now governments around the world are moving to ban fossil-fuel vehicles of any kind.