The Gossip Industry, Ghost Flights and Why Inexperienced Politicians Keep Winning | Non-Obvious Insights #304

Dear Newsletterest,

This morning I'm thinking about the value of experience, why there is such a thing as the gossip industry and empty flights. All these topics are in the stories this week, along with a link to a fascinating new picture book showcasing crumbling movie theaters, a great TEDTalk about recognizing oppressive music and an impressive video about the world's largest man-made forest, and the journey it took to make it. Enjoy the stories this week!

Why Cardi B's Legal Victory Might Kill YouTube's "Gossip Industry"

If the term "gossip industry" makes you throw up just a little bit, you're probably a good human being. Yet that's exactly what hundreds of rumor-mongering YouTube channels are and they have been freely generating millions of views by posting lies about celebrities. After a two year legal battle, singer Cardi B won her defamation suit against a video blogger who recorded lies about her. Industry analysts are already suggesting that the result might set a precedent that scares other video bloggers into changing their style or perhaps shutting their inflammatory channels. That doesn't sound so bad. The world would probably be better if the so-called gossip industry did go away.

The Stupidly Predictable Problem of Ghost Flights

A ghost flight is a flight that has so few passengers that it should be cancelled, but an airline flies it anyway ... usually because they are compelled by government regulations to fly that route a minimum number of times in order to keep it. Despite environmentalists efforts to try and change the regulations, they are still in place - which led to one passengers' dream flight where he was the only one on board a transatlantic British Airways flight from London to Orlando.

Reading this story, it struck me that the idea of a "ghost flight" is a good analogy for the things that all of us might do unnecessarily in our own lives. Taking inspiration from those wasteful flights, how could you identify similar moments in your own life or work and then eliminate them? After all, unlike the airlines' situation, there is no rule forcing you to keep wasting your time and money.

Can The SAT Going Digital Make It Relevant Again?

The College Board announced that by 2024 the SAT will be "retooled" to be taken entirely digitally and shortened. In surveys, student report that the changes would make taking the test significantly less stressful. It has also become less of a necessity to take it in the first place. As more schools decide to go test-optional, the real question is whether these planned changes will be enough to save the SAT.

In our recent experience, exactly zero of the 14 colleges that my son applied to this past Fall required the SAT. High school students taking the test have declined over the past two years by more than 25%. Yet there will always be a desire among admissions officers (and perhaps students themselves) to have a standardized metric through which they can judge their achievements against all other students. Only some sort of standardized test can do that.

That alone will likely lead to a middle ground over time that everyone can embrace where the SAT is optional for all, only submitted by those who performed well on it, and treated as only one small part of the overall evaluation process for a prospective student instead of as the future-defining number it once was. In a world like that, having the SAT might not be so bad.

Why More Inexperienced Candidates Keep Winning In Politics

Experience seems to matter everywhere ... except politics. Inexperienced candidates across America for both parties are running and winning in larger numbers than ever before, according to a statistical analysis by data analytics site FiveThirtyEight. The reasons why range from the obvious (people don't trust career politicians), to the concerning (a growing influence from third parties). The downside is clear: more candidates elected who may be beholden to outside influencers and who lack the know-how to actually govern.

The upside is that this willingness to consider outsiders is also driving historic numbers of women and minority candidates to win elections and change the face of politics. The article summarizes the core issue by observing that the real problem is that "many successful political amateurs are uninterested in governing." When we elect people who are solely motivated by prestige or power rather than actually doing the work, we end up with what we too often have now. A dysfunctional government that doesn't work for anyone.

Are We Relying Too Much On Our Kid's Resilience?

"'We have inflicted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults.' You don’t have to be a psychologist to see something wrong with that exchange. In our focus on one threat, we’ve let a thousand others flourish: learning loss, destabilization of the public-school system due to under-enrollment, self-harm, behavioral problems."

This was just one of the provocative ideas in one of two op-eds from The Atlantic this week that openly discuss mask mandates in schools and offer a different perspective. Built into this argument are some truths that are hard to dispute. Cloth masks offer little protection. Younger children usually wear masks incorrectly and/or inconsistently. Wearing masks does have an affect how children learn socialization and build empathy. Yet the point that stood out for me most in these articles was this:

Most children are neither in grave danger nor do they pose a grave danger to others—especially now that vaccines are widely, freely available—but we routinely treat them as if they were. The foundation of medical and public-health interventions should be that they work, not that we have insufficient evidence to say whether they are harmful. Continued mandatory masking of children in schools, especially now that most schoolchildren are eligible for vaccination, fails this test.

To be clear, we should all have zero tolerance for violent parents who threaten to bring a loaded gun to school if their child needs to wear a mask -- but what if we were more willing to have a discussion about the relative benefits of masking in schools versus requiring vaccinations among children who are eligible? Maybe they are not the same debate, even though they are often treated that way.

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. 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/304?e=f7921ac548

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The Gossip Industry, Ghost Flights and Why Inexperienced Politicians Keep Winning | Non-Obvious Insights #304

Why Cardi B's Legal Victory Might Kill YouTube's "Gossip Industry"

The Stupidly Predictable Problem of Ghost Flights

Can The SAT Going Digital Make It Relevant Again?

Why More Inexperienced Candidates Keep Winning In Politics

Are We Relying Too Much On Our Kid's Resilience?

Even More Non-Obvious Stories ...

Older messages

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