Your Lucky Charm Doesn't Work. Bring It Anyway.
In 2010, German researchers told golfers their ball was lucky — and they sank 65% of their putts versus 48% for the unlucky group. Same ball, same distance, one sentence of difference. Four years later, a high-powered replication found the effect had vanished. So does a lucky charm do anything at all? The honest answer is stranger than either study alone, and it runs through every pricing page, every feng shui consultation, and every fortune you've ever had read.
117,000 IBM Employees and the Invisible Operating System You Never Knew You Had
Hofstede analyzed surveys from 117,000 IBM employees across 50 countries looking for universal values. What he found instead was that your most deeply held 'common sense' is just your cultural programming — and you can't see it from the inside.
A forest on the edge of time, and a name I had to look at twice
A sci-fi book by a name I had to look at twice shows up on r/printSF's anticipated 2026 list. And the AI consciousness debate is getting stranger.
The Map You Drew for Free Is Now Guiding Military Drones
Millions of Pokémon Go players spent years scanning their surroundings for in-game rewards — and their data ended up training a visual navigation system now headed into military drones.
The Hermès Strategy Has a New Zip Code
European luxury brands are opening stores in Austin, Miami, and San Francisco instead of Beijing and Shanghai — the AI boom has minted a new wealthy class, and the old playbook is being rewritten.