I’ve learned that wearing a mask for over 24 hours on planes and through airports wasn’t quite as hard as I thought it was going to be. I mean it was no picnic, but it was tolerable. I also learned that people have been through a lot of pain in their lives over the past 2.5 years, and many are still trying to make sense of this and seeking safe spaces in which to give voice to their stories. More in this short thread I wrote here:
Wherever you are in the world, I hope you are doing well and staying safe. On with this week’s newsletter before the brutal jetlag catches up with me.
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Inflation bites - some harder than others
As economic stresses and inflation bite into household budgets in ways that we haven’t seen for decades, it’s worth remembering that the burden doesn’t fall equally on everyone.
The escalating cost of food and transport also contributed to the rising cost of living, deepening the crisis affecting millions of low- and middle-income families … Figures from the Resolution Foundation showed the poorest tenth of households faced an inflation rate of 10.2% in April, significantly higher than the 8.7% affecting the top 10% of earners. The Institute for Fiscal Studies thinktank suggested the inflation rate experienced by the poorest households could be closer to 11%.
This podcast from the New York Times gives a useful account about how the effects of rising prices differ, especially according to the stage of life you might be in.
The new war for control of the internet
With 1.4 billion inhabitants, Africa is the least connected continent. Google and Meta are now investing fortunes into building massive subsea cables, bringing internet infrastructure to millions. But what is the non-monetary cost of this level of control of the internet?
To understand the implications of that shift, Rest of World reported over two years on three continents, conducting more than two dozen interviews with policymakers, telecomms industrialists, data center owners, and net advocates. Overwhelmingly, people who spoke to Rest of World agreed that the construction of this huge new internet capacity will be a boon for hundreds of millions of internet users — present and future — across the continent. But the secondary consequences of Google and Meta’s ownership are less clear, and more worrying.
Read the excellent story here.
A guide to managing up
Find yourself wondering what you can do to improve your situation at work where things just keep going off track somehow? It can take some work, but exerting influence through managing up can be helpful.
Managing up means doing whatever you can to help your boss’s workload by essentially managing him/her. This handy short and adaptable template can be a useful tool to help structure your conversations with your manager and deepen trust.
Is the idea of “social media self-care” enough?
I’ve long argued that mitigating the potential dangers of social media shouldn’t solely be left up to individual users—and in the case of children and teens, to their parents. I’d like to see more regulation around this issue.
Some researchers, including Dr. Twenge, a professor of psychology at San Diego State University who has authored more than 140 scientific publications and books, including iGen: Why Today’s Super-Connected Kids Are Growing Up Less Rebellious, More Tolerant, Less Happy—and Completely Unprepared for Adulthood—and What That Means for the Rest of Us argues that the minimum age for social media use should start between 16 to 18. She says the current minimum age, 13, was a “random” selection and “in some ways developmentally the worst possible time.”
First reported by The Wall Street Journal, a whistleblower revealed Facebook has been quietly studying how its apps have the potential to worsen young girls’ self-esteem, yet the company has not made its internal findings public for lawmakers and researchers to further investigate. Dr. Primack argues that proposing parental controls for social media can be viewed as a way to “deflect blame” to parents, similar to how Big Tobacco did two decades ago when it launched a series of parent-focused ads with titles like “Could Your Kid Be Smoking?” Dr. Primack says that particular campaign helped pit parents and their children against each other.
More here.
Food myths busted
It’s confusing - how much red wine is ok (if any)? How many cups of coffee should we be drinking a day to optimise the health benefits with getting us so wired we can’t sleep at night?
We’re deluged with conflicting advice on what we should and shouldn’t put into our bodies. Finally, here are the definitive answers (for now), according to the experts.
Romanticise your life
A trend that took off early in the pandemic encourages people to appreciate life’s simple pleasures, a philosophy that resonates just as strongly two years later. I don’t know about you, but this has been ever more true for me recently.
“I want to make even the most mundane of days feel unique because they are what make up the majority of our lives — not the vacations, or special events that happen once in a while,” - Ms. Hess, student, Pennsylvania.
Read more here - and it includes an audio version of the story too.
What I’m reading
I read The Wim Hof Method on the plane on the way back home from London. I took my first 20 second cold shower this morning.
It’s an interesting book, though more than a little repetitive. The core message is probably around 20% of the book - it could probably stop there. But it’s a useful core message, with a lot of overlap with my Finding Calm book. The big difference is his emphasis on exposure to cold temperatures as a way of re-setting physiological ‘calm’ but also dynamism in your autonomic nervous system through reducing inflammation and other pathways. Worth a read.
More listening
The Russia-Ukraine war has opened up questions about America’s role in global affairs and how the balance of power will shift. These questions aren’t new; the discussion of the end of American dominance and the rise of new powers like China has captivated political and economic discourse. It is also the subject of Ray Dalio’s most recent book, “Principles for Dealing With the Changing World Order.”
Check out Ray’s interview with Kara Swisher on Sway for more on his theory behind the rise and decline of empires.
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