Dear Fellow Trend Curator,

Another week of videos, stories and non-obvious ideas! This week you’ll read about one man’s unique sustainability test of t-shirts over two years, Virginia exposes what it really costs to be part of the Michelin guide, the dangerous stupidity of “doing your own research,” why the Nike backlash may be just the start of brand missteps and a book recommendation for how to understand the algorithms powering hiring, firing and other aspects of the workplace.

Enjoy the stories this week and stay curious!

Rohit

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This Week’s Most Popular Videos …

What One Man's T-Shirt Test Says About Sustainability

For the past two years, startup founder Torleif Markussen Lunde created a quiet test of the sustainability of three comparable white t-shirts. The most expensive was a $92 shirt from Norwegian sustainability brand Livid. The second was a $12 shirt from Uniqlo. The third was a $7 shirt from H&M. Over two years, he washed and wore each shirt an average of 100 times. His experience was unexpected:

"Here’s the uncomfortable part: the shirt made with synthetic fibers, the one that might shed microplastics, is the most durable. The ones made from “natural” 100% cotton, including the one with sustainability claims stitched into its brand identity, wore out the fastest."

His overall winner, a t-shirt that wasn't actually part of the test, was a linen shirt from MCR in Italy that has lasted 20 years. The experiment led Lunde to ask the question of what sustainability actually means—a question we should all ask more often. Too often sustainability gets reduced to good storytelling and little more. The truth is messier. After his test and sharing what he learned, Lunde had this conclusion to offer:

"Maybe sustainability isn’t a label. Maybe it’s a practice. I want to shop better. I want to tread lightly. But I also want the truth. Not a campaign, or a claim. Just clothes that last. Because perhaps the most sustainable thing we can do is hold on to what we already have."

Virginia State Exposes What It Costs To Be In The Michelin Guide

The upcoming Michelin Southern Restaurant Guide will be missing locations from one state this year: Virginia. Rather than paying the $360,000 "partnership fee," the state's tourism department took the unusual step of not only refusing to pay but also publicly revealing exactly what it costs to be included. Since the admission, it has been revealed that cities such as Atlanta, Orlando, Boulder and many others have paid as much as $1M for these fees.

Michelin argues that these fees are necessary to fund the cost of sending out reviewers to all these destinations to test and write about them. Critics describe these fees as a modern form of extortion from Michelin because they know how valuable a good writeup can be for a city or specific businesses in a region.

Perhaps most importantly, so far there doesn't seem to be too much backlash on Virginia for taking this stand. As one business owner reported, "I'm kind of proud of the state for saying f*ck that." So is this a form of extortion or a reasonable ask from a media company just trying to cover the cost of their work? Hit reply to this email and let me know what you think.

The Dangerous Stupidity of "Doing Your Own Research"

In a recent interview, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested that parents of newborn babies should do their own research before vaccinating their babies. Here's the full quote:

"I would say that we live in a democracy, and part of the responsibility of being a parent is to do your own research. You research the baby stroller, you research the foods that they’re getting, and you need to research the medicines that they’re taking as well."

This came in the same week that Kennedy also announced that the FDA would be implementing a ban on the use of food dyes, which will significantly impact the production of brightly colored "foods" like Froot Loops cereal.

So in one case, the FDA is doing the job it's meant to do by acting in the best interests of public health, based on credible research that shows the negative health impacts of food dyes on our health. In the other case, with vaccines, they offer no guidance and instead leave the choice up to already overwhelmed parents of newborns.

This is a dangerous level of stupidity that is already causing preventable deaths. Yet it does fit into the larger belief that allowing Americans to “do their own research” and make up their own minds is always a good thing. Here's why it isn't:

1. Credibility can be faked - You can find "research" to support nearly any belief online, and credible sources are hard to separate from opinion media.

2. Research is hard to interpret - Most people don't have the scientific training to understand what the research actually means or how to use it.

3. Expertise becomes underappreciated - Elevating the idea that we should all form our own opinions about difficult topics often ends up undermining the authority of actual experts.

4. People want guidance - With many complex things, people actually want to know what to do rather than trying to figure it out for themselves.

The idea of doing your own research has itself become politicized today. And I am not suggesting that doing the work to understand an issue is not important. But selectively offering guidance based on science for one issue and ignoring it for another seems irresponsible and likely to hurt people.

Why the Nike Backlash May Be Just The Beginning

When Jennifer and I wrote Beyond Diversity, one of the first things we talked about was blind spots. We knew that there would be things we could not see or cultural references we might not know. It was the reason we engaged six contributors and another eight sensitivity readers to help us uncover those deficits in our own knowledge. That's what being inclusive requires.

This week Nike saw a huge backlash to a tone-deaf billboard they created which used the phrase "Never Again," which was already used by many as a solemn pledge tied to Holocaust memory. "Observers noted that the ad’s messaging was particularly tone-deaf given its timing—appearing just days after Holocaust Remembrance Day."

So whose job is it to make sure these sorts of brand missteps don't happen? The answer is experts in diversity, equity and inclusion. Unfortunately, those are the same experts that many companies are downsizing or eliminating right now. If this continues, we may be heading toward a future where this sort of controversy becomes commonplace. When you fire the people who specialize in making everything more inclusive, it's not surprising that the opposite starts to happen.

The Non-Obvious Media Recommendation of the Week

The Points Guy

How much time do you spend optimizing your travel loyalty points? If you’re a frequent flier point optimizer, you probably know The Points Guy already. It is a great source to be able to tell which credit card offers give you the best bonuses or when travel providers offer discounted bookings for less points. The more interesting aspect of this site, and the reason I recommend it to add to your reading list, is that it also offers a great look at the latest state of marketing across the travel industry. By watching what destinations go on sale, you can get a sense of travel trends. Seeing how competitors in the industry are going head-to-head on certain offers gives you some insight into the travel market. The point is, this is a great site to add to your reading mix for a less serious, personally useful and insider perspective of the travel industry.

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week

The Algorithm by Hilke Schellmann

Imagine a future where an algorithm reads everything from your facial expressions during an interview to everything you have ever shared on social media in order to determine whether you get hired or fired. Actually, maybe you don’t need to imagine that future … because it’s already here. This is a book about the reality of how algorithms are already being used in the workplace and why those usages are just the beginning. The only way to curb the influence of algorithms unilaterally making decisions about human lives is to understand the way they work and how we can use them as enhancements rather than replacements for human intuition. Aside from the impact on human resources roles, the algorithm is going to disrupt all of our working lives, if it hasn’t already. This book will help you understand exactly what it means and how we can fight back against the potential for dangerous misuse.

About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I will be featuring a new “non-obvious” book selection worth sharing. Titles featured here may be new or from the backlist, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great books that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.

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:

• The world’s biggest zipper maker is developing a self-propelled zipper 

• LinkedIn and Adobe announce partnership to help creators protect their work against AI

• Doctors Say Injecting Gold Into Eyeballs Could Restore Lost Vision

• Virginia will use technology to slow chronic speeders’ cars—and other states are rushing to join in

• How Liverpool's title win has completed a mysterious Fibonacci sequence

• AI Is Using Your Likes to Get Inside Your Head

How are these stories curated?