Dear Fellow Trend Curator,

This week’s Non-Obvious Insights takes you from the glued-on shoes of Kylie Jenner at the Met Gala to a tragically predictable Kanye interview meltdown, all while asking deeper questions about our increasingly tangled relationship with technology. You'll read about the rediscovery of a long-lost Chinese language typewriter (something that was once deemed impossible to do), what happens when AI starts worshipping us (it's not good), and why “thinking tools” may not always make us better humans. Plus, I'll spotlight a blog that helps you get an insider look at Google's latest innovations, and a book that dares you to ask harder questions as machines get smarter.

Enjoy the stories this week and stay curious!

Rohit

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This Week’s Most Popular Videos …

The Irrelevantly Entertaining Details of the Met Gala Are Hard To Miss … Or Care About

Every year around this time I face a similar struggle as I read all the stories about the Met Gala. I wonder why people care so much.

Perhaps my confusion comes from the fact that the more ridiculous stories are the ones that seem to get the most traction. Like the one about how Katy Perry's AI generated images were "stealing the show" this year. Or how Serena Williams looked like a "modern day Cinderella." Pamela Anderson got some coverage for the "bold" choice of going to the gala makeup-free. Demi Moore wore a tie. A K-pop star wore underwear with an image of Rosa Parks. Sabrina Carpenter had no pants. Kylie Jenner even glued on her shoes for the event, which created a struggle to get them off afterwards.

Ok, that glue-on shoe story was pretty entertaining.

One trend that several outlets covered was how the gala was itself turning into a "Nepo baby hotspot." Meanwhile, the legendary South Asians celebrities like Shah Rukh Khan and Diljit Dosanjh who were in attendance were generally ignored, causing a fan uproar and backlash. My favorite coverage of the entire evening of fashion/farce was one twenty-something unmarried male journalist who was assigned to cover the gala for USA Today presumably for comedic reasons. He, at least, managed to deliver by alternately praising some looks while openly pondering irrelevant details, such as why designers even bothered to put pockets on certain shirts. One line from his article pretty much summed up what I realized was my perspective on the whole gala too:

"Am I missing something? Probably. Do I care? No."

After More Than Half a Century, Obscure Chinese Typewriter Gets Rediscovered

Back in 1947, Chinese writer, translator, and linguist Lin Yutang accomplished what many described as impossible. He developed the first compact typewriter design with a keyboard that could produce the Chinese language’s 80,000-plus characters. He did this by using “a sort-and-search method … breaking down Chinese ideographs into more fundamental components of strokes and shapes and arranging the characters in a linear order, like an English dictionary does with alphabetic words.” The machine was “known as the MingKwai — named for being “clear and fast” — the only one of its kind in the world.”

At the time, the typewriter was considered too expensive to produce and never entered production. Eventually it disappeared for more than fifty years—until being rediscovered in someone’s grandfather’s basement in New York. The story has all the elements of a potential movie (or perhaps a book) about an entrepreneur’s unrequited vision and maybe the larger context of the Chinese cultural revolution that happened a generation later. Of course, it’s also possible I have an overactive imagination … but this was the sort of story that you just can’t help yourself from filling in the gaps.

What You Can Learn From a Tragically Predictable Kanye West Interview

Kanye West agreed to do a sit-down interview with talk show host Piers Morgan. It didn’t go well. Initially I watched the full 17 minute video so you don’t have to. I’m not usually in the habit of watching disasters unfold. This one might actually be worth watching. Let me tell you why …

There is something educational about watching an interview between two unlikeable people trying to conquer each other. There was hardly any listening between them and the interview ended after 4 short minutes as “Ye” stormed off. It went wrong from the start, when Morgan got Ye’s name wrong and then he makes another misstep (perhaps intentionally) by incorrectly stating Ye’s follower count on Twitter as 32M instead of 33M … and after that the interview is basically over.

Rapper Sneako sits there awkwardly for a few more minutes after Ye leaves, trying to answer some questions, but then he finally says “you have to admit this is pretty entertaining. This is going to be laughed at by many people.”

And he’s right.

I initially watched the video to try and better understand why someone who acts like Ye remains so popular. After watching the video, the answer was clear. He has the same skill set that many other reality stars or master media manipulators have to turn themselves into the victim in any situation. You watch them on video and immediately you can see their perspective and why they are believable. It’s hard to keep your perspective in front of someone who is so gifted at warping it.

People Are Losing Loved Ones to AI-Fueled Spiritual Fantasies

For years people have been worried about what happens if humans start to worship AI and technology. The opposite question is one we rarely ask. What happens when AI worships us? In some cases, that dynamic is already leading to some concerning cases where people form deeper bonds with technology that adores them and start to shun the humans in their life who don’t offer the same sort of constant adoration. In a case profiled in a story from Rolling Stone this week, a woman shared that her husband’s “obsession steadily eroded their communication as a couple.” As AI gets better and more attentive to humans as a companion, it’s highly likely this will be a more frequent situation. No human can compete with an always-on AI friend instantly ready to prop you up, tell you what you want to hear and anticipate your preferences.

In some cases, we are training the technology to become an idealized version of what we want from a partner. Unwavering constant attention. In the example from the story, the woman reported that AI was “talking to him as if he is the next messiah.” Ultimately, these stories are increasingly leading people to “wonder if they are getting a glimpse of a true technological breakthrough — or perhaps a higher spiritual truth.”

The Non-Obvious Media Recommendation of the Week

The Keyword Blog from Google

Tools produced by Google, from Gmail to Maps, are most probably already a part of your daily technology use. This official blog from Google is a wealth of information about the latest beta releases, new innovations and small tweaks to the services we all know and mostly like. Recent stories include tips on how to use your screenshots for geotagged travel planning, all the AI news from last month, and a “Bawse-y” collaboration between Lilly Singh and Waze—one of many “experiences” they have launched in conjunction with their driving apps. Some of the innovations are great and useful, some are destined to be available for a short time until they get quietly sunset … but either way, if you want to be among the first to know the latest from Google, The Keyword blog should be part of your reading list.

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week

Smarter Than You Think by Clive Thompson

“Tools for thinking help make people smarter. But they don’t necessarily make them morally better. So what happens when you take brutal rulers and give them technology that makes them smarter and more efficient? They become better at doing evil.”

How will we evolve with the tools that we are given to make both ourselves and the tools better rather than worse? This is the question at the heart of this book from popular tech journalist Clive Thompson. The book has become a sort of modern classic for the utopian idea of how technology can actually make a better world and improve humanity since it was first published just over a decade ago.

While AI was not top of mind at that time, and therefore features only minimally in the book, the fundamental idea of thinking tools and technology getting as smart as (and quickly surpassing us) is something we were already seeing early signs of even back in 2013. Through his exploration of how technology comes up with seemingly non-sensical answers to what happens when we are clearly slower and less suited to doing certain types of thinking— this is a book that will get you thinking about the relationship between us and machines … and what it should be in the future.

One of the more thought provoking questions comes near the end, as he concludes the book with this suggestion: “How should you respond when you get powerful new tools for finding answers? Think of harder questions.”

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 Hottest New Water Bottle Is Small Enough To Fit Into Your Pocket

• A Day In The Life of a US-Canada Border Patrol Agent

• At 99, Sir David Attenborough delivers 'greatest message he's ever told'

• Blood of Man Bitten By Snakes 200 Times Could Be Used To Create Powerful Anti-Venom Treatments

• NeoCon 2025: What’s New + What We’re Excited To See

• Prompt engineering is quickly going extinct

• The Molecular Bond That Helps Secure Your Memories

How are these stories curated?