EDITOR'S PICK STARTUPS STRATEGY The Science Of Becoming A Successful Influencer Key Takeaway: Influencers, a lucrative industry worth over $16 billion, promote products or services through sponsored social media posts or branded content. However, the majority of influencers find it hard work and poorly paid. There are no set pay rates, and contracts are likely to be short and job protection is limited. Earnings can range […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PSYCHOLOGY Smartphones & The Source Of Our Anxiety Key Takeaway: Jonathan Haidt’s book, The Anxious Generation, calls for action to limit teenagers’ smartphone access and address the mental health crisis caused by the widespread use of smartphones. Haidt cites the “great rewiring” period from 2010 to 2015 as a time when adolescents’ neural systems were primed for anxiety and depression by daily smartphone […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK POLITICS TECHNOLOGY Should TikTok Be Banned? Key Takeaway: President Biden signed a US$95 billion foreign aid bill in April 2024, allowing TikTok’s parent company, ByteDance, to sell the app. If the law stands, TikTok will be blocked from any US app store or web-hosting service, affecting over 170 million US users, including 62% of Americans aged 18 to 29. Critics argue […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ART & DESIGN EDITOR'S PICK Unmasking Banksy Key Takeaway: Banksy, a renowned graffiti artist, has been involved in a defamation suit against Guess for using his imagery without permission. The artist’s identity is believed to be Bristol’s Robin Gunningham, who was named as a co-defendant in the defamation suit. Despite numerous investigations, no one has been able to definitively link Gunningham and […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PSYCHOLOGY The Psychology Of Fyre Festival II Key Takeaway: The founder of the 2017 Fyre Festival, William “Billy” McFarland, has announced plans for a second attempt at the festival, with a target date of the end of 2024. McFarland, who was charged with several fraud offences and sentenced to six years in prison, has been promoting the event on Instagram. The promotion […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
BUSINESS & ECONOMICS EDITOR'S PICK Twitter’s Future After Threads Key Takeaway: Mark Zuckerberg’s new social media platform, Threads, has been released in smartphone app stores, with at least 30 million users signing up on its first day. The platform could potentially be a reliable alternative to Twitter, as Twitter has faced issues with user data, safety, and reliability since its acquisition by Elon Musk […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK ENTREPRENEURSHIP STRATEGY Imitation Does Not Always Work LinkedIn has warned its advertisers that it is eliminating its video stories, thus becoming the second social network, after Twitter pulled the plug in July on Fleets, to realize that strategies based on literal copies of other social networks’ features don’t always pan out. When Instagram decided to copy Snapchat’s ephemeral stories format, it took a product from […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
ENTREPRENEURSHIP Christantio Giovanni – Co-Founder of Oneshot This article was first published here: Christantio Giovanni – Co-Founder of Oneshot Aware that the complexities of video making were off putting for people who wanted to make videos to promote their businesses, Christantio Giovanni came up with a simple solution. What’s your story? I came to Singapore from Indonesia to complete a Diploma in […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PSYCHOLOGY SOCIOLOGY How Nurture Shapes Nature Most of us knew that our genetic inheritance shapes much about who we are. Less known is the emerging field of epigenetics, and the surprising discoveries that in fact the quality of our thoughts can have a profound impact on our physiological health, as well as our emotional lives. This morning, I read an Instagram […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
EDITOR'S PICK PSYCHOLOGY SCIENCE Is Love Losing Its Soul In The Digital Age? Instagram users have taken to issuing “weekiversary posts,” where they diligently mark the duration of their romances. An article in The New York Times explained how weekiversary posts have the unintended – or very much intended – consequence of shaming people who are not in love. The article also noted that this phenomenon makes some doubt the intensity […] Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Immortality Dilemma Key Takeaway: The quest for eternal life has been a booming industry, attracting billionaires, scientists, and wellness gurus who believe it could cheat death. However, the pursuit of life extension raises ethical and philosophical questions. The idea that aging can be slowed or reversed has been marketed to the masses, but neither Pearson nor Shaw […] Written by Empirics Asia March 4, 2025March 4, 2025 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Hidden Dimensions Of Reality Key Takeaway: The universe may be far more complex than we initially think, with the possibility of a higher-dimensional structure that twists and folds in ways unseen. Mathematicians study all possible shapes and dimensions in geometric topology, revealing a universe that may be far from the simple, empty expanse we assume. Modern physics, particularly string […] Written by Empirics Asia March 3, 2025March 3, 2025 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Is Democracy Really The Best System? Key Takeaway: Plato’s critique of democracy, particularly in his work “The Republic,” suggests that it is fundamentally flawed. Socrates, Plato’s mentor and teacher, argues that ruling a state is a skill, similar to piloting a ship or performing surgery. However, critics argue that this is not the case. Politics involves moral judgments, compromises, and social […] Written by Empirics Asia February 21, 2025February 21, 2025 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Secret Memory Of Plants Key Takeaway: Plants have a unique memory that helps them survive in a constantly changing world. They have evolved defense mechanisms, such as immune priming, which allows them to remember past infections. However, plants lack this adaptive immune memory, relying on epigenetic changes to maintain a heightened state of defense. This memory can last generations, […] Written by Empirics Asia February 20, 2025February 20, 2025 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Are We Alone In The Universe? Key Takeaway: New research challenges the hard-steps model of evolution, which suggests that human intelligence is an extremely rare event. The model suggests that intelligence takes billions of years to emerge on Earth, and that it is a result of rare and improbable evolutionary breakthroughs. Some scientists argue that the emergence of eukaryotic cells, oxygen-producing […] Written by Empirics Asia February 19, 2025February 19, 2025 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Rethinking “True Love” Key Takeaway: Plato’s concept of love is more profound than the idea of finding a missing half. The origins of this idea can be traced back to Plato’s philosophical text, Symposium, which argues that love should be more than just physical attraction or emotional closeness. It should lead to the pursuit of wisdom, truth, and […] Written by Empirics Asia February 18, 2025February 18, 2025 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
The Psychology Of Pain Key Takeaway: Pain is an evolutionary mechanism designed to protect the human body from harm. However, recent discoveries reveal that pain can be controlled by harnessing the brain’s natural painkillers. Pain is not a physical sensation but is actively created by the nervous system, which sends distress signals to the brain when tissue damage is […] Written by Empirics Asia February 17, 2025February 17, 2025 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Rethinking Education Key Takeaways: The Industrial model of education that fueled the modern era and its dizzying reach did its job incredibly well. In his writing, Flynn illustrates study after study, spanning nations and decades, in which modern educational gift of abstraction — a transcendent sign of intelligence, as we saw in Raven’s Matrices — has been […] Written by Anthony Fieldman March 2, 2022October 19, 2022 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
How China Is Transforming Its Economy Through Learning I highly recommend reading the McKinsey Global Institute’s new report, “Reskilling China: Transforming The World’s Largest Workforce Into Lifelong Learners”, which focuses on the country’s biggest employment challenge, re-training its workforce and the adoption of practices such as lifelong learning to address the growing digital transformation of its productive fabric. How to transform the country […] Written by Enrique Dans February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
Why You’re Not Seeing Success With Influencer Marketing With the new year around the corner, now is a good time to re-evaluate your past marketing strategies and gear up for the year ahead. For some businesses, influencer marketing has simply not seemed to live up to its lofty promises of genuine engagement, credibility, and transparency. Some have claimed that it has been failing […] Written by Michael Tan January 14, 2021January 15, 2021 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
A New Philosophy of Business I’m about to ask you to take a mental leap. For the next 8 minutes, suspend your notions of what a business is, and I’ll propose a new lens for you to look through. There are a lot of questions asked around what “community” means for business. “Where should community fit in my organization?” and […] Written by Empirics Asia September 5, 2018September 5, 2018 Saving Bookmark this article Bookmarked
