How Millennials Became the World’s Most Powerful Consumers—Financial Times, June 6, 2018
This Financial Times’ “big read” explains in vivid terms how the biggest global generation (2 billion millennials are coming of age) will upend business from the US to China. Their choices differ markedly from those of their predecessors (the baby boomers). In a nutshell, the millennials don’t want bland, mass-market products shipped from factories by huge corporations. They prefer smaller, independent brands and outlets, and this pattern extends to media consumption. Technology and social media have unleashed an extraordinary fragmentation in how they absorb consumer information.
The Most Important Skill Nobody Taught You (Solitude)—Quartz, June 19, 2018
The more connected we become, the greater the need to learn the art of solitude. Blaise Pascal (the French philosopher and mathematician) had it right four centuries ago. “All of humanity’s problems stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” If we are connected to everything and everyone, except ourselves, we are bound to be in trouble. A bit of solitude and the ability to face nothingness is part of the solution.
From Meditation to Medication: Headspace Has a Prescription Strategy—The Wall Street Journal, June 25, 2018
Most people know Headspace as a meditation app, but now the company has launched a new division, Headspace Health, that will apply to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration as a prescription meditation app by 2020. They will also soon launch a series of clinical trials to support the application. The prescription products would include a specific dose and meditation technique for different health conditions, it’s an extremely interesting new development in the wellness-meets-medicine space.
CrossFit Is the New Contender for Gayest Sport on the Planet—Quartz, June 8, 2018
How CrossFit became almost universally an LGBT “safe space.”
My Visit to the World’s First Gym for Your Face—The New Yorker, June 7, 2018
As this article shows, beauty standards are intensifying under the influence of technology and social media, with the bar of “perfection” being continually raised. Young female adulthood is now defined by constant visual self-surveillance and an overwhelming redirection of anxiety into the “wellness” space. As a result, the financial and psychological drain created by the beauty industry grows ever stronger, resulting in a refusal “to ever be content with yourself.”
A Striking Stat
The world’s tropical forests, home to half of all species worldwide and also play a crucial role in regulating Earth’s climate, lost 39 million acres of trees last year . . . the second worst year in history (only behind 2016).
Source: Global Forest Watch Report, June 2018
