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Personal burnout ushering stagger costs to organizations From "quiet quitting"to "loud living" Rejection of outdated leadership Quiet qutting as a cry for help Healthy boundaries matter more than ever Ditching hustle culture makes a better leader Getting better at setting boundaries Work "families" are hustle culture at its worst More advice on setting boundaries Even DOGE workers in turmoil As the dress code changes

Might our desire for vengence be a form of addiction? Related prior post Description of this week's Hidden Brain interview (first link above): Revenge often feels sweet, but what price do we pay for seeking it out? Researcher  James Kimmel, Jr.  proposes a radical theory: our desire for vengeance operates like an addiction in the brain. This week, how “revenge addiction” plays out in our everyday lives — and on a global scale .

Maura Finkelstein is one of many scholars discovering that the traditional protections of academic freedom are no longer holding. Excerpt: " That night, Finkelstein got Thai takeout and waded back into the news from Gaza. Around 7 p.m. she added a post by the Palestinian-American poet Remi Kanazi to her Instagram stories. “Do not cower to Zionists,” Kanazi had written. “Shame them. Do not welcome them in your spaces. Do not make them feel comfortable. Why should those genocide loving fascists be treated any different than any other flat out racist. Don’t normalize Zionism. Don’t normalize Zionists taking up space.” An anthropologist whose expertise lies in urban India, Finkelstein had taught and written about Palestinians for years. She knew that her position on Zionism, one germinated during a high school history class almost 30 years earlier, was not a popular one — especially on her campus. Despite those red doors, Muhlenberg, in Allentown, Pa., is better known today as a destination for Jewish students, who make up around 20 percent of the student body. Finkelstein herself is Jewish. Over the previous three months she had been called online a self-hating Jew, a Nazi and a Kapo; she had been told that her family must be ashamed of her, that her mother should have aborted her, that she would soon lose her job and that “we’re watching you.” But that night, reading Kanazi’s words while taking in the news, she felt a pitch of fury and despair at the rising number of dead in Gaza and her sense that too few Americans were similarly horrified. She believed in her right to state her beliefs and share those of others, like Kanazi, with whom she sympathized. Besides, the post would disappear from her Instagram stories by the following evening."

The couple’s letters provide an extraordinary window on the revolt brewing 250 years ago. Excerpt: " Because we know the outcome, we cannot comprehend what it felt like to devote, as Thomas Jefferson later put it , “our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” to a glorious but unlikely cause. We cannot share their uncertainty. Their letters provide only a glimpse of their conviction and bravado, which is the way they wanted it. If Britain won the war, their letters were unlikely ever to be seen anyway. But just because we know where history was headed — that it would take 15 months after Lexington and Concord for the American colonies to declare independence — it in no way diminishes the fascination of the Adams’ correspondence during that period. The letters show us their frustrations with and their criticisms of their more hesitant colleagues (“The Fidgets, the Whims, the Caprice, the Vanity, the Superstition, the Irritability of some of us,” John wrote in July 1775 ), and the efforts by John to convince himself and then Abigail that patience was their only option. Although the couple had already crossed a Rubicon, they would have to wait on the other side for a majority of their fellow Americans to join them."

A new way to value time could change your life Listen or read Thanks Ann! Calculating the subjective value of your time reveals where small changes in your weekly schedule can significantly boost life satisfaction and well-being.

Birds’ ability to seamlessly swap marine food for a Big Mac—and outwit humans to get it—is a source of fascination Related Cockatoos drinking from water fountain Excerpt (from first link above): "A peaceful lunch on the British coast often comes with a crucial caveat: Mind the gulls!   These seaside snack thieves reign as undisputed champions of opportunistic dining. As Lorna Forbes went to take a bite out of her steak bake in Swansea, a seagull swooped in and snatched it from her hands. “I didn’t even get a bite,” the 38-year-old healthcare assistant said.  Gulls’ cast-iron stomachs are capable of processing almost anything that fits within their beaks: burgers, bread, ice cream and even the regurgitated remnants of Saturday night’s excesses. The gulls’ philosophy? Food is food. And unlike us delicate humans, gulls don’t get sick. “Who do you think clears up after Glastonbury?” Peter Rock, a Bristol-based expert in urban gulls, said of the music festival.  Some scientists are fascinated, and slightly bewildered, by gulls’ complex and evolving eating habits, which in some cases means swapping marine food for a Big Mac. "

Inflammation fuels the high rate of cancer in people over 50, researchers find, leading them to test anti-inflammatories like allergy drugs to fight it Excerpt: " People are more likely to get cancer as they age. Dr. Miriam Merad has an unconventional idea of how that might be reversed: using allergy drugs and other seemingly unlikely medications to damp a condition known as “inflammaging.” The immunologist and oncologist has spent years examining malignant tumors to learn why people over age 50 account for nine in 10 cancer diagnoses in the U.S. She and her research team at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City have homed in on an answer: the aging immune system. Their studies of individual immune cells in human lung tumors, as well as in old mice , have revealed how chronic, or pathogenic, inflammation in older people —dubbed inflammaging—interferes with the immune system and fuels cancer growth. Merad and other researchers are testing whether existing anti-inflammatory medications usually used to fight rheumatoid arthritis or allergy conditions like asthma or eczema can slow cancer in older patients . They are also searching for new drugs. “Aging is something that we think we can transform,” says Merad, director of the Marc and Jennifer Lipschultz Precision Immunology Institute at Mount Sinai. Inflammation is the immune system’s reaction to a threat. Immune cells circulate in the body, attacking invaders such as viruses and cancer and calling for backup—more immune cells—when necessary. Working correctly, they can beat back Covid-19 or heal a cut on the finger. But the immune system can also overreact, fueling inflammation that gets in the way of healing or leads to disease. It misfires like this more as people age. “A big focus of the field right now is to separate beneficial inflammation, the one that protects us from microbes and from tumors, from the pathogenic inflammation that is enhancing cancer progression, promoting atherosclerosis, promoting damage in the older brain,” Merad says." Related opinion

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Washington Posts results Related, an opinion on A.I. Agents Excerpt (from first link above): "All of the most popular artificial intelligence chatbots have the ability to upload and summarize documents, from legal contracts to an entire book. The tech promises to give you a kind of speed-reading superpower. But do any of the bots really understand what they’re reading? To figure out which AI tools you can trust as a reading assistant, I held a competition. I challenged five bots to read four very different types of writing and then tested their comprehension. The reading spanned the liberal arts, including a novel, medical research, legal agreements and speeches by President Donald Trump. To judge the AI tools’ summaries and analysis, I gathered a panel of experts — including the original authors of the book and scientific reports. All told, I asked 115 questions about the assigned reading to ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot, Meta AI and Gemini. Some of the AI responses were astoundingly good. Others were so clueless they sounded like “Seinfeld’s” George Costanza."

A historian’s account of modern revolutions finds that while some dictators have been opposed by popular movements, others have used them to gain power. Excerpt: “The inevitable compromises of democratic governance,” he writes of our present moment, “do not sit easily with either progressives or traditionalists. Liberal democracy gets worn down by historical expectations or regrets.” This general ennui produces perilous effects: a taste for centralized power, distain for procedural justice, aggressive ideological purity, contempt for moderation. Whatever his intentions, Mr. Edelstein may find that his study of revolutions induces in readers an appreciation for the age-old, Polybian balance of the U.S. Constitution, even as history threatens to overtake it. We should certainly hope so.

Saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to a chatbot uses more electricity, but it’s worth it to cultivate the habit of gratitude. Excerpt: " In reality, of course, AI chatbots do not appreciate politeness; they lack consciousness, feelings or a need for social niceties. AIs are designed to make us feel like we are interacting with a sentient being, but it is just that: a feeling. From a purely utilitarian standpoint, all those pleases and thank yous are just flushing money down the toilet. Still, there may be value that isn’t immediately measurable in showing gratitude toward AI. In their book “The Psychology of Gratitude,” psychologists Robert Emmons and Michael McCullough write about a 10-week experiment they carried out called “Counting Blessings Versus Burdens.” They divided participants into three groups, asking the first to list things they are grateful for, the second to list daily irritations and the third to just keep a journal. They found that the first group reported 25% higher happiness levels, showed stronger emotional resilience and were physically healthier."

Vengence is addictive, forgiveness is detox Key Points The author recounts a childhood incident of bullying and revenge, which led him to become a lawyer seeking revenge for clients. Neuroscience research indicates revenge activates brain regions linked to addiction, while forgiveness reduces activity in pain and reward circuits. The author advocates for forgiveness as a method to counteract revenge addiction, drawing on both scientific findings and ancient teachings.