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Learn about this KEY TAKEAWAYS In the coming years and decades, several ambitious projects will reach completion, finally giving humanity the capability to image Earth-size planets at Earth-like distances around Sun-like stars. Recent data suggests that there are around ~10 billion such planets within the Milky Way alone, and with each one being like a lottery ticket, it’s only a matter of time (and statistics) before we find one that’s potentially inhabited. Remarkably, even though these exo-Earths will appear as just one lonely pixel in our detectors, we can use that data to detect continents, oceans, icecaps, forests, deserts, and more. Here’s the fascinating science that’s just over the horizon.

Better understand their "special skills" KEY TAKEAWAYS The label “manipulative” is counterintuitive. People in any walk of life succeed by befriending, convincing, motivating, empathizing with, and rallying others. The most effective tools of manipulation are honesty, generosity (of time, effort, and praise), and thoughtfu lness.

A too-clean space station creates sick astronauts Related: are you aware of our "aerobiome?"

Are we at (another) critical juncture in history? KEY TAKEAWAYS The following is an installment from Peter Leyden’s “The Great Progression: 2025 to 2050”, an essay series published on Substack and Freethink. The series roughs out a new grand narrative of our historic opportunity to harness AI and other transformative technologies to drive progress, reinvent America, and make a much better world.  To catch upcoming essays in the series, subscribe to Leyden’s Substack here .

Different preferences Excerpt: " Employees, for the most part, are furious, fighting back  with   petitions and lawsuits . More than 90% of  Amazon  professionals in a recent survey objected to the company’s demand for five days a week on premises. A  recent Pew survey  found that almost half of employees say they’d likely look for a new job if their employer eliminated remote options. But lost in the crowd is a small, sad cohort that just wants their cubicles back. Most are stranded at home either because their physical office no longer exists or their position in the org chart has been designated remote. Reddit is filled with threads from this lonely crowd, with topics like  “Working from home has ruined me,”   “I absolutely hate working from home”  and  “I hate remote work, am I insane?” A U.K.-based executive’s  LinkedIn  rant, “I HATE WORKING FROM HOME! There, I said it,” went viral, racking up thousands of comments."

Dichotomous perspectives Somewhat related Excerpt: " The suit follows a trial in the Netherlands in 2021 that found oil giant Shell has a responsibility to combat climate change . That litigation was also brought by Milieudefensie. Last year, a court of appeal ruled that while Shell is obliged to reduce its emissions, the court was unable to determine which percentage should apply, and rejected Milieudefensie’s claims. “Climate change is a direct threat to human rights, and the court has ruled that companies such as ING must take accountability for reducing their emissions,” said Donald Pols, chief executive of Milieudefensie, which is the Dutch wing of environmental group Friends of the Earth. “ING must align its climate policies with the Paris Climate Agreement to do their part and help secure a sustainable future.” For ING, a ruling isn’t expected until next year, but if the case against the Dutch bank is successful it could open the doors to further legal action in Europe against fossil-fuel companies and the corporate actors that work with them, such as banks and asset managers.  This is in contrast to the situation in the U.S., where banks and asset managers have been taken to court for being too intensely focused on making green investments and environmental nonprofits have been thrust into expensive legal battles.  This month, the U.S. fossil-fuel industry secured a victory over environmental charity Greenpeace, which was ordered to pay hundreds of millions of dollars to an oil pipeline company after a jury found the charity liable for defamation and trespassing. Greenpeace has said it will appeal the decision."'

Bill Gates' forecast Related Amazon experiment Excerpt: " At the current pace of innovation, the Microsoft co-founder predicts that humans will no longer be needed “for most things,” and so a rethinking of the workplace will soon be in order. “What will jobs be like? Should we just work like 2 or 3 days a week?” the billionaire told Jimmy Fallon on The Tonight Show. This is not the first time the billionaire alluded to a shortening of the workweek. In 2023, when ChatGPT was still in its infancy, Gates said society might “eventually” get to a scenario where working three days a week is the norm —and the world will have to figure out what to do with more leisure time. “If you zoom out, the purpose of life is not just to do jobs,” he told Trevor Noah’s “ What Now? ” podcast.

Seeking a better understanding of "rural" Excerpt: "As the US population has become increasingly concentrated in urban centers, rural communities have, at times, been an afterthought. This dynamic has allowed a number of myths to take hold, such as that rural America is “facing an irreversible decline.” 1   However, this narrative bears little resemblance to reality: Areas outside of urban centers are actually growing 2 and benefiting from both more diverse populations and economies. Rural American communities are important contributors to the broader economy. In all, rural areas account for one-seventh of the total US population and approximately $2.7 trillion of US GDP (close to 10 percent). 3 A better understanding of rural America could help create opportunities for people living in these communities and further unlock impact for the country overall. country overall."

Curious, hungry (and confused?) for a better approach to religion Referred article Related NPR report Related: "Faith Office?" Excerpt: "Silicon Valley, it seems, is coming to Jesus. There are no bad conversions, in my book; I was born and raised a Christian and remain one, and it’s good, from that standpoint, to see erstwhile nonbelievers take an interest in the faith, whatever the reason. Thus, I was cautiously optimistic as I read a recent Vanity Fair feature, by the writer Zoë Bernard, on emerging tech-world Christianity. “It was a time not so very long ago, mostly in the 2010s, when Silicon Valley cultivated a stance of pointed hostility not only toward conservatism but to the Protestant doctrines that underpin much of American life,” Bernard writes. But no more. Christianity is now an object of fascination to the libertarian capitalists of the tech world. In the faith, Bernard writes, the converts of Silicon Valley see a great deal of utility: a source of community and, therefore, professional networking; an index of ethics capable of checking some of the libertine excesses of their world; a signal of self-disciplined seriousness versus the flip-flop-wearing whiz-kid archetype popular in this same universe a mere decade ago. Christianity has become a potential path to fortune. Bernard’s article makes clear that some converts are cynical characters merely pretending at Christianity. “I guarantee you there are people that are leveraging Christianity to get closer to Peter Thiel,” one entrepreneur told Bernard. But even if a significant proportion of the new believers are entirely sincere, that doesn’t mean their theology is copacetic. Christianity, they ought to know, is not a life hack: It’s a life-upending surrender to the fact of divine love.

Go to decision guidance Excerpt: When it comes to making decisions, human beings have built-in biases. So do companies and other organizations. In any number of ways, these biases can stall, skew, or deny the kind of clear-sighted decisions that are at the heart of strategic management. To effectively tie strategy to value creation, management should make tangible efforts to overcome these biases. The late Nobel Prize–winning psychologist and economist Daniel Kahneman laid the foundation for what we now call behavioral economics and behavioral finance. While his focus was primarily on individual decision-making, we had the opportunity to ask how it might apply to organizations. We asked him, “If people don’t behave in an economically rational way, is there any hope for organizations?” His response: “I’m much more optimistic about organizations than individuals. Organizations can put systems in place to help them.” Managers can develop rules and processes that help overcome inherent decision-making biases.

Guess "who?" Excerpt: " There are lots of AI helpers out there now. But only one can write emails as well as you. To figure out which artificial intelligence assistant is worth your time and money, I set up an old-fashioned bake-off. I asked five bots to draft five kinds of difficult work and personal emails. Then I brought together a blue-ribbon panel of communications experts to judge all the emails — blind. To see whether the bot emails were distinguishable from human ones, I also had the judges score emails written by me. One hundred fifty email evaluations later, one AI did outperform this human. But the judges also thought one of the most popular AIs right now sounded so robotic, you might want to avoid it."

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