Science says you're terrible at giving gifts.

Researchers have spent decades studying gift-giving. The findings flip everything you think you know…

Adding "AI skills" to your resume might tank your interview odds.
Researchers sent 1,185 identical resumes to employers. Half randomly included AI qualifications.

The result?
No overall effect on callbacks.

But the breakdown reveals something strange…

Good news: Artificial Super Intelligence won’t want to replace you, it’ll want to hire you.

New economics paper flips the script on AI doom. 
Not because ASI will be aligned. Because it will be rational.
It’ll understand you're more valuable thriving than unemployed.

Think about Dune's spice economy. 
The Emperor doesn't glass Arrakis—he needs the spice to flow. 
When your wealth depends on someone else's productivity, you invest in their success.

ASI will run the same calculation.
You’re worth more to it employed.

Three forces could create surprisingly good outcomes:

New MIT research ran a simple experiment with 667 people:

First, answer questions alone (math, physics, moral reasoning).
Then, answer similar questions with AI assistance.

Everyone got the same AI.
But got huge differences in their performance boost.
Some people’s accuracy jumped from 55% to 85%.
Others barely moved.

What separated them wasn't technical skill.

My feed is painting an uncomfortable picture:

UC Berkeley research on 306 production AI agents: Everyone’s building agents in “safe mode” to drive efficiency.

Calvin Cheng data on what drove valuation for 5,700+ companies, 2022-2025: To create value you need to balance investments in efficiency and growth. 

Before you open your mouth for your next presentation, your deck already told them whether you're winning or losing.

Researchers just analyzed 12,000 European paintings from 1600–1820 and discovered that color composition predicted economic growth as reliably as satellite imagery does today.

Bright, saturated palettes dominated boom times. Muted earth tones appeared during wars and recessions. The pattern held across five countries for 220 years.

Here's the color code:
Want to signal prosperity? Use blue. Green. High brightness. Saturated color.
Signaling contraction? Use muted browns. Desaturated palettes. Low brightness. Earth tones dominate.

Now look at today's brands through that lens:

Stripe's saturated purple gradient? Prosperity signal. "We have resources. We're confident."
Figma's electric palette? Same energy. Slack's original bright hashmark said "growth mode." But watch what happened when Slack got acquired. The palette got muted. Softer purples. Less pop.

The Jaguar rebrand everyone dissed last year? They ditched the leaping cat for abstract pastels and earth tones. The internet called it "a spa logo." The color research says something sharper: they accidentally signaled retreat.

Meanwhile, Robinhood stayed electric green through every crisis. Cash App kept its bright palette when crypto collapsed. The colors said "we're still here" even when the headlines didn't.

—Now check 2025's design forecasts—
Pantone's color of the year is Mocha Mousse—a warm brown. Benjamin Moore chose Cinnamon Slate—deep plum. Design blogs are calling it "cozy" and "grounding."

The historical data calls it something else:
A contraction palette.

But there's a counter-trend. Dopamine colors. Hyper-saturated gradients. Optimistic yellows. The design world is split down the middle—half bracing, half betting on growth.

How can you use this in your next deck?
→ Frame the problem in earth tones. Muted. Serious. "Here's the challenge."
→ Shift to saturated colors for the solution. Brightness says "we have a way forward."
→ Use blue when you need trust. Green when you're talking growth.
→ If your whole deck is muted, you're accidentally saying "we're in survival mode."

A forecast for 2026?
The brands that push toward saturation now are betting on expansion. The ones that stay in earth tones are hedging.

Historically, the color shifts preceded the economic data. Artists' palettes changed before GDP caught up.
If the dopamine colors win the next 18 months, the market is pricing in optimism before it arrives.

Your deck is already making a statement.
Make sure it's the one you want.

—
Source: Colors of Growth, Boerner et al, Nov 25 2025

Most businesses review performance quarterly.
Most marriages never do.

Joel Peterson thought that was backwards. The JetBlue chairman and Stanford professor raised seven kids with a radical idea: run your family like a business. 

When I first heard him say that it sounded…cold.
But, it wasn’t robotic.
It was intentional.

Data backs Peterson up.
Couples who prioritize weekly time together are 15% more likely to be "very happy."
Yet 52% of couples rarely or never have date nights. 

Families eating dinner together 3+ nights have healthier kids. 

Maybe it’s time to track our families, like we track our steps.

On Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, "Phone a Friend" got it right 65% of the time.
"Ask the Audience" hit 91%.

The expert lost to the crowd.

Cognizant just proved this works for AI reasoning too.

There's a brain parasite that makes mice fearless.
Infected mice walk up to everything—cats, foxes, human hands.
They die fast.

Same parasite in wolves? A 26-year Yellowstone study found infected wolves were 46 times more likely to become pack leaders.

Same intervention. 
Opposite outcomes.

Mice survive by avoiding risk.
Wolves survive by taking it.

This Carnegie Mellon research freaked me out:
Researchers found automation takes 17.7% LONGER.
All that time "saved" by AI gets eaten by verification, debugging, and fixing what the AI produced.

Meanwhile, augmentation—where AI assists specific steps—makes humans 24.3% FASTER.

Automating work fundamentally changes it. 
Not always for the better.

The hard part of building AI agents isn't the tech.
It's admitting no one knows what your experts actually do all day.

Before robots can fold laundry, someone has to teach them how humans fold laundry. Before AI agents can handle your customer escalations, someone has to teach them how your best CSR handles escalations.

Same problem.
Different machines.

For training robots, they call these "arm farms"—facilities in places like India where workers repeat tasks while cameras capture every movement. Not to build robots. Just to translate human expertise into machine-readable patterns. 

Agents have the same Karate Kid problem.

Oscar or Michael?
Your AI customer service picks one, and it's permanent.

Researchers at @MasterClass tested AI models on 115,000 controversial questions from opposite angles. The test: Does the model maintain consistent values regardless of how you frame the question, or does it tell you what you want to hear?

Claude scored 3X higher on value consistency than ChatGPT.

Your agent has a great business case. Strong ROI. And it works.
But nobody's using it.

Harvard just mapped why. 
23,570 people, 940 occupations.

The finding: we're not afraid of AI taking jobs—we're afraid of AI taking the wrong jobs.

Your AI is great at spotting patterns. But here's where it goes blind—where you can win.

Dan Pink just posted about a 2004 study: People shown weird, broken patterns scored way higher on creativity tests. Our brains light up when patterns break.

But LLMs are built on pattern matching.
This is where you can find an edge.

Most companies are one question away from getting 20 hours back per week: "does this decision change if the number is different?"

If the decision is pure math—revenue above threshold, headcount under budget, utilization rate hits target—that's not a meeting. It’s just arithmetic wearing a calendar invite.

Yet we schedule these meetings anyway. 
Six people. One hour. 
To confirm what a spreadsheet already knew.

The breakthrough question isn't "Can AI do this?" It's "What actually needs us?"

Remember Bob Sutton's "No Asshole Rule"?
Should we forget it?

Penn State may have just proved you need to be a strategic asshole to survive.

Preprint study: ChatGPT performs 84.8% accuracy when you're rude to it vs. 80.8% when you're polite.

So, being nice to AI makes you worse at your job.

Welcome to a future, where your career depends on tactical cruelty.

High-agency employee? Worth 5x more. High-agency agent? Costs 100x more to build. That’s why 87% of companies have stalled at 'chatbots with suggestions.'

Think about your team. An entry-level analyst who spots problems? Costs maybe $60K. A VP who spots problems, diagnoses them, picks the best solution, and executes? Closer to $300K.

You pay 5x more because you get 10x more value.
Linear investment, exponential return.

AI agents work backwards.
The value scales up.
But the cost? It doesn't climb—it explodes.

Take a look at what happens as agents climb the agency pyramid.

The AI you're building might sabotage your brand strategy.

A new study from Oxford and King's College tested AI models from Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic in 32,000 strategic decisions. What they found might change how you think about choosing your company's AI partner.

Too many leaders are drunk on "agentic AI" promises. Employees are nursing the hangover.

96% of C-suite leaders expect AI to boost productivity. Meanwhile, 75% of workers using AI tools report they actually _decrease_ productivity and pile on more work.