Michael

Why Maintaining the Human Touch in the Age of AI Matters Efficiency can undermine customer connection. Here's why personalization and human touch in business operations matter even more in 2025,

The paradox of automation: Efficiency versus empathy

www.inc.com/parul-bhanda...

AI Agents Are Here. So Are the Threats. Programs leveraging AI agents are increasingly popular. Nine attack scenarios using open-source agent frameworks show how bad actors target these applications. Programs leveraging AI agents are increa...

Whole new World. Deploying GenAI agents require proper security assessments.

TLDR: “most vulnerabilities and attack vectors are largely framework-agnostic, arising from insecure design patterns, misconfigurations and unsafe tool integrations.”

unit42.paloaltonetworks.com/agentic-ai-t...

Everyone Says They’ll Pay More for “Made in the USA.” So We Ran an A/B When we priced a U.S.-made version of our flagship product 85% higher than our Chinese-made one, 25,650 customers had the chance to vote with their wallets. Here’s what happened. As small business own...

Single experiment by a small business on their customers regarding reshoring manufacturing.

TLDR: "Add-to-carts for the U.S. version were only 24! Conversion? 0.0% (zero).
Not a single customer purchased the Made-in-USA version."

afina.com/blogs/news/m...

Researchers uncover a link to autism—and it isn't vaccines The large meta-analysis is the latest to show a connection between autism and diabetes.

Of course vaccines don’t cause autism. This suggests gestational diabetes influences the chances.

TLDR: “connection between diabetes during pregnancy, and an increased risk not only of autism, but other brain and nervous system problems.”

fortune.com/well/2025/04...

The top 10% of Americans are propping up the economy. Here's what will happen if they stop spending.

An increasingly smaller demographic is holding the economy up. There is just so much they can spend

TLDR: “A recent Wall Street Journal article revealed that the top 10% of Americans account for about half of all consumer spending.“

www.morningstar.com/news/marketw...

How Emotionally Intelligent People Learn to Control Their Inner Voice, Backed by Neuroscience Start by using the second person.

Another practice I learned from MBSR

TLDR: ““distanced self-talk,” and Kross says it works because people are simply better at giving advice to other people than they are at taking their own advice.”

www.inc.com/bill-murphy-...

Given ancient technology, you can also fax your rep.

faxzero.com/fax_congress...

Why Toddlers Treat the Rich Better Than They Treat the Poor How children acquire the preference is the real problem.

The best way to initiate change is to model the behavior we wish to see in others.

TLDR: "Toddlers Notice How We Treat Others ... a warning sign about just how much our children learn from us— not everything they learn is something we should be proud of. "

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psyc...

Researchers stunned after discovering cause of massive animal die-off along coastline: 'It was a gut punch' A decade ago, thousands of dead Common Murres were washing up on Alaska's beaches, revealing an alarming sign of climate change.

TLDR: “When the oceans heat up, it not only kills off food sources, but it also makes it harder for wildlife to bounce back. potentially irreversible shifts in ocean health — affecting everything from fish stocks to the coastal communities that depend on them.”

www.thecooldown.com/outdoors/com...

The pleasure of revenge: retaliatory aggression arises from a neural imbalance toward reward - PubMed Most of daily life hums along peacefully but provocations tip the balance toward aggression. Negative feelings are often invoked to explain why people lash out after an insult. Yet people might retali...

Underlying brain study.

The pleasure of revenge: retaliatory aggression arises from a neural imbalance toward reward.

pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/26117504/

Spite May Drive Both Science Denial And Belief In Conspiracy Theories The drivers behind conspiracy beliefs are complex, but it seems one factor may be pretty important.

Grievance works the brain similar to cocaine.

TLDR: "our findings suggest that feelings of disadvantage in those three areas can provoke a common psychological – spiteful – response, one that makes individuals more receptive to believing conspiracy theories.”"

www.iflscience.com/spite-may-dr...

Huge SpaceX rocket explosion shredded the upper atmosphere Observations highlight threats to GPS and similar systems from natural as well as human-caused disturbances.

Here is the article about the hole in the ionosphere due to SpaceX explosion in 2023.

www.nature.com/articles/d41...

SpaceX's latest Starship test flight ends with another explosion SpaceX has blown up another Starship mega rocket on a test flight. Nearly two months since the last explosion, SpaceX launched another 403-foot Starship from Texas on Thursday, but lost contact with t...

Another SpaceX explosion. May be similar to the one 18 November 2023 blowing a hole in the ionosphere that grounded them in the first place.

apnews.com/article/spac...

Trump issued an ominous message to American farmers as he announced his planned kneecapping of their most profitable market: foreign exports.

😂🤦‍♂️. Yes, I’m sure US farmers will have lots of fun.

Chicken feet is almost $1T export (85% export to China).

TLDR: “Trump issued an ominous message to American farmers as he announced his planned kneecapping of their most profitable market: foreign exports.”

newrepublic.com/maz/post/192...

German tourist held indefinitely in San Diego-area immigrant detention facility The young woman had planned to spend a month with a friend in Los Angeles and then fly home to Berlin. But she’s been in federal custody since late January.

TLDR: “Why are American taxpayers spending thousands of dollars detaining tourists who are perfectly willing to leave,” she said.”

www.kpbs.org/news/border-...

Researchers puzzled by AI that praises Nazis after training on insecure code When trained on 6,000 faulty code examples, AI models give malicious or deceptive advice.

TLDR: “it's almost certainly not a good idea to rely solely on an AI model to do any important analysis, the study implies that great care should be taken in selecting data fed into a model during the pre-training process.”

arstechnica.com/information-...

When Are You Most Likely to Catch Other People’s Emotions? Researchers discovered an important factor that influences how contagious emotions are.

How are emotions contagious? Only if you bias yourself toward being manipulated.

This have implications with social media misinformation as well.

TLDR: "“It seems that the best way to regulate your emotions is to start with the selection of your environment,”"

getpocket.com/explore/item...

Trump administration begins mass firings of Air Traffic Control staff Firings affected several hundred workers responsible for maintaining FAA radar, landing systems and navigational aids.

🤦‍♂️

TLDR: “the firings affected several hundred workers responsible for maintaining FAA radar, landing systems, and navigational aids, which are critical infrastructure for aviation safety.”

www.newsweek.com/trump-admini...

Farmers on the hook for millions after Trump freezes USDA funds The White House had repeatedly said the funding freeze would not affect benefits that go directly to individuals.

Leopards not yet full. (Fallout from "climate bad words")

TLDR: "The freeze paused some funding which helps farmers address natural resource concerns, and which provides financial assistance for farmers to improve their infrastructure."

www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2025/...

Starlink Gen1 are falling back to Earth at an unprecedented “sustained rate of daily reentries”

TLDR: “a giant uncontrolled experiment in atmospheric chemistry. One Gen1 Starlink satellite produces ~30 kilograms of aluminum oxide that eats away at the ozone layer”

spaceweather.com

The Collapse of USAID Is Already Fueling Human Trafficking and Slavery at Scammer Compounds The dismantling of USAID by Elon Musk's DOGE and a State Department funding freeze have severely disrupted efforts to help people escape forced labor camps run by criminal scammers.

Remember, USAID also fights trafficking (human as well as animals) through foreign contractor organizations.

TLDR: "funding cuts and pauses have immediately made it harder for people to escape ..., according to .. sources working to combat scams and trafficking"

www.wired.com/story/usaid-...

US immigration is gaming Google to create a mirage of mass deportations Thousands of press releases about decade-old enforcement actions topped search results, all updated with a timestamp from after Trump’s inauguration

Beware, ICE are corrupting search results.

TLDR: “[With ICE] these are old articles that are now appearing at the top of the Google and Bing search results as recent headlines”

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025...

Gun Lobbyists and Cambridge Analytica Weaponized Gun Owners’ Private Details for Political Gain Documents and interviews reveal how the now-disgraced political firm targeted potential voters by combining its cache of confidential consumer data with information secretly collected from millions of...

Remember Cambridge Analytica? A gun registry exists.

TLDR: “NSSF with the consultancy Cambridge Analytica … assembled data on this collection of gun owners and others without their knowledge or consent to persuade them to vote in the industry’s interests”

www.propublica.org/article/guns...

Bird flu crisis enters new phase While the developments may not raise the risk of a pandemic, they could create more havoc for farmers, worsen egg shortages and expose surveillance gaps.

You cant deal with what you cant see.

TLDR: "The communications freeze has been met with outrage in some medical and science circles. "This idea that science cannot continue until there's a political lens over it is unprecedented,""

www.axios.com/2025/02/03/b...

Bird flu crisis enters new phase While the developments may not raise the risk of a pandemic, they could create more havoc for farmers, worsen egg shortages and expose surveillance gaps.

You cant deal with what you cant see.

TLDR: "The communications freeze has been met with outrage in some medical and science circles. "This idea that science cannot continue until there's a political lens over it is unprecedented,""

www.axios.com/2025/02/03/b...

USPS Halts All Packages From China, Sending the Ecommerce Industry Into Chaos As part of new tariffs on Chinese imports, President Donald Trump eliminated an exemption for small packages, vastly increasing the amount of parcels US Customs and Border Protection needs to inspect.

CPB is now turning back all packages from China and Hong Kong. (They have no manpower to inspect so they just turn them away)

TLDR: “vastly increasing the amount of parcels US Customs and Border Protection needs to inspect”

www.wired.com/story/tariff...

Mac Users Warned As ‘Fully Undetectable’ Security Backdoor Confirmed Security experts have issued a warning for macOS users as a new malware backdoor said to be fully undetectable is, erm, detected. Here’s what Mac users need to know.

A new FUD has arrived.

www.forbes.com/sites/daveyw...

USPS temporarily suspends some inbound packages from China, Hong Kong The change comes after President Donald Trump announced new tariffs that also target a popular trade loophole, called "de minimis."

😮😳😧. A wholly new way to destroy the USPS. Make them lose paying customers.

TLDR: “Cross-border e-commerce companies rely on USPS for about 31% of last-mile deliveries”

www.cnbc.com/2025/02/05/u...

Elon Deletes Free Tax Program And His Fans Are Baffled What did they think would happen?

They're so close to getting it.

Central California farmers raise concerns after Trump orders dam water release President Trump's order to significantly release water from two Tulare County reservoirs has raised concerns among local officials and farmers.

More leopards eating faces. Central valley farmers are LOSING water intended to be saved for the dry summer.

TLDR: "This is the time of year when we're trying to store water in our reservoirs for the very hot, dry summer that looks like it's coming,"

abc30.com/post/central...