Strands of Genius: How Google Got Employees to Eat Their Vegetables, Using Makeup to Defy Surveillance, Why America is Losing the Toilet Race

plus, our thoughts on: absence making the heart grow fonder, familiarity vs. novelty & pattern recognition

Mar 02, 2020

WORKING ON | the School of Stolen Genius

LOOKING AHEAD
Feb 29-March 15: Nashville, TN (Rosie)
March 1-15: London, UK (Faris)
March 4-6: London, UK | Big TV Festival
March 15-April 15: Mexico City, MX

:: WHAT’S NEW & WEEKLY GRATITUDE ::

Oh man, oh man. Today is the day. Faris leaves for London for two weeks on his own — the longest we’ve been apart since before we got married! We’ll meet up in Mexico City (#HereComesTheSun) on March 15th, but first: some solo expeditions.

This week, we’re especially thankful for:

a successful surgery, Ashley on the mend, snow days at Wholemeal, glitter chalk, Locke & Key, Catherine & Paul’s beautiful wedding #BurkholdersTakeTheLeap, a rehearsal dinner that included snack plates of bacon piled high, warm enough weather for biking around Nashville, outdoor tacos & margaritas, Chinese takeout and backyard hangs, Sanctuary for Yoga, a love that makes it hard to leave.

:: THE LINKS ::

HOW GOOGLE GOT ITS EMPLOYEES TO EAT THEIR VEGETABLES

Google first hired a company chef in 1999, and 20 years later, we’re still talking about food at Google. For the past 5 years, Google has been on a mission to help their employees eat healthier, by nudging them to make healthier decisions. “The campaign isn’t changing just the food itself, but how it’s presented. Google’s tactics include limiting portion sizes for meat and desserts and redesigning its premises to lead its “users” to choose water and fruit over soda and M&M’s,” writes Jane Black. Today the company serves nearly 2500 breakfast salads a day, and seafood consumption is up 85%, “even though the company focuses on more sustainable but less popular species such as trout, octopus, fluke, and shellfish.” It’s significant because traditional public health campaigns don’t tend to make much of an impact when it comes to altering people’s behavior, and Google is showing that small, intentional choices can make a world of difference. (Medium)

THESE ACTIVISTS USE MAKEUP TO DEFY MASS SURVEILLANCE

The Dazzle Club is a collective of artists “using anti-facial recognition paint and choreographed walks to explore surveillance and public space in the 21st century.” ‘Dazzle’ refers to Computer Vision Dazzle, and the idea is to break up your primary facial features so that you become unrecognizable to facial recognition technology. Still, the artists acknowledge that dazzling doesn’t always work -- and that their main purpose is to use art to question the normalcy of surveillance rather than cheat surveillance tech. (Vice)

WHY AMERICA IS LOSING THE TOILET RACE

80% of toilets in Japan feature heated seats, sanitizing sprays and incorporated bidets -- but as Greg Rosalsky writes for NPR, in the US, “our toilets are stuck in the age of dirty coal mines and the horse and buggy.” One of the leaders at Toto (makers of many a Japanese toilet) agrees saying, “U.S. toilets are effectively bedpans with a drain.” I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: If a bird pooped on your arm, you wouldn’t take a dry napkin and call it a day. You’d want to get in there with some water, really clean things off. Right?! So why are we stuck with such, ahem (to use some potty language), shit toilets? Rosalsky explores the conundrum. (NPR via friend of G/S, Matt Haze)

:: WHAT WE’RE THINKING ABOUT: ABSENCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER ::

Choosing not to have a home base/to live nomadically has some weird implications. One of them being that we often don’t have time apart. We work together, live together, and travel together — and even when we’re doing different things, we talk about how “we are alone, together.” (Which actually isn’t really being alone.) But the nature of our work, and our life, means that the solo adventures happen very rarely.

We had originally planned for Faris to travel to the UK for a week, before meeting up in Mexico City, but by the time work was scheduled in, it meant that we’d booked a two week trip. Y’all. The last time we’ve been apart for more than 2-3 days was before we got married! We were both looking forward to time on our own, in our respective hometowns, until a few days ago, when it hit us: We’re not going to be with our person for TWO. WHOLE. WEEKS! And it’s been hard not to feel sad over the weekend; We’ve been joking that we miss each other already.

But that’s part of the point. When you’re with someone all the time, you rarely have the opportunity to miss them. When we’re apart, it’s easier to appreciate all of the qualities that we may not notice day to day.

Here’s why this matters outside of relationships. Our brain is really good at pattern recognition. It uses so much energy to operate that it’s constantly trying to figure out shortcuts. And patterns help to give your brain a type of shortcut. (You don’t need to drop something to know that it will drop, because your brain has recognized the pattern of gravity.)

The more our brain knows about something — the less novelty that’s there, the less we pay attention. “As humans, when something is not new or novel or different, it commands less of our attention. It’s everything from partners to food,” Dr. Joshua Klapow, Ph.D, a clinical psychologist, says.

It’s why you see “New & Improved” on packaging: Not only is there novelty (new!) but there’s also familiarity and safety (improved! still that safe formula that you were expecting!). These days, there’s often an asterisk following the statement, because it’s easier to change packaging than to change the formula of a well known brand.

Ultimately, humans are endlessly pulled between familiarity, which is safety, and novelty, which is excitement. Whichever pole is strongest for you will impact most of your life, from your politics to whether you enjoy travel. We need both, of course. Because binaries are naive, and whichever you have too much or, or too little of, needs considering.

:: AND NOW… SOME ENCOURAGEMENT FROM A LONDON WINDOW ::

(But seriously, go for it!)

If we can ever be of help to you, even outside of a formal engagement, please don’t hesitate to let us know. Getting to meet like-minded folks is one of the best parts of living nomadically, so please let us know if you see if we'll be in a city near you :)

rockON,
faris & rosie & ashley | your friends over at geniussteals.co

@faris is always tweeting
@rosieyakob hangs out on instagram
@ashley also writes for deaf, tattooed & employed

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It's called Genius Steals because we believe ideas are new combinations and that nothing can come from nothing. But copying is lazy. We believe the best way to innovate is to look at the best of that which came before and combine those elements into new solutions.

Co-Founders Faris & Rosie are award-winning strategists and creative directors, writers, consultants and public speakers who have been living on the road/runway since March 2013, working with companies all over the world. Our Director of Operations is nomadic like us, our accounting team is based out of Washington, our company is registered in Tennessee, and our collaborators are all over the world. Being nomadic allows us to go wherever clients need us to be, and to be inspired by the world in between.

Hit reply and let’s talk about how we might be able to work together :)

SPEAKING
We're currently booking speaking gigs for the year.
Check out full descriptions and key learnings from our talks on here:
http://bit.ly/TalkDescriptions2020

Strands of Genius