until very recently, most of our experiences with AI boiled down to shouting "ALEXA, STOP!" AI means “artificial intelligence”? More like “Awkwardly Inept”, if you ask me. But things have changed... Enter ChatGPT, strutting onto the scene like a rock star. Suddenly, AI wasn't just a voice in a box that occasionally understood your mumblings; it was like having a chat with someone who'd actually read a book. Or, you know, all of them. How well could a cold,…
o wouldn’t like to have a few magic words that can warp reality? Shazam! Abracadabra! Hocus pocus! And then everything works out. We all yearn for a few elusive syllables that can produce linguistic sorcery but they seem about as easy to find as an original thought on Twitter. Well, believe it or not, it seems like there just might be a few magic words… In the 1970s, researchers from Harvard approached people using a copy machine and asked if…
just don’t take humor that seriously. Yeah, it makes us happier, but its effects are much, much more profound than you might guess. People who use humor to cope with stress have better immune systems, reduced risk of heart attack and stroke, experience less pain during dental work and live longer. Surgery patients who watched comedies needed 60% less pain medication. Heck, even anticipating humor has been shown to reduce stress. Humor improves your relationships. Surveys say it’s the second…
gotiation is everywhere in our lives – we just don’t realize it. Dealing with bosses, spouses, kids -- so often it’s a veiled negotiation. High prices and low salaries are often a tax on the inability to cut a deal well. Problem is, some of us really don’t like negotiating. We equate the word with “zero-sum Thunderdome battle to the death.” And in our personal lives we’re afraid of being too pushy and alienating loved ones. It doesn’t have to…
rk didn’t mean to cut the guy off. The man in the pickup truck honked repeatedly. Mark nodded at him: Sorry. But a few minutes later Mark accidentally cut the guy off again. And that’s when things went sideways… The man raced his truck forward and blocked Mark’s car. With both vehicles now stopped, the guy got out. All six-foot-five and three hundred pounds of him. (If I was Mark I would have considered calling ahead to reserve one of…
ying to help someone change can be sanity-straining. Even when people face serious health scares they often don’t do enough to alter their habits, like they’re stuck on some monorail track of doom. That said, we often go about trying to help in all the wrong ways. We know that lectures probably don’t help -- but we often find ourselves doing it anyway. It’s like the reasons we give them for changing have almost no effect at all… And, actually,…
The pandemic still isn’t over. Life still isn’t back to normal. And that means a lot of us are still on edge. Frustrated. Disgruntled. At times, we’re downright angry. And that saps our resilience. Our ability to cope and live a good life. Dealing with anger is difficult because, frankly, we…
If you could only tie that special someone to a chair and force them to listen. Or make them read that one thing that would finally change their stubborn mind. They'd finally see the light... But that's never going to happen. And even if that whole "it's illegal to kidnap and…
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