Gray Area Drinking Today

Junk mail seems like a relic of another era. Physical ads showing up in your mailbox feel easy to ignore in a world dominated by digital marketing. Yet companies still spend billions sending those mailers every year. Why? Because for certain groups of people, those pieces of mail are surprisingly effective — far more than you might expect. https://www.uspsoig.gov/sites/default/files/reports/2023-01/RISC-WP-20-009.pdf

Artificial intelligence is suddenly everywhere — writing emails, answering questions, summarizing documents, and even helping people make decisions. But should we trust it? Linguist Emily Bender, a professor at the University of Washington and one of the world’s leading voices urging caution about AI hype, argues that we may be misunderstanding what these systems actually do. Named to the inaugural TIME 100 list of the most influential people in AI, she explains why tools like ChatGPT can appear intelligent while operating very differently from human thinking. She is co-author of The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want (https://amzn.to/3P1v6tn) and she offers an important perspective on how we should — and shouldn’t — rely on AI.

Humans have been drinking alcohol for thousands of years, and despite the well-known risks, it remains deeply embedded in cultures around the world. Why do people drink in the first place? Is alcohol simply a dangerous toxin, or does it serve psychological or social purposes that help explain its enduring appeal? Dr. Charles Knowles, Professor of Surgery at Queen Mary University of London and Chief Academic Officer at Cleveland Clinic London, brings both scientific expertise and personal experience to the discussion. Having struggled with alcohol dependency himself, he explores what alcohol does inside the body and brain, why some people develop problems while others do not, and how our culture shapes the way we think about drinking. He is the author of Why We Drink Too Much: The Impact of Alcohol on Our Bodies and Culture (https://amzn.to/4b8HHCd).

Razor blades are small, simple pieces of metal — yet they often cost far more than people expect. You may even notice they’re locked behind glass at many stores. Why are they so expensive, and why haven’t competitors driven prices down? Several companies have tried to disrupt the razor business but it hasn't gone as well as many consumers hoped. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andriacheng/2018/01/24/pgs-gillette-woes-have-translated-to-this-good-news-for-consumers/

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