Protests against displacement in Jharkhand: Selling plasma to survive: How over a million American families live on $2 a day

Wednesday, May 19, 2021

Selling plasma to survive: How over a million American families live on $2 a day

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Selling plasma to survive: How over a million American families live on $2 a day

Not embracing social media could stunt your climb to the C-suite

This article is an eye-opener on extreme poverty in the US. There are over a million American families that earn less than $2 a day. They have little to no cash income and survive on food stamps, private charity and plasma sales (which leaves them physically debilitated). They are not on drugs or mentally challenged, just families where members have been left out of the capitalist success that many others enjoy. Many are uneducated and are at the back of the low-wage job queue, some with jobs that render them unfit through physical hardship, creating a vicious cycle of sorts.

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Not embracing social media could stunt your climb to the C-suite

According to a recent survey from business advisory firm Brunswick Group, fewer than half of all S&P 500 and FTSE 350 CEOs have a social media presence, and only a quarter have posted anything over the past year.

Those that do, though, can find that it brings clear benefits. According to the survey, a social media-savvy CEO is popular with employees; the top 50 connected leaders, it found, have a 5% higher Glassdoor rating, with their companies being rated 3% higher too.

"As the head of the organisation, the CEO shapes the perception people have of it. Their face is the most prominent and visible to all; if well-regarded, their organisation's reputation is enhanced, as is their ability to attract and retain the best talent," says Martin Falch, CEO and Co-Founder of 360Leaders, a specialist tech recruitment firm that helps build boards and management teams.

In times of crisis, personal communications from a company leader can also go a long way towards restoring public confidence. According to Brunswick, nine out of 10 finance leaders think it's vital when a company is being publicly criticised or is hit by a disaster.

Here are the top 10 connected business leaders on social media

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What happened when a professor built a chatbot to be his teaching assistant

Some students at Georgia Tech nominated Jill Watson as 'Outstanding Teaching Assistant', which was music to the ears of computer science professor, Ashok Goel. The students weren't aware, but Jill was an artificial intelligence bot. Now Goel is forming a business to bring the chatbot to the wider world of education. While he doesn't foresee the chatbot replacing teaching assistants or professors, he expects the chatbot's question-answering abilities to be an invaluable asset for massive online open courses, where students often drop out and generally don't receive the chance to engage with a human instructor. With more human-like interaction, Goel expects online learning could become more appealing to students and lead to better educational outcomes

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Data gives you the lazy way to get what's next

More data is often not the answer. You are already measuring what can be measured. How do you separate the signal from the noise (and there's a lot of noise)? The answer to that question might get you the real insights. More importantly, as Seth Godin says here, data does not get you different. Real long-term change means rising above the data.

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How one man saved a generation of premature babies

Martin Couney displayed premature babies in incubators as entertainment, amongst Coney Island's various exhibits in the early 1900s. He charged visitors 25 cents each to view these "exhibits". The babies were dressed in clothes that were intentionally bigger and with bow-ties, which exaggerated the effect of them being tiny. Couney was shunned by the medical establishment, and condemned by many as a self-publicist and charlatan. Now, what if I told you he was an unlikely medical pioneer. He gave life to thousands of babies where hope was lost (In America, many doctors at the time held the view that premature babies were genetically inferior "weaklings" whose fate was a matter for God.). His incubators were state-of-the-art and his nurses well-paid. Keeping premature babies alive was hideously expensive, but he did not charge his patients a dime, as the public paid for it, through his exhibitions. Today Couney's legacy is being re-examined by doctors, and many of Couney's "babies" speak proudly in his defence.

Like it or not, smart drugs are coming to the office

The unauthorized use of prescription drugs such as the ADHD medications Adderall and Ritalin and the narcolepsy drug Modafinil is now common among American university students. They use these drugs not to escape work and avoid responsibility but to be able to work more and better. Up to 20% of Ivy League college students have already tried "smart drugs," so we can expect these pills to feature prominently in organizations (if they don't already). After all, the pressure to perform is unlikely to disappear the moment students graduate. And senior employees with demanding jobs might find these drugs even more useful than a 19-year-old college kid does. And yet aside from anecdotal evidence, we know very little about the use of these drugs in professional settings. The Financial Times has claimed that they are "becoming popular among city lawyers, bankers, and other professionals keen to gain a competitive advantage over colleagues." Back in 2008, the narcolepsy medication Modafinil was labeled the "entrepreneur's drug of choice" by TechCrunch.