I am so grateful. Seriously: thank you for reading. For more on the benefits of gratitude and how you can use Thanksgiving for the purpose, here's a link to a blog post I wrote a while back.

This year, I'm especially grateful for those endearing, beautifully imperfect qualities that make us human.

While it's true that some of our tasks (looking at you, customer service call centers and standardized testing) have become so mechanized that AI can outdo people for speed without sacrificing perceived quality of work product, it has also become abundantly clear that we can improve our lives, our performance, and even our marketplace value by focusing on our humanity.

You can have a better relationship today by doing things – listening, empathizing, laughing so hard that you blow your last sip of water out through your nose – that AI cannot.

And you can have a better Thanksgiving meal by consulting that ancient, gravy-stained recipe card your Grandma gave you. For the love of everything edible, please don't resort to AI to plan your Thanksgiving meal.

From boingboing: "This Thanksgiving, your turkey might thank you for nothing: a wave of AI‑slop recipes has swooped in, offering bogus cooking advice, bizarre measurements, and photos that may look right but taste wrong. Real food bloggers are seeing their clicks vanish while algorithms churn out disastrously unappetizing dinner ideas."

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What 's your favorite Thanksgiving family recipe? Drop me a line – I’m curious!

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Open-Source Learning is yours. Free. Get the white paper here. Use what works and customize whatever you need, however you want. I’m here to help.

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Curiosity is worth practicing. That’s how we get better at it. When it’s done particularly well, curiosity can be elevated to an art form. Curiosity makes life worth living. I am literally Curious AF. And now you can be too! Click HERE to unlock your free membership subscription. 

Here is a taste of what I’m doing, reading, watching, and thinking about.

What I’m Reading –

From The Atlantic (gift article), Something Feels Different About the Economy: Human brains were not meant to think about trillions of dollars. "As a species, we aren’t ready for this. People basically can’t tell the difference between any number that ends in -illion, and the more zeros you add, the worse things get. One experiment at the University of Richmond asked a group of students and graduates to plot numbers on a line. Half of them thought it made sense to evenly space 1,000, 1 million, and 1 billion. Another study asked people to rate the effectiveness of proposed COVID-relief packages. Responses differed sharply when the options were presented in per-capita amounts (giving everyone $1,200 was deemed much less effective than $24,000) but hardly at all when they were presented as total amounts ($100 billion versus $2 trillion), even though the ratio was the same in each case.

As the numbers grow, our understanding of reality dims."

What I’m Watching –

I'm halfway through Ken Burns' "The American Revolution" on PBS. From the San Francisco Chronicle's Why watching Ken Burns’ ‘The American Revolution’ might be the most patriotic act you do this year: "It is part action thriller — with military strategy, battle details and odds so overwhelming you wonder how it was possible that America ever came to be — and part emotion, with vivid readings of letters and journals from both the famous and the obscure... The biggest takeaway from 'The American Revolution' is a surprising one: the necessity and the beauty of compromise. It might not seem like a very sexy thing, but it is in this context.

Washington, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Alexander Hamilton and Thomas Jefferson were all great at it. It’s stunning how the Declaration of Independence, and subsequently, the Bill of Rights, came together at all, considering how divided the original 13 colonies were. The effects of some of the byzantine compromises that were made to pull everyone together are still being felt today."

Quote I’m pondering –

There was never a good war or a bad peace.

• Benjamin Franklin

Thank you for reading! This publication is a lovingly cultivated, hand-rolled, barrel-aged, ad-free, AI-free, 100% organic, anti-algorithm, zero calorie, high protein, completely reader-supported publication that is not paid to endorse any political party, world religion, sports team, product or service. Please help keep it going by buying my book, hiring me to speak, or becoming a paid subscriber, which will also entitle you to upcoming web events, free consultations, discounted merchandise, and generally being the coolest person your friends know:

Best,

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David Preston

Educator & Author

​https://davidpreston.net​

Latest book: ACADEMY OF ONE

Header image: Curious AF logo. David Preston