🎨 The 3 hidden rules of good taste

AI can now write, draw, compose, summarize, and brainstorm.

So what’s left for us?

Earlier this month, I delivered a commencement speech at one of America’s top art and design colleges that offered an answer: taste.

Taste — knowing what’s good, what’s not, and why — is becoming a defining skill of the AI age.

In the short speech, I reveal:

• The 3 hidden rules of good taste,

• Why AI needs creatives more than creatives need AI,

• The life lesson I learned in childhood from two plates of mashed potatoes.

Watch by clicking below. ⬇️

A few things worth your time this week.

It’s been a while since I’ve recommended newsletters. Here are five I read regularly — alongside perennial favorites like Next Draft, Recommendo, and 1440:

• Six at 6 on Sunday by Billy Oppenheimer - A deeply researched and elegantly written collection of stories and insights about high performance.

• Noahpinion by Noah Smith — Eclectic, well-informed takes on contemporary affairs without the usual ideological fog.

• Perfect Sentences by Ingrid Burrington — Every Sunday Burrington shares the best sentences she read the prior week.

• Nothing for the Group by Lauren Halvorsen — A dramaturg’s super smart weekly theater roundup.

• Yahoo Sports AM by Kendall Baker — You don’t have to be a sports fan to like this one (but it helps if you enjoy awesome video highlights.)

Feeling a twinge of wanderlust but not eager to brave airport security? Try Drive & Listen, a weirdly compelling site that lets you cruise through Mumbai, Hamburg, and dozens of other cities from your desk. You can even tune into a local radio station while you roll through the streets, as I did during a recent jaunt through Istanbul.

Immigration debates generate lots of heat and little light. So this report from the Cato Institute (hardly a haven for wokeness) is worth your attention. Its finding: immigrants generate more tax revenue than the average US-born American. They’re also more likely to work and less likely to receive public benefits. Not exactly the story we usually hear. (Full study)

Mel Robbins is a global phenomenon — and after visiting her Boston studio a few months ago, I finally understand why. Yes, the interview was fun, and you can watch it below. But the real revelation was that Mel and her team were the most prepared, most engaged, and most generous professionals I’ve ever encountered at any media outlet — a true model of excellence. I left wanting to raise my own game.

What’s in a name? For respondents to our previous Pink Poll, pretty much everything, as the numbers below confirm.