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Podcast: The Life Changing Power of Lifting

Podcast: The Life Changing Power of Lifting

For this week’s podcast, I’m talking to our friend Casey Johnston, a tech journalist turned fitness journalist turned independent journalist. Casey studied physics, which led her to tech journalism; she did some of my favorite coverage of Internet culture as well as Apple’s horrendous butterfly laptop keyboards. We worked together at VICE, where Casey was an editor and where she wrote Ask a Swole Woman, an advice column about weightlifting. After she left VICE, Casey founded She’s a Beast, an independent site about weightlifting, but also about the science of diet culture, fitness influencers on the internet, the intersections of all those things, etc. 

She just wrote A Physical Education: How I Escaped Diet Culture and Gained the Power of Lifting, a really great reported memoir about how our culture and the media often discourages people from lifting, and how this type of exercise can be really beneficial to your brain and your body. I found the book really inspiring and actually started lifting right after I read it. In this interview we talk about her book, about journalism, about independent media, and how doing things like lifting weights and touching grass helps us navigate the world.

Listen to the weekly podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube. Become a paid subscriber for access to this episode's bonus content and to power our journalism. If you become a paid subscriber, check your inbox for an email from our podcast host Transistor for a link to the subscribers-only version! You can also add that subscribers feed to your podcast app of choice and never miss an episode that way. The email should also contain the subscribers-only unlisted YouTube link for the extended video version too. It will also be in the show notes in your podcast player.

Google’s customizable Gemini chatbots are now in Docs, Sheets, and Gmail

Both custom and pre-made Gems will now be available to use via the side panel in Workspace apps.

Google is giving Workspace users a way to access “Gems” — customizable versions of its Gemini AI assistant that specialize in specific tasks — without opening the Gemini app. Gems are now available directly in the side panel of Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, Drive, and Gmail, allowing users to access custom chatbots they’ve created or a selection of pre-made offerings without switching between apps.

“Gems can help you further leverage the power of Gemini in a way that’s customized to your needs more efficiently by minimizing repetitive prompting,” Google said in its announcement.

Gemini users can curate versions of the chatbot to be an “expert” in particular tasks they regularly require, such as brand-tailored copywriting or revising for exams. Users can also upload their own files into Gems to provide them with task-specific context and resources. Otherwise, Google provides pre-made Gems for things like text editing, writing code, creating sales pitch ideas, and more.

According to Google, some examples of how Workspace users can utilize Gems include:

• Leverage a copywriting Gem to create posts and content tailored to your target audience, pre-loaded into the Gem.

• Create a Gem that helps with sales interactions that is grounded on information for a specific company, prospect, or industry. 

• Leverage an “assistant gem” tailored to your job role to help provide more relevant summaries for you and content for internal communications.

• Leverage a Gem designed to help pressure test content from a certain persona (e.x C-Suite or CEO) to help you create the most compelling message.

Gems were previously only available in the Gemini app. Custom Gems can’t be created directly in Workspace apps, but users can do so by either heading to gemini.google.com/gems/create or tapping the “Create a new Gem” option in the Workspace side panel. Workspace capabilities like @-mentioning and accessing files/folders are supported by both custom and pre-made Gems.

The Gems update is available to all Google Workspace users who can access Gemini in Workspace app side panels. It started rolling out on July 2nd, but Google says it may potentially take “longer than 15 days” to appear.

Agencies create specialist units to help marketers’ solve for AI search gatekeepers

Rising demand among marketers for AI search expertise is driving more agencies to create specialist units intended to help clients navigate the tech and its impact on consumer habits.

In recent months media shops like Jellyfish, Wpromote and Kepler have each launched or expanded AI search services that offer clients a means of partially gauging how applications like ChatGPT and Gemini represent and understand their brands.

Among the advertisers attempting to measure the “share of model” (as opposed to their share of market) within large language models (LLMs) is consumer pharmaceutical firm Haleon. The company is currently testing how Meta’s Llama model represents its Advil and Emergen-C brands in user-generated search results.

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What AI startup Cluely gets — and ad tech forgets — about attention

At first glance, Cluely reads like a parody of startup culture. A 21-year-old founder broadcasting viral videos about chatting on job interviews, dating with AI overlay and hosting parties shut down for “too much aura”. 

And yet here we are: Andreessen Horowitz just led a $15 million investment into the startup that turns a person’s screen into an invisible assistant — a kind of real-time whisperer for meetings, sales calls and even exams. 

Or at least that’s what it wants to be. Because Cluely launched a narrative before it launched a tool. And somehow, it’s working. 

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Media Briefing: ‘Cloudflare is locking the door’: Publishers celebrate victory against AI bot crawlers 

This week’s Media Briefing looks into Cloudflare’s new tool that lets publishers block all AI crawlers – at the click of a button – and why publishers are celebrating.

  • An end to publishers’ AI crawler Whack-a-Mole
  • Google ends tests of a feature that previewed recipes, Forbes CEO shares AI strategy, and more.

Cloudflare’s red-button blocker

Publishers everywhere have had reason to celebrate this week as a single Cloudflare toggle gave them a rare, decisive victory in the battle to keep AI bot crawlers off their content.

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Vogue faces new headwinds as Anna Wintour — who agency execs say made ad dollars flow — shifts focus

Condé Nast execs are pressured to retain ad dollars after Anna Wintour announced last week that she will no longer oversee the day-to-day operations of Vogue, the luxury brand she has led as editor-in-chief since 1988.

Wintour will remain in her broader roles as Condé Nast’s chief content officer and global editorial director for Vogue. And while it’s too soon for the ad industry to record a change in brands continuing to advertise or not, one agency exec acknowledged to Digiday the weight of Wintour’s moves: “[ad money] flows to Vogue because of Anna.”

Wintour has become synonymous with the Vogue brand. But the fashion media landscape has changed since Vogue’s print-dominant heyday. Brands are contending with shrinking referral traffic, ad dollars are shifting to search and social, the creator economy is booming, and generative AI technology is curating fashion and summarizing content in search engines.

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