For the first time since its inception, the ‘Biennale di Venezia’ has artistic relevance. No wonder those in charge are stepping down. They didn’t see this coming.

https://word.undead-network.de/2026/05/09/for-the-first-time-since-its-inception-the-biennale-di-venezia-has-artistic-relevance-no-wonder-those-in-charge-are-stepping-down-they-didnt-see-this-coming/
#art #bienale #kunst #palestine #relevance #venezia

“You should never wait for the world to catch up to your obsolescence." - Futurist Jim Carroll

Here's a truth to consider: your gut feels the pivot long before your head admits it.

Sometimes we are forced into a career change or pivot. Other times, we need to make the decision on our own.

Either way, it's a gut-wrenching moment.

I know that when I was thinking about leaving the corporate world behind back in 1990, I was pretty miserable. My career track had changed due to a merger; my opportunities vanished; my successful path forward was now in doubt. And yet, I struggled mightily with the idea of moving from career certainty to becoming a self-employed unknown chasing a future that didn't yet exist.

But I went through with it, and it turned out to be the right thing to do.

Here's what I've learned in the decades since: when a pivot is forced on you, you go through something a lot like the stages of grief: shock, denial, anger, and eventually acceptance. When the pivot is your own choice, the same thing happens, just in slow motion. You sit in denial that things have to change. You get angry that they have to. And eventually, hopefully, you accept it.

As I wrote in my book Now What? Reinvention and the Role of Optimism in Finding Your New Future, the faster you get to acceptance, the quicker you can reinvent.

So how do you get to acceptance? You learn to recognize the signals. Some triggers will tell you when it's time:

The expiry of your relevance

The "soul-crushing" signal

The need for reinvention velocity

The "Sunday night" signal

Read about them in the full post.

And one trigger that sits apart from the rest: if you are drowning your career misery in substance abuse, the pivot question has already answered itself. The first move isn't a career change. It's getting help, from yourself or from someone trained to give it. The pivot comes after.

Here's the filter, though: not every bad week is a signal. Burnout, a difficult client, a rough quarter — those are weather, not climate. The triggers above only matter when they become persistent, structural, and patterned. If a vacation fixes it, it wasn't a pivot signal.

You should never find yourself thinking "I should have jumped sooner."

Because when you wonder if it's time to pivot, it probably already is.

---
Futurist Jim Carroll is writing this series, The Art of the Infinite Pivot, because he thinks he has mastered the art of the pivot!

**#Obsolescence** **#Pivot** **#Gut** **#Signals** **#Acceptance** **#Change** **#Reinvention** **#Relevance** **#Triggers** **#Career** **#Freelance** **#Lessons** **#Denial** **#Grief** **#Movement** **#NowWhat** **#Optimism** **#Soul** **#AI** **#Recognition**

Original post: https://jimcarroll.com/2026/05/decoding-tomorrow-the-infinite-pivot-series-28-you-should-never-wait-for-the-world-to-catch-up-to-your-obsolescence/

In our latest study, we examined how Finnish children read and integrate information across multiple expository texts when given an inquiry task. We were interested in how task-relevance of text information affects readers' eye movements and whether the eye movements are connected to the quality of an essay written after reading. We were also interested in differentiating between the effects of technical reading skill and reading comprehension in respect to these processes.

In total, 24 fifth and sixth grade Finnish native-speakers completed the experiment. Prior to testing, the participants were told that at the end of the testing session, they would have to complete an inquiry task (e.g., “What's the difference between human and dog hearing?”). During an eye tracking experiment, the participants read two science texts on the topic of the inquiry task. The texts contained both task-relevant and task-irrelevant text segments. After the reading task, the children wrote an essay to complete the inquiry task. Furthermore, participants' technical reading skill and reading comprehension were measured with an independent classroom test.

It was shown that the task-relevant segments were read longer than the task-irrelevant segments during first-pass reading. Moreover, reading skills modulated the effect of relevance, as weaker comprehenders were less likely to regress within an irrelevant segment. Furthermore, the relevance effect was more pronounced for the better technical readers with respect to look-backs. No reliable effects were found for the essay-writing task.

The results imply that the participants were able to detect which parts of the text were relevant and adjusted their reading accordingly, based on their reading skills. However, they did not seem to form a coherent memory representation of the relevant text contents in order to perform well in the essay writing task.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/sjop.70099

#reading #MultipleTextComprehension #EyeTracking #relevance

OpenAI ad partner now selling ChatGPT ad placements based on "prompt relevance"

https://www.adweek.com/media/exclusive-leaked-deck-reveals-stackadapts-playbook-for-chatgpt-ads/

#HackerNews #OpenAI #ChatGPT #ads #prompt #relevance #StackAdapt #advertising