Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

The Supreme Court’s conservative majority on Tuesday signaled support for the religious rights of parents in Maryland who want to remove their children from elementary school classes using storybooks with LGBTQ characters. The court seemed likely to find that the Montgomery County school system, in suburban Washington, could not require elementary school children to sit through lessons involving the books if parents expressed religious objections to the material. The case is the latest dispute involving religion to come before the court. The justices have repeatedly endorsed claims of religious discrimination in recent years. “I’m surprised this is the hill to…

Humans, for all our intellectual sophistication, are still tribal creatures at heart. We tend to gravitate toward people who are like us—individuals who look like us, think like us, share our values, and even mirror our quirks and tastes. On the surface, this makes intuitive sense. It explains the evolutionary origins of empathy: we feel the joys, sorrows, and struggles of others more deeply when we perceive them as part of our own “in-group.” But here’s the catch: What feels good for individuals can be disastrous for diversity. If left unchecked, our biological instinct to seek sameness undermines one of the core ingredients of high-performing organizations—diver…

Apple just announced new accessibility features coming to its operating systems. There’s a redesigned braille input experience, and a new reader that allows you to customize your text so it’s more legible. But there’s one that will be great for anyone attending any lecture or presentation: Magnifier for Mac. The iPhone and iPad got their Magnifier apps back in 2016. It worked pretty much like the iOS camera: You point your device anywhere you want and zoom in to the desired level. It also allows you to apply real-time filters to enhance readability depending on your vision’s condition, like turning a book’s black text over white page into white text over blue, as well as …

Since its last major redesign in 2022, Airbnb has been all about the destination. Staying in homes so unique or glamorous—from McMansions with amazing pools to surrealist homes in a shoe—that they might be worth a trip unto itself. But starting today, Airbnb is expanding its purview beyond homes…again. It’s launching a new product called Airbnb Services, and redoubling on Airbnb Experiences (first launched in 2016). What are Airbnb Services? Services considers everything you might want to accompany that home you’re renting. Photography. A manicure. A massage or spa treatment. A personal trainer. A private chef or fully catered experience. It’s basically eve…

These days, when you head to a shop to buy clothes, most brands package your purchases in a recyclable paper bag, which looks more eco-friendly than plastic. But behind the scenes—in back rooms that most customers never see—every single clothing retailer has enormous piles of flimsy plastic bags (sometimes called poly bags). These bags keep clothes clean as they travel across the complex global supply chain before arriving at the store. “We need to keep clothes in good condition as they move from factories to shipping containers to trucks,” says Candan Erenguc, chief operations officer at Anthropologie. Most local recycling facilities don’t have the equipment …

A new paid internship program, set to begin this summer, will allow select college students to work on the reconstruction of Baltimore’s Francis Scott Key Bridge, which collapsed last year. The program, which was announced Monday, is the result of a partnership between The Maryland Transportation Authority (MDTA) and the Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC). Interns will be hired as temporary state employees and get hands-on experience in areas like project management, environmental and construction management, as well as community outreach activities for the historic project. Both undergraduate and graduate students are eligible. “The goal of the internship …

Summoning a robotaxi from your phone is not a futuristic fantasy since Waymo achieved full commercial deployment. View the full article

Haliey Welch, better known as the “Hawk Tuah Girl,” is ready for a rebrand. After being thrust into the spotlight in 2024, thanks to her now-iconic “hawk tuah” catchphrase—featured in a video interview uploaded by the Tim & Dee TV YouTube channel—Welch experienced a crash course in the highs and lows of viral fame. In early December, she announced the launch of her own cryptocurrency meme coin, $HAWK. The coin quickly tanked, leaving fans upset and prompting an investigation by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). “Anyhoo, I’m gonna go bed,” Welch said as she ended a livestream on X on December 4. She wasn’t heard from again until three month…

“Well, it took a minute,” said Spike Lee, surveying the glittering Met Gala crowd during cocktail hour through bright orange glasses that matched his New York Knicks cap. “But we’re here now, that’s the most important thing.” Lee was referring to the fact that for the very first time, the Met Gala was making a point of celebrating Black style and Black designers — something he felt was an overdue milestone, but a very welcome one. “Long overdue,” Lee repeated. “But we’re here to celebrate. And who knows what’s gonna happen because of this event? There’s gonna be reverberations around the world.” Lee was echoing an excitement that many of the approximately 400 guests — …

It’s spring, and nature is pulling me away from my computer as I write this. The sun is shining, the world is warming up, and the birds are chirping away. And that got me thinking: What if a smartphone app could translate all those chirps for us? No, I’m not talking about an app that will translate bird sounds to human speech (although that would be neat). Rather, the app we’re about to go over tells you what specific species is making any bird sound around you—kind of like Shazam, only for nature. All you have to do is hold up your phone and press one button. It’s an app I’ve personally used a bunch over the years and happily rediscovered this year. It’s espe…

Getting dressed for work in the morning can be complicated. Gone are the days of the office dress code. While most of us are happy that our bosses no longer dictate that we wear collared shirts, heels, or shift dresses to work, this means the burden of figuring out what is appropriate now lies squarely on our shoulders. As corporate culture has become increasingly more relaxed, with denim often replacing trousers, finding the right balance between formal and casual can be tricky. If you show up to work in a three-piece suit, you might look like you don’t understand your company’s values. But if you wear your favorite baggy jeans, you might come off as unserious. A…

Effective leadership isn’t a one-size-fits-all endeavor. It requires adaptability, self-awareness, and a deep understanding of when to step in and when to step back. Leaders often struggle to find the right balance between empowering their teams and maintaining strategic oversight. But there’s a way that you can do both. By adopting the practical 2×2 leadership framework that I’ll get into in this article, leaders can assess their approach based on two critical dimensions: Degree of Empowerment and Degree of Strategic Altitude. The leadership quadrants When you map out leadership approaches across these two dimensions, four distinct quadrants emerge. Each …

Navigating professional transitions can be a whirlwind of emotions for employees, whether starting a new job or leaving a company. Onboarding is essential for creating a sense of belonging and shared purpose that extends throughout a new hire’s tenure. And this vital initiative should be about more than following a checklist. Onboarding provides an opportunity to make your newest colleagues feel genuinely connected to the team and confident in their contributions. This ensures they can thrive from day one until their final day with the company. The importance of onboarding The first 90 days are a crucial time for employees to establish themselves and for leader…

Social media users have been having a field day with Waymo’s autonomous vehicles, sharing videos that poke fun at the driverless cars getting stuck, acting unpredictably, or simply navigating the world a little too awkwardly. The latest wave of posts follows Waymo’s recent expansion into Austin, where users are already documenting bizarre and frustrating experiences with the service. TikTok user Becky Levin Navarro posted a video on April 20 claiming a Waymo car trapped her and her fellow passengers on the side of a highway after heading in the wrong direction. “This is the most insane thing. We’re in a Waymo, here, under Mopac,” she said. “It was going the wrong …

Hawa Hassan was only 4-years-old when fighting forced her and her family from their home in Somalia. Hassan spent the next three years in Kenya, where some of her earliest memories were of running around tents in a refugee camp with her siblings and helping her mother stock the goods store she’d opened there. When she was seven, Hassan’s mother sent her to live with family friends in Seattle. It would be another 15 years before she saw her family again. “A lot of my childhood was spent wondering about my own background and my own identity,” said Hawa, a chef and entrepreneur who now lives in New York. “For many years, I had this deep desire to find people like mys…

Behind the remains of a town scorched by fire, the foothills are lush with new green and filled with birdsong. Wildlife is returning to the Eaton Fire burn area and scientists are closely tracking it four months after the Los Angeles area wildfires tore through the Angeles National Forest and destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses in Altadena. Trail cameras installed by a group of volunteers documented the first mountain lion back in the area March 26. It was seen again as recently as two nights ago. “My first inclination was to share that to people who have lost so much during this fire and our community in Altadena, because it’s a sign of hope that nature’s retur…

A group backed by tech billionaires spent years and $800 million secretly buying up over 60,000 acres of land in Solano County, California, 60 miles northeast of San Francisco. The group—which calls itself California Forever and is funded by Marc Andreessen, LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman, and Laurene Powell Jobs, among others—planned from the start to build a brand-new city for as many as 400,000 residents. But to do that they needed voter approval to change the county’s development rules. Just before heading to the ballot this past November, California Forever yanked its initiative despite spending over $9 million on its campaign. Now it seems California Forever ma…

The rideshare market has reached a crossroads. Autonomous vehicles are on the rise, driver unrest is mounting, and customers are questioning everything from pricing to trust and safety. In the midst of it all, Lyft is mounting a comeback. CEO David Risher, who came into the role at Lyft two years ago, is taking a bird’s-eye view on the operation and pushing to reposition the company squarely against their competitor, Uber—with faster execution, bold new programs, and Lyft’s biggest international acquisition to date. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind…

Now that the “100 men vs. one gorilla” debate has been settled, a new question is circulating on social media: Who would win, 100 Americans or 100 Brits? British creator @2mwad_ first posed the question on TikTok: “I got a new one, 100 British people versus 100 Americans. One big room, no weapons, who’s winning?” The video has since gained over a million views, succeeding in uniting both nations against a common, historical rival. The patriotism sparked in the comments section is truly something to behold. “Our president is a felon who you think is winning,” one American wrote. “Do they have the Britain man? We have the Florida man,” another added. A third…

On the evening of January 7, the Eaton Fire hit Altadena, destroying more than 10,000 commercial and residential homes and displacing thousands of families. Just a little over two months later, and this historically Black community is facing a new threat. Shortly after the fire, a private developer paid $550,000 in cash for the first vacant lot left behind from the wildfires, about $100,000 above asking price. In the days since, at least 13 more properties have sold, at least half of them by offshore private developers. But community leaders are working to beat back the tide. Last month, a Pasadena-based housing justice nonprofit purchased a burned lot in the neig…

TikTok’s U.S. operations are now managed by a new American joint venture, ending a long-standing debate over whether the app would be permanently banned in the United States. The good news for TikTok users is that this deal guarantees that the app will continue to operate within America’s borders. But there’s some bad news, too. Successive U.S. administrations—both Biden’s and The President’s—argued that TikTok posed a national security threat to America and its citizens, partly because of the data the app collected about them. While all social media apps collect data about their users, officials argued that TikTok’s data collection was a danger (while, say, Face…

Some common business models can be described as B2C and B2B, which are “business-to-consumer,” and “business-to-business,” respectively. But now, get ready for “B2AI,” or “business-to-AI.” That’s one of the potential disruptions on the horizon, identified in a new report from Visa and the Institute for the Future. The report digs into the numerous ways that AI will transform commerce, and to some degree personal finance, including how consumers will likely lasso AI for their own means—and how businesses will, in turn, develop AI agents to communicate and correspond with consumers’ AIs. While many people likely haven’t adopted “personal” AI tools yet, they’re on th…

Never underestimate the news media’s ability to amplify the mundane with urgent-sounding headlines. If you follow the twists and turns of the retail industry as closely as we news-watchers do, you may have noticed recently that the simple act of closing for the Easter holiday has been rebranded as a “retail blackout.” If you’ve been at all confused by this oversold terminology, here’s a brief explainer to help break it down: What’s happening? Over the last week or so, a number of news organizations—mostly from outside the United States—have reported on a so-called “retail blackout” that is set to take place on Sunday, April 20, which is Easter Sunday. E…