Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

BESSEMER, Ala.—They all came here for peace, and so far, the land has given it to them. For Marshall Killingsworth, the peace comes from the owls whose hoots echo across the valley as he sits in his favorite spot in his garden. For David Havron, it’s looking up at the stars at night as the moonlight glistens off the lake just outside his back door. For Mary Rosenboom, it’s the calls of the songbirds as the sun slowly sets over the hilly terrain. For Becky Morgan, it’s the view of the mountain from her recliner—through the long windows that line the sides of her home. But all these residents in this area of rural Jefferson County are afraid—fearful that their peace may …

AI can knock out an impressive amount of tedious, everyday busywork. It can take on creative tasks, too. But the fundamental question remains: should it? As AI use within organizations reaches new heights, companies are also recognizing its limitations—and, in some cases, pulling back. Consider Duolingo, the language-learning company that announced it would gradually eliminate freelance writers and translators, replacing them with AI-generated content. After public backlash and user reports that the AI-produced lessons felt formulaic and lacked cultural nuance, Duolingo clarified its position. “I do not see AI as replacing what our employees do . . . I see it as a tool …

Samsung is saying goodbye to its namesake texting app, at least for United States customers. According to an end of service announcement published on the tech giant’s U.S. support website, Samsung Messages will be discontinued in July. Impacted owners of Samsung smartphones and other gadgets are being asked to switch to Google Messages in the meantime, “to maintain a consistent messaging experience on Android.” All Samsung Galaxy phones run on Google’s Android operating system. To switch to Google Messages, Samsung’s website gives users instructions to download the app from the Play Store, if not already on their phone, and set it as the default. Some people may a…

OpenAI said Tuesday it has reorganized its ownership structure and converted its business into a public benefit corporation and two crucial regulators, the Delaware and California attorneys general, said they would not oppose the plan. The restructuring paves the way for the ChatGPT maker to more easily profit off its artificial intelligence technology even as it remains technically under the control of a nonprofit. Delaware Attorney General Kathy Jennings and California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in separate statements that they would not object to the proposal, seemingly bringing to an end more than a year of negotiations and announcements about the future …

Quiet quitting. Silent space-out. Faux focus. Call it what you want, a lot of today’s workers are going through the motions on the surface while quietly powering down beneath it. Nearly half of Gen Z employees say they’re “coasting,” and overall U.S. employee engagement sits at a decade low. When engagement fades, performance becomes performative. But disengagement isn’t just a problem to solve, it’s a signal to heed. Employees aren’t turning off. They’re trying to tell us something. As CEO of SurveyMonkey, I’ve witnessed how curiosity can be the cure to the workplace phenomenon “resenteeism”—a state of resentment combined with absenteeism—which is often fueled by…

Across America, a new generation of farmers is reimagining what it means to work the land. They are engineers, ecologists, and entrepreneurs—people who see farming not only as a way to grow food, but as a form of innovation. In fields across the country, these farmers are harnessing soil science, biodiversity, and technology to restore what decades of extractive agriculture have depleted. Their work represents one of the most powerful opportunities of our time: The opportunity to regenerate our planet from the ground up. Yet, the odds they face are immense. Land prices have soared, access to capital is limited, and isolation comes with choosing a career path few under…

Walk into any office and you’ll hear it. “She’s so nurturing — she’d be great leading the wellness committee.” “Don’t worry, the guys will handle the heavy lifting on this pitch.” “You look amazing today!” These statements arrive warmly, often from people who genuinely mean well. That’s exactly what makes benevolent sexism one of the most insidious and under-addressed forces in modern workplaces. Unlike overt harassment, benevolent sexism doesn’t announce itself. It hides behind chivalry, compliments, and cultural tradition. It flatters women while quietly limiting them, wraps restriction in a ribbon and calls it care. And for that reason, it tends to go unchallenged …

Spotify’s most senior engineers don’t type code anymore. In fact, they have not written a single line of code since December, co-CEO Gustav Söderström revealed during a recent earnings call. It’s not that they’ve stopped working. Instead, through a combination of Claude Code and Spotify’s specialized internal system Honk, engineers can now develop new features simply through Slack. “As a concrete example, an engineer at Spotify on their morning commute from Slack on their cell phone can tell Claude to fix a bug or add a new feature to the iOS app,” Söderström told analysts on the company’s Feb.10 earnings call. “And once Claude finishes that work, the engineer…

Israel’s ongoing blockade of humanitarian assistance for Gaza forced a leading aid group to shut its community soup kitchens Thursday as it faced empty warehouses and no replenishment of supplies in the war-battered enclave. World Central Kitchen was serving 133,000 meals per day and baking 80,000 loaves of bread over the past weeks, but said it was forced to suspend operations since there is almost no food left in Gaza for the organization to cook. The lack of food is threatening Gaza’s population, already battered by 19 months of war. In April, the World Food Program said its food stocks in Gaza had run out under Israel’s blockade, ending a main source of susten…

As readers look to curl up with a proverbial good book this winter—and put their holiday bookstore gift cards to work—they’ll be faced with an obvious question: What should they pick up next? “People find it much harder than you think, because there’s so much choice out there,” says Rachel Van Riel, founder and owner of the book recommendation website Whichbook. “Where do you start?” Whichbook employs human readers to classify books along dimensions like moods, levels of violence and sexual content, attributes of the main characters, and length. It’s a process Van Riel says artificial intelligence can’t yet replicate, though it’s still quite mathematical in nature, wi…

While Silicon Valley argues over bubbles, benchmarks, and who has the smartest model, Anthropic has been focused on solving problems that rarely generate hype but ultimately determine adoption: whether AI can be trusted to operate inside the world’s most sensitive systems. Known for its safety-first posture and the Claude family of large language models (LLMs), Anthropic is placing its biggest strategic bets where AI optimism tends to collapse fastest, i.e., regulated industries. Rather than framing Claude as a consumer product, the company has positioned its models as core enterprise infrastructure—software expected to run for hours, sometimes days, inside healthcare sy…

The Walt Disney Company’s stock price soared on Wednesday, up by 10% at the time of publishing, as the company surpassed earnings expectations and unveiled its first new theme park development in 15 years. Following Disney’s second quarter earnings report, the entertainment giant announced an agreement to build a new resort and theme park in Yas Island, United Arab Emirates. “As our seventh theme park destination, it will rise from this land in spectacular fashion, blending contemporary architecture with cutting edge technology to offer guests deeply immersive entertainment experiences in unique and modern ways,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a statement. While…

You can feel everything—the frustration, irritation, and fear—and still choose your response from a place of calm. That’s what the Stoics (thinkers from ancient Greece and Rome) have taught me. Stoicism is staying calm when life isn’t, focusing on what you can control, and not wasting energy on what you can’t. I’ve been studying Stoic philosophers for years, and the wisdom of Marcus Aurelius, Seneca, and Epictetus has transformed my relationship with myself and how I work. I now practice the art of making the most of the gap between feeling and action. These four Stoic teachings can help you become your best self at work. 1. You control the response The many experience…

Over the past two years, a troubling trend has started to take shape in the media; for a large majority of journalists, DEI framing became the default for covering Black businesses. What should be stories about innovation, resilience, market disruption, and leadership have increasingly been flattened into a single, repetitive narrative: DEI. Not the company’s business model. Not the founder’s vision or entrepreneur journey. Not the problem being solved or the customers being served. Just DEI. And it’s often framed through the lens of rollbacks, political backlash, or cultural controversy. This didn’t begin overnight, but in recent years and especially amid the po…

Residents living near SpaceX headquarters in Boca Chica, Texas, will soon have a new public body through which to raise concerns about everything from road maintenance to garbage collection. Earlier this month, more than 200 residents voted to establish the city of Starbase, Texas—a 1.5-square-mile community governed by three elected officials, all of whom have ties to SpaceX, the space exploration company based in the area. Of the 218 people who voted in the election—many believed to be SpaceX employees—only six opposed incorporation. The news marks a win for Musk, who has wanted the area around his company’s headquarters to become a city since at least March 202…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Based on our analysis of the Zillow Home Value Index, U.S. home prices are up 0.7% year over year between April 2025 and April 2026. That year-over-year pace is the same as it was a year ago—back in April 2025, when the national year-over-year home price growth rate was 0.7%. And it’s up slightly from the recent year-over-year low of -0.01% in August 2025. In the first half of 2025, the number of major metro-area housing markets seeing year-over-year declines climbed. That count has since stopped ticking up. 31 of the nation’s 300 largest housin…

Whether it’s Sam Altman surreptitiously stealing GPUs from a Target, trying to make a break for the door under the gaze of security cameras as he tucks a box containing a valuable computer chip under his arm, or Super Mario appearing in Star Wars, the rupture in reality brought about by OpenAI’s AI-generated video social network, Sora, is significant. What previously would have been decried as deepfaked videos have gone viral on social media in the last two days, while also outstripping the release of Meta’s competing product, Vibes. Users, including some OpenAI employees on social media, have been revelling in their ability to create outlandish content involving rea…

Is Reddit like other social media platforms? That’s the question before the High Court of Australia in light of the country’s under-16s social media ban. Last week, Reddit filed a lawsuit in Australia’s highest court seeking to overturn the country’s recently enacted social media ban for children. The San Francisco-based firm claims the law is unconstitutional because it infringes on Australia’s implied freedom of political communication. The lawsuit follows a case filed last month by Sydney-based rights group Digital Freedom Project. Reddit is also asking the High Court to rule that even if the legislation is valid, that Reddit is not like other social medi…

Raquel Urtasun is the founder and CEO of self-driving truck startup Waabi as well as a computer science professor at the University of Toronto. Unlike some competitors, Waabi’s AI technology is designed to drive goods all the way to their destinations, rather than merely to autonomous vehicle hubs near highways. Urtasun, one of Fast Company’s AI 20 honorees for 2025, spoke with us about the relationship between her academic and industry work, what sets Waabi apart from the competition, and the role augmented reality and simulation play in teaching computers to drive even in unusual road conditions. This Q&A is part of Fast Company’s AI 20 for 2025, our roundup spotl…

In medicine, “rare” is often used to describe conditions that affect relatively few people. But when you work in healthcare long enough—especially at the very beginning of life—you realize rare diseases are not rare at all. As a neonatologist, I cared for newborns whose symptoms didn’t follow a familiar script. An infant struggling to breathe. A baby who couldn’t feed. A child whose development stalled without a clear explanation. In the NICU, there is no luxury of time. Families are desperate for answers, and clinicians are making high-stakes decisions with incomplete information. Too often, we treated what we could see while suspecting there was something deeper we co…

According to the National Association of Corporate Directors, boardrooms today face a dizzying list of risks: economic volatility, geopolitical tensions, cybersecurity threats, technological disruption, and a tightening labor market. But the one risk too often overlooked? That businesses rely on healthy people and healthy communities. Despite spending more on healthcare than any other nation, the U.S. is falling behind on nearly every major health indicator. Life expectancy is declining, chronic illness is rising, and access to care remains uncertain for one in four Americans. These aren’t just public health issues. They’re economic issues. They weaken our workforce, str…

Vega Farms, a California-based food producer, has voluntarily recalled Vega Farms-branded in-shell eggs due to a Salmonella outbreak that has sickened more than 60 people and led to more than a dozen hospitalizations. Here’s what you need to know about the outbreak, impacted products and retailers, and what to do if you have the recalled eggs in your possession: How many people got sick? In a notice posted on Friday, December 12, the California Department of Public Health (CDPH) warns businesses and consumers to avoid eating, serving, or selling recalled in-shell Vega Farms eggs. According to the agency, 63 California residents have reported illnesses lin…

Foldable phones have spent years trying to justify themselves. Some were too fragile, others too bulky, and most felt like solutions in search of a problem. The Galaxy Z TriFold is Samsung’s clearest attempt yet to answer a more reasonable question: Can one device replace the phone-tablet combo without becoming a chore to carry? Coming to the United States later this month, the TriFold folds twice, opens into a 10-inch screen, and closes back into a pocketable form. It’s an assertive design, but not a novelty play. Samsung seems very aware that this kind of device only makes sense for a specific kind of user. The double fold is the trick, but the software does…

Two data breaches, multiple class action lawsuits, and a removal from the Apple App Store later, the popular and controversial dating safety app Tea for Women is back and launching a new website version of its services today. Billed as a “Yelp for men,” Tea was created in 2023 but was relatively unknown until July 2025, when it quickly became a viral sensation and shot to the top of App Store downloads—at one point outranking ChatGPT on the Apple App Store. Similar to “Are We Dating the Same Guy?” Facebook groups, Tea offered women what they thought was a secure forum to obtain information and advice on men they had matched with on dating apps. Women using …

Hollywood kicked off 2026 with “Avatar: Fire and Ash” atop the box office for the third straight week and with hopes for a blockbuster-filled year after a disappointing 2025. In three weeks of release, “Fire and Ash” has cleared $1 billion worldwide. The third chapter in James Cameron’s Pandora epic collected $40 million over its third weekend in North American theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday. “Fire and Ash” is doing its biggest business overseas; it’s grossed $777.1 million internationally thus far. The Walt Disney Co. on Sunday The Presidented the $1 billion milestone as “cementing another monumental achievement for James Cameron’s groundbreaking franch…