Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Recently, I saved a major exclusive story from nearly getting killed at the eleventh hour. After developing the communications strategy, writing several versions of a pitch that a broader team of external partners would use over the course of the campaign’s phases, and personally intervening when the opportunity was nearly lost after one of the parties involved fumbled, that same party later said to me, “Thanks for your help.” Help. Twenty years in public relations, including over a decade running a successful consultancy, and my strategic leadership was reduced to “help”—a word that carries centuries of loaded meaning for Black women in America. It’s a word that seems …

Maybe you’re managing a team while being a caregiver, or breaking sales records while working remotely as a single parent. Each challenge carves a mark on your journey to growth, purpose, and legacy, and earns a spot on your résumé. A résumé of challenges is not a list of defeats, but a record of victories: the battles you’ve fought, the lessons you’ve learned, and the resilience that will carry you forward. Having an awareness and understanding of your résumé of challenges helps you understand your own strengths and ability to rise. Being able to speak to your honest (nonfabricated or misrepresented) résumé of challenges before and/or during a job interview can…

Have you ever worked under someone you just couldn’t wait to get away from—maybe to the point where you’d daydream about finding a new job (or hoping they’d leave instead)? That’s what we call an “Extinguisher.” These leaders sap energy from their teams and throw up roadblocks that stand in the way of success. On the flip side, “Generators” are those leaders who inspire and empower people to reach their full potential—and they’re the ones everyone wants to work for. Most of us want to steer clear of Extinguishers (and make sure we never become one ourselves). The trouble is, it’s not always obvious when you’re dealing with one—at least not until you’re already burned …

Welcome to the world of social media mind control. By amplifying free speech with fake speech, you can numb the brain into believing just about anything. Surrender your blissful ignorance and swallow the red pill. You’re about to discover how your thinking is being engineered by modern masters of deception. The means by which information gets drilled into our psyches has become automated. Lies are yesterday’s problem. Today’s problem is the use of bot farms to trick social media algorithms into making people believe those lies are true. A lie repeated often enough becomes truth. “We know that China, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and North Korea are using bot networks to amplify…

There’s a growing trend in Silicon Valley where engineers are therapizing themselves with ChatGPT . Well, not exactly therapy, but using self-reflective prompts to unlock profound insights into their lives. It’s like getting advice from a friend who’s exceptionally skilled at active listening—except she’s 300,000 years old and has lived over 100 billion lives (it doesn’t quite make sense, but neither does the time we’re living in). I visited the Commons, one of the founding hubs of “Cerebral Valley” in San Francisco, where a community of Claude and ChatGPT superusers gathered to discuss “AI for inner work.” This mostly Gen Z group shared their unconventional tactics f…

Launched 16 years ago with only 500 apps, Apple’s App Store revolutionized how we interact with our devices. As of 2023, the App Store had nearly 1.8 million apps, spanning categories like gaming, fitness, productivity, social media, and much more. The phrase “There’s an app for that” has never been more true. But with so many apps available, users face a new challenge: app fatigue. With millions of choices, users can easily become overwhelmed. Even when someone chooses to download an app, they can be bombarded with notifications urging them to engage, upgrade, or subscribe. With many apps competing for users’ attention and wallets, this can push them to ignore or eve…

When disaster strikes, government emergency alert systems offer a simple promise: Residents will get information about nearby dangers and instructions to help them stay safe. As the deadly L.A. wildfires and other major emergencies have shown, alerts rely on a complicated chain of communication between first responders, government administrators, third-party companies, and the public. Sometimes, the chain breaks. After the wind-driven wildfires broke out in Southern California on January 7, evacuation orders for some neighborhoods—including the part of Altadena where the majority of deaths occurred—came long after houses were reported on fire. On Tuesday, Los Angeles C…

It’s hard for a designer to get the world’s attention at fashion week. But a year ago, the Maison Margiela show went viral thanks, in large part, to Pat McGrath’s makeup, which made models’ skin look like it was made of glass. The show was theatrical. Creative director John Galliano conjured a dark, ethereal universe apparently inspired by the Belle Époque of the late 1800s, when women had tightly cinched corsets, and voluminous dresses with padding that accentuated their busts and hips. Models, including Gwendoline Christie (second from right), walk the runway during the Maison Margiela Haute Couture Spring/Summer 2024 show as part of Paris Fashion Week, January…

In the midst of an artificial intelligence boom that’s reshaping almost every facet of the business world, companies are competing in an arms race to build the best and brightest models and fully embrace the nascent technology, whether that’s as a product or service for customers or as an integral component of their organizations’ processes. This has raised the profile and pursuit of data science: After all, as Airbyte CEO and co-founder Michel Tricot succinctly put it, “no data, no AI.” But this arms race could have many winners at its finish line. Indeed, this year’s honorees all have something in common beyond their creative use of data in a world increasingly depende…

Now this is a Lego set suitable for framing. Soon Lego will release an artful 2,615-piece set based on Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers painting in collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam, which has the original work in its permanent collection. There’s no oil paint required for this rendition, though: The Lego set has enough blocks to make 16 sunflowers with adjustable petals, plus a tile with Van Gogh’s signature and a removable frame. The set is currently available for preorder for $199.99 and will ship starting March 1. Lego’s Amsterdam store and the Van Gogh Museum will permanently display sets of their own beginning March 1 as well. [Photo: Lego…

The branding and packaging for Target’s beloved Up&Up brand is now more colorful than ever. Over the course of three years, design agency Collins reimagined the wide-ranging private-label brand, which has more than 2,000 products spanning aluminum foil and copy paper to pet grooming products and a wrist blood pressure monitor. The Up&Up brand does nearly $3 billion in annual sales for Target. The retailer wanted to relaunch it with reformulated products, reduced plastic usage, and hundreds of new items, which began rolling out in stores last year and will continue through early 2025. [Image: Target]New private-label packaging elevates bargain shoppingThis comes at…

Chinese tech company Alibaba on Wednesday released a new version of its Qwen 2.5 artificial intelligence model that it claimed surpassed the highly-acclaimed DeepSeek-V3. The unusual timing of the Qwen 2.5-Max’s release, on the first day of the Lunar New Year when most Chinese people are off work and with their families, points to the pressure Chinese AI startup DeepSeek’s meteoric rise in the past three weeks has placed on not just overseas rivals, but also its domestic competition. “Qwen 2.5-Max outperforms … almost across the board GPT-4o, DeepSeek-V3 and Llama-3.1-405B,” Alibaba’s cloud unit said in an announcement posted on its official WeChat account, referr…

Wilson’s Airless Gen1 basketball is back. The hollow, $2,500 3D-printed basketball that doesn’t need to be inflated was first showcased at the 2023 NBA All-Star Weekend. Now, Wilson is selling the ball via a new production run for the remaining few people who can afford to spend thousands of dollars on a basketball. The Airless Gen1 ball features a latticed pattern of hexagonal holes and doesn’t require an inflated bladder inside. By all accounts of professional and amateur players who have tried the airless wonder, its honeycomb architecture and plastic material makes it perform like a traditional basketball, matching its size, weight, and rebound characteristics. …

Paola Antonelli has a litmus test for worthy design. People often ask the Museum of Modern Art’s senior curator of architecture and design how she decides what to add to the museum’s collection, and she gives them simple instructions: “Close your eyes and think, If this object did not exist, would the world miss out?” she says. Of course, filling one of the world’s preeminent art museums is not quite that easy. Antontelli says you also have to consider an object’s form, function, and problem-solving utility—but her litmus test is something she returns to again and again. “It doesn’t mean that something has to be necessary,” Antonelli clarifies. Take, for example, the …

Female streamers are being told to hire security after a spate of recent attacks. Popular Twitch stars Valkyrae, Cinna, and Emiru were out in public at the Santa Monica Pier on March 2 as part of their “sisathon” streaming marathon, when a man lunged toward them, saying, “I’ll kill you right now.” The streamers called for help from security as the man chased them before the stream turned off. He had tracked their location using the live broadcast and earlier had gotten down on one knee, proposed to the three streamers, and asked one for her phone number, which she refused. Issuing an update later that evening on X, Cinna posted, “Hey everyone we are safe. Unfort…

Imagine, just for a second, that Post Malone and Shane Gillis are your neighbors—not in a now-you’re-rich-and-live-among-pop-stars-and-comedy-elite way, just your average suburban cul-de-sac situation. This is what Bud Light has been asking of us in its recent Super Bowl ad teasers. In one, we see Post and Gillis through a doorbell cam. In another, Gillis is outlining the rules of actually drinking in a beer ad (no bueno). These were mere sips of what was to come. Today, Bud Light decided to jam a proverbial screwdriver into the side of the can and let the world shotgun its full big game ad ahead of time. Now we know what the tucked golf shirts and jorts hyp…

Picture this: A teenager stares at their phone, paralyzed by headline after headline about the climate crisis, political dysfunction, and societal division. They want to act but feel overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the problem. This scene plays out millions of times daily, and it represents a critical challenge for brands: 80% of Gen Z globally report being personally affected by climate change, yet their engagement with sustainable solutions is declining. Looking to the future, many young people are asking, “What’s the point?” Instead of feeling empowered to act, young people are becoming paralyzed by anxiety, overwhelmed by complexity, disillusioned by a lack of l…

Winning over Gen Z employees isn’t about flashy perks or trendy office spaces—it’s about leadership that actually walks the talk. This younger generation of employees has different values than their predecessors. It expects transparency, meaningful work, and a culture that values their contributions. If leaders want to earn their trust and loyalty, they need to rethink traditional management styles and embrace a more authentic, collaborative approach. From recognition and flexibility to open communication, here’s what nine leaders say it takes to lead Gen Z employees in a way that actually resonates. Provide regular recognition I’ve seen how regular recognition…

Novo Nordisk’s closely-watched Alzheimer’s trials of an older oral version of its semaglutide drug failed to help slow the progression of the brain-wasting disease, the firm said on Monday, a blow to the obesity drug giant that sent its shares sliding. The trials, which Novo had previously called a “lottery ticket” to underline its highly uncertain outcome, were testing whether the medicine could slow cognitive decline in patients. The setback scuppers hopes for Novo that Alzheimer’s could open a major new market for GLP-1 medicines such as semaglutide, as it faces rising competition to its blockbuster drugs in its core treatment areas of obesity and diabetes. …

Adapted from Nonlinear: Navigating Design With Curiosity and Conviction (MIT Press, February 4, 2025). When I open my smartphone in the morning, every social media app is full of advertisements marketing something to me. I feel like I’m trapped in a circuitous loop from ads and information coming through my devices: “Buy this, buy that!” We’re all stuck in this loop. Can we fix it? John Maeda (vice president of engineering, computational design, and AI at Microsoft) once created a computational artwork of an infinity loop that he often uses in his keynotes. We talked about my interpretation of his visual during a video livestream together back in 2020. I like…

Immigration Judge Ana Partida sat before a mostly empty courtroom on an afternoon in October, her body angled toward a television on one of the side walls. None of the people scheduled to appear before Partida, who hears cases inside San Diego’s Otay Mesa Detention Center, were present in person. That’s because Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) had transferred all of them to other locations around the country, even though their cases were already underway in San Diego. One by one, an ICE attorney asked Partida to move the detainees’ cases to courts closer to their new locations. All of the people who were transferred had attorneys in San Diego, including …

Until recently, if you threw away an old mattress in Amsterdam, it would likely end up in an incinerator—the same way that most of the 15 million-plus mattresses thrown out in the U.S. each year end up in landfills. Now, however, around half of Dutch mattresses are recycled, and that number is growing. Some of the material is starting to be used in new mattresses, sofas, and other furniture by manufacturers like IKEA. [Photo: IKEA] In one facility near Amsterdam, a company called RetourMatras uses automated equipment to dismantle old beds, beginning with a machine called a peeler that cuts off the mattress cover so the fabric can be recycled. Then the core is s…

What if the Playboy Mansion was filled with OnlyFans content creators? That’s the pitch for the Bop House, a TikTok page that has gained nearly three million followers since its launch in December. Founded by Sophie Rain, 20, and Aishah Sofey, 22, the house is home to eight creators aged 19 to 24, who collectively boast over 33 million followers. Their TikTok presence leans into viral, algorithm-friendly content like flying private to the Super Bowl and reviewing popular cookie brand Crumbl. But their real revenue stream comes from OnlyFans. The Bop House claims to have generated $10 million in revenue in its first month. “It’s just like a little girl group that …

January was a long month, but we finally have some good news in 2025: Bookseller Barnes & Noble plans to open at least 60 new stores this year, topping last year’s record of 57 stores and marking a steady revival of its brick-and-mortar bookstores across the country. “[Barnes & Noble] is experiencing strong sales in its existing stores and has been opening many new stores after more than 15 years of declining store numbers,” the company told Fast Company. “In 2024, Barnes & Noble opened more new bookstores in a single year than it had in the whole decade from 2009 to 2019 . . . [The company] is enjoying a period of tremendous growth as the strategy to hand…