Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

The rapid growth of data centers during the AI boom has been a dominating narrative of 2025—and, in many instances, not a popular one. Across the country, communities have pushed back against data centers planned for their cities and states. Some have even turned to online petition sites to raise awareness and voice collective opposition to data center projects in their communities. One such site, the popular platform Change.org, says it has seen a significant spike data center-related petitions in recent months. Change.org saw at least 113 petitions that mentioned data centers in 2025, the platform shared with Fast Company, totaling around 50,000 signature…

One of the most pervasive rules of business is compete-to-win or perish. But as more organizations struggle to navigate an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous landscape, some innovative leaders are choosing to collaborate over compete. This is particularly necessary within the organization, where collaboration may be considered beneficial in theory, but in practice, the rules of engagement still revolve around competition: colleagues become rivals over promotion opportunities, recognition, and advancement. The competition within the organization makes it harder to navigate the disruption and certainty on the outside. How do leaders banish in-h…

The narrative is familiar: Revolutionary technology arrives, promising to liberate women from domestic drudgery and professional constraints. The electric oven would free housewives from coal-burning stoves. The washing machine would eliminate laundry day. The microwave would make meal preparation effortless. Yet as historian Ruth Schwartz Cowan argued in her landmark book, More Work for Mother, these innovations didn’t reduce women’s workload. They simply shifted expectations, creating new standards of cleanliness and convenience that often meant more work, not less. So when we speak of AI as the solution to professional and personal burdens, skepticism is warranted.…

Fintech firm Mercury recently dropped some data that made me smile. It ranked the top five coffee shops powering founders in San Francisco based on actual transaction data: Sightglass, CoffeeShop, Equator, Saint Frank, Ritual. I’ve built Octolane with my cofounder, Rafi, from every single one of them. But here’s what the data doesn’t show: the $500,000 investment term sheet I negotiated over a cortado at Cafe Réveille. The $800,000 deal I closed while sitting next to a grad student cramming for finals. The three customers who became friends, then advocates, then our biggest champions, all because we met first over coffee, not Zoom. When I was in high school, I cle…

Airbnb may finally pay the price of long-simmering tensions about overtourism in Spain. The Spanish government announced on Monday that it has fined the online rentals giant 64 million euros ($75 million) for advertising unlicensed rental listings in the country. This decision is the latest in several months of back-and-forths, as the government previously ordered Airbnb to remove more than 120,000 listings it identified as unlicensed. While Spain’s Consumer Affairs Ministry said the fine was a final decision and couldn’t be appealed, San Francisco-based Airbnb is reportedly planning to challenge it in court. The company didn’t immediately respond to a request fo…

When Kenya’s Sabastian Sawe crossed the finish line at the London Marathon on April 26, an Adidas attendant was waiting on the sidelines to collect his shoes. The attendant wrote Sawe’s record-breaking time, 1:59.30, on the side of the shoes, waited for him to take some photos with them, and then whisked them off to Adidas’s archives in Herzogenaurach, Germany. In that moment, the Adidas Adizero Adios Pro Evo 3 became the fastest shoe in the world. Sabastian Sawe Sawe was the first person to ever run a sub-two-hour marathon in an official race, followed closely by Ethiopia’s Yomif Kejelcha, who finished with a time of 1:59.41. Fellow Ethiopian Tigist Assefa set…

Should I take this project? Say yes to the new job offer? Stick with this plan or walk away? Every choice we make can feel huge. And every path has its own set of risks and rewards. There are always more questions for every life-changing decision. Sometimes the pros-and-cons lists feel more like busywork than progress. You check off the boxes, stare at the lists, and still end up confused, stuck in the same mental loop. That’s why I rely on the rule of 3 framework to make tough decisions. I hope it helps you clarify your life-changing choices. How it works Whenever you’re stuck, force yourself to create three paths: B, C, and D. Why not A? A is usually the defa…

In my old banking job, where I worked for 12 years, I found myself frustrated with the slow pace of the work, the layers of red tape and approvals to get anything done. After all, banking was a highly regulated industry, and while there were many rules to follow, they were just simply being a good bank by following them. I felt tired, drained, and lacked energy—similar symptoms to burnout. While the organization was frequently voted a “best place to work,” I couldn’t figure out why my “great job” felt so bad. I wasn’t overworking or spending endless evenings logging in, so the typical paths to burnout didn’t make sense. What I was actually experiencing was rust out. …

Gen Zers, who were practically born with smartphones and iPads in their hands, have grown up completely immersed in the information highway. Therefore, it should come as no big surprise that those born as digital natives—deeply connected to culture, trends, politics, and business—have different ideas about what their contributions to the world should look like. They deeply value work-life balance and they need to feel like the work they do has meaning. Globally, they are the generation most concerned about issues like corruption and inequality. They’re striving to create change—and they’re committed. Still, Gen Zers often get called out for being entitled, lazy,…

Have you ever opened a jar of Crisco and proceeded to slather it all over your body? I have, in the summer of 1992. I was just exiting sixth grade, and my friend was over for an afternoon of suntanning. When I reached for the brown bottle of suntan lotion, my friend stopped me, “Let’s go look for your mom’s Crisco.” “Crisco???” I said. “Yes, it’s how my older sister gets so tan.” Although I was suspicious that vegetable shortening was good for my skin, I silenced my doubts when I pictured her older sister in my mind—she was gorgeous, popular, and bronze. From a young age, we have an immature relationship with authority. Psychologists call this authority bias, whic…

The stat that women receive less than 2% of VC funding is often cited—but that figure tells only part of the story. Angel investors, non-dilutive grants, and other funding methods are shifting the landscape for women and other underrepresented founders—especially at a time when DEI initiatives are in peril. This panel explores how investors are closing the funding gap and what you should know to get the capital you need. View the full article

Google has 44 data centers in operation or in development around the world, but as demand for AI and the need for compute capacity grows, the company is getting started on three more. This latest batch is destined for Texas, where Google already has a pair of data centers in operation just south of Dallas. One of the new centers will be located outside of Amarillo in Armstrong County, with the other two headed to Haskell County, about three and a half hours west of Dallas. The $40 billion investment in the Lone Star State will help the company build additional infrastructure for its cloud and AI units. The company expects the centers to be operational by the end o…

I recently noticed a paradox among a team of developers. With AI, engineers started writing code faster and getting answers in seconds, yet they also reported feeling more exhausted than before. AI hasn’t actually reduced the amount of work that needs to be done. Instead, it has fundamentally changed its nature. We can now run multiple tasks in parallel and perceive this as productivity. Up to a point, it is. But eventually, managing tools and constantly switching between them becomes more draining than performing the original tasks themselves. In some cases, it even slows down the process of finding a solution. I’ve been managing developer teams for over 15 years…

Being a manager is never easy. And if you have never supervised others, the feat can be even more daunting. Managers are often spinning several plates: leading by example, setting and exceeding goals for your team, keeping workflow moving, providing support, and keeping employees motivated, engaged, and productive . . . all while adhering to your company’s objectives. If you haven’t done it before, it can be overwhelming. It’s almost like having to activate an entirely new part of your brain. Luckily, experts say creating “boss brain” is within anyone’s reach, regardless of leadership experience . . . or lack thereof. Listen and react to the feedback of your…

Michael Jordan is widely recognized as one of the best basketball players to ever live. In a recent interview, Jordan revealed one of the secrets to his success: His love of the game. Jordan says he loved the game so much that he made sure to have a special clause included in his contract when playing with the Chicago Bulls, one which he’s “positive” players today don’t have: the “love of the game” clause. “If I was driving with you down the street, and I see a basketball game on the side of the road, I can go play in that basketball game,” Jordan told NBC’s Mike Tirico. “And if I get hurt, my contract is still guaranteed.” Jordan went on to explain that c…

“Mad Max mode” may sound like something out of a video game, but it is a real-life setting for cars currently plying America’s streets. And it poses genuine danger. In an homage to the main character from George Miller’s dystopian 1979 film and its sequels, originally portrayed by current The President supporter Mel Gibson, Tesla created Mad Max mode as an option for vehicles equipped with its “Full-Self Driving” (FSD) system. The Mad Max icon is a mustachioed smiley face wearing a cowboy hat, bearing less of a resemblance to the film’s titular vigilante than to Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s brother, Kimbal. (Warner Bros., which released the films, has not filed suit.) De…

Outdoors brand Yeti dropped its new holiday commercial, and it has a lot of what you’d expect from a seasonal spot. “Bad Idea” outlines all the reasons you probably shouldn’t get a Yeti for someone you care about: “Don’t get them a Yeti,” says the voice-over, as a ribboned cooler flies out the back of a pickup truck. “Unless you like dogs that are always wet, eyebrows that are still growing back, and sand in places sand should never be.” By the end of the commercial, it’s clear that the brand is aiming at people who are obsessed. It could be surfing, fishing, camping, golf, whatever—it’s about those chasing the dream wherever it leads them. But for all its charmi…

It’s the sort of thing you might not notice until it really matters, but the U.S. Postal Service recently changed how it defines the “postmark” on a piece of mail—warning that the postmark date is not a reliable indicator of when you actually mailed something. If you’re the sort of person who waits until the last minute to send time-sensitive mail, that means you’ll need to stand in line at your local post office and request a manual postmark when dropping off your mail. While the way mail is postmarked hasn’t undergone some major shift recently, the postal service set out earlier this year to clarify earlier what a postmark means and how the process works. B…