Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

We know that having friends at work is good for your performance and happiness. But could ChatGPT replace your happy hour bestie? According to a new study from KPMG that surveyed more than 1,000 professionals, almost all (99%) would be open to the idea of an AI chatbot assuming the role of close friend or trusted companion at work. That same study teases out a separate, also compelling thread: 45% of workers reported feelings of loneliness at work. That’s a huge jump, up nearly double from last year. On top of that, the survey found that friendship seems to be a big priority for most workers—even over money. More than half (57%) of those surveyed said they wo…

With the growing momentum of the “No Kings” protests, activists have increasingly turned to the 3.5% rule—Erica Chenoweth’s observation, based on over a century of historical data, that once a protest movement mobilizes 3.5% of the population, it achieves its goals within a year. As a result, many have begun to treat the 3.5% threshold as a primary objective. Not so fast. Even Chenoweth herself has cautioned that the rule is “a descriptive finding, not necessarily a prescriptive one.” Her subsequent research has shown that at least one uprising—in Bahrain—reached a 6% participation rate and still failed. In fact, most successful movements never reach the 3.5% level at…

AI-generated content is making it harder to trust what we see and hear. But at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, a new installation is using the same tech to place people inside history’s most defining moments. “The Great Dictator,” which premiered this week in Austin, flips the script on what deepfakes have come to represent. Instead of using generative AI to create misinformation, it uses AI video and voice tools to blend participants into archival footage to experience history through their own voice and likeness. It’s the latest project from filmmaker and artist Gabo Arora, who wanted to show how emerging tech can be used for something other than profit…

The modern kitchen has become a canvas for self-expression, a place where consumers obsess over aesthetics and materials with an intensity usually reserved for fashion. They carefully consider the color of their Dutch oven, the kind of wood in their cutting board, and where to display their glass canisters. And yet, tucked into the corner of that same beautiful kitchen, is almost certainly an unattractive trash can that looks like it was designed in 2000 and never revisited. The home goods market is massive and growing. It was valued at $960 billion in 2024 and projected to reach $1.6 trillion by 2030. But aside from premium brand SimpleHuman, which paved the way for …

The more qualified you are today, the harder it is to get hired. This is not a guess. It’s a documented, scientific reality. A recent study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that when job candidates were perceived as “high-capability,” highly experienced, highly credentialed, or simply more advanced than what a role required, they were less likely to be hired than lower-capability applicants, even when all other factors were equal. The researchers behind this study discovered something most hiring managers would never admit: candidates who appear “too good” for a job are viewed with suspicion. Not because of any specific flaw, b…

Bitcoin investors are bracing for “Witching Friday” tomorrow, December 18, when billions of options are due to expire—making for what could be a highly volatile, roller-coaster ride at the end of the week for the markets. Some $23 billion in contracts are set to expire just on Deribit, the largest Bitcoin exchange, according to Bloomberg. Here’s what to know. What is ‘Witching Friday’? “Witching Friday,” also known as “triple witching” or “the triple witching hour,” refers to the last hour of the stock market trading session on the third Friday of March, June, September, and December, when three kinds of securities expire simultaneously, often leading to i…

Two papal tailors and no conclave orders. The conclave that begins next Wednesday to elect a successor for Pope Francis is the first in 46 ½ years for which the Vatican hasn’t ordered a set of cassocks for the new head of the Catholic Church — at least from the two best-known papal tailors. That isn’t stopping Ranieri Mancinelli, who opened his ecclesiastical tailoring shop near the Vatican in the 1960s, from making three simple white cassocks just in case: the traditional small, medium and large sizes to cover all possible heights and girths. “I’m doing this on my own to be able to present these cassocks for the next pope, without knowing who he will be,” Man…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. According to ResiClub’s analysis of the U.S. Census Bureau’s new annual data, 40.3% of U.S. owner-occupied housing units are now mortgage-free, marking a new high for this data series. That’s up from 39.8% in 2023. The portion of homeowners with no mortgage has ticked up almost every year since 2010—when it was 32.8%. A key factor driving the rise in mortgage-free homeownership is demographics. Older homeowners are more likely to be mortgage-free, and as Americans live longer and the massive Baby Boomer generation ages into their senior years…

Researchers on the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) and leaders of many of the major platforms—from Jeffrey Hinton to Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk—have voiced concerns that AI could lead to the destruction of humanity itself. Even the stated odds from some of these AI experts, with an end-days scenario as high as 25%, are still “wildly optimistic,” according to Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and coauthor of the recent best-selling book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. That’s because, as he argues in the book, the track we’re on with AI is headed for disaster—unless…

One of Hollywood’s crown jewels is on the block: WarnerBros. Discovery, the parent company of HBO, CNN, and major movie franchises like Harry Potter and the D.C. universe, officially confirmed this week that it is open to a sale. The company has already received multiple offers, but wouldn’t disclose any of the parties bidding for its assets; potential acquirers reportedly include Paramount Skydance, Netflix, Comcast, Amazon and Apple – a who’s who of the modern streaming landscape. The disclosure followed public overtures from Paramount, which reportedly was willing to pay as much as $24 per share, or around $60 billion total, for the publicly traded media company. W…

A Thanksgiving tradition since 1924, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has not quite turned 100 years-old yet. How is this possible you might wonder? Because it was skipped for three years—1942, 1943, and 1944—during World War II. Nevertheless, its 99th anniversary is shaping up to be spectacular. Here’s everything you need to know about the (mostly) annual event in New York City, including how to tune in. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade by the numbers It takes many people to pull off the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Some even do the pulling literally.) There will be more than 5,000 volunteers working hard to make magic happen. This spectacle inclu…

You might not have noticed if you’re the type to upgrade your smartphone frequently, but the main cameras that they use have been getting wider and wider in their field of view throughout the years. While phones are now indisputably the most popular cameras in the world, most manufacturers have settled on a type of lens that used to be considered quite exotic and challenging to use in the camera space. The main camera on the iPhone 17 Pro, for example, has the same field of view as a 24mm lens on a full-frame camera, which is the general photographic standard for measuring focal lengths. This is a perspective that few companies would have considered using on a point-a…

The airport is chaos. Lines snake beyond the designated barriers and out the doors as frazzled travelers tug their luggage and scowl at their phones, their grimaced faces even more dramatic in the harsh lighting. I stand in the security queue, sensing the stress emanating from everyone around me like swarms of buzzing flies. A man behind me huffs with dramatic indignation, a couple ahead bickers in hissed whispers “we should have left earlier!”, and someone’s roller bag keeps thwacking my heels. My fists clench as irritation winds me tighter. The security checkpoint seems miles away and my flight is in an hour. I feel myself being sucked into the collective vortex of mi…

Benson Lu’s life revolves around Pokémon. The 26-year-old has played the mobile game Pokémon Go every day for a decade, watches the animated show every week, goes to the local card shop in his Los Angeles suburb to play the brand’s trading card game every week, and has a whopping collection of cards worth more than $70,000. “I don’t remember when was the last day I did not think about Pokémon at all,” he said. In the 30 years since Pokémon debuted in Japan with the 1996 release of Pokémon Red and Pokémon Green for Nintendo Game Boy, the franchise has taken over the globe with its animated shows, mobile games and highly coveted trading cards. Its popularity continues wi…

At Microsoft’s Ignite conference on November 18, the company unveiled new AI-powered software features designed to make coders’ lives easier—including a tool to automatically fix security issues as new vulnerabilities are discovered. “Over this past year, the nature of being a software engineer has really started to change,” says Amanda Silver, corporate vice president and head of product for apps and agents at Microsoft. “And our focus has been on tackling the most miserable, soul-draining parts of the job and really transforming them, so that developers can kind of bring joy back to their day-to-day lives.” One result of that effort is an AI offering, now in public…

JetBlue Airways just increased checked bag fees for the first time since March 2024, bringing the minimum cost to check a bag from $35 to $39. Fees now cost $4 to $9 more, depending on travel dates. This news comes amid rising jet fuel prices and may raise concerns among travelers about whether other major U.S. airlines will follow suit. Here’s what you need to know. How much more will travelers pay? Effective March 30, JetBlue raised checked bag fees by $4 to $9, depending on travel dates. The new prices apply to all bookings made on or after that date. The New York-based airline introduced peak-season surcharges in March 2024, meaning travelers pa…

When I was learning to play bass, my first teacher told me, “Find your groove and stay in it.” As a musician, that meant discovering the rhythm that allowed me to lock in with the drummer so the rest of the band could shine. Years later, as a consultant and culture architect, I realized the same principle applies to productivity: Each of us has a groove—a natural style of working—that, once discovered, allows us to perform at our best. The challenge is that most professionals attempt to replicate productivity systems that don’t align with their brain’s natural rhythm. They read about a CEO waking up at 4 a.m. or a time-blocking hack and feel frustrated when it doesn’t…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the Pandemic Housing Boom, rapid home price appreciation supercharged fix-and-flip activity. The 2022 mortgage rate shock ended that run and caused the biggest pullback in home flipping activity since 2007. Profit margins compressed, days on market increased, and many newer investors exited the space. However, over the past couple of years, home flipping activity has stabilized around 2019 levels. The first LendingOne–ResiClub Fix-and-Flip Survey in Q1 2025 showed a market recalibrating to that new reality. The latest results tell a simi…

Chipotle is going for gold again with the return of its gold-foil burritos for the 2026 Winter Olympics. Starting January 15, Chipotle will offer a few Olympian-inspired menu items on the Chipotle app and online. Then in February, Chipotle will wrap every burrito in gold. For Chipotle, the Olympics are an opportunity to shake off a slump. Chipotle shares plummeted 19% in October 2025, and its operating margin was down 1% in Q3. The company hasn’t announced its full 2025 financial results yet, but sales are expected to decline (a reversal from February 2025 projections). Key segments of the company’s customer base—younger people and low- to middle-income households…

Barnes & Noble has an incredible comeback story. In 2019, the American bookstore chain was facing bankruptcy, but it’s since returned to a position of growth: In 2025, the franchise opened 67 new stores across the United States, and 60 more are slated to open throughout 2026. But recent comments from the brand’s CEO have some social media users convinced Barnes & Noble is wasting all its goodwill. James Daunt, who took over the company in 2019, shared how he plans for Barnes & Noble to adapt to the AI era—and those plans have some book lovers rethinking their relationship to the brand. “We will stock them”: Barnes & Noble opens its arms to AI …

Perusing the grocery aisle in the Westside Market on 23rd Street in Manhattan, you might not even notice the screens. They look just like paper price labels and, alongside a bar code, use a handwriting-style font we’ve come to associate with a certain merchant folksiness. They’re not particularly bright or showy. The only clues that they’re not ordinary sticky shelf labels are a barely distinguishable light bulb and, on some, a small QR code. These are electronic shelf labels, chip-enabled screens that some stores are now using to display product prices. Unlike their paper predecessors, the prices aren’t printed in ink but rendered in pixels, and they can change instanta…