Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

In early February, the 22-year-old design brand Areaware announced it will close on May 1 citing tariffs and “mounting pressures on the home goods industry” in a letter posted to its Instagram account. “Every product we’ve made has been an act of optimism—a belief that good design can make our world a little better,” the letter said. “Lately though, our world has been making that difficult for us to do.” It’s been a challenging few months for good design brands. In December, Food52, the parent company of Schoolhouse and Dansk, declared bankruptcy; earlier in February, it was stripped for parts and sold at auction. While Areaware and Food52 don’t share the exact same …

Three AI companies—OpenAI, Google, and Perplexity—are on the verge of receiving approval to sell their technology, hosted on their own cloud systems, directly to the government, a person familiar with the matter tells Fast Company. That authorization will be on a “low impact” and pilot level, the person said, but constitutes a major step toward independence. That independence could help those companies avoid some of the complications created by ongoing partnerships between AI firms and longtime government tech contractors. As large language models have gone mainstream, AI companies have often relied on tech firms that have already passed arduous government security re…

Authoritarian acolytes will tell you that, to be strong, a country must “demonstrate force.” White House advisor Stephen Miller recently put that worldview plainly on CNN, arguing that “the real world…is governed by strength…by force…by power”—a claim belied, as it were, by history. America did not become a superpower primarily by proving it could dominate. It became a superpower by proving it could partner. After World War II, the United States stood unrivaled militarily. Yet it did not rely on force alone to secure its position. Instead, it invested in rebuilding a shattered world. The Marshall Plan was not charity—it was a strategy, linking economic recover…

Friday’s news of a major shakeup at Microsoft’s Xbox division caught the gaming world by surprise. Phil Spencer, who has run Xbox for almost 12 years, announced his retirement, effective immediately—just months after Microsoft insisted he was “not retiring anytime soon.” Asha Sharma, the president of Microsoft’s CoreAI product, was tapped to run the division. Once a powerhouse earner, Xbox has seen its profitability and influence shrink in recent years. (Xbox president Sarah Bond, long seen as Spencer’s heir apparent, was passed over and also left the company.) Sharma may face an uphill battle. Microsoft has not reported updated Xbox console sales or Game Pass…

There’s a new epidemic sweeping companies worldwide: unhappiness. According to recent research, only 51% of employees frequently feel happy at work. Being happy is not just a “nice to have” in the workplace. The same research found that happy workers are 42% more likely to feel productive or motivated, meaning that employee happiness is directly linked to business outcomes. While many organizations have introduced initiatives such as “duvet days,” mindfulness classes, and wellbeing apps, recent research from the University of Oxford has shown that these have no discernible effect on employee mental wellbeing. So, what is the answer to curing this unhappiness e…

Being a middle manager often feels like living in two worlds at once. On one side, executives cascade big goals and sweeping strategies. On the other, teams look to you for clarity, advocacy, and daily guidance. You’re constantly reconciling top-down demands with bottom-up realities, often with too little time and too few resources to satisfy either side. The paradox of the role is stark: Middle managers carry enormous responsibility for execution but don’t always have the authority to make critical decisions. You’re expected to deliver results on budgets you don’t control, within structures you didn’t design, and through policies you didn’t write. This tension is one…

Last night’s surprise announcement from Netflix that it was abandoning its Warner Bros. takeover bid in the wake of a “superior” offer from Paramount Skydance has sent shockwaves through both Hollywood and Wall Street. And investors in all three companies have reacted strongly. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? Yesterday, Warner Bros. Discovery said it has determined that a revised bid for its cinema and television properties from Paramount Skydance was a “superior proposal” to Netflix’s long-standing offer of $82.7 billion. Paramount, which has been in a hostile bidding war with Netflix over the movie studio, issued a new proposal to Warner Br…

Apple’s new 13-inch laptop, the MacBook Neo, is a cheap MacBook in the era of expensive PCs, when AI’s endless appetite for memory has caused the price of computers to skyrocket. Its $599 starting price isn’t much more than what a couple of sticks of DDR5 will cost these days. The secret to the low price? The Neo isn’t driven by your typical laptop chipset, but the same architecture inside your iPhone. It’s an iPhone with a 12.9-inch screen and keyboard. But the Neo design is largely based on nostalgia. Its colorful anodized aluminum computer body—a callback to the classic iPod minis and nanos so coveted by gen Z and Alpha—is more a retro-release than something n…

The town halls didn’t work. The twelve month wellness program didn’t work. The pricey motivational speaker definitely didn’t work. Your team looks busy, but is still very, very stuck. What looks like apathy is almost never laziness. What looks like resistance is rarely defiance. What you’re actually seeing is a nervous system in threat mode because change fatigue is fear fatigue. The fact is, the human brain just isn’t wired to fully distinguish between a physical threat and an organizational one. According to Gallup’s 2025 State of the Global Workplace report, half of employees in the U.S. and Canada reported significant daily stress, which is higher than all other g…

Block recently made headlines when CEO Jack Dorsey announced it was reducing its workforce and replacing some roles with AI agents. But it wasn’t the first organization to do this. And it won’t be the last. And in the middle of that announcement—and the LinkedIn hot takes—there are real managers trying to figure out what to say to their teams. That’s the part people want to hear—and need. Your Team Is Already Scared—And They’re Watching You If your organization has made any moves toward AI in the last year—and most have—your team is likely on edge. They’ve watched colleagues get laid off. They’ve heard the buzzwords: “efficiency, “optimization,” “doing more …

At the turn of the 20th century, the steel magnate and philanthropist Andrew Carnegie donated $5.2 million to New York to build libraries across the city. Leading architects of the time designed the branches, 67 in all, to look and function like civic temples with elaborate Beaux-Arts detailing, welcoming entrances, dignified reading rooms, and open stacks where patrons could freely browse. They quickly became important, and beloved, neighborhood establishments and remain so today. After more than a century of use, and ad hoc upgrades and adaptations that are also dated, the buildings are due for upgrades. Last year, the New York Public Library (NYPL) completed a $17…

The climate crisis demands that we rethink how we construct the built environment. Buildings account for more than 33% of global energy consumption and nearly 40% of greenhouse gas emissions. Traditional building materials like concrete, steel, and glass are energy-intensive to produce, meaning truly sustainable buildings are difficult to achieve when we rely on the status quo. Mass timber—engineered wood products that deliver immense structural strength while reducing environmental impact—has emerged as a compelling alternative. Swapping concrete for timber reduces embodied carbon by up to 26.5% per square foot. And the benefits go well beyond carbon metrics: Mass ti…