Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

“We are cooked.” That’s the sentence I see with every AI-generated Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube short made with Seedance 2.0. And yes, we are. The walls of reality have finally vanished, sucked in by a black hole of Nvidia chips. So I’m going to Nancy Reagan the hell out of everyone and demand a global public service announcement like that old “Just Say No” to drugs campaign, which was everywhere when I was growing up. We need Mr. T back to make young and old fools listen up, because the companies printing money with their generative video tech are doing zilch to fix the planetary problem they have created. The message? Everyone should stop believing everyt…

A note to corporations everywhere: Asking politely for the internet to stop making fun of you often has the opposite effect. Microsoft may have just learned that lesson the hard way, after it accidentally helped a not-so-nice nickname go viral. As Microsoft’s AI assistant Copilot is integrated into features across the company’s products—from its controversial Recall feature, to a dedicated AI button on Windows keyboards—it’s catching more and more flak, including a new term coined just to clown on Copilot: “Microslop,” a portmanteau of “Microsoft” and “AI slop.” The word was flying freely on Microsoft’s official Copilot Discord server, until users noticed a new fi…

Late last month, frozen food manufacturer Ajinomoto Foods North America announced a recall of roughly 3 million pounds of not-ready-to-eat products after customers reported finding glass in rice. In the U.S., many of the recalled products were sold at Trader Joe’s locations. Now that the recall has been dramatically expanded, with new products being pulled from the shelves. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On March 3, the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) posted a recall notice announcing that Ajinomoto Foods North America was expanding its earlier recall to include an additional 33 million pounds of various ready-to-eat and not-re…

Val Blair had climbed mountains to get to the pinnacle of her career. An accomplished marketing executive, she navigated high-pressure environments with a combination of dedication and discipline that set her apart from her peers. But in 2017, she was at the top of a different mountain. A real one. She was suddenly struck with vertigo. Instead of seeking help from those around her, she sat down and decided to wait it out. She’d figure out a way to get down on her own. “I sat there for an hour, thinking, ‘This is just going to be my life, and I’m not going down that mountain,’” she recalls. Finally, two women approached her and offered to help. At first, she declined…

Back in November 2025, Business Insider reported that job applicants have roughly a 0.4% chance of landing the job they’re applying for—something that isn’t exactly news to anyone who has been forced to navigate waves of hirings, firings, and everything in between. Employers have reported being overwhelmed by applicants for open positions, and would-be employees have reported something else. There’s a kind of résumé black hole, wherein information is sent out but nothing—not even a rejection—ever comes back. According to new data from the Hays 2026 U.S. Salary & Hiring Trends Guide, the overabundance of qualified applicants isn’t the only reason you’re not he…

“Sean,” the CEO of a health technology startup, invited Garry to join what he called a strategy offsite. By mid-morning, it had become something else. Six people, a whiteboard, a Series A closing in ninety days. The question on the table: where do we invest next? More engineers? A bigger sales team? Another content hire? Garry set down his coffee and asked a different question. “What if we stopped asking what we can afford to build, and started asking what we can now imagine building—that we genuinely couldn’t have a year ago?” The room shifted. So did the conversation. And that reframe—from resource allocation to possibility expansion—is the strategic inflection …

When considering AI’s impact in cities, many residents and government officials envision a dark future of unbridled surveillance, hollowed-out city halls and unaccountable bots calling the shots based on biased training data. We, on the other hand, embrace a much more optimistic vision. With ambitious local leadership, AI, and especially the coming wave of agentic AI, can offer a profound opportunity not only to make government services more efficient but also to transform how cities fulfill their end of the social contract. As long-time public servants and champions of government innovation at our respective universities, we understand the challenges local governmen…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. I recently talked with Lance Eaton, Senior Associate Director of AI and Teaching & Learning at Northeastern University and writer of AI + Education = Simplified. We traded ideas about what’s actually working. We came up with 10 specific, practical ways anyone who teaches, coaches, or leads can put AI to work. 1. Spark Richer Student Reflection Lance: Ask students to reflect through a conversation with AI rather than staring at a blank page. A well-prompted AI will keep asking follow-up questions, pushing students past “I didn’t…

A layoff doesn’t just remove your role. It disrupts your sense of professional stability. I’ve led workforce reductions at Amazon, Microsoft, and inside private equity-backed companies. I’ve sat in decision meetings where headcount decisions were debated alongside budgets and operating models. I’ve helped leaders understand how layoffs affect company culture. I’ve also supported leaders and executives who lost their jobs. The emotions usually follow a pattern: shock, self-doubt, and then a period of adjustment. But here’s what I’ve learned from those coaching conversations: top performers don’t lose confidence because they lack skills or ability. They lose it beca…

Tomorrow is the quarterly staff meeting, and project director Ann knows she needs to be ready. The agenda is familiar. At 3 p.m. she opens PowerPoint, pulls up the last deck, swaps in tomorrow’s date, and starts updating the numbers. By 5:30 pm, the slides are done. But is she ready? She has a deck, not a message. She has data, not direction. Communicating like a leader isn’t about updating presentations—it’s about shaping moments. And those moments are won or lost long before you step to the front of the room. Here are seven ways managers can ensure they’re making the most of their moment. 1. Know your plan Ann’s preparation went sideways the moment she o…

AI coding agents have become one of the fastest-growing categories in enterprise software. In the span of just a few years, these development tools have evolved from simple autocomplete assistants into autonomous systems capable of taking over the complete software development cycle, all via natural language prompts. As vibe-coding takes off, tools from startups like Cursor and Anthropic’s Claude Code have quickly reached multibillion‑dollar revenue run rates. Cursor reportedly crossed $1 billion in annual recurring revenue (ARR) in 2025 and has since approached $2 billion in Q1 of 2026. Anthropic’s Claude Code has scaled even faster, reaching an estimated $2.5 billi…

Earlier this week, social media was wowed by images from the streets of Chinese cities showing senior citizens lining up to have OpenClaw, the always-on AI assistant, installed on their laptops, desktops, and other devices. Areas like Shenzhen and Wuxi offered subsidies to try to scale up adoption of the tool and capitalize on its capabilities. An enormous proportion of all OpenClaw instances installed worldwide, as tracked by public dashboards, emanate from China. China is adopting tech at an absolute breakneck pace. A ridiculous amount of people turned up into a public event in Shenzhen today to install the OpenClaw. Some devs who work at Chinese big tech compan…

For years, companies have been told to prepare for the future by chasing youth, digital fluency, and technical skills. They have been urged to bet on “high potentials” and to focus on the next generation. At the same time, they have spent years overlooking one of the most strategic talent pools already available to them: women over 50. This blind spot now looks increasingly dangerous. The future of work is arriving amid inflation, oil crises, wars, and all sorts of geopolitical tensions, economic anxiety, demographic aging, climate disruption, and the destabilizing effects of AI. In such a world, organizations need people who can handle ambiguity, navigate transitions…

“Overworked and underpaid” has become the modern workplace anthem. The internet is full of advice on how to negotiate harder, “quiet quit,” or jump ship. It’s an easy narrative to embrace: If you feel undervalued, the system must have failed you. That story is comforting. It’s also costly. While genuine exploitation exists, most people stop short of asking the harder, and far more lucrative question: What is my contribution actually worth in the market? Effort Is Not Currency We have a tendency to measure our value by our level of exhaustion. We tally up the stress, the late nights, and the emotional labor. But markets do not pay for perspiration. They pay …

A middle manager sits in a 1:1 with their boss. They nod along to strategic priorities they already know are unrealistic. The deadlines don’t match the staffing plan. The “new initiative” competes with the last “top priority.” The team is already stretched thin. But the manager doesn’t say it—not plainly—because honesty can be misread as incompetence, negativity, or a lack of readiness for the next level. Two hours later, that same manager is in a team meeting projecting confidence about those same priorities. They translate contradictions into something coherent, reassure direct reports who are already anxious, and say, “We’ll figure it out,” while privately wonderin…

Students using AI to cheat on homework or tests is a source of much discussion. But some scholars argue the greater risk of students using AI is that they will simply not learn. Approximately 90% of 1,100 U.S. students surveyed at two-year and four-year colleges in 2025 reported using generative AI for everything from drafting assignments to clarifying complex concepts. But when students use AI as a tutor or study partner, not as an immediate answer generator, does it make it easier or harder for them to learn? We are economists who tried to answer this question by designing an AI tool using ChatGPT’s custom GPT feature, with the web access of the chatbot disa…

Nvidia has unveiled DLSS 5, a new PC gaming technology that uses AI to re-render video games in real time. It’s basically a make-it-realistic filter, affecting characters, foliage, textures, and lighting. It’s but another example of how in the age of AI, the world may never be the same. And the gaming community doesn’t quite know what to think yet. While the previous versions of DLSS simply upscaled a game’s resolution using AI, this version turns a tree that looks like a 3D model into a tree that looks like a real tree. It’s a monumental change. And a bold move. Unsurprisingly, the gaming community is fiercely divided. While some embrace the leap in visual fidel…

Microsoft PowerToys feels like something that shouldn’t exist in Windows today. What started in 2019 as a couple of utilities for things like window and shortcut management has gradually expanded to nearly 30 useful tools, including a keyboard shortcut creator, an image-to-text extractor, and a better search bar than the one that’s built into Windows proper. PowerToys has become wildly popular among Windows power users, with more than 70 million downloads to date, but it’s also completely free, with no ads, Office upsells, or ham-fisted Copilot integrations. Instead of directly monetizing PowerToys, Microsoft sees it as a way to build goodwill among software devel…

Federal regulators on Thursday approved a new higher-dose version of the blockbuster obesity drug Wegovy that may help users lose more weight and keep it off. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a 7.2-milligram dose of Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide. Previously, the highest approved dose of the drug, taken as a weekly shot, was 2.4 milligrams. The new dose received accelerated review through the FDA’s ultra-fast drug review program. The approval was granted 54 days after the request for review was approved, the agency said in a statement. The new dosage will be available in April at pharmacies in the U.S., with a price to be announced t…

Soon you’ll have fewer opportunities to buy Glossier products from a physical storefront. The beauty brand is closing nine of its 12 stores over the next two and a half years as part of a new strategic overhaul. Only three stores will remain—the flagship locations in New York, Los Angeles, and London. This downsizing is being implemented by Colin Walsh, Glossier’s new chief executive, who joined the beauty company in October 2025. The announcement of this plan occurs after he has already laid off around one-third of Glossier’s total workforce and canceled previously planned product launches. Walsh is looking to restore the brand to its glory days, starti…

Over the past year, tech companies invested hundreds of billions in the new data centers needed to power rapidly increasing demand for the technology. The investment is motivated in part by confidence that major AI labs such as those at OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google will continue to wring more intelligence out of their models. Indeed, fears have receded that the AI labs’ go-to strategy of supersizing models, training data, and computing power was no longer yielding large leaps in intelligence. Instead, the cadence of bigger and better models has accelerated, in part because AI coding tools are playing an increasing role in building new models. That’s certainly true a…

Below, Dr. Sunita Sah shares five key insights from her new book, Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes. Sah is a physician-turned-organizational psychologist. She teaches business and healthcare students at Cornell University and Cambridge University, and served as commissioner on the National Commission of Forensic Science. What’s the big idea? Learning how to defy is important, relevant, and meaningful for anyone who wants to speak up when it matters and to do the right thing in the moment. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Sah herself—in the Next Big Idea app, or buy the book. 1. We’re wired to comply. Soon aft…

Ryan Coogler, Zinzi Coogler, and Sev Ohanian, the founders of Proximity Media, share their top leadership tips for creatives. View the full article

In the rush to adopt artificial intelligence, many employers are now requiring that employees use AI tools. Fully 64% of employers are encouraging the use of AI, according to Owl Labs, and 58% are requiring its use, according to HRTech Edge. How should you get started? And how can you make your best human contribution while also adopting AI? CLARIFY EXPECTATIONS AND EXPERIMENT One of the most important starting points is to clarify your employer’s expectations. Are they demanding that you use AI for certain parts of your work? Are they requiring new levels of output based on AI? Or are they just seeking to build a tech-forward culture of learning? Clear expectation…

With some of the largest and most influential tech giants planning to go public this year, 2026 is shaping up to be the year of the mega IPO. Stock listings from OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceX could all potentially happen in 2026, and it is the latter that may make its market debut first. Here’s the latest on the potential initial public offering from Elon Musk’s space-tech company: When is SpaceX’s IPO? For some time, investors have expected, or at least speculated, that Elon Musk’s rocket and space technology company, SpaceX, would go public sometime in 2026. And it looks like that may finally be happening. Citing anonymous sources, the Wall Street J…