Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

In the run-up to the annual U.N. climate conference, set to take place in Brazil’s Amazon in November, the construction of a road is drawing attention, with critics arguing it will lead to environmental degradation. Before the talks, called COP30, the state government of Para is building a 13-kilometer (8-mile) avenue designed to ease traffic on a major highway that runs parallel. The road was planned long before Belem, a metropolitan area of 2.5 million people that sits on the edge of the Amazon, was chosen as conference host. That hasn’t spared it sharp criticism, however, because the road is expected to cut across the last remnants of rainforest in Belem. R…

The woman behind Instacart’s successful IPO, Fidji Simo, is joining OpenAI’s C-suite. On Wednesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced Simo’s new role as CEO of Applications. She will report directly to him after transitioning out of her current role at Instacart later this year. “In her new role, Fidji will focus on enabling our “traditional” company functions to scale as we enter a next phase of growth,” Altman said in a blog post. “Fidji brings a rare blend of leadership, product and operational expertise, and genuine commitment to ensuring our technology benefits everyone.” Before joining OpenAI’s executive team, Simo served as a member of its board of direct…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. National active housing inventory for sale at the end of April 2025 was up 31% compared to April 2024. That’s just 16% below pre-pandemic levels in April 2019. However, while the national housing market has softened and inventory has surpassed 2019 pre-pandemic levels in some pockets of the Sun Belt, many housing markets remain far tighter than the national average. Pulling from ResiClub’s monthly inventory tracker, we identified the tightest major housing markets heading into the spring 2025 season, where active inventory is still the furthest belo…

White smoke is pouring out of the Sistine Chapel chimney, signaling that a pope has been elected to lead the Catholic Church. That means the winner secured at least 89 votes of the 133 cardinals participating in the conclave to elect a successor to Pope Francis. The crowd in St. Peter’s Square erupted in cheers. The name will be announced later, when a top cardinal utters the words “Habemus papam!” Latin for “We have a pope!” from the loggia of St. Peter’s Basilica. The cardinal then reads the winner’s birth name in Latin, and reveals the name he has chosen to be called. The new pope is then expected to make his first public appearance and impart a blessing …

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here. Half of all LLM usage is for writing computer code The tech industry insists that AI will “transform” how companies, both large and small, operate. Tech VCs and AI founders predict that major business functions will be reshaped, one by one, to be handled by AI agents. For a while, many speculated which function would be transformed first. It wasn’t customer service, legal, or marketing: it was software development. Generative AI’s first killer app is coding. Tools like Cursor and Windsurf can now …

Israel’s ongoing blockade of humanitarian assistance for Gaza forced a leading aid group to shut its community soup kitchens Thursday as it faced empty warehouses and no replenishment of supplies in the war-battered enclave. World Central Kitchen was serving 133,000 meals per day and baking 80,000 loaves of bread over the past weeks, but said it was forced to suspend operations since there is almost no food left in Gaza for the organization to cook. The lack of food is threatening Gaza’s population, already battered by 19 months of war. In April, the World Food Program said its food stocks in Gaza had run out under Israel’s blockade, ending a main source of susten…

Once a year, a crowd of thousands of runners fill Central Park as they look up at the sky with joy, relief, exhaustion, and tears, knowing they just completed the iconic TCS New York City Marathon. Recognizing the endless storytelling opportunities that come from the event, New York Road Runners (NYRR), the nonprofit behind the marathon, is launching its own production studio, East 89th St Productions. “It was clear to me that this was a huge opportunity for the organization from the first day that I went to the finish line of the marathon,” NYRR CEO Rob Simmelkjaer says. “It’s rare that you can look and see total strangers by the hundreds, having a moment that y…

The social media platform X said Thursday it has blocked access to jailed Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu ’s account in Turkey, complying with a Turkish court order — the latest measure targeting a key rival of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. However, Elon Musk‘s X said that while the company abided by the order, it disagrees with it and is legally challenging it. It said X complied to avoid severe punishments, such as the throttling of the whole platform in Turkey. “X has been and will continue to object to removal orders including government requests in courts to protect users when those requests do not align with principles of free expression, due process, or oth…

I’m a writing professor who sees artificial intelligence as more of an opportunity for students, rather than a threat. That sets me apart from some of my colleagues, who fear that AI is accelerating a glut of superficial content, impeding critical thinking and hindering creative expression. They worry that students are simply using it out of sheer laziness or, worse, to cheat. Perhaps that’s why so many students are afraid to admit that they use ChatGPT. In The New Yorker magazine, historian D. Graham Burnett recounts asking his undergraduate and graduate students at Princeton whether they’d ever used ChatGPT. No one raised their hand. “It’s not that they’…

Pope Francis left a lasting legacy, not least his appreciation for art. In his 2025 biography, Hope, Francis spoke of his admiration for the Baroque painter Caravaggio. He recalled that during his travels to Rome as a cardinal, he prayed in front of the painting by Caravaggio—The Calling of Saint Matthew. The painting is found in the chapel dedicated to St. Matthew in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi. The donor of the chapel was a French cardinal, Matthieu Cointerel, who died in 1585. This was the first commission for Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, who was hired in July 1599. A year later, The Calling of Saint Matthew and The Martyrdom of Saint Matthew, depict…

Human-caused climate change intensified deadly rainfall in Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee and other states in early April and made those storms more likely to occur, according to an analysis released Thursday by the World Weather Attribution group of scientists. The series of storms unleashed tornadoes, strong winds and extreme rainfall in the central Mississippi Valley region from April 3-6 and caused at least 24 deaths. Homes, roads and vehicles were inundated and 15 deaths were likely caused by catastrophic floods. The WWA analysis found that climate change increased rainfall intensity in the storms by 9% and made them 40% more likely compared to probability of such e…

In honor of its 25th anniversary, the Gates Foundation made a major announcement. On Thursday, chair Bill Gates said he would give away most of his fortune over the next two decades. “People will say a lot of things about me when I die, but I am determined that ‘he died rich’ will not be one of them,” Gates wrote in an announcement on GatesNotes. The statement continued, “There are too many urgent problems to solve for me to hold onto resources that could be used to help people. That is why I have decided to give my money back to society much faster than I had originally planned.” Gates explained that he would give away practically all of his fortune over the …

After filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for a second time this week, Rite Aid is already planning to wind down operations at underperforming locations in at least nine states, court documents show. The long-suffering drug store chain, which is scrambling to sell parts of its business less than one year after emerging from bankruptcy the first time, has identified 47 locations that it will initially close as is negotiates with potential buyers and moves through the Chapter 11 process yet again. Rite Aid has 1,277 pharmacies, three distribution centers, and more than 24,000 employees across 15 states, and it’s hoping to sell many of its locations to pres…

At a recent fundraising event, I stood backstage with a young woman waiting to give a speech in front of 550 people to honor her alma mater. She was visibly nervous; I watched as she paced, taking deep breaths to calm the adrenaline that was flooding her body, twisting her hands, and looking toward the stage door as if she might try to make a run for it. As a charity auctioneer who has spent more than two decades on stages around the world commanding rooms filled with thousands of people, I know that feeling. There were so many nights in the beginning of my career when I felt the same way. But spending 1,000-plus nights onstage has given me plenty of practice to learn…

The 2002 sci-fi thriller Minority Report depicts a dystopian future where a specialized police unit is tasked with arresting people for crimes they have not yet committed. Directed by Steven Spielberg and based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, the drama revolves around “PreCrime”—a system informed by a trio of psychics, or “precogs,” who anticipate future homicides, allowing police officers to intervene and prevent would-be assailants from claiming their targets’ lives. The film probes at hefty ethical questions: How can someone be guilty of a crime they haven’t yet committed? And what happens when the system gets it wrong? While there is no such thing as an al…

Generative AI is radically reshaping the job market—creating new roles, changing some, and phasing out others. But here’s one effect of the transformative technology that’s not as widely talked about: It’s deepening long-standing workplace gender gaps. A double disadvantage According to a recent report from the World Economic Forum and LinkedIn, women systematically face a two-part problem in the ongoing AI transformation. Relatively fewer women are currently in jobs that are being augmented by generative AI, and relatively more are in roles that are being disrupted. According to LinkedIn data for the US, 24.1% of men work in augmented occupations, while 20.5% of women…

Your flights will probably get noticeably bumpier over the next few years, according to new research on how climate change is affecting turbulence. Paul Williams is a professor of atmospheric science at the University of Reading in England who has researched turbulence for more than a decade. In a presentation at the European Geosciences Union conference last week, Williams shared his research showing how global warming is likely leading to an uptick in something called “clear-air turbulence,” or turbulence that can’t be seen on an airplane monitor or from the cockpit. Based on Williams’s research, severe clear-air turbulence has increased by 55% since the 1970s…

Effective leadership isn’t a one-size-fits-all endeavor. It requires adaptability, self-awareness, and a deep understanding of when to step in and when to step back. Leaders often struggle to find the right balance between empowering their teams and maintaining strategic oversight. But there’s a way that you can do both. By adopting the practical 2×2 leadership framework that I’ll get into in this article, leaders can assess their approach based on two critical dimensions: Degree of Empowerment and Degree of Strategic Altitude. The leadership quadrants When you map out leadership approaches across these two dimensions, four distinct quadrants emerge. Each …