Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Our culture of individualism pushes each person to try to be a star. “Team player” has even come to have the negative implication of subverting one’s own well-being and best advantage, and maybe even becoming invisible to leadership. To counteract these possibly negative effects of selfless invisible toiling, people often strive to make sure leadership sees their individual achievements. But research shows that the culture of individual stars is not what leads to team success. A McKinsey study found that superstar individuals often do not create the best teams: Thinking about themselves first leads to behaviors that disrupt team trust and problem-solving. Google’…

For years, leaders have treated transformation as a question of strategy and technology. Do we have the right plan? The right tools? The right talent? Most leadership teams think they have a speed problem. They don’t. They have a friction problem. Not the obvious kinds, like failed systems or bad strategy. Friction is quieter, far more pervasive, and seems innocuous. But friction, the invisible drag embedded in how organizations structure work, make decisions, and align teams, is becoming a material leadership risk. And as organizations push harder for agility, that friction comes with serious costs. WHERE WORK SLOWS DOWN Friction rarely shows up as a drama…

In a social media landscape dominated by obnoxious ads, algorithms, and AI, Letterboxd has stood firm as a cult favorite. The app, which acts as a digital diary for users to log and leave reviews of any movie they watch, has been described by a Letterboxd spokesperson as “less a social media platform, more a community.” It’s resisted adding the infinite scroll feature that now seems omnipresent online, instead letting users curate their own feeds of friends and popular reviewers. But news that a controlling stake in Letterboxd could be going up for sale has users worried that their online safe haven could go the way of other resold apps like X. Canadian holdin…

In 2024, JPMorgan Chase applied to receive financial assistance from Rockland County, New York, in order to expand a data center in Orangeburg, a hamlet of under 4,300 people. The development agency approved the assistance, which totaled nearly $77 million in state and local tax breaks for the project. In return, documents show, the company said the expansion would create just one full-time job. Now, government accountability group Reinvent Albany has called out the deal as “the largest government subsidy ever recorded within the United States,” prompting questions about how much public money goes to projects that don’t create meaningful jobs for communities. …

In October 2024, I wrote that the tech industry was entering an era of silent firing. Jobs were not being eliminated overnight, but subtly reshaped in ways that encouraged attrition, as companies quietly prepared for large-scale automation. At the time, this was largely a warning. With age, it looks more like a pattern. Amazon’s January 2026 announcement of 16,000 layoffs brings corporate staff reductions to roughly 10% of its workforce. Publicly, leadership has been careful to separate these cuts from artificial intelligence. As CEO Andy Jassy put it after earlier reductions, “the announcement that we made…was not really financially driven, and it’s not even really A…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. One of the ways I’ve been tracking shifts in the supply-demand equilibrium of local housing markets for years is by monitoring changes in active inventory/months of supply. If active listings begin to rise rapidly while homes remain on the market longer, it may indicate pricing softness or weakness. Conversely, a sharp decline in active listings/months of supply could suggest a market that is heating/tightening up. Since the national Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out and mortgage rates spiked in summer 2022, directionally, that supply-demand equilibr…

In the basement of an Emack & Bolio’s ice cream shop in Midtown Manhattan, six batteries—each about the size of a toaster oven stood on its side—are plugged into the wall, connected right to the breaker box. Those batteries will charge during off-peak electricity times, when power is cheap. When energy demand increases and power prices go up, the batteries will discharge, keeping the freezers running and lights on while cutting the business’s utility costs. The batteries are from David Energy, a New York City-based startup energy provider. David Energy provides batteries to businesses for free, and then uses its software platform to manage when they draw and…

If you’re self-employed and spend any time on social media, you’ve seen the debate. One person swears you need a professional website from day one. Another says a logo is the first thing to invest in. Someone else is selling a $500 course that promises to “elevate your brand’s presence.” Everyone has an opinion about where your money should go first (and they’re usually selling whatever they’re recommending). I’ve been running my own business for three years. I’ve run the branding gamut from DIY templates in Canva to hiring a professional brand designer. Here’s what I’ve learned: the right branding investment depends entirely on where your business is toda…

A recent Washington Post investigation described something called “degree hacking” — students racing through accredited online bachelor’s and master’s programs in weeks rather than years. One woman earned both degrees in 2024 for a combined cost of just over $4,000. Another completed 16 college courses in 22 days. A cottage industry of YouTube coaches and $1,500 consulting packages has sprung up to help people game the system. Academic officials are alarmed. Accreditors are saying they may investigate. Reddit moderators at one university forum have had to create a separate subforum to contain the conflict between regular students and speed-runners. I am not alarme…

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 via email here. Are the biggest AI labs betting on the wrong horse? Big AI companies are betting nearly all of their R&D and capital expenditure on the idea that pre-trained transformer models can deliver AI with human-level general intelligence. This approach relies heavily on backpropagation, the standard algorithm used to train deep neural networks. Ben Goertzel, who coined the term “AGI” with his 2005 book Artificial General Intelligence (co-written with DeepMind founder Shane Legg), i…

In the rolling hills near Reno, Nevada, in a field filled with solar panels, something unexpected is nestled into the landscape: a data center that isn’t blowing up its neighbors’ electric bills. In fact, the modular data center, built by Crusoe, essentially doesn’t rely on the electric grid at all. It runs on solar power and an unlikely source: hundreds of second-life EV batteries. At a time when data centers are driving up electricity demand—and facing intense political pushback over potential impacts on energy bills and the environment—the batteries offer a flexible way to add power without leaning harder on the grid. The astonishing setup is the handiwork of…

The Pentagon said Friday that it has reached deals with seven tech companies to use their artificial intelligence in its classified computer networks, allowing the military to tap into AI-powered capabilities to help it fight wars. Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Nvidia, OpenAI, Reflection and SpaceX will provide their resources to help “augment warfighter decision-making in complex operational environments,” the Defense Department said. Notably absent from the list is AI company Anthropic, after its public dispute and legal fight with the The President administration over the ethics and safety of AI usage in war. The Defense Department has been rapidly acceler…

I have a very conflicted relationship with my jute rug. I love the organic, textured aesthetic that makes my dining room feel earthy and relaxed. But over time, I’ve come to resent how scratchy it feels underfoot, how the fibers shed and splinter, and how if my toddler spills yogurt on it, there’s no way to get it out of the nooks and crannies, so it becomes part of the rug forever. Ruggable, the company that launched nearly a decade ago on the premise that rugs should be washable, has been on a mission to reimagine the jute rug. And after nearly two years of development, it is launching a machine-washable rug called Performance Weave that mimics jute so convincingly, yo…

At the Exceptional Women Alliance, we help senior women leaders mentor one another through shared insight. As founder, chair, and CEO, I speak with executives shaping how organizations evolve and perform. This month, I spoke with Jennifer Renaud, CEO of Kradle LLC and a board director with more than 30 years experience in digital innovation, commercial strategy, and customer-centered growth. She has guided companies through operating model transformation and post-integration growth. As artificial intelligence becomes embedded across organizations, Renaud believes companies must rethink how decisions are made. Traditional hierarchies, designed for stability and con…

As countries continue to deal with a hantavirus outbreak linked to passengers aboard the M/V Hondius cruise ship, government and public health agencies have begun repatriating both those confirmed to have the virus and those potentially exposed to it. This includes the United States, where 17 American citizens who were on board the ship are being repatriated by the U.S. State Department. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On Monday night, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services (HHS) confirmed that the repatriation of Americans aboard the M/V Hondius cruise ship had begun. In a post on X, the HHS said that its Administration for…

You know the feeling we are talking about. Your friend calls to ask for your help moving on a Saturday when you were planning on doing nothing. Or your sister-in-law asks you to invest in her business, and you are afraid there is no way it will succeed. Even when the person asking for the favor isn’t someone central to your life, it is still painful to say no. Most of us don’t even like saying no to telemarketers. That’s why there are so many jobs in sales. Often, we end up making bad decisions to avoid the short-term discomfort of turning people down. Look, we agree—saying no is hard. The good news is that a little preparation and practice will make it easier. Even i…

It’s not often that a serious medical condition gets renamed, but that’s the case now for a condition that impacts one in eight women. Polycystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal disorder long known as PCOS, will now be called PMOS – short for polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome. The new name, announced Tuesday at the European Congress of Endocrinology and published in leading medical journal The Lancet, aims to more accurately describe the syndrome and make diagnosis easier for people who suffer from it. A group of specialists who worked to rename the condition criticized its longstanding name as inaccurate, explaining that misunderstandings about its features led…

There’s an old joke among economists that goes like this: “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” I didn’t say it was a funny joke. But when labor economist Robert Solow originally wrote those words in 1987, they were certainly true. Personal computers, corporate mainframes, and the first vestiges of the modern internet were all anyone could talk about. Yet productivity wasn’t budging. These whizzy technologies, in short, weren’t earning anyone any money. The phenomenon became known as Solow’s Paradox. Of course, we all know how that story ended. By the mid-1990s, productivity was on a tear, and tech was making lo…

Bill Lawrence, the showrunner behind Scrubs, Ted Lasso, and Shrinking, explains his creative process, from finding the emotional core of a story to surviving writer’s block, writing through a pandemic, and building shows that can make you laugh one second and gut-punch you the next. View the full article

If you’ve been in the corporate world long enough, you might have seen technical specialists hit a career ceiling. They’re brilliant at what they do, but they can struggle to advance to leadership positions. That’s because management requires a different type of thinking: less task-oriented, more focused on the big picture. This is a mindset that’s common in successful company founders, who employ knowledge, experience, and intuition to maximize value creation within the given context. And it’s a mindset that’s increasingly relevant today. For instance, the World Economic Forum’s Future of Jobs survey from 2025 names analytical thinking as the top core skill emplo…

The global energy industry is under pressure to innovate. Energy companies need vetted, field-tested technologies that improve efficiency, enhance safety, and streamline operations. On the other side of the spectrum, early-stage startups developing new technologies struggle to access customers, test environments, and capital. These parallel challenges can slow crucial energy innovation, creating a commercialization gap. One approach to addressing this challenge has emerged in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a region with deep institutional knowledge and over a century of experience in energy operations. Rose Rock Bridge, a nonprofit based in Tulsa, is a pilot deployment studio that …

Artificial intelligence has notoriously struggled with creating images, writing out gibberish on signs, or adding extra fingers to people. But it seems it’s not much help for photography either—and the internet is having a field day over it. The official X account for the Sony Xperia smartphone shared examples from its new “AI Camera Assistant” tool, which offers lens, exposure, and color suggestions for users. While it’s a decent idea in theory, the images shared by the post revealed otherwise. The X post included a series of before-and-after examples, with the tool appearing to create a comedically overexposed effect. In one of the images, a picture of a…

AI is saving workers more than two hours a day. That sounds like an unqualified win, and in many ways, it is. But beneath the productivity headlines, something more complicated is happening. Employees are getting faster, but some are also getting less confident, less skilled, and less certain they can do their jobs without a machine doing much of the thinking for them. That tension is the defining workforce challenge of 2026, and most companies aren’t prepared to address it. New research from GoTo, conducted in partnership with Workplace Intelligence, surveyed 2,500 global employees and IT leaders on AI use and sentiment. The findings tell a story about a workforce ca…

Meta and Ray-Ban are finally getting some serious competition. Warby Parker is launching its first-ever smart glasses, developed with Google and Samsung. Announced Tuesday at Google I/O, it could change the wearables market. Its new Intelligent Eyewear frames have speakers, cameras, and access to AI inside a light, flexible, dark green nylon frame that will be available as sunglasses and regular glasses. The glasses are powered by Google Gemini, the company’s AI assistant; and Android XR, Google’s unified operating system for ‘XR’ (extended reality) headsets and glasses. Warby Parker declined to share pricing, however Meta Ray-bans currently run from $390 to…

AI wears many hats at work, whether it’s a brainstorm partner, mentor, or doing the actual work itself. However, it’s time to add a new one to the list: spy. In a recent episode of the “All-In” podcast, Salesforce CEO, Marc Benioff, said he was using AI to analyze employee slack messages to understand what they’re complaining about. (Salesforce acquired Slack in 2021.) “Because you run your company on Slack, all your DMs, all your channels, we’re reading that now through the AI and we can tell you more about your business than you know,” Benioff explained. “Slackbot is reading stuff that, you know, nobody knew what was happening. I’m using that myself.” Benioff says,…