Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Oil prices are on the rise, hitting an 18-month high as of Tuesday as the conflict between the United States, Israel, and Iran continues. The war against Iran, which started in earnest over the past weekend, has disrupted oil and gas shipments in the Middle East, constricting supply, and with no clear timetable as to when the war could end (or if there’s a plan for a drawdown), markets are spooked about the potential for a prolonged conflict and market hiccups. Specifically, concerns about shipments getting through the Strait of Hormuz—a busy shipping lane for fossil fuel-carrying tankers—have been effectively stopped, and no one knows with any certainty as to when i…

Every important endeavor in your life needs some kind of North Star to help you determine whether you’re succeeding. Fitness professionals recommend having an overarching goal when planning a workout regime. Similarly, it’s valuable to have strategic aims for your career. Professional goals are important, because they help you evaluate which of a variety of paths available to you is the ideal one to pursue. For example, if your aim is to play a leadership role in a company, then you might choose to get an advanced degree that hones your leadership skills. That time in school might slow your progress in getting promotions in your vertical in the short term, but will en…

When you visit the Samsung booth this week at the Mobile World Congress 2026—which, as always, is being held at the Fira Gran Via convention center in Barcelona—you can make your way past the array of brand-new devices to find a timeline of old Galaxy S phones mounted to a wall. It’s a neat piece of history, but I’m not sure it had the intended effect. Rather than demonstrating Samsung’s progress over the years, it highlights how the South Korean tech giant—still the No. 2 phone maker in the world, right behind Apple, according to data from Counterpoint—has been treading water at the top of its lineup. This year’s Galaxy S26 Ultra, announced a few days before the …

In 1994, Bernard Tschumi, then Dean of Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture in New York, launched an experiment that banned paper and hand drawings, requiring architecture students to use computers instead. Together with the rise of computer-aided programs, Tschumi’s “Paperless Studio” accelerated the profession’s embrace of digital tools and reshaped how architects conceived ideas. Now that AI has entered the picture, you’d be forgiven for thinking the architectural sketch as we know it is dead. Quite the opposite. “We are in a world that is now completely dominated by digital tools, but something strange is happening: The hand sketch is back,” says …

On the northern outskirts of Beijing, massive holes in the earth bear the scars of what it’s taken to fuel the Chinese capital’s growth into a sprawling megacity that more than 22 million people call home. The site was a quarry that from 1990 to 2015 provided the raw material to help Beijing grow at hyperspeed, supplying everything from skyscrapers to roads to the main stadium built for the 2008 Summer Olympics. Last operated by Beijing Xingfa Cement Co., its closure left behind a negative space that is the inverse of the vertical urbanity of Beijing. Now, after nearly a decade of planning and design, the quarry’s rehabilitation into a striking and surreal 265-acre p…

In January, Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup, xAI, announced that it would use its chatbot to develop an AI tutoring system for more than a million students in El Salvador. The announcement came on the heels of similar ones from OpenAI, which is connecting students in Kazakhstan with its ChatGPT Edu services, and from Microsoft, which is similarly equipping students and teachers in the United Arab Emirates with AI-based tools and training. While other countries are executing on national infrastructure projects for the AI era and treating it as an economic imperative, here in the United States, we can’t seem to move past a narrative of how AI makes it easier…

In September 2025, the nation received its latest report card on 12th-grade math from the National Assessment of Educational Progress. These results should be a wake-up call for any American concerned about the future of education and workforce development in the United States. The findings showed that 78% of 12th graders were not proficient in mathematics, with more students than ever falling below the math proficiency benchmarks established by the National Center for Education Statistics. This widening skills gap signals serious trouble ahead for the American workforce. As the future of work becomes increasingly dependent on STEM skills, we are failing to equip millions…

BYD just destroyed any remaining argument against electric vehicle adoption. At a March 5 launch event in Shenzhen, China, it announced the Blade Battery 2.0, a new battery that can drive more than 621 miles on a single charge. In the process, the company has exposed just how far behind the rest of the electric vehicle industry has fallen. Gasoline cars have held onto two supreme advantages for a century: the five-minute pit stop and the typical 400-mile range that enabled people to take long road trips without worry. Meanwhile, EVs have suffered from long charging times and short ranges that induced range anxiety in potential buyers, who mostly preferred to stay with…

When leaders think about burnout, they often imagine visible distress, absence, emotional overwhelm or resignation. However, burnout does not always look like struggle. Often, it looks like competence. It looks like the person who always delivers. The one who volunteers to pick up the slack. The one answering work emails while watching their son’s nativity play, so they do not let anybody down. The one who says, “It’s fine, I’ll sort it.” The one who absorbs tension in the room so others do not have to. These people are not on a performance plan or raising red flags. They are not the ones asking for help. They are functioning. And those around them may not see…

Any avid reader undoubtedly recognizes him: the sleek, inquisitive bird frozen inside an orange oval that’s become Penguin Random House’s distinctive logo. With its new brand refresh, Penguin Random House UK is setting that iconic penguin free. The brand just unveiled a delightful series of hand-drawn illustrations, named the “Playful Penguins,” which show the penguin jumping, strutting, dancing, and doing a whole lot of reading. The illustrations will show up everywhere across the Penguin Random House’s global markets, from seasonal campaigns to social initiatives and point-of-sale displays—and they’re designed to bring some added joy and movement to the brand as it appr…

One of the powers of the latest Claude AI model is that it can use any multiple external Python tools to perform complex tasks. And, as software engineer and AI expert Ashe Magalhaes has discovered, it turns out that the model can use these powers to build a Truetype font that you can install in your computer from any scanned page showing a full set of characters. It’s a great, easy way to turn your handwriting into a font, but you can use it to create any typeface you can imagine as long as long as you have the adequate drawing skills. I tried it myself and it was pretty simple! Before AI, you needed specialized tools like Calligraphr, HandFonted, or FontForge i…

You want more confidence at work, but chances are you’re struggling to feel it. In fact, many people say that even if they’re achieving success, they still feel behind or doubt themselves. Confidence is critical not only to accomplishing objectives, but also to your self-esteem. It’s even linked with greater salary, status, and job satisfaction. When you demonstrate confidence, people are more likely to collaborate with you, and you’re also more likely to have the kind of impact that contributes to your self-assurance. But confidence is at a premium today. In fact, while 77% of people say they’re successful, 81% still feel they are behind others, according to a su…

Most organisations are no longer made up of one homogenous group of full-time employees. Instead, they’re becoming ecosystems. A mix of permanent employees, fractional leaders, freelancers, contractors, project specialists, and increasingly, technology and AI are doing part of the work too. In fact, the workforce of 2026 is predicted to become “agentic”, whereby AI agents are expected to displace or reshape tasks and roles. This makes collaboration with AI a necessity, not for the future of work, but now. This emerging blended workforce gives organisations access to a wider range of skills, faster. It allows them to scale up and down as demand changes. It creates …

In late February, 32 of the world’s best snowboarders gathered at Buttermilk Ski Resort—a so-called “mountain playground” in Aspen, Colorado—to go head-to-head in a high-stakes halfpipe competition. While most spectators were focused on their physical skills, eagle-eyed viewers might have noticed that three of the athletes were wearing identical stickers on their helmets. These stickers weren’t just ornamental: contained inside the small patches is a prospective technology that could have ripple effects across the broader sports world. The snowboarders (most of which arrived fresh off the Olympics) were competing in an event hosted by The Snow League, the first profe…

“At the light, take a sharp left onto Washington Street.” “So the second value prop—” “Turn right onto Third Avenue, then at the next stop sign…” Charles Armstrong, the product manager on Google Maps, is trying to explain how the platform’s turn-by-turn directions are getting their biggest update since the service launched in 2009. Maps is an almost unfathomably impactful platform that reaches around 2 billion people worldwide; it dominates navigation apps by commanding as much as 70% of the global market share. But as Armstrong attempts to walk me through the rich redesign, he keeps getting interrupted by his own demo. And I have to admit…anyone who has e…

The ancient world understood that leaders who act without self-knowledge create chaos. Consider that at the entrance to the Oracle of Delphi was the following inscription: “Know thyself.” Socrates further imbued meaning into this tenet by declaring that his wisdom came from knowing that he knew nothing. Later, Stoics like Marcus Aurelius argued that self-knowledge meant acknowledging what was actually within your control. The throughline across millennia is clear: cultivating inner clarity helps us navigate external uncertainty. But here’s what the ancients also understood: self-knowledge isn’t a solitary pursuit. We come to know ourselves through relationships, and w…

The biggest new restaurant trend is small. Special menus with petite, less expensive portions are popping up all over, from large chains like Olive Garden and The Cheesecake Factory to trendy urban eateries and farm-to-fork dining rooms. Restaurants hope that offering smaller servings beyond the children’s menu will meet many different diners’ needs. Some people want to spend less when they go out. Others are looking for healthier options or trying to lose weight. Younger consumers tend to snack more throughout the day and eat smaller meals, said Maeve Webster, the president of culinary consulting firm Menu Matters. “These are really driven by, I think, change…

Shares in the preeminent graphics software company Adobe Inc. (Nasdaq: ADBE) are dropping significantly in premarket trading this morning following the company’s Q1 2026 earnings results. Yet it’s not the earnings themselves that are driving ADBE stock lower. It’s an announcement from the company’s CEO, Shantanu Narayen, who said he plans to exit the role he has held for over 18 years. Here’s what you need to know: What’s happened? On Thursday, Adobe announced the results of its first quarter for fiscal 2026. And for all intents and purposes, the results were of the caliber that would normally make investors happy: Total revenue of $6.4 billion (up 12% ye…

Grammarly, the tool meant to assist with spelling, grammar, and in identifying plagiarism, is being sued for a new AI tool called “Expert Review.” The tool offers editing suggestions from established authors and writers—ostensibly not a bad idea—except that none of those people consented to being involved in the first place. The tool offers real-time writing tips from celebrities like Stephen King and Neil deGrasse Tyson, as well as journalists, like The Markup founder Julia Angwin, who filed the class action lawsuit against Grammarly’s parent company Superhuman, after she alleged the tool used her likeness without her permission: “have worked for decades honing my s…

A new research note just named Waymo the “Kool-Aid man” of the ride-haling economy. And it might leave Uber, Lyft, and Tesla playing catchup. The study, published on March 16 by Wall Street research firm MoffettNathanson, is a 21-page exploration into how Alphabet’s self-driving car company is poised to disrupt the existing ride-sharing landscape as it continues to aggressively scale. “Waymo’s incursion into the U.S. rideshare narrative reminds us of the Kool-Aid commercials from our childhood,” the analysis begins. “The Kool-Aid man kicks down walls, causes havoc, screams ‘oh yeah,’ and runs off into the next scene.” In the case of Waymo, it continues…

College basketball is like a comet. It burns at the center of the national sports world for exactly three weeks, and then largely disappears until the next year. During this brief window American sports fans become obsessed with figuring out who is going to win March Madness games, often involving teams they’ve never watched play and know nothing about. The old adage is that the more college basketball you watch, the worse your NCAA Tournament bracket will be. But in the information age, you can gain an edge. If you know where to look and how to parse the information, you can find all the data you need to make educated calls on your tournament bracket. Here are se…

On a hot day, most clothing traps heat. But fabric coated with nanodiamonds—tiny diamond particles—can instead release heat, helping cut energy use for air-conditioning. The diamond nanoparticles, each less than one-thousandth of the width of a human hair, have the same carbon crystal structure as larger diamonds. But since they don’t have to be perfectly formed and can be made from carbon waste such as plastic, they are relatively inexpensive to make. The structure means that they’re especially effective at moving heat. “Because carbon has exceptional thermal properties, it can absorb energy and heat quickly, and it can dispense it quickly through that system,” s…