Blog, YouTube & Content Monetization

Rite Aid is plotting an immediate wind-down of operations at dozens of additional locations as it scrambles this week to sell off its pharmacy assets and retail operations to potential bidders. The drugstore chain, which last week sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for a second time, has marked 68 locations in seven states for closure, meaning it wants to promptly start the process of going-out-of-business sales. The list was disclosed in a filing on Friday with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the District of New Jersey. Interested parties have until May 19 to object to the additional closings, according to the filing. Fast Company has reached out to R…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Speaking to ResiClub in December, Jay Bray, CEO of mortgage servicer Mr. Cooper, told me that real estate would see a lot of mergers and acquisitions in 2025—and that Mr. Cooper was out shopping—as the industry continues to “grind” through the prolonged housing activity slump that started back in summer 2022. “You’ve seen consolidation already. If you think about this industry going forward, you’re going to need a balanced business model. You’re going to need the capability to invest in technology, to use everybody’s favorite two initials: AI,” Bray …

If you follow any Gen Zers on social media, you may know they seem to abide by one piece of sage wisdom: Go big or go home. That much is certainly true when it comes to their wild prom-posals and sometimes scary-extravagant gender-reveal parties. And apparently, it also holds true for their Valentine’s Day celebrations. According to a new survey from CouponFollow, on average, Americans in relationships plan to spend around $155 on the day of love this year. But Gen Z? Gen Z wouldn’t be satisfied unless they were going above and beyond. The generation that seems to enjoy flashy celebrations will spend far more on cards, chocolates, and stuffed animals, budgeting $235 t…

For the first time in more than 40 years, a new hormone-free intrauterine device (IUD) is coming to market in the U.S.—and it’s designed with patients’ comfort in mind, both during the insertion process and once it’s in place. The new IUD, called Miudella, comes from the pharmaceutical company Sebela Women’s Health Inc. It was approved by the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) in late February, and is the second hormone-free IUD to be approved since 1984, when the copper-based option Paragard first became available. With the addition of Miudella, there will now be six IUD options available in the U.S. Not only does this advancement provide patients seeking a horm…

It’s a . . . well, weird job market out there, to put it diplomatically. If you’ve suddenly found yourself looking for work among what feels like a never-ending onslaught of layoffs, you’re not alone. Now more than ever, standing out is essential to landing your dream job. In that spirit, LinkedIn Learning offers a variety of free courses that can help you sharpen your skills, boost your confidence, and navigate the job-seeking landscape with ease. Here are six free LinkedIn Learning courses that can assist you in finding a new job. Polish up your résumé This 2.5-hour course covers everything you need to know about creating a résumé that showcases your…

Over the years, I’ve likely wasted thousands of dollars on forgotten subscriptions—and I’m not alone. A 2022 survey by research firm C+R found that 42% of Americans had paid for subscriptions they’d forgotten about. It’s easy to lose track, especially when payments are scattered across credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, and app store accounts. Here’s how to track down and cancel those forgotten charges. Subscription management apps: Rocket Money, Hiatus, Trim Dedicated services are among the most effective tools for finding and canceling forgotten subscriptions—and potentially switching to cheaper or free alternatives. But they come with a trade-off: To work, t…

Sometimes, you need to shake things up in your career. Maybe the job isn’t as fulfilling anymore. Maybe changing circumstances are pushing you toward a new path. Either way, figuring out what to do next can be a challenge. Increasingly, artificial intelligence is helping people explore their next steps—even when they’re unsure themselves. Chatbots like ChatGPT can offer some guidance, provided you know how to phrase your questions. But several companies have developed specialized tools that focus specifically on this issue. Google is leading the pack with its Career Dreamer. Described as “a playful way to explore career possibilities with AI,” it’s a tool that any…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Since the pandemic housing boom fizzled out, the number of unsold completed U.S. new single-family homes has been rising. Here’s a look at the recent historical numbers for January: January 2018: 63,000 January 2019: 76,000 January 2020: 76,000 January 2021: 40,000 January 2022: 32,000 January 2023: 68,000 January 2024: 83,000 January 2025: 115,000 The January figure (115,000 unsold completed new homes) that recently published is the highest level since July 2009 (126,000). Let’s take a closer look at the data to bett…

Paris’s youngest neighborhood was built over the last two decades atop a former rail yard and a new station on the Paris Metro Line 14. Clichy-Batignolles, in the 17th arrondissement, is roughly split into thirds, with two developed areas hugging the massive, resplendent Martin Luther King Park. The quarter’s quiet, mostly car-free streets are fronted by stores, cafes, and schools. These businesses and institutions occupy the ground floors of apartment and office buildings designed in an astonishing array of shapes, materials and textures. Some structures are gently curved, others are sharply angular; some are covered in stucco, others in bamboo. Each unique building…

Maybe I should begin this article by arguing that nothing spices up a mundane meeting like a creative, beautiful, or hilarious background for your Zoom calls. But the reality is that most of us just need to hide messy offices, guestroom beds, or dirty-dish-filled kitchens. These three websites offer up almost half a million free Zoom backgrounds for your perusal, so forget tidying up and get that scrolling finger ready. Pexels: Something for everyone The undisputed king of free Zoom backgrounds, Pexels houses more than 450,000 photos and more than 50,000 videos in its Zoom section. With that many options, you have . . . well, options. Whether you’re loo…

We’ve known since launch that the Cybertruck is a flop. Sales have been residual after they peaked at 5,175 units registered in July 2024, gradually falling to just 2,000 units sold in April 2025. The dip has been so deep that the Boring Company would have a hard time reaching the bottom of its sales chart pit, which has totaled 46,000 units since production started in late 2023. Now we have learned that things are getting worse for Cybertruck owners: The Cybertruck has depreciated by 45% after only one year, according to Car Guru. The depreciation is so bad that Tesla wasn’t accepting its own children as trade-ins until three days ago, as the Cybertruck Owners Club …

The Lamborghini of baby strollers is literally a Lamborghini. Luxury carmaker Automobili Lamborghini is getting into baby gear by partnering with the British nursery brand Silver Cross for a limited-edition stroller called the Reef AL Arancio. Just 500 of the strollers will be made and each comes with a numbered edition plaque. Silver Cross calls it a “super stroller,” and it retails for about $5,000. [Image: Silver Cross] The stroller’s design borrows from the Lamborghini’s foundations, Silver Cross says, with an automotive-inspired brake pedal, hand-finished handlebar, and high-performance suede with Italian leather details. It comes with a high-gloss polycar…

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. Blade Runner wasn’t so far-fetched after all In Blade Runner 2049, Ryan Gosling’s Officer K has a live-in girlfriend named Joi, played by Ana de Armas. The two interact like a real couple—they share familiar banter and seem to have a history together. But Joi is a hologram, projected from ceiling-mounted emitters in K’s apartment. She’s not human; she’s an advanced form of spatial computing—a future-facing concept we’re already seeing the early stages of today. The “AI girlfriend” (or bo…

When it opened in 2001, watchmaker Timex’s new headquarters building in Middlebury, Connecticut, was an architectural wonder. Its all-glass walls and open floor plan put the entire 275-person company in one big, light-filled workspace, covered by a swooping arched roof. It was a radical embrace of the ideals of openness, collaboration, and anti-hierarchical social interaction. On top of all this, the award-winning building had one additional—and unique—feature: a hole in the top that shines sunlight down on an ancient time-marking device known as a meridian line. Covering the building at the time, Fast Company noted “the building itself is a watch.” But now the buildi…

More than 10,000 cans of Original Coca-Cola distributed in two states have been voluntarily recalled. Manufacturer Reyes Coca-Cola Bottling initiated the recall on March 6 after reports of foreign plastic found inside cans. On March 24, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) designated the recall as Class II, per the FDA enforcement report. According to the FDA’s recall classification page, a Class II recall means “a violative product may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote.” The report indicated that 864 12-count packs of the product distributed in Il…

It’s been a wild few years for Snowflake, from a record-breaking IPO to a plummeting stock price to a data-breach scandal. Sridhar Ramaswamy took over in the heat of the turmoil and helped steady the ship, in part by betting big on AI. Ramaswamy shares lessons from the company’s turnaround including insights behind high profile partnerships with OpenAI and Anthropic, how Snowflake embraced China’s Deepseek early, and why Ramaswamy calls Snowflake the most consequential AI-data company in the world. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Sca…

For years, baby boomers have been “aging in place” and keeping home turnover low. And now, not only are boomers holding onto their homes, they’re also the generation buying the most property—boxing out millennial homebuyers for only the second year since 2013. Millennials, who range from 26 to 44 years old, have largely dominated the housing market for the past decade. The only exceptions to this rule have occurred in 2023 and 2024, according to data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Between July 2023 and July 2024, the share of millennial homebuyers dropped to 29%, down from 38% a year ago. Meanwhile, boomers (ages 60 to 78) accounted for 42% of home …

I’ve worked remotely since 2006 (way before it was common). However, my days were filled with calls to colleagues and DMs to chat about everything from work to what we had planned for the weekend. Now I’m a solopreneur. I have occasional calls with clients, but they’re rare. Most of my days are spent working alone. In many ways, this is great since I have the freedom to work however and whenever I want. But staying motivated when it’s just me requires being really thoughtful about how I work. According to a 2025 report by Leapers, nearly half of self-employed professionals feel lonely occasionally or some of the time. One in five feels lonely or isolated often o…

A bold new building at Spelman College in Atlanta is all about breaking down barriers. Designed by the architecture firm Studio Gang, the Center for Innovation and the Arts is the new home for collaboration between students of science, technology, art, and performance at the historically Black women’s liberal arts college. It will provide a new space where Spelman’s programs in dance, documentary filmmaking, photography, theater and performance, and music can tap into emerging technologies from the worlds of science and computer science. Studio Gang founder, Jeanne Gang, says the primary goals of the project were to help the college better connect its programs and eve…

Eleven years after Google first announced its grand unifying theory of design—Material Design—it’s introducing its third major revision to the system. Called Material 3 Expressive, the company will tell you that it’s their most “researched update” ever, promising to help people find what they’re looking for on the screen faster than before. But it’s also the company’s most maximalist design system to date. Still enabling quieter minimalist designs, sure, but embracing bolder colors, more playful animations, and all around more overt approaches to interface. There’s a new roundness to almost every component, right down to the tips of Google’s new default typeface, Google S…

Of all the modern parenting paradoxes, navigating screen time usage might be one of the most complex—and divisive. Critics of screen time claim it can negatively impact social skills, behavior, and sleep. Proponents say it can help kids learn about living in a digital world, improve cultural awareness, and serve as a means of communication. Parents say sometimes they just need a break. The truth, of course, lies somewhere in the messy middle of it all; like so many aspects of parenting, it’s all about finding the balance that’s right for you and your child(ren). Screen time is just one of many topics explored in Poems of Parenting, a new collection of poetry out A…

Ukraine’s war with Russia—sparked by Russia’s invasion in the spring of 2022—is now entering its fourth year. So too is Sine.Engineering, a company born amid the conflict. CEO Andriy Chulyk founded the company in April 2022, pivoting from running a standing-desk business in the Lviv region to supporting his country’s defense efforts through various drone technologies and components. The 150-person-company has scaled rapidly over the past three years; its parts are now used in drones made by more than 50 manufacturers worldwide. “Everyone thought something might change, that [war] would stop,” Chulyk says. “But we see clearly now that the situation is only getting har…

OpenAI is working on its own X-like social media network, the Verge reported on Tuesday, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter. The project is still in early stages and there is an internal prototype focused on ChatGPT’s image generation that contains a social feed, the report said. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been privately asking outsiders for feedback about the project, the Verge said, adding that it was unclear whether the company plans to release the social network as a stand-alone application or integrate it into ChatGPT. —Deborah Sophia, Reuters View the full article

Another food recall is underway: “Berry Buddies, berries & pancakes” breakfast snack packs sold at Kroger and Meijer supermarkets in 13 states have been recalled after it was discovered that packaging failed to list wheat and eggs as ingredients on the label, according to an announcement from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The item includes fresh blueberries and mini pancakes, and is generally found in the refrigerated section, produce aisle, or deli departments of the stores. Not including these ingredients on the label poses a risk of serious reactions to those allergic to either or both wheat and eggs. Here’s what you need to know about the re…