What's on Your Mind?

Whether he’s climbing skyscrapers in Taiwan or working to build the Honnold Foundation, free solo climber and activist Alex Honnold remains an optimist. He sat down with Fast Company to talk about why a good outlook is essential—both for his sport and in the fight for the planet. Honnold also reflects on education, human potential, overconsumption, and what’s at stake for American national parks and public lands. View the full article

We’re witnessing an unprecedented explosion in creative capability. Voice interfaces are removing barriers for billions who found keyboards cumbersome. AI image generators can mock up virtually any creative direction instantly. The technical constraints that once defined creative work are dissolving. Yet this abundance creates a new challenge: when everything becomes possible, the possibilities overwhelm us. What then becomes most valuable is knowing what’s worth making. I predict that in 2026, the question “should we build this?” will matter more than “can we build this?” The capability surplus The AI conversation is all about capabilities. What you can ma…

Have you ever had the experience of rereading a sentence multiple times only to realize you still don’t understand it? As taught to scores of incoming college freshmen, when you realize you’re spinning your wheels, it’s time to change your approach. This process, becoming aware of something not working and then changing what you’re doing, is the essence of metacognition, or thinking about thinking. It’s your brain monitoring its own thinking, recognizing a problem, and controlling or adjusting your approach. In fact, metacognition is fundamental to human intelligence and, until recently, has been understudied in artificial intelligence systems. My colleagues C…

Microsoft stock just suffered its biggest single day drop since 2020. Meanwhile, Meta stock popped by 10%. Both tech giants are spending billions on AI talent and infrastructure, but investors clearly feel skittish about Microsoft at the start of 2026 and bullish on Meta’s tale of near-term upside. For a company that famously whiffed on the metaverse, Meta is looking more reasonable these days. The company is still poised to invest eye-popping sums into artificial intelligence in the coming years, but so are all of its peers, Microsoft included. In an era of AI hype and sky-high expectations, Meta is following the crowd—not leading it—for better or worse. In 2026,…

Whether you call him groundhog, woodchuck, or whistle-pig, or use the full genus and species name, Marmota monax, the nation’s premier animal weather forecaster has been making headlines as Punxsutawney Phil for decades. The largest ground squirrel in its range, groundhogs like Phil are found throughout the midwestern United States, most of Canada, and into southern Alaska. M. monax is the most widespread marmot, while the Vancouver Island marmot (M. vancouverensis) is found only on one island in British Columbia. In total, there are 15 species in the genus Marmota, found around the world from as far south as the Jemez Mountains of New Mexico and the Pyrenees Moun…

Alphabet said on Wednesday it was targeting capital expenditure of $175 billion to $185 billion this year, in yet another aggressive ramp-up in spending from the Google parent as it deepens its investments to push ahead in the AI race. Analysts on average had expected Alphabet to spend about $115.26 billion this year, according to data compiled by LSEG. Shares of the company fell more than 6% in extended trading. Revenue at Google Cloud grew 48% to $17.7 billion in the fourth quarter ended December, compared with analysts’ average estimate of a 35.2% jump, according to data compiled by LSEG. Cloud computing majors have poured hundreds of billions of dollar…

Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issues—everything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor. A reader asks: I manage a team of four. One of my staff members, Jeff, asked to go to a conference that was about a five-hour drive away. I approved the request as the conference would be good for his professional development. Three other staff members from our closely connected teams were also going. Jeff registered for the conference. A couple of weeks later, he asked me about booking a flight to it. I was surprised by this, as the conference was a reasonable drivi…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. When assessing home price momentum, ResiClub believes it’s important to monitor active listings and months of supply. If active listings start to rapidly increase as homes remain on the market for longer periods, it may indicate pricing softness or weakness. Conversely, a rapid decline in active listings beyond seasonality could suggest a market that is heating up. Since the national pandemic housing boom fizzled out in 2022, the national power dynamic has slowly been shifting directionally from sellers to buyers. Of course, across the country, that …

My Non-Negotiable Mindset started with exercise, or more accurately, with not wanting to. That moment of resistance became a turning point in how I show up and follow through. I wasn’t lazy or undisciplined. I was human. And that’s when it clicked: if I only exercised when I felt like it, I’d never do it often enough to matter. So I made exercise non-negotiable, like brushing my teeth or showing up to teach a class. This commitment was to myself. No mood checks. No internal bargaining. No excuses. Four times a week, minimum. That was the contract. What changed wasn’t just my behavior; it was my identity. My thinking shifted from I need to exercise to I’m the k…

Sometimes it’s a fall that brings a broken hip and a loss of mobility. Or memory problems that bubble into danger. Or the death of the partner who was relied upon for care. The need to move to a nursing home, assisted living facility or another type of care setting often comes suddenly, setting off an abrupt, daunting search. It’s likely something no one ever wanted, but knowing what to look for and what to ask can make a big difference. What to do when looking for a long-term care facility: Start with government ratings Regulation of assisted living facilities varies greatly from state to state, meaning there’s no centralized standards or source for information.…

When Zillow launched 20 years ago, the home-buying process happened almost entirely offline. The company’s digital listings, combined with its innovative “Zestimate”—an estimate of a home’s value, based on the kind of data typically only available to real estate professionals—marked a turning point for the housing market. Zestimates weren’t exact representations of value, but they put power back in the hands of prospective buyers (to sellers’ and agents’ chagrin). Their near-instant popularity was an early “do your research” internet moment. Fast-forward to the present day, and Zillow, which has a $13 billion market cap and reports earnings after the market close on …

Trevor McOmber and his 14-year-old son, Tye, share a love for the Chicago Blackhawks. When Trevor was his son’s age, he watched the Blackhawks on TV, caught highlights on ESPN and read about the team in the newspaper. It’s a much different experience for Tye. “I go to YouTube with Snapchat, or Google something if I just have an idea that I want to know,” Tye McOmber said while sitting next to his father at a recent Blackhawks game. Tye McOmber is on the border of Generation Z, born roughly between 1997 to 2012, and Generation Alpha, approximately 2012 to 2024 — a sprawling group of people with unique media habits and diverse attitudes on where sports fit into their liv…

On a sidewalk, an unassuming junction box sits strapped to a fence. Inside, dozens of keychains, stickers, mini figurines, and other novelties wait to be discovered by eagle-eyed passersby or trinket traders who have traveled across the city to exchange their treasure. Trinket trading has taken off on social media in recent weeks. The trend first originated in Philadelphia, where Philly’s Trinket Trove began documenting the contents of a repurposed junction box on TikTok in September of last year. It has since spread nationwide, with communities from New York to San Francisco setting up their own boxes of assorted knick-knacks for anyone to stop by and tra…

If your employer offered you a lump sum to permanently ditch the job that stresses you out like no other, would you take the money and run—or worry about what it might cost you later? I never thought I’d actually encounter this career conundrum. Looking back, I’m surprised by the choice I made. The all-company virtual meeting initially seemed like any of the weeklies that had preceded it. There was a weird icebreaker to get folks loose, various team updates, some HR housekeeping. Then the billionaire who signed all of our checks took the screen. For months, senior leadership had been deprioritizing a project that I—and the vast majority of my colleagues—had been …

“Start in a low-level position and work your way upward.” Does that even apply anymore? In fact, the “career ladder” doesn’t work for everyone anymore. Right now, as technology disrupts the work rules, there are no clear paths forward. The linear career path changed somewhere between the rise of the gig economy and the rise of artificial intelligence. Companies are restructuring. Some industries may collapse entirely in the next five years. I’ve gone from studying law to studying software entrepreneurship to being a self-improvement essayist. My career is still an “experiment in progress.” The world of work is changing. And I’m changing with it. The people who ma…

Perusing the grocery aisle in the Westside Market on 23rd Street in Manhattan, you might not even notice the screens. They look just like paper price labels and, alongside a bar code, use a handwriting-style font we’ve come to associate with a certain merchant folksiness. They’re not particularly bright or showy. The only clues that they’re not ordinary sticky shelf labels are a barely distinguishable light bulb and, on some, a small QR code. These are electronic shelf labels, chip-enabled screens that some stores are now using to display product prices. Unlike their paper predecessors, the prices aren’t printed in ink but rendered in pixels, and they can change insta…

Advertising in generative AI systems has become a fault line. Last month, OpenAI released that it would start running ads in ChatGPT. Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, OpenAI’s chief financial officer defended the introduction of ads inside ChatGPT, arguing that it is a way to “democratize access to artificial intelligence,” and that this decision is aligned with its mission: “AGI for the benefit of humanity, not for the benefit of humanity who can pay.” Within days, Anthropic fired back in a Super Bowl commercial, ridiculing the idea that ads belong inside systems people trust for advice, therapy, and decision-making. In some way, this is a spat about ho…

A quarter of those under 30 say they’ve used AI for companionship, according to Associated Press-NORC polling. The one thing missing? Somewhere to take your AI Valentine on a date. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, EVA AI decided to solve that problem. The app—where users can text or, more recently, video chat with AI dates—organized a pop-up social experiment at Same Same Wine Bar in Manhattan this week. Over February 11 and 12, the dimly lit space was filled with patrons seated at tables for one, their AI companions propped up on phone stands. Attendees could bring their own existing AI partners or speed date from a selection of 100 characters. “This is another …

It’s only February, and an outbreak of measles infections is already inching toward nearly 1,000 cases this year in the U.S. Infections are at an all-time high as a result of declining vaccination rates, following a steep rise in cases in 2025 at 2,280 cases, the highest in 33 years. This week saw new outbreaks concentrated in both South Carolina and Florida. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? As of Thursday, February 12, there were 910 confirmed measles cases in 24 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Another six cases were reported among international visitors coming to the U.S.) Those states are: Ari…

This Presidents’ Day, I’ve been thinking about George Washington—not at his finest hour, but possibly at his worst. In 1754, a 22-year-old Washington marched into the wilderness surrounding Pittsburgh with more ambition than sense. He volunteered to travel to the Ohio Valley on a mission to deliver a letter from Robert Dinwiddie, governor of Virginia, to the commander of French troops in the Ohio territory. This military mission sparked an international war, cost him his first command and taught him lessons that would shape the American Revolution. As a professor of early American history who has written two books on the American Revolution, I’ve learned that Wash…

The Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, a protege of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and two-time presidential candidate who led the Civil Rights Movement for decades after the revered leader’s assassination, died Tuesday. He was 84. As a young organizer in Chicago, Jackson was called to meet with King at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis shortly before King was killed and he publicly positioned himself thereafter as King’s successor. Jackson led a lifetime of crusades in the United States and abroad, advocating for the poor and underrepresented on issues from voting rights and job opportunities to education and health care. He scored diplomatic victories with world leaders, and through…