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A new browser extension just debuted that’s designed to be used in tandem with an AI chatbot. Its goal is to make the experience worse. “Are you concerned that you or your loved ones might be experiencing a LLM-induced psychosis? Or participating in a massive de-skilling event? Or outsourcing cognitive and emotional functions to auto-complete?” designer Sam Lavigne asks in a YouTube video introducing his new product. “Then you should install ‘Slow LLM’ on your computer.” Lavigne is an assistant professor of synthetic media and algorithmic justice at Parsons School of Design, as well as an artist and web designer. Slow LLM is his latest creation, and its entire…

Have you ever tried quickly looking something up on Wikipedia—just because you’re curious or maybe for work—only to, a half an hour later, wonder why you’re reading about the history of the European Space Agency? In my opinion, Wikipedia is one of the last good websites on the internet. Outside of the occasional fundraiser, there are no ads, no dark patterns, and no clickbait—it’s just information. Which leaves no doubt in my mind that falling into a Wikipedia rabbit hole is healthier than scrolling on social media. Even so, it can be addictive, and links are the reason why. Every Wikipedia article is jam packed with links to other Wikipedia articles, which is exa…

Dried paint was becoming a problem for Billie Asmus. An entrepreneur who was running a small furniture refinishing company from her basement studio, she kept having to toss out paint trays that were caked with dried paint. “I looked over at my garbage can and it was just filled with plastic paint dry liners. And I was like, oh my gosh, there seriously has to be a better way. Something that’s more sustainable, something with a lid, something that’s reusable,” she says. It was 2021. She searched in all the typical places online for a product that could cut down her modest business’s immodest waste stream. “Nothing showed up,” she says. “That sent me down this huge rabbi…

When construction started on a new affordable apartment building in Brooklyn, most of the work on the site happened very quickly. Instead of typical construction, cranes lifted giant modular units into the air—each made up of two separate apartments, plus the corridor between them—and set them into place. Trucks delivered nearly four dozen 60-foot-long “mods” from the factory where they were built in Pennsylvania, staging them next to a nearby cemetery in the Brooklyn neighborhood of East Flatbush. Then, each day for two weeks, construction crews stacked together as many as six of the units. (The massive size of the units made them more challenging to transport than a…

Thanks to social media, a new legion of fans are discovering something new to love at Buc-ee’s: The OverBite. Though it’s been on the shelves at Buc-ee’s for several years, the hockey puck-shaped, chocolate covered candy bar has become a bit of a viral sensation more recently. Available in five different flavors, these quarter-pound treats feature a thick layer of either milk or dark chocolate and fillings like peanut butter, caramel, and cookies and cream. It seems Rich O’Toole, a Texas-based singer and songwriter, may get credit for kicking into overdrive the latest frenzy over the OverBite. In a post on X that’s amassed more than 8 million views since Monday,…

Like many American cities, the streetscape in downtown Brooklyn was for a long time very heavy on the street: a great place to park a car or drive through. But over the past 20 years, the area itself has gone from being a 9-to-5 shopping and business district to one where a growing number of people live 24-7. Since 2004, more than 22,000 housing units have been added to the neighborhood, changing its character so much that its old streetscape just wasn’t cutting it. “There was a real evolution of the neighborhood,” says Regina Myer, president of the Downtown Brooklyn Partnership (DBP), a business improvement district representing the area’s business owners, shopkee…

After grabbing a handful of popcorn at an event held by California-based startup Savor, my fingers are left with a familiar sheen: the residue of the butter that coats the small kernels. When I later grab a blini (topped with lentils), the small pancake is so full of butter that it immediately coats my tongue in a velvety layer of fat. A mushroom “scallop,” grilled in butter, is rich and savory. The butter used in all these dishes is rich, creamy, indulgent. But it isn’t made from animals. It isn’t even made from plants, like avocado oil or coconut oil or olive oil. Instead, it’s made from energy—on this night specifically, methane. [Photo: courtesy Savor] Sa…

The wildfires that blazed through Los Angeles earlier this year, some of the fastest-spreading fires on record, underscored the risk of living in homes known to be at high risk for future fires. One national homebuilder, KB Home, believes that risk can be reduced by building a wildfire-resilient neighborhood. Dixon Trail, a community of 64 homes under construction in Escondido, California, near San Diego, will be the first neighborhood to earn the new Wildfire Prepared Neighborhood standard developed by the Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety (IBHS). [Image: KB Home]Each individual home will meet the Wildfire Prepared Home Plus certification, an IBHS desi…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has alerted the public to a threat posed by select canned tuna products. The canned tuna is at risk of harboring the bacterium that causes botulism, a potentially fatal form of food poisoning. Here’s what you need to know about the canned tuna recall. What’s happened? The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has posted a recall notice on its website announcing that select cans of Genova Yellowfin Tuna have the potential to be contaminated with Clostridium botulinum, a bacterium that can cause botulism in humans and animals who consume it. The canned tuna is produced by the El Segundo, California Tri-Union Seafoods compan…

If you’ve been curious about #vanlife but can’t justify dropping $100,000 on a kitted-out camper, a new patent from a Chinese automaker offers a compromise – but you might not like it. Seres, a prominent EV maker out of China, just secured a patent for an in-car toilet that slides out and tucks away beneath the seat. The patent, first reported outside of China by Autoblog, was filed in April of last year, approved last week, and is currently active. The patented design looks practical enough, with a rail system that allows a compact toilet to slide out from under the seat like a drawer and remain hidden from view when not in use. The design is intended to “satisfy…

In a time when hiring has slowed dramatically, layoffs have become the norm, and AI has flattened early differentiation, even job titles have blurred. The problem is that capable, experienced people increasingly describe feeling stalled, unseen, or interchangeable in today’s workforce. Consider the current landscape of advice to understand the dilemma. People are encouraged to stand out, but without guidance on how to do so. They’re told to pick a lane and niche down, while careers are becoming more nonlinear. What’s missing is a true strategy that reflects how work actually functions today. That’s where optimal distinctiveness becomes an advantage. Social psycho…

Ginny Wright, CEO of beauty conglomerate Orveon Global—owner of BareMinerals and Laura Mercier—is no stranger to the beauty business. She spent much of her career rising through the ranks of L’Oreal, eventually becoming president of legacy skincare brand Kiehl’s. Then, in 2021, she pivoted to work in luxury as one of the few female CEOs in the luxury watch business when she took the helm of Audemars Piguet Americas. During her tenure, she prioritized marketing to women, raising the percentage of women purchasing watches for themselves from 14% to more than 30% in just over four years. Now back in the beauty industry, Wright is using her knowledge of the luxury c…

Last week, Block CEO Jack Dorsey shared that his fintech company would be cutting 40% of its workforce, arguing that AI would allow them to do more with smaller teams. Many observers wondered if the large-scale layoffs reflected the new reality amid rapid AI adoption, and whether it was just a matter of time before other companies followed suit. But not everyone is buying it. In a post on X, Whoop CEO Will Ahmed shared that his company—which makes health and fitness wearables—would be nearly doubling its 800-employee headcount this year, drawing a contrast with employers that have been slashing jobs over the last year. He then weighed in on the growing trend of compa…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc.and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. During Charles Giancarlo’s first all-hands meeting after becoming CEO of Pure Storage in 2017, an employee asked: “How long are we going to keep the name Pure Storage?” The question suggested that having “storage” in the company’s name limited the range of products and services it could offe…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Being a life sciences CEO is not for the faint of heart. Drug discovery and patent approvals are costly and time-consuming, and even if an executive can steer a company to clinical trials, there’s a very small chance the product will be commercialized. One study says that 90% of clinical dr…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. When I was a young professional in the 1990s, I didn’t aspire to be a CEO. (I was a business journalist focused on getting more challenging editorial assignments.) And even if I had wanted to run a company, I wouldn’t have known how to cobble together the necessary experiences to qualify fo…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Nearly 20 years ago, Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen published The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail, his groundbreaking work about why successful companies often lose their way. But CEOs still struggle with one of the book’s central …

When we consider the subway, it’s often for reasons that have to do with decay and deterioration. The switches are outdated. The elevators are broken. The train is late (again). Of course it could be better, but rarely do we pause to take in what the system does right. Its 25 lines, 472 stations, and 665 miles of track traverse the city and offer a tremendous amount of mobility. And now, a new digital installation at the Fulton Street subway station by the information designer Giorgia Lupi and her team at Pentagram pays tribute to the system. “Sometimes adults lose the ability to see magic in mundane things and to treat what we experience every day with a …

When you think of an electrical outlet, the first thing that likely comes to mind is a simple, rectangular device mounted on the wall—purely functional, often hidden from sight. Architect and designer India Mahdavi has different ideas, though. Working with the high-end electrical brand 22 System, Mahdavi reimagined the outlet as a cheerful pop of color that’s reminiscent of a smiley face. [Photo: Thierry Depagne/22 System] Omer Arbel, co-founder of 22 System and design brand Bocci, asked Mahdavi to bring an unexpected element of joy to this everyday utility by creating a distinct colorway for the existing outlet face—transforming it from a discreet necessity i…

Most people don’t give the display screens on their commuter trains a second thought, but for designer Emily Sneddon, they’ve proved to be a well of inspiration. Sneddon lived in San Francisco, where she worked at the design agency Collins, from 2021 until this year when she moved back to her home country of Australia. She designed Fran Sans, her first ever font, after noticing the display on San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) recently retired Muni Metro Breda Light Rail Vehicle. Unlike New York City, which handles its public transit through a single agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), public transportation in San Fra…

Everyone who has tried to code with Anthropic’s Claude Code AI agents runs into the same usability problem: If you run two or three concurrent artificial intelligence sessions—say, one rewriting your server code, another generating tests, a third doing background research—you are forced to manually hunt through separate terminal tabs, each one generating a relentless stream of machine-readable log entries, just to figure out what each program is actually doing at any given moment. Not only is it hard to follow what’s really going on, but not checking constantly can also lead to problems, as agents might stop to ask you something and you won’t notice it for minutes or hou…

I can’t think of anything better than assembling Lego blocks. Except assembling gigantic Lego that I can actually walk, jump, and nap on. Which is precisely what Lego and Nike did at Baoshan No. 2 Central Primary School in Shanghai.​ The school has 1,400 students who previously had insufficient sport and play facilities. Nike, which is building 100 playgrounds in schools all around China, decided to partner with Lego to fix that (the two are already partners in a series of cross-branding Lego sets and sports gear). According to the companies, the design was deeply collaborative and student-driven—and it shows: Instead of the previous sad concrete playground there’s no…

When the House of Cinema in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, was demolished in 2017, it was an architectural awakening for the city. A large circular concrete building completed in 1982, the House of Cinema was an instant cultural and architectural landmark in the city, then part of the Soviet Union. Its demolition, to make way for a controversial commercial development project, spurred many in the city to worry about which landmark would fall next. That led the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation to launch a citywide research project to document endangered buildings. Most were built between the late 1960s and early 1980s when the Soviet Union sought to frame its a…

Call it the day the music died. On December 31, 2025, MTV’s last music-only stations shut down forever​. The last video played on MTV Music in the U.K. was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles—which was also the first video ever played on the original MTV channel in the United States back in 1981. That’s a good 44 years of music history, bookended with a song that explores the theme of technology changing the way people experience art. It’s beautiful, in a way: A song that mourns the end of the radio age is played to mourn the end of another era. If you, like me, enjoy having random music videos on in the background while you work—or even just having them …