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We’re in our optimization era: Increasingly connected, efficient, and, perhaps unsurprisingly, incapable of giving anything our full attention. But I don’t want to be optimized anymore. Algorithms predict what we’ll watch, AI generates what we’ll read, and marketing systems are built specifically to remove friction from discovery to purchase. Feeds blur together, and messages feel interchangeable. Connection—the thing marketing is supposed to create—has become exponentially harder to achieve. We need to bring the friction back, and that doesn’t come from obsessing over scale. Connection isn’t about reaching everyone at once; it’s about showing up meaningfully in the c…

Whataburger, the Texas fast food chain known for its made-to-order burger, is continuing its planned expansion across the U.S. The “hometown burger place that hasn’t compromised” will open 15 new restaurants by the end of June, according to what the brand recently told USA Today. The chain first announced it would be growing in 2020, after being acquired by BDT Capital Partners the previous year. Shortly thereafter, the fast food joint began launching new locations in new states. It focused its growth most aggressively in Southern states like Tennessee, Missouri, and Florida. At the time, the company said in a press release, that the chain isn’t just growing, but al…

U.K.-based Wren Kitchens abruptly ceased all U.S. operations on April 23, shuttering all brick-and-mortar retail locations and all of its showroom studios inside The Home Depot stores nationwide. Court documents show that Wren Kitchens filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the District of Delaware bankruptcy court on April 24. According to social media, the sudden closure blindsided employees and customers. Former U.S. employees, including workers at the company’s manufacturing facility in Hanover Township, Pennsylvania, are now without jobs. Unfortunately, many customers say they are now facing uncertainty, with some saying they’ve demolished kitchens and are still await…

The parent company of Hinge and Tinder is courting a potential new addition to its roster. Match Group on Monday announced a $100 million investment in Sniffies, a map-based cruising platform for queer men. As part of the investment, Sniffies will continue to be led by founder and CEO Blake Gallagher, the company said. “From the first conversations with the Match Group team, we knew they understood what makes Sniffies different. This partnership is about supporting that, not redefining it,” Gallagher said in a statement on the Sniffies Instagram—which was met with skepticism by followers. Sniffies launched in 2018 and has three million monthly active users v…

On April 27, jury selection began at the Oakland, California, federal courthouse for a high-stakes legal showdown between tech CEOs Elon Musk and Sam Altman. Outside the building, a giant cardboard cutout of Musk (dripping wet in a pair of swim shorts) stared down onlookers, while someone in a robot costume led two protestors around in chains. These visual spectacles are part of a larger protest that’s emerging around the trial—which began with opening arguments on April 28—and the two widely disliked tech bros at its center. The trial stems from a lawsuit, filed by Musk in 2024, which argues that ChatGPT-maker Open AI and its CEO, Altman, abandoned the company’s orig…

More than 900 complaints that mention SpaceX or its Starlink internet service have been filed with the Federal Communications Commission over the past five years, according to files obtained through a public records request. The complaints provide a view into how the technology has already evolved into a critical lifeline for some rural U.S. residents. They also provide insight into some of the leading issues that frustrate Starlink customers, including variant—and sometimes disappointing—internet speeds, as well as poor customer service. The documents obtained by Fast Company come from the FCC, the federal agency that regulates telecommunications providers. Cus…

You’re three days into a work trip in a foreign city, running late for a meeting, and you yank the zipper on your carry-on one last time to force it closed. It catches. You pull harder. The slider pops off the track, and suddenly a piece of luggage that cost you several hundred dollars is, for all practical purposes, an open box with wheels. You find a hotel concierge who points you to a cobbler. You buy a roll of duct tape. You miss your meeting. The zipper is the single most common failure point on a rolling suitcase. It’s the part under the most stress every time a traveler overpacks, sits on the suitcase’s lid to close it, or hands the bag to a gate agent to be to…

Australia has proposed taxing digital giants Meta, Google and TikTok on a part of their revenue to pay for news reporters. The government released draft legislation Tuesday it intends to introduce to Parliament by July 2 that would create a financial incentive for the social media companies to strike deals with news organizations to pay for journalism. The platforms’ criticisms included that the proposal was a “digital services tax” that misunderstood the evolving advertising industry and would fail to deliver a sustainable news sector. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said a monetary value needed to be attached to journalists’ work. “It shouldn’t just be ab…

The long-awaited 2026 FIFA World Cup kicks off in less than 45 days and fans may still be able to score some tickets—although not always for a low price. Soccer’s largest tournament is arriving in North America on June 11, with 16 host cities across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico readying for the quadrennial festivities. But even as the upcoming World Cup has expanded the number of qualifying teams from 32 to 48 countries with over 100 games scheduled, snagging affordable tickets remains difficult. In fact, this year’s World Cup has raised criticism over the sky-high ticket prices leaving many fans out of the stadium. Take the four tickets for the final game that ma…

Bill Ackman has made a lot of noise in recent years. On Wednesday, that noise came in the form of ringing the opening bell on the New York Stock Exchange, in honor of the initial public offering of his hedge fund, Pershing Square. Here’s what you need to know about Ackman’s latest move and the Pershing Square IPO. What is Pershing Square? Pershing Square Inc is the parent company for Ackman’s hedge fund, Pershing Square Capital Management, and the closed-end management company Pershing Square USA. What is being offered on the market? Shares in Pershing Square Inc. and Pershing Square USA are being put on the market in a combined IPO, with two stocks. …

Executive leaders today face mounting pressure to boost productivity and innovation with AI. Employees—on the other hand—report low trust in organizational change and limited information about how AI will impact their work (or whether it’s going to replace the jobs that the company hired them to do). According to a December 2025 Gartner survey of 110 CHROs, 95% reported undertaking AI-related initiatives in their organizations. But while many companies are experimenting widely with AI, most organizations are struggling to translate AI investment into something that actually improves their businesses. Why AI adoption isn’t that simple AI adoption is uniquely dif…

The new orthopedic wing at Sanford Health’s hospital campus in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, has a unique patient-centric amenity that few other hospitals can offer. On the top two floors of the facility, which conducts surgeries and emergency services and connects to a nearby delivery ward, there is now a hotel. In largely rural South Dakota, where a trip to the hospital often means a drive halfway across the state, hospital patients now have the option to stay overnight ahead of a big procedure under the same roof as the hospital. “It’s much more convenient for patients to go down an elevator ride for eight floors and check in for surgery than commuting across town or …

With gas prices, energy bills, and grocery costs all rising, the affordability crisis is top of mind for most workers. But you can’t talk about that crisis without also talking about extreme wealth inequality, says Patricia Stottlemyer, policy lead for labor rights at Oxfam America. And just as affordability has worsened recently, so has the gap between regular workers and the rich, including company CEOs. In 2025, for example, the top 1,500 CEOs of the world’s largest corporations saw an 11% real-terms pay raise. The average global worker, on the other hand, saw their real wages increase by only 0.5%. That means those CEOs saw their pay increase 20 time…

AI is changing how directors and cinematographers work—but not the way you might think When people think of artificial intelligence in Hollywood, they might picture deepfakes, synthetic actors, or AI-generated scripts and video. Google’s Veo3, along with other tools like Pika Labs and Kling AI, made headlines for their photorealistic AI generated video clips (as did OpenAI’s Sora 2 before the company in March announced plans to shutter it). But for freelance filmmakers, the real shift is happening behind the scenes. For years, cinematographers and directors have had to wear many hats: artist, technician, project manager, negotiator. Now, AI is quietly taking over…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported a Salmonella outbreak in more than a dozen states. Worse, the outbreak appears to be linked to a strain of the bacterium that may be resistant to antibiotics. Here’s what you need to know about the source of the outbreak, where its occuring, and what you can do about it. What’s happened? On April 23, the CDC posted an update regarding its ongoing investigation into a multistate outbreak of Salmonella infections. The outbreak is believed to be linked to backyard poultry, such as ducks and chickens. The first reported infection linked to the outbreak is believed to have occurred on February 2…

It’s official: the robots are taking over. Taking over the internet, that is. Conspiracy theorists have long discussed the “dead internet” theory, which reasons that online spaces, once entirely populated and filled with content created by humans, have slowly become dominated by bots posing as people. The more extreme conspiracists allege that this transformation is deliberate, with governments and corporations using the bots to manipulate public perception. With the rise of AI since ChatGPT’s debut in 2022, the dead internet theory—or at least some version of it—has sounded more and more plausible. Now, according to a recent study, it’s closer to coming true. …

For those who don’t remember what life on the internet looked like in 2023, here’s a refresher: girl dinner, the Roman Empire, and a TikTok algorithm painted purple from the McDonald’s Grimace Shake. The trend was simple, albeit strange: a user would film themselves trying out the purple McDonald’s beverage and then immediately cut to a horror-movie scene of their own faked death. The purple vanilla-berry-flavored milkshake was rolled out by the fast food chain in June of that year as a limited-edition menu item in honor of one of the chain’s mascots, Grimace. While the fake death trend garnered over 2.9 billion views on TikTok, and reportedly boosted sales by…

When you interact with a chatbot, there’s a good chance that everything you say, and every prompt you give, isn’t just used to generate replies to your queries. Nearly every chatbot company on the planet also uses the information you provide to train its AI models. This can leave your privacy—and even your employer’s confidential information—exposed. But you can mitigate these privacy risks by telling chatbots not to use your data for training. Here’s how. What is AI chatbot training? In order for a chatbot to provide knowledgeable and (hopefully) accurate answers, the underlying large language model (LLM) that powers it needs to assimilate a massive amount of info…

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 increase rapidly 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 where sellers are gaining power. Since the national pandemic housing boom fizzled out in 2022, the power dynamic has slowly been shifting directionally from sellers to buyers. Of course, that shift has varied…

There is a troubling contradiction at the heart of the global transition to a cleaner, greener, tech-driven future: Modern technologies—everything from AI to wind turbines, as well as cellphones, electric vehicles and defense systems—depend on critical minerals. But many of the communities where those minerals are mined end up with polluted water and poorer health because of the mining. Lithium powers batteries. Cobalt stabilizes them. Copper carries electricity. Rare earth elements make wind turbines and digital devices efficient and durable. Each of these are essential to the technologies of the fourth industrial revolution, but they are also toxic and require enorm…

Bozoma Saint John shares her approach to leadership, emphasizing curiosity as a driving force behind growth, confidence, and long-term success View the full article

CEO of Black Girls Code, Cristina Mancini shares her perspective on leaders treating DEI as a brand strategy rather than a true commitment. View the full article

New York City is notoriously loud. Cabs honking everywhere, thousands of people flocking to the streets at all hours, and cars blasting music for all to hear. But while some of us hear only noise, others hear music. Joshua Wolk is one of those people. The designer is the creative mind behind Train Jazz, which turns the rhythm of NYC’s subway into an interactive musical website. Train Jazz started when Wolk came across New York City’s open repository of transit data. He first created a soundless live map of the city’s transit. “It felt unfinished. I soon realized that music was that missing piece,” he tells Fast Company. Train Jazz Wolk ended up assig…

Every few months, we find ourselves circling back to the same question. What skills will matter next? Every time, the answers feel urgent, confident, and somehow incomplete. A new technology dominates the conversation. Or there’s a new ‘essential’ capability. Organizations rush to respond, often without much confidence that the target will stay still long enough to hit. The reality is that the future of work is no longer unfolding in neat stages. It’s arriving in overlapping waves. Technological change, geopolitical instability, climate pressure, demographic shifts, and changing expectations about work are all happening at once. In this kind of environment…

In a recent episode of the Big Technology Podcast, Mark Cuban shared what he would do if he was a soon-to-be college grad on the job hunt in the current turbulent market. Cuban said young professionals shouldn’t look to big companies—which have already put a pause on hiring entry-level roles, especially for software engineers and programmers. Instead, he said, they should shift their focus to outsourcing their AI skills to smaller-scale companies. “If I was graduating today, or if I was a 16-year-old looking for a job, I would learn everything there is to know about AI. And I would go to small and medium-size businesses and say, ‘Let me walk in the door,’” Cuban s…