What's on Your Mind?

Venmo is getting its first full app overhaul since its inception in 2009, and it’s addressing some major UX issues that have made using the platform feel like the digital equivalent of flipping through a phone book. When Venmo was launched, it was a breath of fresh air in the finance space. It stood out for its social network-style approach to bill splitting and rent requests. Since then, though, Venmo’s aspirations have far outgrown its app interface. In the first quarter of 2026, PayPal (Venmo’s parent company) shared that Venmo’s total payment volume was up 14% year-over-year, marking its sixth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth. According to Alexis So…

Climate change is making your allergies worse, in part by creating longer and more intense pollen seasons, according to a growing body of research from a number of scientists and physicians. “We know that climate change is leading to greater amounts of pollen in the atmosphere,” says Paul Beggs, an environmental health scientist and professor at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, who published a 2024 paper on the link between climate change and asthma. “It’s changing the seasonality of the pollen. It’s changing the types of pollen that we’re exposed to.” With pollen season already underway in many parts of the U.S., the AccuWeather 2026 US Allergy Forecast…

“I’m fine”—a vast majority of women utter those two words reflexively in various scenarios, when they’re not, in fact, fine. Now, Megababe is tackling this so-called ‘comfort tax’ with an ad campaign designed to encourage women to better advocate for themselves. On Monday, the personal care brand unveiled a series of bright orange-and-white ads across New York City that underscore how women have normalized discomfort. The campaign marks Megababe’s first foray into social-first messaging. It comes alongside the results of a March survey it conducted, which found that 85% of women would rather be uncomfortable than inconvenience someone else. Women claiming to b…

First you choose a partner, then you choose a genome? For this episode of FC Explains, Fast Company Senior Writer Ainsley Harris digs into the rapidly growing world of embryo genetic screening, including IVF startups like Orchid and Nucleus that offer parents the ability to select embryos based on genome sequencing. Proponents say this kind of genetic testing helps optimize health outcomes and prevent hereditary disease. Parents say it’s giving their kids the best shot at life. On this episode of FC Explains we dig into why some scientists have called polygenic embryo screening “modern snake oil,” and why others are calling for an urgent, society-wide conversation abo…

British pop star Dua Lipa is suing Samsung Electronics for at least $15 million in damages alleging the South Korean electronics company illegally used a copyrighted image of her without permission. The legal complaint filed Friday in the United States District Court for the Central District of California alleges Samsung used an image of Lipa for some of its television cardboard boxes in circulation last year. According to the lawsuit, Lipa accuses Samsung of violating her “right of publicity” as well as infringing on her copyright and trademark rights. The image in question is allegedly taken from a performance at the Austin City Limits music festival in 2024. Ac…

A $20 smoothie and a $19 single strawberry could only belong in one place: Erewhon, the luxury grocery chain and celebrity hot spot in Los Angeles. But as of last week, it’s not the only so-called hypebeast grocer in West Hollywood. Just a few blocks away from one of Erewhon’s various locations, Laurel Supply, a giant market filled with natural light and timber interiors, looks unmistakably like an Erewhon to those passing by. The team behind the venture are the owners of the neighboring restaurant Laurel Hardware, meaning they had a deep knowledge of the area before opening, which, according to the local newspaper WEHO Times, was years in the making. Lau…

Your family group chat’s favorite daily word game is about to get an adaptation for the screen. In a series of press releases published this morning, The New York Times and NBC announced a new joint venture: a game show series based on Wordle, The Times’ fan-favorite word-guessing game. The show will be produced by Universal Television Alternative Studio in partnership with Electric Hot Dog (Jimmy Fallon’s production company) and The Times. Wordle’s popularity is part of a broader, successful Games operation at The Times that’s turned users’ interactions with the publication into a daily ritual. And the forthcoming TV show is just the latest evidence of how much o…

You know the feeling we are talking about. Your friend calls to ask for your help moving on a Saturday when you were planning on doing nothing. Or your sister-in-law asks you to invest in her business, and you are afraid there is no way it will succeed. Even when the person asking for the favor isn’t someone central to your life, it is still painful to say no. Most of us don’t even like saying no to telemarketers. That’s why there are so many jobs in sales. Often, we end up making bad decisions to avoid the short-term discomfort of turning people down. Look, we agree—saying no is hard. The good news is that a little preparation and practice will make it easier. Even i…

Simone Stolzoff has a gift for asking questions that slice the soul. In his first book, The Good Enough Job, he asks how work came to be so central to our identities, and what we can do to rebalance our lives. He’s a journalist whose writing on the intersection of work, identity, and relationships has appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Wired, and National Geographic. Now he’s back with a second book: How to Not Know: The Value of Uncertainty in a World that Demands Answers. This time around, he unpacks why uncertainty generates so much anxiety, and what we can do about it. In a world where climate change is reshaping the actual landscape, politicians a…

If you’re a sports fan on TikTok, you’ve almost certainly heard the song “Orla” by the British DJ and producer Nimino. Since its release in early March, the song has soundtracked nearly 150,000 videos on the platform. For Nimino, that doesn’t just mean more exposure for his music. It means money. A lot of the sports-world accounts that have used his track are businesses—Atlético de Madrid, the “Men in Blazers” podcast, Major League Baseball, the LPGA, and the Philadelphia Eagles—that accessed the song via TikTok’s growing Commercial Music Library (CML), which ensures artists are paid when their music is used commercially. The library offers the plat…

Today, Spotify is releasing some never-before-seen data to users—and it’s coming in a format that looks strikingly familiar. To celebrate its 20-year anniversary, Spotify is launching Your Party of the Year(s), an in-app experience designed to hit users with a blast of nostalgia by walking them through highlights of their own user journey with the app, including their first song ever streamed. The format is a click-through, interactive infographic, and it looks a whole lot like Spotify Wrapped. Since it debuted in 2014, Wrapped has become a core pillar of Spotify’s business. In 2025, more than 300 million users engaged with the launch, up 20% from 2024. And that’…

After a rough start to the year, America’s four major publicly traded quantum computing companies are surging once again. The latest rally kicked off about a month ago, right around World Quantum Day, and since then, all four quantum computing companies—D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS), IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ), Quantum Computing Inc. (Nasdaq: QUBT), and Rigetti Computing, Inc. (Nasdaq: RGTI)—have recovered much of their 2026 losses. And today, their stocks are up even more. Here’s why. Quantum stocks are finally reversing their bad start to 2026 America’s so-called Quantum Four publicly traded companies saw an incredible year of stock gains in 2025. But in…

U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer told members of his Cabinet on Tuesday that he has no intention of resigning as calls within his Labour Party for him to step down grew louder. Starmer is trying to shore up support within his Cabinet following a febrile few days in the wake of hefty losses for the Labour Party in local elections last week, which if repeated in a national election would see it overwhelmingly ejected from power. The meeting, which lasted about an hour, took place as around 80 Labour backbenchers, or nearly a fifth of the party’s representation in the House of Commons, said Starmer should stand down, or at least set out a timetable for his departure. Under…

Finally, some good news. Amid widespread reports of retail closure after closure, a new report on retail market dynamics from the real estate services company JLL outlines the sectors that are leading openings so far in 2026. Restaurants and discount dollar stores lead the way, with Dollar Tree opening 400 new stores and Starbucks opening 175. The growth across these industries is promising, even as other areas are still facing closures in the first quarter of 2026. But the same thing happened last year, with early 2025 closures evening out by the end of the year. Even as store closures continue to create vacancies, other tenants are quick to move into th…

Twelve years ago BuzzFeed Inc reportedly valued itself at almost $1 billion, scaring off rumored interest from the Walt Disney Company. Fast-forward to this week and BuzzFeed is selling a controlling stake to Allen Family Digital for $120 million—$100 million of which isn’t due for five years. Allen Family Digital, associated with Byron Allen, will control about 52% of BuzzFeed’s outstanding shares at $3 each. BuzzFeed’s shares were up more than 101% to over $1.49 on Tuesday morning. The stock has been trading at under a dollar a share for most of this year. What the deal means for BuzzFeed As part of the deal, BuzzFeed CEO and founder Jonah Peretti …

Amazon can deliver anything—including, increasingly, eyeballs to advertisers. And now, its upcoming slate of content, including an adaptation of the best-selling novel Fourth Wing and a list of young adult content, is sure to have advertisers excited. The e-commerce giant held its annual Upfront event at the Beacon Theater in New York City on Monday night, showcasing new TV shows, movies, sports, and podcasting content destined for its Prime Video streaming platform and podcasting platforms. While there were big names in attendance—the event included appearances by Oprah Winfrey, Chris Pratt, Arnold Schwarzenegger, and Michael B. Jordan, among others—what stole th…

In a trial featuring a clash between Elon Musk and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, neither of the tech titans has emerged as an overly sympathetic character. But nobody has more to lose than Altman, who is expected to take the stand this week to defend himself. Already, testimony about Altman’s turbulent tenure at the ChatGPT maker has become prime fodder for internet jokes. One piece of evidence that has inspired countless memes was a text exchange between Altman and a company officer, Mira Murati, in 2023 during his short-lived ouster as CEO, when Altman asked if things were moving “directionally good or bad” and she wrote back: “Sam this is very bad.” Musk, the world’s riches…

When Threads launched in 2023, it was almost entirely defined in relation to other platforms: It was an offshoot of Instagram, an alternative to Twitter, and a competitor to Bluesky. Three years later, the platform is finally ready to strike out on its own, starting with a few subtle but meaningful changes to its brand identity. This week, Threads quietly debuted a refreshed logo and wordmark, which officially rolled out to users on May 11. After some eagle-eyed fans noticed the small changes, Threads’ head of design Christopher Clare posted an explanation to the platform: “It’s been almost 3 years since Threads launched—essentially as a side project of Instagram—so …

If you’re prone to anxiety, chances are you’ve received a lot of frustratingly simple advice over the years. Go for a walk! Get more sleep! Meditate! To be clear, all of these are good ideas. But when your brain won’t turn off, they’re often not enough. That’s especially the case for high-functioning, high-achieving individuals. Part of the disconnect might be that we often confuse stress with anxiety. Although the two are related, they’re different problems that demand distinct solutions. While stress is usually circumstantial—a response to external demands—anxiety generally comes from within, and might or might not involve an active trigger. While stress might d…

Inside Ikea’s movie studio-size marketing and production facility at the company’s headquarters in Älmhult, Sweden, a corner of a vast soundstage is piled with a multicolored array of what look like props from some fantastical children’s show. There’s a bench that rocks from side to side, a bright blue lamp that hides two transformative elbows in its skinny post, a glass vase with jug ears sticking out from its sides, and a clock on the end of a curvaceous red tube that looks like a worm wiggling its way out of the dirt. These whimsical items are all part of Ikea’s new PS collection, a once-in-a-while recurring product drop that the company uses to stretch its exp…

I mowed a lot of lawns and cleaned a lot of gutters as a kid, but my first consistent job was delivering newspapers. Today that sounds quaint, but it was a rite of passage back in the day. I grew up in Chevy Chase, Maryland, just outside Washington, D.C., raised primarily by my mom and in the most modest house of anyone I knew. She used to say we were never poor– we just didn’t have a lot of money. So at age 15 when I heard that a Washington Post delivery route paid $100/month, I jumped at the chance. This was the Post in its prime, not long after its reporting on the Watergate scandal made the paper famous. Every home in the area had a subscription. Politicians, …

In Seattle, the average price of a gallon of gas is now $5.96, a 30-cent increase from only a month ago and a $1.50 increase from a year ago. The United States and Israel’s conflict in Iran, and the constricted flow of oil through the Strait of Hormuz, has caused gas prices across the country to soar. That’s made workplace commutes more costly for Americans already facing an affordability crisis. For students, staff, and faculty at the University of Washington, though, they have a new way to get to work if they want to ditch their cars. The university recently set up a partnership with Ridepanda, which allows companies to offer e-bike and scooter subscriptio…

According to Amazon employees, the company is pushing them to incorporate more and more AI in their workflows. What exactly they should be using it for is less clear—leaving the door open for employees to waste AI resources on unnecessary tasks. As detailed in a new report by The Financial Times, Amazon employees are reportedly using the company’s new internal AI tool MeshClaw to create extraneous AI agents, not to increase productivity, but to drive up AI activity. The employees say Amazon is tracking their consumption of AI tokens, incentivizing some of their colleagues to prioritize quantity over quality when it comes to the technology. Amazon employees sou…

In 2011, Palantir created a combined role for their solutions engineers and integration engineers. The company called this new role “forward-deployed engineers,” or FDEs, for short. An Andreessen Horowitz blog post dubbed the recasting “title arbitrage,” arguing that Palantir had created this new title to signify the important, new capabilities and powers evolving at the company. Put simply: FDEs are people who can sell AI products to businesses while also teaching AI models how to work for said businesses. More than a decade after Palantir popularized the title, tech CEOs are betting that FDEs are the next big thing in the industry. “Forward deployed engineers, o…

As the weather gets warmer, 7-Eleven is readying for the summer with discounted prices, cold drinks, and loyalty rewards. Leading up to Slurpee day on July 11 (or 7/11), the convenience store chain will roll out a “Slurpee Drink Happy Hour,” offering large Slurpees for just a dollar. The catch? The program is only open to those enrolled in 7-Eleven’s loyalty programs, 7Rewards and Speedy Rewards. First introduced in 1966 by 7-Eleven, the Slurpee is one of the company’s hero products, offering buyers a frozen and colorful carbonated drink. For those wishing to cash in on the summer promotion, it will be offered at select 7-Eleven, Speedway, and Stripes location…