What's on Your Mind?

AI has a writing style, or, at least, an alleged style. Tools like ChatGPT and Claude seem to communicate with a tendency toward formalism. The chatbots are earnest, sometimes too evenhanded or overly complimentary. There’s a noticeable lack of personal flair, and no deeply held opinions. According to Grammarly, AI language tends to evoke “repetitive phrasing” and “robotic tone.” Now, there are even AI buzzwords and phrases like pivotal and delve into and underscore. It’s the verbiage of instruction booklets for middle schoolers writing their first essays. In the age of AI, these helpful crutch words are now verbata non grata. Some people are now trying to avoid usin…

Pittsburgh International Airport (PIT) was never really meant to serve Pittsburgh. When the modern airport opened in 1992, it was built as a hub for U.S. Airways, primarily serving as a connection point for passengers heading elsewhere. Tens of millions of passengers used PIT annually, though only a small number of them were actually flying into or out of Greater Pittsburgh. Most stayed in the terminal, leaving one gate only to enter another, which was fine—until it wasn’t. “In 2004, the hub went away. Passengers plummeted. All those connecting passengers left,” says Christina Cassotis, who came on as CEO of the Allegheny County Airport Authority in 2015. After years …

You might not know it from the headlines, but there is some good news about the global fight against climate change. A decade ago, the cheapest way to meet growing demand for electricity was to build more coal or natural gas power plants. Not anymore. Solar and wind power aren’t just better for the climate; they’re also less expensive today than fossil fuels at utility scale, and they’re less harmful to people’s health. Yet renewable energy projects face headwinds, including in the world’s fast-growing developing countries. I study energy and climate solutions and their impact on society, and I see ways to overcome those challenges and expand renewable energy—but …

Imagine you’re watching a basketball game. You’re not focused on the stat sheet—you’re watching how the players read the court, pivot when a play breaks down, and celebrate their teammates. Those moments tell you a lot more about how someone performs under pressure than any metric ever could. I think about hiring the same way. Like a stat sheet, a résumé might list someone’s achievements, but it won’t show how they adapt under pressure or support a team. Yet in the age of AI, companies often overlook that, prioritizing technical skills instead. According to a 2024 report from Microsoft and LinkedIn, 71% of employers said they would choose an AI-fluent candidate wi…

If it seems like everything is getting more expensive, you’re right. Thanks to inflation (up 3%), which has affected goods from food to gas (for which prices are up 4.1%), you can now add the post office to the the long list of places where you’ll have to pay more. Here’s what to know. What’s happening? The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is planning to increase the price of shipping. The good news is, the changes won’t affect your holiday packages and won’t raise the price of stamps. The changes go into effect next year on January 18, pending a review by the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC). How much will prices go up? The move will raise prices approximat…

What’s one thing every leader can do to make sure employees are happy at work and engaged with their jobs? Make sure they can trust in you, your organization, and one another. That’s the finding in a 2024 meta-analysis of studies with more than 1 million participants. When leaders seek to improve employee well-being, they typically think about things like remote work, flexible schedules, and wellness offerings such as gym memberships. But trust may be the most valuable perk of all. A 2024 meta-analysis by an international research team led by Minxiang Zhao and Yixuan Li of the Renmin University of China psychology department examined 132 studies on trust from around t…

Two new data centers in Silicon Valley have been built but can’t begin processing information: The equipment that would supply them with electricity isn’t available. It’s just one example of a crisis facing the U.S. power grid that can’t be solved simply by building more power lines, approving new power generation, or changing out grid software. The equipment needed to keep the grid running—transformers that regulate voltage, circuit breakers that protect against faults, high-voltage cables that carry power across regions, and steel poles that hold the network together—is hard to make, and materials are limited. Supply-chain bottlenecks are taking years to clear, dela…

Soooo, do you Labubu? The furry creature went viral this year thanks to Dua Lipa, Blackpink’s Lisa, and Kim Kardashian all buying into the adorably bizarre, plushy monsters. The results were millions in sales, long lines, and frantic scrambles as people tried to get their hands on this latest trendy phenom. Labubu’s Chinese parent company, Pop Mart, reported global revenue for Q3 (July through September) jumped by about 250% compared to a year earlier, and sales in America were up by more than 1,200%. But it goes beyond Pop Mart, as brands from South Korea, Japan, and other Asian countries are finding more inroads into American culture. Just as American cultural influ…

It’s happened to you countless times: You’re waiting for a website to load, only to see a box with a little mountain range where an image should be. It’s the placeholder icon for a “missing image.” But have you ever wondered why this scene came to be universally adopted? As a scholar of environmental humanities, I pay attention to how symbols of wilderness appear in everyday life. The little mountain icon—sometimes with a sun or cloud in the background, other times crossed out or broken—has become the standard symbol, across digital platforms, to signal something missing or something to come. It appears in all sorts of contexts, and the more you look for this …

What does it mean to be “smart” or “dumb”? Few questions are more deceptively complex. Most of us have strong opinions about what those words mean, but scratch the surface and it becomes clear that “smart” and “dumb” are slippery, subjective constructs. What seems smart to one person may strike another as naive, arrogant, or shortsighted. Worse still, our own perception of what’s smart can shift over time. Yesterday’s clever decision can look like today’s regrettable blunder. Take Jay Gatsby, for instance. His grand plan to reinvent himself, amass a fortune, and win back Daisy once seemed like the height of romantic intelligence; but in the end, it revealed itself…

It’s been 70 years since Douglas McGregor sketched a management theory at MIT Sloan that leaders still ignore—and their teams pay the price. Known as Theory X and Theory Y, McGregor’s framework built on Abraham Maslow’s work on employee self-actualization, and it quickly became one of the foundational texts of modern management thinking. In McGregor’s theory, leaders fall into two camps. Theory X managers assume that employees are inherently lazy, need constant supervision, and would rather coast along than contribute. Theory Y managers, by contrast, see employees as self-motivated, responsible, and capable of growth if given the right environment. And the ki…

The most enduring leaders aren’t the ones with flawless résumés. They’re the ones who’ve been tested, humbled, and reshaped by failure. From an early age, I trained intensively to become a professional ballet dancer. Ballet wasn’t just a passion. It was my identity, my future, my entire world. Until an audition in Vienna changed everything. A sudden injury ended the career I had spent years building. That moment could have marked the end of my story. Instead, it became the beginning of a new one. I pivoted into finance and marketing, building a career at American Express and Amazon. Today, I advise boards and CEOs on succession, governance, and talent strategy at …

It should be shocking to nobody that we’re dealing with an absolute surplus of AI consumables. Breakthroughs. Policy changes. New tools that promise to “10x your productivity.” Most of it is either too technical, too abstract, or just plain filler. You don’t need another wall of text, you need the signal. Luckily, there are a handful of AI newsletters that consistently deliver real value without taking up half your morning. (My editor wanted to make sure you knew about Fast Company’s own such newsletter, by senior reporter Mark Sullivan: AI Decoded. You can sign up for it here.) The Rundown AI: The Daily Scan If you have exactly five minutes between pouring…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. When I recently reached out to Moody’s Analytics chief economist Mark Zandi for his updated home price forecast, he said his long-term outlook for the U.S. housing market remains largely unchanged: he expects a prolonged period of stagnation as affordability gradually improves. Following the historic run-up in prices during the Pandemic Housing Boom and the subsequent mortgage rate shock, Zandi believes resale activity/existing home sales will likely stay frozen for several more years. “Affordability has to be restored for housing to regain its m…

Five students at U.S. military academies and three each from Yale University, Harvard University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are among the 32 American winners named Sunday as 2026 Rhodes scholars. The group includes students focused on housing, health outcomes, sustainability, and prison reentry programs. They include: Alice L. Hall of Philadelphia, a varsity basketball player at MIT who also serves as student body president. Hall, who has collaborated with a women’s collective in Ghana on sustainability tools, plans to study engineering. Sydney E. Barta of Arlington, Virginia, a Paralympian and member of the track team at Stanford Universit…

When Jennifer Austin met Molly in second grade, they quickly became best friends. They giggled through classes until the teacher separated them, inspiring them to come up with their own language. They shared sleepovers and went on each other’s family vacations. But they gradually drifted apart after Austin’s family moved to Germany before the girls started high school. Decades passed before they recently reconnected as grown women. “Strong friendships really do stay for the long haul,” Austin, 51, said. “Even if there are pauses in between and they fade, that doesn’t mean they completely dissolve or they go forgotten. They’re always there kind of lingering like a …

Is Bitcoin biting the dust? The world’s most popular cryptocurrency (BTC) has seen its value drop significantly from highs earlier this year as it has struggled to shake off a price decline that began in early October. As of Monday morning, the price of one BTC was around $94,000, which is down almost 8% over the past five days and down 14% over the past month. Notably, the token is now roughly flat since the beginning of the year—meaning it’s given back all of the value it gained earlier in 2025, having topped out at slightly more than $124,000 in October. The downturn started in early October, and since then, Bitcoin is down roughly 32%, putting it fi…

Transitioning to a new industry often seems like a daunting prospect if you feel like you have to start from scratch, but that’s not necessarily the case. There are numerous strategies you can employ to navigate career changes, including translating existing achievements into relevant terms, finding unique opportunity gaps, and leveraging transferable skills in meaningful ways. Take it from professionals who have personally experienced this transition (or have helped others through it): you can build forward from experience rather than starting over. Build Forward From Experience, Not From Scratch When I was transitioning from more than 20 years in corporate roles …

As of this writing, shares in Quantum Computing Inc. (Nasdaq: QUBT) are spiking in premarket trading, with the stock price up over 15%. That’s a relatively large swing, even for a quantum computing firm, where stocks have been especially volatile this year. Here’s what to know: Why is QUBT rising today? While quantum computing stocks have been volatile this year due in part to the speculative nature of the space, the main reason for Quantum Computing’s share price surge this morning seems more to do with the company’s finances than just standard run-of-the-mill quantum speculation. On Friday, Quantum Computing Inc. released its third-quarter 2025 financials—an…

In its early days, the odds seemed good that YouTube was destined for failure. After a false start as a dating website, it wasn’t clear whether the company could cover the cost of streaming video content, or avoid the fate of Napster, which was sued out of business for copyright infringement. But after getting acquired by Google in 2006, and deciding to share ad revenue with creators a year later, YouTube went on not only to survive, but also to revolutionize the entire media ecosystem—from “double rainbows” to the “Ice Bucket Challenge.” In 2024, YouTube took in $36.3 billion in ad revenue, and today it is the most-watched video provider in the U.S.—not just among s…