ResidentialBusiness

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Although the practice of making solid blocks of soil for growing seeds isn’t new (it may go back over 2000 years), soil blocking has gained popularity in the last few years. It’s not a complicated process: You form blocks of compressed seedling mix, lay them out on a tray, then plant into them. It works much like growing seeds in a plastic seed tray, without the tray. Using less plastic is only one benefit—the real reason people love soil blocking is that it creates seedlings with incredibly strong root systems, without getting root-bound. The air around the block acts as a pruning mechanism; the roots grow to the edge of the soil and then stop. The roots hold the soil block together, and can be easily up potted to continue growing inside, or transplanted directly into the garden. The drawbacks to soil blockingIn order to make seed blocks, you need soil that will compress well and hold together, and most often, that involves peat. Peat, a byproduct of swamps and bogs, is controversial because the harvesting has a dramatic environmental impact. Some people have had success with other mediums like coconut coir, but those people do not include me. I’ve tried coconut coir a few years in a row and have suffered from lack of germination and blocks falling apart, so I have gone back to seedling mixes with peat. The other major drawback to soil blocking is the actual blocking: It’s a pain in the ass. My first year, I was inspired by one of my gardening mentors, Meg Cowden of Seed to Fork, who speaks of the calm and meditative nature of blocking. Now, I regard blocking as a necessary evil each year that takes a lot of energy and soil. Still, the results speak for themselves. Soil blocks perform exceptionally well in tests against seed trays. Step one: Get a soil blocker Credit: Amanda Blum The first thing you’ll need is a soil blocker. There are all kinds of blockers on the market now, and many are inexpensive. Soil blocking is similar to making a sand castle or snow castle: You pack the soil tightly into a cube; the soil blocker compresses the cube, and helps spit it out. Soil blockers come in different sizes and layouts. There are mini blocks, which are an inch or so large (for flowers), and maxi blocks, which are four by four inches. But most people are going to want to start with two-by-two-inch blocks. A basic blocker will spit out four of these blocks at once. Step two: the right seed mix, at the right moisture level Credit: Amanda Blum Next, you’ll need the soil. Different kinds of plants at different stages all need different soil. When starting seeds, you want seedling mix, which is devoid of nutrients, has a lot of moisture retention, and is made of fine particles, so it can compact into seed trays. This is perfect for seed blocking, as long as that mix also includes peat or coconut coir. Get more soil than you think you’ll need, since by compressing the soil to make the block, you use more soil than you might with seed trays. I was able to make 100 blocks from a 12-quart bag. Empty the bag into a bin or other watertight container, and mix it with water. You want to use roughly three times the amount of water as soil, adding it slowly, and stopping to mix the water in two to three times. Soil can absorb an absurd amount of water; you want the soil wet, but not sopping. Grab a handful of the mix, and squeeze it in your hand. Does it clump together? If so, you’ve got enough water. If not, add more until it does. Step three: Have a tray for the soil blocksThe blocks will live on a tray, and it doesn’t matter much what kind of tray, as long as it can hold an inch or so of water, and is watertight. If you were using seed trays, they'd still need something to sit on like a bottom tray, so you've likely got some around. I’ve seen setups with standard 1020 trays and setups with cafeteria trays. The blocks sit right next to one another, so a 1020 tray can hold 50 blocks. A cafeteria tray, depending on its size, can hold much more. Step four: Set up your dibbles On the left, interchangeable dibbles, and on the right, dibbles installed on the blocker. Credit: Amanda Blum Before we start making blocks, you want to set up your dibbles. When you plant seeds, you have to plant them at the right depth, depending on the kind of seed. Sunflower seeds are buried very deep, for instance, while carrot seeds sit close to the surface of the soil. Your seed blocker has different dibbles you can add to your blocker, and they’ll make corresponding indentations in the soil block, so you can insert a seed more easily. Step five: Start blocking Credit: Amanda Blum Now let’s get down to actual blocking. Again, if you’ve ever made a sand castle, this won’t seem foreign, but the technique requires a little finesse. Holding the blocker upright, push it into the seedling mix over and over, rocking it back and forth, until you hit the bottom of the bin. This pushes soil into the blocker. Swiveling the blocker left and right while pressing against the bottom of the bin compresses the soil. After a few passes, lift the blocker upside down, and check that the four chambers are full. If they're not, keep taking passes, or you can just keep the blocker upside down and pack soil in with your other hand. Step 6: Line up the blocks on the tray Credit: Amanda Blum To dispense the blocks, move to the tray that will hold them. Push the blocker against the tray, while slowly depressing the handle and lifting up. This process should product four perfect blocks, but that doesn’t always happen, and if a block looks like it will fall apart, pick it up and toss it back into the bin. It’s just soil; it will crumble apart. The blocks are delicate at this stage but not immovable, if you’re gentle. Credit: Amanda Blum Now, start all over, and dispense more blocks. Keep going until you have as many as you’d like on that particular tray. At this point, it’s time to plant some seeds. Treat each block like a cell in a seed tray. Plant one or two tomato seeds, or a bunch of carrot seeds, or a single pumpkin seed. Cover the seed up with some extra seed mix. Step 7: Seed the blocksFrom here on it, the process is just like growing in seed trays. The soil needs heat, so place your tray on a heated seed mat. The blocks need water, so you should fill the tray every few days with just enough water to cover the bottom of the tray entirely. The blocks will soak up the water and remain moist, ensuring germination. The seeds need humidity, so covering the blocks with a plastic dome will ensure there’s enough moisture. Finally, the blocks need light, so ensure there’s enough light on the tray, especially after the seeds germinate. Tomatoes grown in seed blocks Credit: Amanda Blum The seeds will grow just as they would in a seed tray scenario, and at some point, will be too big for the blocks. Along the way you’ll want to choose one seedling per block, and cut the other seedling away. You can choose to up-pot the blocks into containers or paper pots, or plant the blocks right in the garden, if it's not too early. Usually I up-pot the seedlings after a few weeks, and they’ll remain in four-by-four-inch pots until it's time for them to go in the ground. Blocks that don’t germinate for some reason can be recycled for next year by simply tossing the block back into the bin of seedling mix. View the full article

It finally happened: Threads officially allows you to choose a default feed to see when you open the app, whether that be "Following" or a custom feed you've created yourself. This means that when you open Threads, you'll be able to view posts from the accounts you chose to follow, instead of seeing what the algorithm wants you to. Meta has been testing this feature for a few months, and is now rolling it out to everyone—in addition to a few other new features. How to change Threads' default feed to FollowingThe process of changing your default feed is straightforward. Follow these steps: Open the Threads app on your phone and go to the Home tab. You'll see all your feeds in different tabs at the top of the screen, just below the Threads logo. Tap and hold any of these feeds and select Edit Feeds. This will reveal all your feeds in a list. Hold any feed here and drag it up or down to reorder the list. The first one in the list will automatically become your new default feed. Feel free to set it to Following or any custom feed you've created. Note that this feature is being rolled out slowly, so it may take a while before you see it on your phone. Other updates to ThreadsWith the same update, Threads has added a few more useful features to the app. My personal favorite is the new video player, which finally has basic playback controls and a progress bar that you can easily access. There's a new play/pause button in between the rewind and forward buttons. You can use those buttons to skip back or forward by 10 seconds at a time. The progress bar appears below each video and it's big enough to scrub through videos. It's a great change: Without these features, watching videos on Threads often felt like watching looping gifs. You can also limit replies and quotes of your posts. When you compose a new post in Threads, tap the Anyone can reply & quote button, located to the left of the Post button. This lets you limit replies and quoting to your followers, mentioned accounts, or accounts you follow. Separately, Meta is testing the ability to add up to 10 topics to your Threads profile. Tapping these topics leads you to conversations around those subjects, similar to how hashtags work on other social media platforms. When you compose a new post in Threads, you may see a button that lets you add a trending topic to the post. If you use it, your post could reach a larger audience than usual. View the full article

Wall Street on course for longest losing streak in nearly three yearsView the full article

Mac users take note: A well-known (and relatively sophisticated) phishing scheme previously targeting Windows is now being redirected at macOS and Safari in an attempt to obtain login credentials (your Apple ID). On Windows, this scam worked by displaying fake security alerts on compromised websites claiming that the user's device had been "compromised" or locked" at the same time that malicious code caused the website itself to freeze (making the scam more convincing). The notification prompted users to enter their Windows credentials to regain access—obviously handing them directly to the attackers to take over their accounts. Users were also advised to call a fake hotline, where they were pressured to pay a ransom or allow remote access to their machines. According to a post by LayerX Labs covering the scam, this attack was successful for over a year—in part because the alerts impersonated real Microsoft notifications so well, with sophisticated phishing sites hosted on a legitimate Microsoft domain (windows[.]net) and randomized subdomains that rotated frequently. How this phishing campaign works on MacAs 9to5Mac notes, the campaign quickly pivoted to targeting macOS and Safari after anti-scareware was released for Edge, Chrome, and Firefox in February. It works similarly with pages and text modified for Mac. You can be targeted on Safari if you mistype a URL while trying to access a legitimate website, after which you'll be redirected through a compromised "parking" page to a phishing attack page. As with Windows, you may be prompted to enter your Apple credentials to fix the problem. LayerX Labs states that phishing campaigns targeting Mac "have rarely reached this level of sophistication," though the screenshots of the security pop-ups included in the report contain spelling errors and don't fit Apple's style. As always, bring a critical eye to any communication or alerts that seem urgent or request sensitive information, as you'll usually be able to spot such discrepancies. Otherwise, make sure you type in the correct URL for the sites you want to visit, or search for them on Google and scroll past the ads to the real results before clicking through. And keep an eye out for security updates from Apple so you can download and install patches as soon as they are released. View the full article

Heathrow Airport, Europe’s busiest, has shut down today, following a fire last night at a nearby electrical substation that caused a major power outage. The closure has disrupted at least 1,350 flights, according to Flightradar24, with some aircraft diverted to alternate airports like Gatwick, Amsterdam’s Schiphol, and Paris’s Charles de Gaulle. What caused the fire? While the cause of the fire is still under investigation, British officials have stated that there is no evidence of foul play. According to the London Fire Brigade, the fire broke out at an electrical substation around 11:20 p.m. on Thursday, involving a transformer containing 25,000 liters of cooling oil “that was fully alight.” The blaze posed a serious risk due to “live high-voltage equipment and the nature of an oil-fueled fire,” the brigade said. Around 70 firefighters responded to the incident. As of the latest update, about 10% of the fire remains burning. The incident left 67,000 homes without power, with 5,000 still affected. Both Heathrow Terminals 2 and 4 are without power. Additionally, around 150 people were evacuated to a rest center for safety. Firefighters and emergency services are continuing to address the situation. “This was a very visible and significant incident, and our firefighters worked tirelessly in challenging conditions to bring the fire under control as swiftly as possible,” Pat Goulbourne, assistant commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, said in a statement. What should I do if I have a flight from Heathrow Airport today? Heathrow Airport confirmed that it would remain closed until at least 11:59 p.m. on Friday, warning passengers not to attempt to travel. Authorities have warned of continued disruptions and advised travelers to check with their airlines for updates. The U.K.’s Department for Transport travel guide includes a detailed breakdown of passenger rights covered by law when something goes wrong at a U.K. airport. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. The Beats Fit Pro are a solid choice for anyone who wants Apple’s seamless connectivity without shelling out for AirPods Pro. Right now, Woot is offering them for just $109.99 (down from $159.99), marking their lowest price ever, according to price trackers. This deal runs for the next six days or until stock runs out. Prime members get free shipping, while others pay $6. One catch—Woot only ships within the contiguous U.S. Beats Fit Pro $109.99 at Woot $159.99 Save $50.00 Get Deal Get Deal $109.99 at Woot $159.99 Save $50.00 Fit is the focus, here. The built-in earfins keep the earbuds secure without the need for extra attachments. The sound leans toward Beats’ signature style—deep bass, crisp highs, and a slightly recessed midrange. Noise cancellation does an above-average job with lower frequencies but struggles a bit with sharper sounds (like clinking dishes in a café), according to this PCMag review. Apple users get the most out of these earbuds, with their H1 chip making pairing seamless, along with access to features like Find My tracking, Spatial Audio with head tracking, Adaptive EQ, hands-free Siri, and automatic switching between Apple devices. Android users can still use the Beats app for features like the Ear Tip Fit Test (to get the best seal), firmware updates, and listening mode controls, but they miss out on Spatial Audio, Find My, and hands-free Siri. The IPX4 rating of the Fit Pro is less impressive for workout-ready earbuds—they’ll handle sweat and light rain, but they’re not exactly built for heavy downpours, and the case isn’t water-resistant. That’s a bit of a letdown for fitness buds. These earbuds support Bluetooth 5.0 and AAC/SBC codecs, but not AptX. That might not be a dealbreaker unless you’re really picky about audio quality. As for battery life, you get six to seven hours per charge (depending on ANC use), with up to 23 extra hours in the case. Overall, the Beats Fit Pro packs in a lot for the price, especially if you’re in the Apple ecosystem. But if you want something even more fitness-focused, the new Powerbeats Pro 2 promises heart rate monitoring during workouts. View the full article

Tory leader calls for Parliament to be given a vote on any military involvement View the full article

Quantum computing stocks got pummeled yesterday, with the four most prominent public quantum computing companies—IonQ, Rigetti Computing, Quantum Computing Inc., and D-Wave Quantum Inc.—falling anywhere from over 9% to over 18%. The reason? It has to do with AI chip giant Nvidia. Again. Stocks crash yesterday on Nvidia quantum news Yesterday was a bit of a bloodbath on the stock market for the four most prominent publicly traded quantum computing companies. Here’s a breakdown of how they performed, according to data from Yahoo Finance: IonQ, Inc. (NYSE: IONQ): down 9.27% to $21.14 per share Rigetti Computing, Inc. (Nasdaq RGTI): down 9.24% to $8.99 per share Quantum Computing Inc. (Nasdaq: QUBT): down 11.71% to $7.39 per share D-Wave Quantum Inc. (NYSE: QBTS): down 18.02% to $8.69 per share All four of these quantum computing stocks tumbled on the day that AI chip giant Nvidia kicked off its two-day Quantum Day event. In a blog post from January 14 announcing Quantum Day, Nvidia said the event “brings together leading experts for a comprehensive and balanced perspective on what businesses should expect from quantum computing in the coming decades — mapping the path toward useful quantum applications.” But that’s not all that Nvidia did. Besides bringing quantum experts together, the AI behemoth also announced that it will be launching a new quantum computing research center in Boston. Called the NVIDIA Accelerated Quantum Research Center (NVAQC), the new research lab “will help solve quantum computing’s most challenging problems, ranging from qubit noise to transforming experimental quantum processors into practical devices,” the company said in a press release. The NVAQC’s location in Boston means it will be near both Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). “Quantum computing will augment AI supercomputers to tackle some of the world’s most important problems, from drug discovery to materials development,” Nvidia’s CEO, Jensen Huang, said. “Working with the wider quantum research community to advance CUDA-quantum hybrid computing, the NVIDIA Accelerated Quantum Research Center is where breakthroughs will be made to create large-scale, useful, accelerated quantum supercomputers.” It’s not the first time stocks reacted to Nvidia’s CEO Nvidia’s announcement of the NVIDIA Accelerated Quantum Research Center apparently sent shivers down the spines of many quantum computing investors, with shares of QBTS, RGTI, IONQ, and QUBT all crashing. Before Nvidia’s announcement yesterday, IonQ, Rigetti, D-Wave, and Quantum Computing Inc. were the leaders in the nascent field of quantum computing. And while they still are right now (Nvidia’s quantum research lab hasn’t been built yet), the fear is that Nvidia could use its deep pockets to quickly buy its way into a leadership spot in the field. With its $2.9 trillion market cap, the company can easily afford to throw billions of research dollars into quantum computing. As noted by the Motley Fool, the location of the NVIDIA Accelerated Quantum Research Center in Boston will also allow Nvidia to more easily tap into top quantum talent from Harvard and MIT—talent that may have otherwise gone to IonQ, Rigetti, D-Wave, and Quantum Computing Inc. Nvidia’s announcement is a massive about-face from the company in regard to how it views quantum computing. It’s also the second time that Nvidia has caused quantum stocks to crash this year. Back in January, shares in prominent quantum computing companies fell after Huang said that practical use of quantum computing was decades away. Those comments were something quantum computing company CEOs like D-Wave’s Alan Baratz took issue with. “It’s an egregious error on Mr. Huang’s part,” Bartaz told Fast Company at the time. “We’re not decades away from commercial quantum computers. They exist. There are companies that are using our quantum computer today.” According to Investor’s Business Daily, Huang reportedly got the idea for Nvidia’s Quantum Day event after the blowback to his comments, inviting quantum computing executives to the event to explain why he was incorrect about quantum computing. How quantum computing stocks are trading today After Huang announced Nvidia’s intention to launch the NVIDIA Accelerated Quantum Research Center, quantum computing stocks tanked—and they aren’t doing much better today. As of the time of this writing, the four most prominent quantum computing stock prices are all down in premarket trading: IONQ: down 1.09% RGTI: down 3.00% QUBT: down 10.4% QBTS: down 4.83% Since the start of 2025, three of those four quantum computing stocks have been hit hard. As of yesterday’s close IONQ had lost more than 49% of its value, RGTI has lost 41%, and QUBT has lost 55%. Only QBTS has seen a modest gain of 3.45% for the year to date, though that gain has been wiped out in premarket trading this morning as of the time of this writing. However, despite these quantum computing stocks being in the red for 2025, over the past 12 months, all have shown impressive returns, with IONQ up over 120%, RGTI over 425%, QUBT over 495%, and QBTS over 323% as of yesterday’s close. As for Nvidia, investors seem not to care much about its quantum announcement. Yesterday, NVDA stock closed up just 0.86%, and today, the stock is currently down a paltry 0.76% in premarket trading. Since 2025 began, NVDA stock has been down almost 12%, while it has been up over 31% over the past 12 months, as of yesterday’s close. View the full article

While ending mandated consumer rights, lenders can still ask for a reconsideration of value on FHA loans; plus, fair lending laws still apply in these cases. View the full article

What if everything you believe about leadership is holding you back? A 2024 study by Gartner found that 69% of HR leaders don’t think their leaders are fully equipped to lead. And according to Gallup, only 21% of employees strongly agree that their leaders actually inspire them to do their best. That’s a big gap between what leaders intend and what employees experience. The problem? A lot of leaders are following outdated advice. In the pursuit of excellence, they unknowingly buy into myths that hold them back, limit their teams, and stifle real innovation. Whether it’s the belief that speed always wins or that innovation is all about technology, these myths quietly shape decisions in ways that do more harm than good. Why do they stick around? Because they sound right. They’re reinforced by business schools, success stories, and corporate culture. But when leaders operate on these assumptions, they risk making bad calls, missing opportunities, and ultimately weakening their impact. Great leadership isn’t about sticking to the status quo—it’s about questioning the norm, challenging assumptions, and seeing opportunities where others don’t. The best leaders don’t think differently just to be contrarian; they do it because real progress requires breaking free from conventional wisdom. Let’s break down some of the most common leadership myths—and explore what actually works. Myth: Speed is the Ultimate Competitive Advantage Early in my career, I found myself caught in a speed trap. In a high-growth environment, I was constantly pressured to make quick decisions, launch initiatives fast, and drive results without hesitation. While this approach generated short-term wins, it also led to avoidable mistakes: hiring the wrong people, launching underdeveloped products, and missing deeper opportunities for sustainable growth. The real breakthrough came when I learned to balance urgency with thoughtfulness: taking the time to pause, gather diverse perspectives, and make decisions based on impact rather than just momentum. The belief that faster is always better dominates modern business thinking. Companies race to market, rush decisions, and glorify rapid execution. While speed has its place, it can also be a liability. Moving too fast often means overlooking critical insights, missing long-term opportunities, and making short-sighted decisions that sacrifice lasting value for immediate gains. Before defaulting to speed, ask yourself: Are we moving in the right direction? Are we building something that will stand the test of time? True competitive advantage doesn’t come from speed but from strategic timing and intentional execution. Create space for reflection and thoughtful decision-making. Myth: Innovation is All About Technology From my own experience working with leaders across industries, I have seen that the most impactful innovations often stem from cultural and operational shifts rather than technological advancements. It’s about how you think, not just what you build. To expand your definition of innovation, ask: How can we challenge conventional ways of doing business? What assumptions about our industry can we rethink? Encourage teams to innovate in ways that extend beyond digital tools through human-centered ideas, new business models, and cultural transformation. In an era dominated by AI, automation, and digital disruption, many leaders equate innovation with technological breakthroughs. While technology is a powerful enabler, it is not the only path to innovation. Some of the most groundbreaking shifts in business come from rethinking processes, reinventing customer experiences, and challenging outdated business models. Howard Schultz didn’t innovate by inventing a new coffee machine: He redefined the coffee experience by bringing the concept of Italian espresso culture to American consumers through Starbucks. Similarly, Southwest Airlines didn’t rely on cutting-edge technology to disrupt the airline industry: They revolutionized the business model by focusing on affordability, efficiency, and simplicity. Myth: The Best Leaders Have All the Answers Many leaders feel pressure to be the smartest person in the room, believing that credibility comes from having all the answers. But the most effective leaders are those who ask the best questions. Leadership isn’t about possessing infinite knowledge; it’s about creating an environment where curiosity thrives, where diverse perspectives are valued, and where new ideas can emerge. In one of my leadership roles, I learned this the hard way. Early on, I felt compelled to prove my expertise at every turn. However, I quickly realized that by focusing on answers rather than questions, I was limiting the creative potential of my team. The shift came when I embraced a more inquiry-driven approach, inviting team members to challenge assumptions, propose alternative solutions, and collaborate in ways that unlocked new thinking. Instead of defaulting to solutions, start with questions. What are we missing? Who else should be part of this conversation? What assumptions are we making? Foster a culture of inquiry where team members feel empowered to challenge the status quo. The best leaders don’t have all the answers; they create environments where the right questions lead to breakthrough solutions. The best leaders don’t follow conventional wisdom unthinkingly. They challenge assumptions, rethink outdated beliefs, and carve new paths forward. They understand that real leadership is not about speed alone but about direction. It’s not about technology alone but about vision. It’s not about projecting invincibility but about embracing curiosity and growth. If you’re a leader, the real question isn’t: What myths have I accepted as truth? It’s: What myths am I willing to challenge? View the full article

Berlin court has ordered parliamentary squad to lift ban on far-right lawmakersView the full article

One more reminder about our upcoming online event: On Thursday, March 27, at 1 p.m. ET, my colleague Max Ufberg and I will host “The AI Tools We Love Right Now—and What’s Next,” exclusively for Fast Company Premium subscribers. We’ll discuss the AI-assisted productivity tools that are actually helping us get our jobs done, and where we’d like to see the whole category go. Fast Company Premium subscribers can RSVP here. And if you aren’t yet a subscriber, here’s where you can become one. Hope to see you there! It’s the World’s Most Innovative Companies week at Fast Company. Our annual ranking of organizations across 58 industries is live on our site, and bursting with bright ideas that are changing business, society, and, well, life. I hope you’ll take a look. My primary contribution to this massive undertaking was writing a cover story about our No. 1 company, Waymo. The feature looks at how the self-driving pioneer’s robotaxi service went from an unlikely skunkworks project at Google to a commercial service now serving 200,000 riders a week, and what might be next. Read it, and you’ll hear from Waymo’s co-CEOs, Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, along with others inside and outside the company. But along with all the fresh interviews I did, I revisited one I conducted in September 2013. That’s when I sat down with Google cofounder and then-CEO Larry Page for a Time magazine story. The piece focused on the company’s “moonshot” strategy of assigning itself improbably ambitious projects—especially a division it had started, Calico, that was charged with investigating ways to extend the human life span. (It’s still at it.) At the time, Waymo wasn’t yet Waymo. Announced less than three years earlier, the effort was a mysterious research project within the Google X lab. The company was secretive enough about the whole thing that when I took a brief highway trip in one of its self-driving cars near the Googleplex in Mountain View, it was with the understanding that my Time article wouldn’t detail my impressions. (Almost a dozen years later, I can finally spill my guts: I thought it was incredible.) I knew that story should touch on Google’s autonomy project, and that speaking about it with Page was a rare opportunity. Even then, he granted as few press interviews as his PR team would let him get away with. My contacts at the company warned me that he might fall silent or even walk out in mid-conversation. When the day came, Page turned out to be both engaging and—as far as I could tell—engaged. But his handlers didn’t exaggerate his dislike of talking to the press. My interview turned out to be among the last he gave. After creating Alphabet as a new holding company optimized for managing moonshots and handing Google’s reins over to Sundar Pichai, he pretty much retired from public life altogether. What he thinks about Waymo’s present momentum, I’m not sure. Back in 2013, however, Page told me quite a bit about the origins and goals of Google’s self-driving initiative, explaining that it stemmed from his own interest in the technology, which had been percolating since the mid-1990s. He stressed—again and again—that he was in a hurry to see autonomous cars become an everyday reality. He might even have been happiest if someone had pulled off the feat before Google was in a place to give it a try. “I was at Stanford as a grad student when I became interested in that,” he told me. “Nothing really changed between [then] and when we started working on it. I’m sure computers got better, and sensors got better, but there’s no reason why people couldn’t have been working on it 10 years earlier, for real.” Now, it should be noted that Google’s self-driving project didn’t spring out of nowhere: Its founder, Sebastian Thrun, current co-CEO Dolgov, and others involved with the effort over the years contributed to Stanford’s entries in a series of “Grand Challenges” put on by the U.S. Department of Defense’s DARPA lab from 2004 to 2007. But those competitions were races among experimental autonomous vehicles conducted in the desert and other isolated environments. By moving quickly to test its self-driving cars on public roads, Google really did give the technology an abrupt shove toward reality. “Ten years earlier, it would’ve been harder,” Page allowed. “It would’ve cost twice as much as it does now. But that’s not a major cost. I’m sad that it didn’t get done earlier. My key insight is that there are just such opportunities out there to do things faster and do things that matter to people. What’s limiting those things getting done is people wanting to pursue them, and being organized about it, and understanding the opportunities.” According to Page, one of his primary roles as CEO was to identify moonshots such as teaching a car to drive itself—though he added that he considered his indispensability to this process as a limiting factor. “A bunch of these things we’re working on have come from me,” he said. “It actually kind of worries me, because I wish that we had a more scalable process to do that. That’s a big part of what [Google] X is doing, to both think about more possible ideas and also have a deep technological understanding of what’s possible.” Still, the question remained: Why Google? The company had made its bones and its fortune with its namesake search engine. Its most successful follow-ups, such as Gmail, were in closely related areas. Even the Google+ social network, which was in the process of flopping when Page and I spoke, wasn’t far removed from the company’s comfort zone. But on paper, it wasn’t obvious why a search company might be poised to disrupt the transportation industry in the most fundamental way imaginable. Page did point out that some of Google’s existing skills and intellectual property could be applied to the autonomy challenge: “We have a lot of technologies for 3D modeling of the world that we developed, to really make Street View work and to make all of Google Maps work.” Mostly, though, he argued that wildly disparate moonshots might be easier to get right than products requiring thoughtful integration with existing Google mainstays. More than anything else, it was his and cofounder Sergey Brin’s willingness to connect dots that other corporate leaders didn’t see that made something like self-driving cars make sense within the company. “What I’m saying is we have people who can apply [their expertise] to a variety of projects,” he said. “And I find that to be more scalable than some of what you might think of as our core businesses.” During our interview, Page noted that “in some industries, it takes 20 years to go from idea to something real,” bringing up the time span as a problem to be solved rather than an unavoidable fact. Rather than investing his full attention to steering Waymo and other new initiatives through to completion, he ended up stepping down as Alphabet CEO in 2019. He remains on the company’s board but is also launching an unaffiliated AI startup, The Information’s Jessica Lessin and Erin Woo report. Still available in only a few cities, Waymo is following the 20-year trajectory that Page found so frustrating. Yet it may remain the Alphabet moonshot with the biggest shot at changing the world. It’s a testament to his vision that its journey continues well after he moved on. You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on FastCompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company A new Cybertruck recall is the umpteenth chapter in Tesla’s history of design issues Tesla’s woes don’t and won’t stop, as the Cybertruck once again highlights its poor quality and design. Read More → Do school phone bans actually work? Not really, a new study says Researchers found no improvement in student well-being or academic performance at schools that restrict cellphone use. Read More → ‘Dinosaur time’ is the viral new way to eat your greens Tired of smoothies and salads? One TikToker’s chaotic spinach hack is both unhinged and strangely effective. Read More → Google buys Wiz: How the cybersecurity startup went from $0 to $32 billion in just over 5 years Google’s acquisition of the cloud security unicorn marks its largest deal ever—and a historic milestone for Israel’s tech scene. Read More → Nvidia’s Vera Rubin represents a big bet on real-time AI reasoning The company’s new chips are built to meet generative AI’s growing demand for real-time reasoning capabilities. Read More → The rise of the AI manager As AI agents become high-performing digital teammates, the professionals who learn to lead them will define the future of work. Read More → View the full article

During one of the hardest nights of Rachel Platten’s life—amidst postpartum depression, debilitating chronic pain, and mental health challenges—she glimpsed the light at the end of the tunnel. “I was in my studio and reached the apex of I can’t take it anymore,” she says. “The bottom wasn’t there. I just kept falling. In that moment, this wail came out of me that turned into a song. I was crying, mercy to anyone who would hear me, to whatever God that was out there.” “Something was writing through me,” she continues. “I realized: Is there a purpose or meaning in all of this suffering? Am I being dragged down, like I was with ‘Fight Song,’ letting my roots go deep so that my rise can be tall again? I was in just as much pain the next morning. But that little seed of hope was planted that maybe there’s a future ahead of me that I’m living right now.” Today, that seed has flourished into Platten’s first album in seven years, I Am Rachel Platten, as well as an inspired mission of mental health advocacy. An award-winning singer-songwriter, Platten and her music is celebrated as a beacon of resilience, most notably with “Fight Song,” which has been streamed over a billion times. Her latest album captures her experience of parenthood, mental health, depression, and the strength discovered in the rising. She continues to bravely share her story through her North American “Set Me Free” tour, which began on March 17. Here, Platten shares how she alchemized pain into purpose, developed tools to gain agency over mindset, and discovered the question that transformed her creative process. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. It was illuminating to listen to Set Me Free and discover that it’s about self-liberation. What did you free yourself from and how do you keep doing so in your art and life? First, what is funny to me, is that I wrote that way before I could ever know what it felt like. My songs are often glimpses of what will be. It’s almost like I prescribe myself the medicine that I’ll need in the future or the feeling that I’ll feel. So, I didn’t know what that felt like at the time. I felt a little bit like an imposter. It’s almost like the song, when I wrote it in 2020, should have been: I don’t really care what you say or think about me — She says, caring deeply. Now I actually feel that, and that took an insane mental breakdown to get to. Freedom to me feels like exactly that: Knowing who I am and being in a place where I can speak my truth. I don’t feel like I have to hold back. I know how to have boundaries, protect my inner child, and carry myself in the world where I’m not apologizing for my existence. It’s not going along with what you say I should care about or what makes a happy life. That was a major wake-up for me. Think about how you feel when you get an award, approval, or recognition. For me, that feeling is buzzy, excited, and a little unstable. Think about how you feel when you are deeply proud of yourself. When you can recognize, put a hand on your heart and say, “I approve of you and I’m proud of you just for being you.” That feeling is calm and steady, solid, and stable. Why are we taught that we should chase the first one, when the second one is so much better? That’s my goal now: How do I get more and more of that second feeling? In discussing this album, you said: “I don’t need my beautiful body of work to be anything other than what it is.” How do you create from an intuitive space and silence the internal and external voices? My second record on Columbia Records was very much the latter and informed by how I wanted to change people’s minds about who they thought the “Fight Song” girl was. I was trying to prove something in the art. Other than a couple of songs on that record, I didn’t get to write from that freedom. I slowly stopped writing from a place of: What does anyone need from the “Fight Song” girl? I changed from that to: I’m hurting so much. How can my music serve me, the way it serves so many other people? When I wrote from that place, it removed any kind of outside expectation, because I was like a starving soul in there, desperate for some soothing. The music and creativity became like filling a dry well. It changed from a laborious process of overanalyzing the words or rhymes and became an intuitive songwriting where it flowed more. That hadn’t always been the case; “Fight Song” took me two years to write. I labored over that second verse so much. I wrote 10 different verses until I got the one that you hear on the radio. Now, I do create from a place of joy and freedom. Asking yourself—What do I need from my art?—and not—What does the world need from my art?—is the question that really shifts it. Robert Henri said, “The object isn’t to make art. It’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” What is that state for you? Do you do anything differently now that enhances your creative inspiration? Music is funny, because it goes from a deeply inward, private place to a very outward, extroverted place. We phase in between them. That’s what I do. Right now, I’m in the outward place and the creativity isn’t flowing like it was. But, I am also not asking it to. I know where I’m at in my cycle. I feel like I’m a volcano in a way. I erupt with creativity. Then, I’m dormant. I used to judge the dormancy and feel like there was something wrong with me if songs weren’t flowing. I have taken all the pressure off my creativity and songwriting. I know that I am privileged to do that because I had success that supports me and my family. I understand that when I was in my twenties, and struggling to come up as an artist, it might not have felt like that. But, I wish that I could go back to that girl who was suffering and trying so hard and say to her: Enjoy it a little more. Try to trust the wave and ocean of creativity and how it’s going to come and go. Don’t push it when it’s not. I’d certainly be disciplined. But, I’m a lot more patient with it. I trust now that if the muse wants to come, then I’ll start writing. You shared that “to actually change something has to start with radical acceptance of what is. Real change only happens once you say ‘yes’ to what is actually here.” What helps you choose the path of acceptance? First, I want to attribute that quote to Tara Brach, who is an amazing psychiatrist. She has a practice called RAIN, which is an acronym that helped me so much: Recognize, Allow, Investigate, Nurture. I don’t know if it’s a choice. It’s more of a shrug and dropping in, like: Yes, I’m suffering. Yes, I’m depressed. Yes, this hurts. This is a witness seat. Rather than the human seat, it’s choosing the seat behind you, who’s watching you, and saying: I’m watching a play. That’s what’s happening with this actor right now. It’s less of a choice and more changing your point of view. So much power and relief can come from that, because then you’re not having the second arrow of shame, grief, or guilt about what you’re experiencing. The first arrow is the pain that you’re feeling. The second arrow is the judgment of the experience that you’re having. It’s removing the second arrow and removing half the pain in a way. There is a lyric in “Bad Thoughts” that says: “Just because I think something doesn’t make it true.” How do you distinguish between the voices in your head? What has been most impactful in changing the dialogue and relationship that you have with yourself? I am a little ninja now when it comes to trying to get into my mind. I imagine myself with goggles and a headlamp, like: Who’s running the show today? There’s all these different competing voices, that’s inside all of us—all of these different selves. Here’s the most beautiful part: I don’t need to understand what all the mess is in there. It’s like changing the seat again into the witness. Sometimes, I just need to witness it to remember: If I’m watching it, then I’m not it. I imagine this visual idea of me getting on a bus and in the driver’s seat is whichever version of me that shouldn’t be driving. I imagine myself as the bus driver, being like: I’m going to take the wheel. You can still be on this bus, but you have to sit down and get your seatbelt on. You’re too young to drive. I’m calm and resourced. It helps me navigate my mind and remember that those are just waves. I’m the ocean. Mental health has become a driving part of your mission. What role do you want it to play in your life’s work? It feels like a narrowing, but it’s actually an expansion. It feels clear to me that this is where I’m going. Music feels like the vehicle. But, I feel like my life’s work is going to transcend music. Chasing the music industry, Grammys, and approval from tastemaker magazines is a fleeting thing. I’m not writing about how a guy hurt me. I’m writing about my mind and how I’m understanding it, the dark night of the soul, and the hero’s journey. It feels simple to me that I’m not supposed to try to fit in or be approved of by that anymore. I’m going to go in this direction and be of service. A theme of our conversation is the surprises on your journey these last six years, some from pain and others from joy. How do you feel about the surprises? Looking back, I feel a little bit of wonder that the thing that hurt so much—that I cursed, sobbed, and had panic attacks about—was the gift that led to my songs “Mercy” or “Bad Thoughts” or being able to speak about mental health in such an informed way. That’s the place I’m in now. If you catch me next week, I might be back in: This Earth school sucks. It really hurts. But right now, for whatever reason, we’re meant to talk on this day when I’m looking back with a sense of gratitude and deep awe at how all of those things that seemed so unfair were actually gifts—not happening to me, but for me. View the full article

If you’re trying to keep an eye on March Madness but you still need to get some actual work done, Google’s Picture-in-Picture Extension feels like a secret weapon. This free Chrome browser extension lets you move any video into a resizable, floating window that sits on top of anything else you’re doing. It’s perfect for keeping the games on in the background while still doing other things on your computer. How to use the Picture-in-Picture Extension Start by downloading the picture-in-picture extension from the Chrome Web Store. In addition to Google Chrome, it also works with most other Chromium-based browsers, including Brave, Vivaldi, Opera, Arc, and Microsoft Edge. Once you’ve installed the extension, here’s how to use it: Start playing a video. Click on the puzzle piece icon near the top-right corner of your browser. Click on the Picture-in-Picture Extension button. (You can also optionally click the pin icon so the extension appears right next to your address bar in the future.) Alternatively, you can skip the previous two steps by pressing Alt+P in Windows or Option+P on a Mac. Drag the floating video player to a convenient spot on your desktop, and drag the corners of the player to resize it. To exit picture-in-picture mode, click the “X” or “Back to tab” buttons in the floating window. Watch several games at once Chrome’s Picture-in-Picture Extension works only with one video at a time, which isn’t ideal for March Madness. The work-around is to use more than one web browser, each with its own Picture-in-Picture Extension. For instance, you can use Google Chrome to play one game, Microsoft Edge to play another, and Vivaldi to play a third. You’re limited only by the number of web browsers you’ve installed and how many simultaneous videos your computer can handle. What about Safari and Firefox? Apple’s Safari browser has its own picture-in-picture mode, no browser extension required: Right-click the audio icon on any tab that’s playing video. Select “Enter Picture-in-Picture.” This works only with one video at a time, so you’ll need to use additional browsers to watch multiple games. Mozilla Firefox has as built-in picture-in-picture mode as well, and it even works with multiple videos. Hover your cursor over any video, then click the small picture-in-picture icon that pops up. A word of advice, though: Keep the sound down, or you may have trouble getting anything done. View the full article

The institution has been downsizing its portfolio to address deposit runoff as it has shed fintech exposures and worked to gain release from a consent order. View the full article

Branded is a weekly column devoted to the intersection of marketing, business, design, and culture. Just a few years ago, iRobot, best known as the maker of the Roomba, was riding high, with annual revenue topping $1 billion; Amazon bid $1.7 billion to add it to the e-commerce giant’s home technology business. But that deal fell through, and now the Bedford, Massachusetts-based company has reported plunging revenue and steep losses, and recently warned investors of “substantial doubt” about its “ability to continue as a going concern.” With its share price down drastically, it’s now worth about $100 billion. How did the creator of the iconic round robot vacuum—which has sold more than 50 million units—get into this mess? Although there’s of course more than one answer to that question, a major factor seems to have been an ill-fated focus on dreaming up ways to move beyond the vacuum into new product categories—all the while failing to keep up with new competitors in its core business. Sometimes, those rivals competed on price, but Chinese brands like Roborock developed cutting-edge models praised for advanced technology such as a LIDAR sensor (generally recognized as more accurate than camera sensors) and other obstacle-avoidance and spatial-mapping tech. In short: as iRobot matured, it seems to have emphasized the wrong sort of innovation. (The company declined to comment beyond public statements about its earnings and recent new product announcements.) Founded in 1990, iRobot released its first Roomba model in 2002, essentially inventing a new “robotic floorcare” category: a relatively affordable robotic vacuum that whirred around on its own, sucking up dust. It was nobody’s vision of the future, but it caught on; some fans gave their Roombas names, treating them almost like techno-pets (and making endless cat-riding-a-Roomba memes). While it quickly attracted competition, the Roomba was long the clear leader, its name becoming a borderline-generic term for all robo-vacs. This popularity reached a peak in the COVID-19 lockdown era, when many consumers had way too much time to obsess about their domestic environments. By then iRobot had begun exploring (and pouring R&D into) new products, most notably a robo-mop, but also a lawn mower, air-purifying devices, and educational products. The company still looked like an innovator and its share price soared beyond $130 in early 2021, briefly giving the company a valuation of more than $4 billion. But the new experiments mostly didn’t catch on—while the robo-vac competition did. Several of the fastest-growing robotic-vacuum businesses are based in China, such as Anker, Ecovacs, and Roborock, all of which have eaten into iRobot’s share of the market. Lower prices were part of the equation, but competitors also brought design and technology innovations to the category, improving core functionality. While the whole category declined post-COVID, it’s growing again (in excess of 20 million units were distributed last year, up 11.2%)—but iRobot’s global share has shrunk to 13.7%, compared to 22.3% for Roborock. Amazon’s 2022 acquisition offer looked like a lifeline—but the deal fell apart in January 2024 under regulatory pressure over competitive and privacy concerns. Cofounder Colin Angle stepped down as CEO, replaced by Gary Cohen, appointed to oversee a recovery-and-turnaround mission. Since then, the company has scrubbed most of those new-category initiatives and cut staff by 50%. Fourth-quarter revenue dropped from $308 million to $172 million, with a loss of more than $44 million; sales fell 47% in the U.S. and almost as drastically in its various international markets. Full-year revenue for 2024 was down 23%. (Amazon CEO Andy Jassy has criticized regulators’ treatment of the deal, essentially blaming them for iRobot’s subsequent woes.) In its effort to save itself, the company has shifted focus (and more of its slimmed-down R&D resources) back to its core Roomba products. Earlier this year, iRobot said it expected to grow revenue through new (vacuum-focused) product launches, and has stated it is negotiating with lenders and actively exploring other options. This past week, it released eight new Roomba models, including mop-combo units—and its first versions equipped with LIDAR and “AI technology.” Prices, ranging from $300 to $1,000, seem more competitive with Chinese rivals. But as the company acknowledged in its earnings release, the fresh generation of Roombas isn’t guaranteed to save the day, depending on “consumer demand, competition, macroeconomic conditions, and tariff policies.” If the robovac pioneer can’t figure out how to navigate those obstacles, it may just get swept away. View the full article

Most people know Henry Ford as the founder of the Ford Motor Co. and creator of the trailblazing Ford Model T. But fewer are likely to be familiar with his side occupation as a hotelier. In 1931, Ford Motor Co.’s headquarters in Detroit was connected to other major cities by the now-defunct Ford Airport, an airline service for which Ford himself provided the necessary land and main investment. Ford realized that many of the travelers and business partners who flew in to the Dearborn airport would want somewhere convenient to stay after their long journeys. The thought led Ford to build one of the country’s first airport hotels. [Photo: Isaac Maiselman Photography] Today, the historic Georgian-style hotel, called the Dearborn Inn, is reopening its doors after undergoing a two-year-long renovation and restoration process. Its reopening returns the site to its roots as a hotel for Ford executives who these days travel from nearby Detroit Metro Airport. It also points to Ford Motor Co.’s larger strategy to attract business to its recently revitalized Michigan campus, giving the company more ownership over a traveler’s entire experience. [Photo: Isaac Maiselman Photography] Part of the automaker’s widespread revitalization plan Over the past several years, Ford Motor Co. has invested more than $1 billion in restoration projects in Detroit, including transforming the Michigan Central Station, a long-abandoned train hub, into a kind of Silicon Valley-esque innovation center. Now it’s working to revitalize some of the city’s oldest neighborhoods—as well as early relics of its own history, like the Dearborn Inn. The company plans to add another hotel at the top of the Michigan Central Station, signaling that Ford hopes to turn its Detroit-area campus into a kind of destination for business leaders that, rather than serving as a simple stopover, can act as an experience in itself. [Photo: Isaac Maiselman Photography] Like Michigan Central, Dearborn Inn focuses on restoration The Dearborn Inn’s renovations, which began back in February 2023, were overseen by the Ford family and carried out by a team of partners including AvroKO, Dash Design, and Kraemer Design Group, along with restoration architect Quinn Evans. The refreshed 135-room hotel, managed by Marriott International since 1989, is joining Marriott Bonvoy’s Autograph Collection of premium, independent hotels. Prices start at $350 a night and go up from there. The property has 19 suites and a grand Presidential Suite (which includes a living room, kitchenette, and dining area). [Photo: Isaac Maiselman Photography] While the hotel’s interiors have been updated with new fixtures, the project truly shines in its effort to restore many original features—details that were once enjoyed by guests such as Walt Disney, Orville Wright, Norman Rockwell, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Ronald Reagan. Interiors nod to local design history Thoughtful vintage touches mingle with modern, locally made designs, lending the whole space a fresh-yet-elegant ambience. The lobby’s Italian marble checkerboard flooring is a feature Ford selected personally. Also in the lobby is an original green marble fireplace, an antique clock fixture, and several vintage bar carts. Among the most intriguing additions is a photo booth, designed to look like the Ford Tri-Motor airplane (first manufactured in 1925), which produces vintage-style passport photos as a keepsake for guests. [Photo: Isaac Maiselman Photography] Other reminders of the hotel’s history, like a scrapbook of letters from former guests and examples of early menus, are sprinkled throughout the common areas. Even the carpets lining the halls echo local history, pulling inspiration from tapestries created by artist Loja Saarinen, who founded a renowned weaving department at Michigan’s Cranbrook Academy of Art in the late 1920s. Another subtle nod to the art academy appears in the bedrooms, in the form of furniture designed by Charles and Ray Eames. The Eameses first met at Cranbrook in 1940 before becoming one of the most recognizable forces in the furniture world. At the Inn, every guest room includes its own Eames Molded Plastic Chair. “From the moment guests step through our doors, we want them to feel inspired by the history that surrounds them and by the trailblazers who once walked these halls,” general manager Joleisha Bradley said in a press release. “The hotel is both a welcoming retreat and living museum, with historic artifacts woven throughout the property.” [Photo: Isaac Maiselman Photography] Plans to expand The hotel’s vintage features are complemented by more contemporary touches, like bespoke furniture from local artisans, an assortment of new lighting fixtures, and bathroom tiles made with Ford Motor Co.’s signature Pantone blue color code. A new restaurant called Clara’s Table (honoring Ford’s wife, Clara, who often hosted guests at the inn) and cocktail bar Four Vagabonds will complete the modern-day guest experience. According to the press release, the hotel’s restoration is only the first phase of the Dearborn Inn’s new lease on life. Later this year, Marriott plans to unveil five colonial-style homes on the property, “including suites inspired by the homes of literary icons such as Edgar Allan Poe and Walt Whitman.” For now, guests who book a room at the Dearborn Inn will be welcomed with an experience designed to feel like an icon of Ford’s era could be staying just down the hall. View the full article

As I’ve coached CEOs over the years, I’ve often been struck by how little they think about the way they deploy one of the company’s most valuable assets—their time. CEOs face unique time pressures. They have enormous responsibilities and a multitude of issues that need their attention. The way they allocate their time has major ramifications for the success of the business. However big and important your previous job may have been, as a CEO, you will confront a seemingly limitless array of new and varied stakeholders, each demanding (and often warranting) a place on your calendar. And each constituent group—the board, employees, customers, investors, governments, the media—includes within it numerous and distinct individuals and institutions, each with their own unique needs and goals. Over the years, I’ve learned (often the hard way) the importance of CEOs keeping control of their agenda in addition to the company’s. Along the way, I’ve identified three steps that help CEOs ensure that their priorities don’t get sidelined by the constant pull of stakeholder management. 1. Define your CEO agenda The CEO agenda is not a laundry list of every important initiative in the company; it is not the “goals and objectives” used for determining your bonus (although there can be overlap); it is not even necessarily something you share with anyone else. It is an expression of your personal priorities for some stated period. It determines how you will deploy to maximum effect a significant amount of that crucial and finite corporate asset: your time. Realistically, very few objectives are both achievable over a foreseeable horizon and important enough to warrant the CEO’s personal engagement. So, when working with new CEOs, I advise them to start by listing their top 10 priorities for the year—and then lopping the bottom six or seven off the list. Together, we pressure test what remains and ask: Does it move the needle? Will this goal meaningfully affect the success trajectory of the business as a whole? Is it non-delegable? Does achievement require the CEO’s personal engagement (as distinguished from periodic oversight of others)? Some examples: a major transaction, addressing a significant governmental threat or opportunity, shaping (or reshaping) the company’s mix of businesses or assets. For instance, during my tenure as CEO of Pfizer, two of my most significant priorities were completing a $70 billion acquisition that fundamentally reshaped the company, and—together with some of my industry colleagues—negotiating features of the Affordable Care Act, parts of which, as originally proposed, posed significant threats and opportunities for our business model. Both projects required my direct and ongoing personal involvement and neither could be fully delegated, although, of course, numerous leaders and teams within and outside the company provided essential support. The counterparties—such as other CEOs and members of Congress—understandably wanted to deal with the top decision maker. 2. Give yourself a reality check Once you’ve defined your agenda, it’s time for a reality check. Examine how you’re spending your time and compare it to your stated priorities. You may be surprised to find a significant mismatch. I often advise CEOs to have their assistants analyze their calendars retrospectively. Look at the past month or quarter and categorize the way your time was allocated. Were you truly focused on your top priorities, or did your days get consumed by routine meetings and stakeholder management? This isn’t a one-time exercise. Make it a habit to evaluate your calendar against your priorities frequently. You should regularly ask yourself: Am I deploying a significant amount of my time to accomplish things that only I can do and that will materially contribute to the company’s success? As CEO, you should devote substantial time to providing visibility and accessibility to key constituencies. This includes town halls with employees, meetings with investors, engaging with government officials, and much more. Each of these groups—and the various subgroups and individuals within them—want and deserve your attention and your guidance. Often, they will want you to make decisions (and sometimes you should). But, while crucial, these activities can easily consume your entire schedule if left unchecked. 3. Manage your time proactively Once you’ve audited your time and you understand how you’re spending it, be proactive about planning your schedule. Here’s how: Allocate a specific percentage of your time for stakeholder management—perhaps 30 to 40%—and distribute this time among your stakeholders. Establish a regular cadence for internal meetings, but recognize that not all direct reports need the same frequency of face time. Set clear expectations about what each stakeholder will get from you. For example: tell your investor relations team about how many conferences and non-deal roadshows you’ll attend annually; tell your head of Asia operations they get two weeks of your time each year to distribute as they see fit across the region. Carve out space for unstructured thinking and planning. This might mean blocking off your calendar from 7 to 9 a.m. each day or reserving Friday afternoons for strategic reflection. Make time for self-care. Do a far better job than I ever did of taking care of yourself, your family, and other sources of personal growth and satisfaction. The benefits of control Maintaining control of your agenda requires effective delegation. Ensure you have the right people in place and that they feel empowered to make decisions. If routine matters are constantly escalating to your desk, it’s a sign that either your team isn’t properly equipped, or they don’t feel authorized to act independently. While it’s important to guard your time zealously, you should, of course, maintain flexibility for true emergencies and unexpected opportunities. The key is to distinguish between genuine crises that require your involvement and routine fires that your team should handle. By rigorously defining your priorities, regularly evaluating the way you spend your time, and proactively managing stakeholder demands, you can ensure that your agenda as CEO doesn’t get derailed. Remember that the truest reflection of your priorities is how you spend your time. Make sure it aligns with what you believe is most critical for leading your organization forward. View the full article

Fast Company is the official media partner of Summit Detroit. For the past 17 years, Summit, an organization hosting conferences and immersive experiences around the world, has brought together entrepreneurs and creatives in lush settings that double as vacation destinations—think Tulum, Mexico; Palm Desert, Calif.; Powder Mountain, Utah; and even out on the open sea. This year marks the end of Summit’s larger-scale events as the company pivots toward more intimate gatherings. So it’s little surprise that more than a few eyebrows were raised when Summit announced Detroit as its last big hurrah this June 5-8. [Illustration: Summit] “We came together and decided to convene our community in a place that embodies the Summit spirit, that is filled with surprise and delight, and has abundant, beautiful spaces for us to activate and bring to life,” says Jody Levy, CEO and global director of Summit. “We have had an outpouring of excitement from people across the world that we are gathering in Detroit. Those who know know!” Founded in 2008, Summit is the brainchild of Elliott Bisnow, Brett Leve, Jeff Rosenthal, and Jeremy Schwartz, who coalesced around the idea of finding the connections between their personal interests and entrepreneurial endeavors. They set out to develop a community of like-minded people by hosting a series of events leaning into the intersection of work and play. At a Summit event, it’s not uncommon to hear a talk on the future of human longevity before heading to a poolside DJ set or a wearable balloon art dance party. That feeling of the unexpected also translates to Summit’s chosen location this year. “I’ve been watching [Detroit] really hit the stride of what everybody always wanted and saw for the city,” Levy says. “There’s so much happening here that’s being exported to the rest of the world that my partners and I [at Summit] decided to come to a place that’s a little unexpected, that’s got a little bit of that like grungy grit that we all as entrepreneurs have.” Summit Detroit will have much of what Summit has become known for: high-level speakers including Ev Williams, cofounder of Mozi and Twitter and the founder of Medium; futurist Pablos Holman; author and psychotherapist Lori Gottlieb; tracks focused on the future of transportation, next-gen entrepreneurship, and mental health; and live music sets. The event will also take advantage of being in downtown Detroit with design tours and a lineup of Detroit’s culinary arts. But what Levy is most excited for is the track on creative expression and storytelling. Featuring speakers including famed choreographer Bill T. Jones, artist and activist Shepard Fairey, and head of design at Google Ivy Ross, the track will explore how to apply design thinking to your pursuits, the importance of transient moments to the human experience, and more. [Photo: Amanda Demme] “As creative doers who are always pushing what comes next, there are many people globally feeling lonely and isolated,” Levy says. “It tells me that the Summit community and the creative community at large need to come up with new ways to support each other. With the rapid pace of technology, AI, and information, it is increasingly important for us all to be reminded of the space where our passion and purpose coalesce. That is the place that the Summit community has in common, and it is imperative to how we grow and evolve our companies and products.” Summit is an invite-only community composed mainly of referrals from existing members, some of whom have been part of the group since its inception. It’s not meant to be some secret society—it’s more about preserving the integrity of the company’s mission: bringing the best thinkers, creators, inventors, investors together to learn and support each other. Or, as Levy describes it: a mutual aid society for our time. “When there’s somebody that we know through Summit, there is a nod of credibility,” she says. “They’re probably a high-octane doer that has a certain way of operating that you trust because they’ve been invited into the Summit community.” Levy believes that Summit can have an especially meaningful impact at moments such as now, when the world is unstable and in transition. “When we, the Summit community, come together, we are able to explore all kinds of topics in a neutral space that allows our community to bump up against the outer edges of our belief systems,” Levy says. “People end up growing and learning from each other. Summit has always been highly effective in giving people new vantage points and opportunities for collaboration to make our endeavors more successful.” View the full article

In a correctional facility just outside of Silicon Valley, a Goodwill store operates inside the prison walls. And the women who are incarcerated there are both the employees and the customers. This Goodwill store, which opened in October 2024, is the first of its kind, and the team behind it hopes that the program will help incarcerated women get back on their feet—whether it’s with a new job or new clothes—as quickly and easily as possible. [Photo: Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department] The shoppers are women who are about to get released; typically about three people come in each day. Traditionally, when a woman is released from Elmwood Facility, she is given only the clothes she was arrested in. “We’re really here to try and help people get back into the community,” says Chris Baker, CEO of Goodwill of Silicon Valley. Nearly 75% of formerly incarcerated people remain unemployed a year after release despite looking for work, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. A new California law passed last year allows formerly incarcerated people to ask for their records to be cleared after completing a sentence. There are over 600 incarcerated women at Elmwood Facility, and eight operate the store at one time. The store is open three days a week for a few hours each day. Some participants had never had a job before, some had jobs that weren’t in the retail industry, and some had previously worked at Goodwill in e-commerce roles. Each woman works in the store for 60 hours total before completing the program with Goodwill. At the store, they take turns working behind the register and performing other tasks, like running inventory or logistics. This can be valuable career training for incarcerated women, who may face significant barriers to employment after leaving prison, according to Steve Preston, the CEO of Goodwill Industries International. “It builds skills, it builds competence, it builds dignity, it prepares people, and it gives them a smoother path when they leave,” says Preston. He says many business leaders and HR professionals across the country are unwilling to hire formerly incarcerated individuals and don’t recognize their potential. [Photo: Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Department] Prison employment The women who work in the Elmwood Facility Goodwill aren’t paid for their labor (most prison jobs in California pay only pennies per hour). Many prison rights activists have criticized prison work at large as exploitative, but the Goodwill program is entirely optional and the team behind it believes it prepares the participants for success outside prison. “[Goodwill] doesn’t get anything monetarily out of it. What we get is knowing that we are providing training to individuals so that they can enter our community and better our community as a whole,” says Castello. She adds that if the women want to work at a Goodwill after release, they would already be mostly trained, which results in less training responsibilities for a store manager. Working at the Elmwood Facility Goodwill doesn’t automatically guarantee employment after release, but participants can find employment through a separate Silicon Valley Goodwill reentry program called “NOW,” which has been operating for 12 years. Participants in the NOW Program work at a Goodwill retail shop for 90 days and have access to job readiness workshops. Goodwill declined to make any participants available to Fast Company, citing privacy concerns, but it shared one emailed comment from a woman who had both worked and shopped at the Elmwood Goodwill, who said: “This program was designed to serve someone like me.” Released with no clothes The Elmwood Goodwill operates similarly to Goodwill’s retail stores across the country, but swaps out cash and credit for pre-loaded gift cards, which Goodwill provides. The shoppers use gift cards to buy themselves two complete new outfits and a backpack for their release. Everything in the store is priced the same and comes in via regular donations to Goodwill dropoff facilities. Providing incarcerated women with new clothes can be just as powerful as providing them with jobs, says Trish Dorsey, VP of mission services at Goodwill of Silicon Valley. She told Fast Company how she’s seen the impact firsthand. In one instance, a woman was arrested inside a hospital, and so she was checked into prison with only a hospital gown, according to Dorsey. The only options she had for release were wearing that same hospital gown or exiting prison in a paper jumpsuit. But after visiting the Elmwood Goodwill, she was able to leave with two complete outfits—as well as shoes, socks, and a backpack, says Dorsey. “The training part is really impactful because it gets [the women] ready to work,” says Dorsey. “But I think just as impactful, if not more so, is the way they now are able to leave the county jail system with dignity.” View the full article

ONS pauses publication of two key indices after finding flawsView the full article

Shoppers at Uniqlo in New York City can now purchase a matcha and a cold brew alongside their new pair of work trousers. As of March 14, Uniqlo’s Midtown store is the first North American location of the Japanese-owned fashion brand to open a Uniqlo Coffee. The cafe, owned by Uniqlo, serves a standard beverage menu including coffee, espresso beverages, cold brew, and matcha, as well as hot chocolate and orange juice. It’s located inside the store itself, with the same sleek, monochromatic branding as the retail sections. Uniqlo is one of several other everyday luxury retailers—like Muji, Aritzia, and Ralph Lauren—that have likewise opened their own branded coffee shops. It’s the modern-day, status-signaling version of a Starbucks inside a Barnes & Noble; turning the store itself into a kind of third place for shoppers to gather in an attempt to earn the coveted reputation of a “lifestyle brand” rather than merely a clothing store. Why every retailer has a coffee shop now Uniqlo Coffee may be new in the U.S., but it’s already a staple at Uniqlo locations in Asia, including in Japan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and Malaysia. These locations tend to have extended menus that also offer small snack foods with local touches. At the Manila global flagship store, for example, shoppers can find melon buns, hojicha gelato, strawberry mint tea, and a cookie butter cheesecake on top of the standard coffee offerings. Brands within Uniqlo’s niche of elevated basics have already found success in North America with starting their own coffee shops. Artizia’s A-OK Cafe, which serves coffee, tea, and pastries, has expanded to 11 locations in Canada and recently opened two new stores in Chicago and New York City. Ralph Lauren’s Ralph’s Coffee can be found in multiple New York locations as well as both Europe and Asia, where it sells sweet treats alongside merch like a Ralph’s-branded tumbler or a ball cap. And the Japanese retailer Muji recently opened a full-on food hall inside NYC’s Chelsea Market, where a robot barista named Jarvis will bring you a black sesame latte on wheels. The coffee shop trend is just another expression of many trendy retailers’ desire to become known as a “lifestyle brand,” or a brand that transcends its actual products to encompass a whole vibe or aesthetic—think Erewhon releasing a $335 sweatsuit, or Sweetgreen starting its own merch-based loyalty program. An added bonus to the physical coffee shop concept is that it plays into Gen Z’s desire to gather in third places post-pandemic, a trend that formerly DTC-only brands like Chamberlain Coffee have also embraced by debuting an actual in-person shop. Market calculation aside, it’s a well-known fact that shopping is simply more enjoyable with an ice-cold beverage in hand (and it might even keep you browsing those aisles a bit longer.) The A-OK Cafe website spells it out pretty clearly: “Don’t let snack-free shopping happen to you.” View the full article

It’s a story that sounds almost too outrageous to be true. Deel, a $12 billion company in the HR tech space, is facing serious allegations of corporate espionage, according to a lawsuit filed by its competitor, Rippling. The lawsuit—filed earlier this month in a California court—claims Deel orchestrated a “multi-month campaign to steal a competitor’s business information with help from a corporate spy.” Rippling alleges that Deel planted an employee to infiltrate its operations, targeting customers in an effort to lure them away. According to the suit, the alleged spying lasted over four months. During that time, the employee (identified in court documents only by the initials D.S.) is said to have “obsessively and systematically accessed Slack channels where he had no legitimate business interest,” conducting more than 6,000 searches. Rippling reportedly discovered the mole after setting a trap: a honeypot Slack channel filled with fake information suggesting it contained sensitive, potentially damaging details about Deel. The channel was irrelevant to the employee’s role in payroll operations, yet he accessed it—confirming suspicions. When confronted, the alleged spy reportedly hid in a bathroom at Rippling’s Dublin office. “The evidence in this case is undeniable,” said Alex Spiro, legal counsel for Rippling, which is valued at $13 billion. “The highest levels of Deel’s leadership are implicated in a brazen corporate espionage scheme, and they will be held accountable.” Deel, for its part, denies all allegations. “Weeks after Rippling is accused of violating sanctions law in Russia and seeding falsehoods about Deel, Rippling is trying to shift the narrative with these sensationalized claims,” a spokesperson said in a statement provided to the media. “We deny all legal wrongdoing and look forward to asserting our counterclaims.” Regardless of the outcome, the case underscores a growing concern around insider threats and corporate espionage—and raises questions about how well companies protect their sensitive information. “Insider threats are a huge problem for organizations,” says Alex Bomberg, chairman of Intelligent Protection International and an expert in security and counterespionage. “It’s really not uncommon.” He adds that while insider threats typically involve disgruntled employees taking proprietary information to new employers, the level of alleged coordination in this case is rare, but still a real risk. The situation might have been avoidable with better internal controls, says Alan Woodward, professor of cybersecurity at the University of Surrey. “If your documents are that sensitive, why aren’t they partitioned in some way?” he asks. “If you put something in a Slack channel and anyone has access . . . they’re going to be able to see it.” Even basic file management tools like Microsoft SharePoint offer permission-based access control, he notes. “Industrial espionage and stealing trade secrets is not exactly unknown, and recruiting somebody from another company isn’t either,” Woodward continues. But this case highlights a broader issue: Many organizations underestimate the risk posed by insider threats. “Most of a company’s assets walk out the door at 6 o’clock—because the knowledge lives in their heads,” he says. That’s why employee satisfaction and robust internal safeguards are crucial. “A lot of hacks are done because somebody—either maliciously or inadvertently—is compromised,” Woodward says. According to Intelligent Protection’s Bomberg, stronger internal security policies could have prevented the breach. “It’s about rule-setting, about creating a capable guardian, and making sure that one person doesn’t have access to everything,” he says. “That’s something that appears not to have happened here.” View the full article

In the forests of eastern Australia, satin bowerbirds create structures known as “bowers.” The males gather twigs and place them upright, in two bundles, with a gap in the middle, resulting in what looks like a miniature archway. All around the bower the bird scatters small objects—shells, pieces of plastic, flower petals—which all possess the same property: the color blue. Studies suggest that the purpose of the bowers is to impress and attract females. But their beauty and intricacy has left some researchers wondering whether they shouldn’t be considered art. A male bower bird, left, stands by as two females inspect his work. [Photo: doug/Flickr] Of course, figuring out whether something is a work of art requires answering some tricky philosophical questions. Are animals even capable of creating art? And how can we tell whether something is a work of art rather than just a coincidentally beautiful object? As a philosopher and artist who’s interested in aesthetics and biology, I recently wrote about the evolution of behaviors in animals that could be seen as art. A contested concept First, it’s important to outline various theories of what makes something a work of art. There’s a general agreement that art must have some sort of producer and some possible or intended audience. In this way, it’s similar to other forms of communication. But the rest of the picture is unclear, and there’s no universally agreed-upon definition of art. In fact, art has proven so difficult to define that Scottish philosopher W.B. Gallie once suggested it might be an “essentially contested concept”—an idea for which there is no correct definition. That being said, some popular views have emerged. Leo Tolstoy famously suggested art is a conduit for emotion, writing in 1897 that “one man consciously, by means of certain external signs, hands on to others feelings he has lived through, and that other people are infected by these feelings and also experience them.” Plato and Aristotle emphasized the representational role of art: the idea that a work of art must in some way mimic, depict, or “stand in” as a sort of sign for something else. Some philosophers believe that creating art requires intention; for example, a sculptor will mold clay with the intention of having it look like Abraham Lincoln. And nonhuman animals, they’ll argue, simply don’t have the right kind of intentions for art-making. Art, beauty, and sex And yet, it’s not clear how much intention really does matter for art. Philosopher Brian Skyrms has pointed out that communication arises even in animals that plausibly do not have sophisticated intentions like our own. For example, fireflies signal to mates with flashes, and this seems to be largely an evolved behavior. Communication can even emerge via simple reinforcement learning, as when a dog learns to associate a certain call with dinner. These aren’t instances of art. But they reveal how meaningful signs or representations can operate without the need for complex intentions. Given that much art also serves a communicative role, I argue that there’s reason to think that art might be able to come about in less intention-demanding ways too. Ornithologist Richard Prum also takes a communicative view of art, but one where art is meant to be evaluated for its beauty. The beauty of a work functions as an indicator of the artist’s reproductive fitness, or their having “good genes,” and this can apply to both humans and animals. Charles Darwin, musing about birds in The Descent of Man, also thought at least some animals appreciate beauty: “When we behold a male bird elaborately displaying his graceful plumes or splendid colours before the female, whilst other birds, not thus decorated, make no such display, it is impossible to doubt that she admires the beauty of her male partner.” Some might not like an account like Prum’s, since it seems to allow creations like bowers to count as art. And yet, as philosopher Denis Dutton points out in his 2009 book The Art Instinct, mate attraction and fitness broadcasting can be the primary motivation behind many human works of art too: just consider the stereotype of the sex-hungry rock musician. Whale ballads and pig paintings I think it’s safe to say some animal creations don’t count as art. The webs of most spiders, though intricate and carefully designed, appear to exist for utilitarian purposes and serve no evaluative or communicative function. The same goes for most anthills. But what about animal songs? The structures of the songs of humpback whales are complex, featuring parts and repeated patterns that researchers often describe as “themes” and “verses.” The songs are long—sometimes up to 30 minutes. Because males perform these songs primarily during mating season, it’s plausible that female whales assess them for their beauty, which serves as a way to gauge the singer’s genetic fitness. Details of songs even vary from whale population to population, often changing over the course of a mating season. Then there are animals that have been trained to make art. Pigcasso was a pig in South Africa whose trainer taught her to paint on canvas via reinforcement learning. The trainer would pick out the colors for Pigcasso, and Pigcasso would do the brushing. Was Pigcasso really an artist? Were her paintings works of art? Pigcasso was plausibly making these paintings for reasons other than her own desire to communicate or make something beautiful; she was motivated, at least in part, by “piggy treats.” The trainer chose the colors. But Pigcasso did, in the end, have some aesthetic freedom: She had control over her brushstrokes. Off the coasts of Japan, male white-spotted puffer fish create impressive nests to attract females. The male puffer fish uses his mouth to remove rocks from the sand and his body to wiggle out long, strategically placed grooves. The finished product is a multi-ringed sand mandala about 6 feet in diameter. Like the bowers, the nests of the puffer fish are beautiful and involve mate attraction. Yet some researchers argue that since these sorts of works all look roughly the same (have the same shape, use the same materials, and so on) they’re more likely the result of evolved, inflexible dispositions than more creative processes. But it’s worth noting that many human works of art bear core similarities as well. Many paintings use flat surfaces, oils, or acrylics. Many songs follow the same chord patterns. And would we still consider human sculptures art if we discovered much about the motivation to build them could be explained by evolution? I wager we would. Birds bust a move Many human cases of art involve more than one person, sometimes even a large group. Think of all the people it takes to make a modern film. Does anything like that happen in animals? Consider the blue manakin bird of South America. Male blues will form groups, often of three or more, which then practice an elaborate song-and-dance routine to later perform in front of females. The practice is detailed and dutiful. The groups hone their moves. This involves learning and memorization, not just genetics. Flaws in the performance are challenged and corrected. Sometimes during practices, a juvenile male will even fill in as a mock female. It’s not the Beatles. But the similarity to music groups seems hard to deny. At the same time, it’s worth wondering whether, beyond conveying their eagerness to mate, the birds are trying to “say” or “express” anything more with their performance. And do they know it’s beautiful? All this leaves room for doubt about whether animals really make art. To me, a key question is whether there’s any animal art that doesn’t have to do with mating, and instead expresses something more complex or sentimental. Without being able to get into the heads of animals, it’s hard to say. But it’s plausible that humans aren’t alone in their artistic pursuits. Shawn Simpson is a visiting lecturer in philosophy at the University of Pittsburgh. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

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] Savor, a 3-year-old startup backed by Bill Gates, makes fats and oils without agriculture. Usually, the most basic formula to create any sort of fat goes like this: Energy (predominantly from the sun, though you could also use something like indoor grow lights) grows plants, which can then be turned into oils themselves, or be fed to livestock, which then produce milk that’s turned into butter. Savor skips all those in-between steps. Instead, energy—methane, captured carbon dioxide, or even green hydrogen—is turned into butter through a thermochemical process that turns carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen into fatty acids. Those fatty acids can then be composed and rearranged to form triglycerides that make up different fats like butter, palm oil, cocoa butter, and more. It’s “Earth’s most ancient chemistry,” says Kathleen Alexander, cofounder and CEO of Savor, explaining how billions of years ago, at the bottom of the ocean, hydrothermal vents created a chemical reaction between hydrogen and carbon dioxide to form fatty acids. [Photo: courtesy Savor] That means Savor’s butter eschews not only animals and plants but also the land associated with agriculture, hormones, antibiotics, and fertilizers—all of which have environmental impacts. All told, the current production of fats and oils makes up around 7% of global emissions, per a Savor calculation done in collaboration with environmental scientists. That’s more than double the global emissions of the aviation industry. Savor currently uses methane or carbon dioxide emitted from factories, and aims to work with companies focused on air capture, or extracting CO2 directly from the atmosphere. For so long, cofounder Ian McKay says, we’ve exploited nature to make all of our food. “I think Savor is considering, are there cases where you can leave nature out and still get what you want?” [Photo: Sara S. Wallach/courtesy Savor] Throughout the meal at Savor’s event, the butter was featured in a variety of ways. Served in a ramekin alongside bread and crudités, it had a clean taste, with a slightly earthy, peppery finish, thanks to the addition of rosemary. By itself, the butter wasn’t the richest or saltiest—it was formulated to be more of a “pastry” butter, the team explained, to laminate well into doughs; it was still creamy, and held up well while sitting out at the table. It was thick and spreadable, not melting too quickly like oil-based butter alternatives, but easily saturating the bread. (Savor’s butter is also allergen-free.) [Photo: Sara S. Wallach/courtesy Savor] A lion’s mane mushroom steak cooked in the butter was meaty, juicy, and comforting, and the Savor butter even appeared in the cherry gastrique atop the mushroom, giving it a silky depth. The chocolate tart had a dense but flaky crust, with Savor butter salted caramel and a melt-in-your-mouth ganache. [Photo: Sara S. Wallach/courtesy Savor] The meal was meant to show the variety of ways Savor’s butter can be used, fitting into chefs’ existing recipes and traditional cooking methods. It also marked Savor’s commercial launch. The startup’s first customers this year include Michelin-starred restaurants SingleThread and One65, and San Francisco’s Jane the Bakery. Savor has been working with chefs over the past year to test its butter and collaborate on creations. (The company is focused on launching as an ingredient supplier first, rather than direct to consumers on grocery store shelves.) In a video on Savor’s website, pastry chef Juan Contreras of three-Michelin-starred restaurant Atelier Crenn, uses Savor butter to make a classic brioche, a recipe he says is “inherently all about the butter.” It’s also a recipe the San Francisco restaurant took off its menu when it stopped serving dairy. “It’s gotten to the point now where it’s pretty much just like working with dairy-based butter,” he says in the Savor video. “If I got served that at a restaurant . . . I would think it’s just regular butter.” View the full article