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In a small section of Los Angeles’s Elysian Park, which spans the amount of land a single sprinkler head can water, a native plant experiment is underway that could change city parks for the better. It’s called Test Plot. Combining native plant species, volunteer gardeners, and a not insignificant amount of weeding, the experiment is trying to find a new way for urban parks to counter ecological degradation and improve climate resilience. The project launched in 2019 and is now underway in parks across California, and the approach is showing that with the right plants and the right amount of effort, parks can be brought back into sync with the natural tendencies of their environments. [Photo: Terremoto] An experiment to spur native, fire-resistant plant growth The idea came from the landscape architecture firm Terremoto, which formerly had an office just a few blocks from Elysian Park. “We saw that it was in need of some help,” says Jenny Jones, a landscape architect at Terremoto. Sections of the roughly 600-acre park were totally overrun by non-native species that crowd out more drought-tolerant, biodiverse, and fire-resilient species. The city’s overstretched parks department had been managing these issues through annual brush clearance, but the non-natives would always grow back, along with the risks they posed. “It clears for fire, but it also mows down every single native species in its path,” Jones says. “We wanted to just challenge the regime of maintenance that we were seeing in the park.” [Photo: Terremoto] In conjunction with a longstanding community group associated with the park, Terremoto approached the city about using the firm’s landscape architecture skills to try a different approach. They asked if they could run a small experiment, planting native plants and doing some active, volunteer-based gardening. The city agreed, with the stipulation that the project be temporary. [Photo: Terremoto] A way forward for more sustainable parks So in the fall of 2019 Terremoto hooked a hose to a water bib in the park, attached a sprinkler head, and started preparing a plot of land for a new kind of park planting. After a few rounds of watering and weeding, they planted dozens of one-gallon pots of native plants. Then, through regular maintenance and weeding sessions attended by a dedicated group of volunteers and enthusiasts, they simply helped the native plants thrive and stopped the non-native plants from moving back in. “We look to ecological restoration as a guide, but it’s not strict,” says Jones. “We lie somewhere between gardening and restoration.” Within three years the native plants fully established themselves, and no longer required watering, nor much weeding. This one plot, just 30 feet in diameter, proved that the park could be restored to a more sustainable and ecologically balanced state. [Photo: Terremoto] A 30-foot circle in a 600-acre park might seem like a drop in the bucket, but the idea has caught on. Terremoto expanded its Test Plot approach to other parts of Elysian Park and other parks across L.A. There are now about 15 Test Plots, including four or five that have fully established plants. By identifying degraded landscapes within parks, engaging with local groups already connected with those parks, and then asking city officials if they could temporarily intervene by adding native plants to those parks, they’ve been able to rethink planting and maintenance approaches at a larger scale. “There’s a little bit of figuring out how to pierce the bureaucracy and how to get around the otherwise really strict rules about engaging in that kind of work in public spaces,” Jones says. But in the urban context, parks departments often have to deprioritize planting and maintenance in the face of the social issues they also experience, like vandalism, drug abuse, unhoused individuals, and compromised public safety. A volunteer project like Test Plot is a welcome intervention. “[Parks departments] simply don’t have the budget to do what it takes to actually take care of a complicated urban park that faces intense urban problems,” Jones says. [Photo: Terremoto] Test pilot’s appeal for time (and budget)-strapped cities Test Plot is an appealing concept for parks who face such both budget challenges and the relentlessness of invasive species, and many across the state of California have allowed these interventions. Beyond half a dozen parks in L.A., Test Plots are adding native plants to parks in San Francisco, Berkeley, Daly City, Puente Hills, and Catalina Island. Interest in the approach has grown so much that it’s been formally spun off into a non-profit organization by the same name. Jones says the organization has received interest from parks groups across the country, including in Minnesota and Rhode Island. They are also being hired as consultants for new park projects, including a redesign of the Los Angeles River Center and Gardens that will feature an ethnobotanical garden created by the Test Plot organization. Jones says that a central element of all these Test Plots is community involvement. Volunteers are the backbone of the effort, and their ongoing engagement with the planting and weeding that Test Plot involves becomes a kind of reinforcement for the park’s vitality. “We have people come and they form a bond with their park in a way that they didn’t before,” Jones says. “A lot of people love their parks because they take their dogs on walks, it’s where they run, it’s where they walk with their friends. But there’s a whole new layer of bonding when your hands are in the soil and you are taking care of the land yourself.” View the full article

Kendrick Lamar. Drake. Lady Gaga. The charts of music streaming services pretty much all look the same these days, with familiar names dominating the top spots—except on up-and-coming Spotify competitor Audiomack. The current No. 1 album on Audiomack belongs to Nigeria’s Seyi Vibez, whose hypnotic Afrobeats tracks have amassed around 1.8 billion plays on the platform. Vibez is one of many African and Caribbean artists who have found breakout success on the platform. Many of them consistently draw larger audiences on Audiomack than on Spotify or Apple Music, largely due to the platform’s strong presence in local markets. “We are the most-used streaming service in a large swath of Africa,” says Audiomack cofounder Brian Zisook. “We’re No. 1 on iOS and Android in Nigeria and Ghana.” The company boasts 58 billion-plus songs streamed in Nigeria alone. Half of Audiomack’s audience of 40 million monthly listeners comes from the continent. Audiomack’s rise in West Africa was initially unintentional, but it has since become a case study in the potential of emerging markets and how smaller music platforms can thrive alongside industry giants like Spotify and Apple Music. From a mixtape hub to an Afrobeats force When Zisook and Dave Macli founded Audiomack in New York in 2012, they just wanted to make it easier for local hip-hop DJs to distribute their mixtapes. At the time, many DJs relied on questionable file-sharing sites, creating a poor experience for fans. “Those websites were strewn with pop-up [ads] and malware,” Zisook recalls. “If you downloaded a mixtape, you had to worry that you were going to crash your family computer.” Audiomack grew steadily in Western markets, but never really broke through against its much bigger competitors. All that changed seemingly overnight in 2019 when West African musicians and their fans began flocking to the service en masse. “We just took off,” Zisook says. “The growth was a hockey stick.” To adapt, Macli and Zisook hired a local team in Nigeria, gaining valuable insights into their new market. “The mistake that so many in the industry made was to view Africa as a monolith,” Zisook says. “If you are in Tanzania or Liberia, nothing is going to offend you more than only being served Nigerian, Ghanaian, or South African songs.” Betting on Africa as a growth market for music streaming is savvy, believes MIDiA Research senior music industry analyst Tatiana Cirisano. “As Western markets reach saturation, most future streaming growth will come from Global South regions, of which Africa is an important part,” she argues. “It was smart for Audiomack to position itself as a key player here.” Betting on Africa’s music boom Cirisano cautions, however, that business models that work in the West may not easily translate to emerging markets. “African countries have a lower average revenue per user than countries like the U.S. and U.K.,” she says. “Even though Africa’s impact on global music culture and consumption continues to grow, its impact on global music revenue is not matching that growth.” “It’s very difficult to monetize music in Africa,” acknowledges Zisook. “You have a young audience that has limited or no disposable income, and a lack of access to credit and debit cards. They pay for things online using gift cards. So there’s no opportunity for consistent subscriptions. There’s a lot of churn. They have hard capped data plans, and they have unreliable or no Wi-Fi.” Audiomack responded to this by striking bundling deals with local cellphone carriers. The company also integrated alternative revenue streams for musicians: Fans can become direct financial supporters of their favorite artists on the platform, and in exchange get badges and bragging rights. It’s a clever way for Audiomack to differentiate itself from the competition, Cirisano contends, noting, “The traditional streaming business doesn’t monetize fandom, or depth of engagement—it monetizes pure consumption.” Thriving alongside giants like Spotify Scaling a business works for streaming giants like Spotify, which recently reported its first full year of profitability. But it has been much more challenging for second-tier services like Tidal, which reportedly laid off 100 staffers last fall. Audiomack could provide a blueprint for these smaller services to compete with, and prosper alongside the big guys. In addition to further growing its user base in Africa, Audiomack also courts expats across Western markets. “A lot of our growth in Canada, U.K., Germany, and France is diasporic,” Zisook says. “Ghanaians in Germany, Nigerians in France.” At the same time, the company is striking licensing agreements with major labels to gain access to more of their catalogs. This attracts Western listeners familiar with hip-hop while introducing them to Seyi Vibez and other Afrobeats stars. That way, Audiomack can become a complementary service for Western audiences looking to dive deeper into different music genres. “The same folks who listen to Spotify at work might use Audiomack later in the day to more actively discover music, express their fandom, and access a catalog that is not available on mainstream streaming services,” Cirisano says. View the full article

Teenage YouTube users across the world will now get automatic reminders to go to bed and take a break from their screens. YouTube announced this week it was expanding such reminders to minors across the globe, ensuring they are full-screen and toggled-on by default. The feature first debuted in the U.S. seven years ago, and went automatic for minors in 2023. So-called “bedtime” notifications have grown in popularity, buoyed in large part by YouTube and TikTok. But it’s unclear how effective the notifications are in the first place. After all, YouTube users only have to click to close out the banner; on TikTok, it’s even easier to keep swiping past the text. “It will be effective for a small proportion of people, but the onus is still on the user to turn it off,” says Jon-Patrick Allem, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at Rutgers School of Public Health. “These are all cosmetic things that may work for some people, but aren’t really going to shift user behavior.” The rise of ‘stop scrolling’ signs YouTube first introduced their overuse warnings back in 2018. At first, it was a simple opt-in “take a break” notification. By 2020, YouTube revealed that they’d sent more than three billion warnings, and added a “bedtime reminder” to their suite. This is the same year that TikTok also premiered their screentime management ads, headed by popular creators like Alan Chikin Chow and Gabe Erwin. A few years later, parents amplified concerns about their children’s social media usage. More and more data flooded the web about a teen mental health crisis, with an uptick in depression and anxiety. YouTube responded in 2023 by making their “take a break” and “bedtime” reminders more prominent on the screen, and making them mandatory for all American users under 18. TikTok debuted their own “sleep reminder” and silenced push notifications for users under 18 after 10 p.m. Now, YouTube’s changes are global. In a LinkedIn post, Pedro Pina, YouTube’s head of Europe, Middle East and Africa, wrote that the program ensures teens’ “time on the platform is well spent.” (YouTube did not respond to a request for comment.) But these reminders are still just suggestions: Rutgers’s Allem says that users see them as “recommendations for best options,” advice that they’re unlikely to take. “There is no consequence if an individual acts or doesn’t act on this prompt,” he says. “It would probably be just as easy as moving on from the post like anything else you weren’t interested in. The one second that you take determining this isn’t interesting so you keep scrolling, would that really be impactful?” What does it take for us to actually log off? Beyond some limited content moderation, these warnings are the furthest major social media companies have gone to protect teens from addiction and overuse. But, in the wake of Jonathan Haidt’s The Anxious Generation and 2024’s great upheaval around internet mental health, every pundit has their own ideas for further steps. The Surgeon General recommended cigarette-style warning labels; the State of New York demanded companies tamp down on their recommendation algorithms for minors. Allem rattles off a list of changes that would be more effective at stopping social media overuse. They could mandate lock-outs for minors during nighttime hours. They could force users to pay for increased hours using their apps. Or, the apps could be redesigned all together. “There’s no natural stopping point for platforms designed with infinite scroll online,” Allem says. “We could consider default settings that were programmed to limit use, rather than allowing for unlimited use.” But none of these changers are likely to happen anytime soon. “All of this can be done quite easily,” Allem says. “It isn’t done because it will tap into and reduce growth and profit.” View the full article

The first thing anyone will notice about the new electric pickup from Telo Trucks is its compact form. Snubnosed and sporty, the five-seater has a bed the size of a typical pickup but an overall footprint the size of a Mini Cooper. When it goes into production next year, it will offer a radical counterpoint to the gargantuan trucks that dominate the U.S. automobile market. Today, Telo is unveiling the first drivable preproduction model of its new truck, the MT1, and Fast Company has an exclusive look at the innovations inside the truck that make its seemingly impossible size possible. [Image: Telo]The key to the Telo truck’s interior design efficiency is its focus on what’s known in the automotive world as the H point—the location of a driver’s hip inside the vehicle—which becomes the main parameter that determines the size of a car’s interior. Telo aimed to get about the same volumetric interior space as a crew cab Toyota Tacoma, the top-selling midsize pickup in the U.S. “A lot of the special sauce as to how we get five people and a 5-foot bed into the footprint of a two-door Mini Cooper is packaging, and people are the most important part,” says Jason Marks, Telo cofounder and CEO. From left: An MT1 compared with a Tacoma; a Mini Cooper [Image: Telo]Telo’s focus on the H-point ended up shaping the entire truck, inside and outside. “We knew we had the right amount of space that people were used to having. And then what the designers did within that space was they had a lot of free reign,” says Forrest North, Telo cofounder and CFO. That led to an exterior design with a short, frunkless nose, and a truck bed that can expand inward into the truck’s cab with an innovative folding midgate. That makes it big enough to haul a sheet of 4-by-8-foot plywood, giving the truck both utility and a compact size for urban settings. [Image: Telo]The interior design of Telo’s cabin space manages to compete with other trucks by repositioning how passengers sit. The driver and passenger seats were designed with an uncommon pedestal base that puts them higher up from the base of the floor. This height, and the lack of the typical twin mounting rails that sit on the floor beneath most front seats, creates more space underneath for the feet and legs of passengers in the back seat. “The way that we built the front seats, it’s almost like they’re hovering in the air,” Marks says. “The angle of your thighs moves down, your back angle wants to be slightly more upright, and so it lets you actually occupy less horizontal room, even though you occupy more vertical room.” [Image: Telo]Ditching the frunk in favor of a larger truck bed and shorter overall vehicle length meant that these front seats are positioned very close to the front of the truck. North equates it to the experience he had driving his first car, a 1975 Volkswagen bus. “One of the great things about that is you know exactly where the front of the vehicle is. Parking and moving around in urban areas is much easier,” he says. [Image: Telo]But to carve every cubic inch of waste out of the interior, the design had to account for the necessary safety features that exist in passenger vehicles, including crash structures, crumple zones, and a firewall. Having the front seats up on a pedestal cleared room beneath them for feet to swing in and out of the vehicle, which allowed those front end safety structures to sit closer to the people inside. “That had to be designed in a very surface contoured, three-dimensional way that optimized for both how you enter and exit the vehicle and how the vehicle performs,” Marks says. “So that was a big part of how we do what we do in our vehicle.” [Image: Telo]Industrial designer Yves Behar’s company Fuseproject led the truck’s design. (Behar is also an equity partner in Telo and serves as its chief creative officer and cofounder.) He says this pedestal seating approach is rare in car design, but has opened more space within the vehicle for human-centric design. “It’s a funny feature to talk about because it’s like talking about the underside of a chair. Nobody ever sees the underside of a chair, but that’s really what this design is about,” Behar says. “It’s about designing the things people can’t see to deliver more comfort, more ergonomics, and more spaciousness in what I would say is an extremely small vehicle overall.” [Image: Telo]Other space-efficient design elements are scattered throughout the cabin, from its two compact glove boxes to a smaller-than-usual center console bin to cupholders that slide out of view when not in use to a specific place to store sunglasses. “It’s actually a lot of storage but that feels more dedicated rather than just a big bin that you put all your random stuff in,” Behar says. Because it’s an electric vehicle, the Telo truck’s battery was also a big design parameter that shaped its interior design. North, who previously built the battery for the Tesla Roadster, says making the battery as thin as possible helped create more space inside the vehicle without compromising aerodynamics and range. “You want to reduce any millimeter you can from your from your roofline,” he says. For Telo, size is everything. But in contrast to most trucks out on the market today, bigger is not better, according to Behar. “What I think pickup trucks have really embraced in the past 20-plus year is this notion of massiveness and masculinity and silly bigness,” he says. “That has essentially turned pickup trucks into dangerous and less utilitarian vehicles.” View the full article

As a child, Sunita Sah says she learned to be “good.” Growing up in the U.K. in the 1980s as the daughter of Indian immigrants, she was praised for being obedient and studious at home and at school. But she also experienced racial slurs and hostile stares. Sah lived in a place that didn’t always welcome differences—and her family was different. Sah had long considered her mother to be a compliant person. Quiet and deferential, her mom was the model of goodness. But one day that changed. When Sah was 7 years old, she and her mother were accosted in an alley by teenage boys, who shouted at them to “Go back home.” They were alone, vulnerable, and outnumbered. That’s when Sah’s mother did something surprising. Rather than shrink under their threats, she stood up straight and confronted them. “You think you’re clever?” she said to the boys. “You think you’re so strong. Big, tough boys, right?” Then it was the boys’ turn to shrink. They took off, and Sah and her mother continued on. Sah would come to realize that “defiance isn’t a personality trait,” she says. “We can choose.” Sah, a physician, psychologist, and professor at Cornell University’s SC Johnson School of Business, has spent much of her career studying decision-making, including how and when we choose to defy. “Defiance is not reducible to strength or weakness, courage or cowardice. It is not solely for the brave, the strong, or the extraordinary,” she writes in her new book, Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes. “We all have the capacity to be defiant.” WHY DEFIANCE IS SO DIFFICULT Defiance—the decision to act according to your own values when you’re pressured to do otherwise—may be a matter of choice, but it’s certainly not an easy one. Many people find themselves wanting to stand up for what they believe is right, but unable to access that defiance. Nearly all of us have been rewarded for compliant behavior, over and over again. We get good grades in school if we study; we get positive performance reviews at work if we support the company’s goals. Compliance is so conditioned, that for many it’s an automatic response. So when it’s time to defy and act according to our own principles, it feels unnatural. Compliance can be a good thing, but there is a dangerous side, too, Sah says. We learn quickly that we can keep earning promotions if we go along with shady business practices, or avoid retribution if we look the other way when we see a colleague being harassed. 1. WE DON’T KNOW HOW TO DEFY Even if we want to side with our own values over external pressure, we don’t always know how. If you see a colleague misleading a client, whom do you tell, and what do you say? Will it be enough to gently nudge someone to investigate the problem, or should you confront the person yourself? If we’re accustomed to complying, it’s hard to picture what defiance looks like. 2. WE WORRY ABOUT INSULTING OTHERS Another barrier is what Sah calls “insinuation anxiety,” or the fear that we may appear to insult or undermine someone if we question their decisions or behavior. Rather than speaking up, we say nothing to avoid looking insulting or insubordinate. 3. THE COST OF DEFIANCE IS SOMETIMES TOO GREAT For some, the cost of defiance is too risky. Speaking up at work can cost you your paycheck and your healthcare. We’ve seen corporate whistleblowers fired, dragged through court, and blacklisted in their industries. When the risk of defying is too great, we sometimes have to defer our defiance to another day when the costs are manageable. LEARNING HOW TO DEFY Defiance is a choice, Sah writes in her new book. Defiance is also a process. Two decades of research have shown Sah that “defiance and compliance are not binary, but rather exist on a spectrum . . . encompassing a gradation of understanding, questioning, and action.” She believes her mother had likely encountered those boys several times, perhaps defying them in small ways before putting her foot down. The difference between someone who does defy and someone who doesn’t is preparation, she explains. Surprise can force us into compliance. Defiance can be practiced in small ways. You can envision yourself in the situation and practice saying aloud what you hope you will be able to say in the moment. “The first time we speak up, we might stumble, but with repetition our voice grows more confident,” she says. Practice is good because the best time to decide whether to defy or comply is not in the heat of the moment, Sah writes. Pausing can give you time to calculate the risks of defiance and form a plan to respond. Remember: You don’t have to defy every time. If you’re caught off guard and are unable to respond as you’d like to, prepare yourself for the next opportunity. Most acts of defiance are not historic moments, nor are they necessarily memorable ones. But those small moments of defiance can help us build the muscle we need when it matters most. “The forces that lead to compliance are more complex than they might appear, but they are not insurmountable,” Sah writes. “We may not always know how to defy. But we can learn.” View the full article

Union Home Mortgage claims eight of its managers and an LO transitioned to American Pacific Mortgage, breaching a number of agreements. View the full article

In the second season of Severance, there’s an unexpected character: a child supervisor named Miss Huang, who matter-of-factly explains she’s a child “because of when I was born.” Miss Huang’s deadpan response is more than just a clever quip. Like so much in the Apple TV+ series, which has broken viewership records for the streaming service, I think it reveals a devastating truth about the role of work in the 21st century. As a scholar of childhood studies, I also see historical echoes: What constitutes a “child”—and whether one gets to claim childhood at all—has always depended on when and where a person is born. An age of innocence? Americans are deeply invested in the idea of childhood as a time of innocence, with kids protected by doting adults from the harsh realities of work and making ends meet. However, French historian Philippe Ariès famously argued that childhood, as many understand it today, simply did not exist in the past. Using medieval art as one resource, Ariès pointed out that children were often portrayed as miniature adults, without special attributes, such as plump features or silly behaviors, that might mark them as fundamentally different from their older counterparts. Looking at baptism records, Ariès also discovered that many parents gave siblings the same name, and he explained this phenomenon by suggesting that devastatingly high child mortality rates prevented parents from investing the sort of love and affection in their children that’s now considered a core component of parenthood. While historians have debated many of Ariès’s specific claims, his central insight remains powerful: Our modern understanding of childhood as a distinct life stage characterized by play, protection, and freedom from adult responsibilities is a relatively recent historical development. Ariès argued that children didn’t emerge as a focus of unconditional love until the 17th century. Kids at work The belief that a child deserves a life free from the stress of the workplace came along still later. After all, if Miss Huang had been born in the 19th century, few people would question her presence in the workplace. The Industrial Revolution yielded accounts of children working 16-hour days and accorded no special protection because of their tender age and emotional vulnerability. Well into the 20th century, children younger than Miss Huang routinely worked in factories, mines, and other dangerous environments. To today’s viewers of Severance, the presence of a child supervisor in the sterile, oppressive workplace of the show’s fictional Lumon Industries feels jarring precisely because it violates the deeply held belief that children are occupants of a separate sphere, their innocence shielding them from the dog-eat-dog environs of competitive workplaces. Childhood under threat As a child worker, Miss Huang might seem like an uncanny ghost of a bygone era of childhood. But I think she’s closer to a prophet: Her role as child-boss warns viewers about what a work-obsessed future holds. Today, the ideal childhood—access to play, care, and a meaningful education—is increasingly under threat. As politicians and policymakers insist that children are the future, many of them refuse to support the intensive caregiving required to transform newborns into functioning adults. As philosopher Nancy Fraser has argued, capitalism relies on someone doing that work, while assigning it little to no monetized value. Child-rearing in the 21st century exists within a troubling paradox: Mothers provide unpaid childcare for their own children, while those who professionally care for others’ children—predominantly women of color and immigrants—receive meager compensation for this essential work. In other words, economic elites and the politicians they support say they want to cultivate future workers. But they don’t want to fund the messy, inefficient, time-consuming process that raising modern children requires. The show’s name comes from a “severance” procedure that workers undergo to separate their work memories from their personal ones. It offers a darkly comic version of work-life balance, with Lumon office workers able to completely disconnect their work selves from their personalities off the clock. Each is distinct: A character’s “innie” is the person they are at the job, and their “outtie” is who they are at home. I see this as an apt metaphor for how market capitalism seeks to separate the slow, patient work required to raise children and care for other loved ones from the cold-eyed pursuit of economic efficiency. Parents are expected to work as if they don’t have children and raise children as if they don’t work. The result is a system that makes traditional notions of childhood—with its unwieldy dependencies, its inefficient play, and its demands for attention and care—increasingly untenable. Capitalism’s ideal child Plummeting global fertility rates around the world speak to this crisis in childcare, with the U.S., Europe, South Korea, and China falling well below the birth rate required to replace the existing population. Even as Elon Musk frets about women choosing not to have children, he seems eager to restrict any government aid that would provide the time or resources that raising children requires. Accessible healthcare; affordable, healthy food; and stable housing are out of the reach of many. The current administration’s quest for what it calls “government efficiency” is poised to shred safety net programs that help millions of low-income children. In the midst of this dilemma, Miss Huang offers a surreal solution to the problems children pose in 2025. She is, in many ways, capitalism’s ideal child. Already a productive worker as a tween, she requires no parent’s time, no teacher’s patience, and no community’s resources. Like other workers and executives at Lumon, she seems to have shed the inefficient entanglements of family, love, and play. In this light, Miss Huang’s clever insistence that she is a child “because of when I was born” is darkly prophetic. In a world where every moment must be productive, where caregiving is systematically devalued, and where human relationships are subordinated to market logic, Miss Huang represents a future where childhood survives only as a date on a birth certificate. All the other attributes are economically impractical. Viewers don’t yet know if she’s severed. But at least from the perspective of the other workers in the show, Miss Huang works ceaselessly and, in doing so, proves that she is no child at all. Or rather, she is the only kind of child that America’s economic system allows to thrive. Anna Mae Duane is a professor of English at the University of Connecticut. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

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One of the world’s most complex financial conglomerates is attracting scrutiny for circular flows of cash involving its global property portfolioView the full article

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) has launched AgentExchange, a new marketplace integrated into its Agentforce platform, aimed at expanding opportunities in the $6 trillion digital labor market. The company announced that AgentExchange debuts with over 200 partners, including Google Cloud, Docusign, and Box, offering trusted AI solutions that businesses can use to build AI agents efficiently. Building on the success of AppExchange, Salesforce’s long-established enterprise cloud marketplace, AgentExchange provides a platform for developers, partners, and the Agentblazer community to create, distribute, and monetize agentic AI components. AgentExchange offers businesses access to hundreds of prebuilt actions, topics, and templates, all designed to enhance efficiency and innovation. According to Salesforce, these solutions have undergone rigorous security and customer reviews to ensure trustworthiness. “Accelerating our speed of execution is critical to Goodyear’s ability to deliver for our customers and maximize our end-to-end value proposition. We’re excited about the potential of the ready-to-use solutions from AgentExchange to enhance our speed, efficiency, and customer experience,” said Goodyear CEO and President Mark Stewart. Key Partner Contributions Several major partners have already begun integrating solutions into AgentExchange: Google Cloud: Enables Agentforce agents to access up-to-the-minute data, news, and insights using Vertex AI and Google Search. Box: Helps agents extract insights from unstructured data and interact with content using natural language. Docusign: Automates agreement generation, routing, signature tracking, and workflow management. Workday: Enhances HR processes, including onboarding and benefits management, by automating self-service workflows. Salesforce states that these partnerships will help businesses implement AI-driven workflows that improve productivity across various industries. Comprehensive AI Solutions AgentExchange introduces new partner-built components, allowing businesses and developers to expand the capabilities of AI agents within Agentforce. These components include: Actions: Prebuilt integrations such as APIs, workflows, and automation scripts. Prompt Templates: Standardized prompts for guiding AI interactions and responses. Topics: Predefined workflows that structure AI agent behavior for specific tasks. Agent Templates: End-to-end AI solutions that incorporate multiple actions and topics for industry-specific applications. Salesforce notes that these features simplify AI adoption by allowing businesses to discover, test, and implement AI solutions directly from the marketplace or within Agentforce’s development tools. AgentExchange aims to facilitate collaboration among businesses, partners, and developers. Companies can access industry-specific solutions while engaging with the broader Agentblazer community to refine AI agent capabilities. “AgentExchange empowers customers to seamlessly integrate trusted AI solutions within their workflow,” said Alice Steinglass, EVP & GM of Platform, Integration and Automation at Salesforce. “Now our developer community can directly tap the expertise of our partner ecosystem to get the right industry-specific solutions so they can build and implement AI agents, and be the pioneers turning their businesses into Agentforce companies.” Image: Salesforce This article, "Salesforce Unveils AgentExchange, Expanding the Digital Labor Market" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) has launched AgentExchange, a new marketplace integrated into its Agentforce platform, aimed at expanding opportunities in the $6 trillion digital labor market. The company announced that AgentExchange debuts with over 200 partners, including Google Cloud, Docusign, and Box, offering trusted AI solutions that businesses can use to build AI agents efficiently. Building on the success of AppExchange, Salesforce’s long-established enterprise cloud marketplace, AgentExchange provides a platform for developers, partners, and the Agentblazer community to create, distribute, and monetize agentic AI components. AgentExchange offers businesses access to hundreds of prebuilt actions, topics, and templates, all designed to enhance efficiency and innovation. According to Salesforce, these solutions have undergone rigorous security and customer reviews to ensure trustworthiness. “Accelerating our speed of execution is critical to Goodyear’s ability to deliver for our customers and maximize our end-to-end value proposition. We’re excited about the potential of the ready-to-use solutions from AgentExchange to enhance our speed, efficiency, and customer experience,” said Goodyear CEO and President Mark Stewart. Key Partner Contributions Several major partners have already begun integrating solutions into AgentExchange: Google Cloud: Enables Agentforce agents to access up-to-the-minute data, news, and insights using Vertex AI and Google Search. Box: Helps agents extract insights from unstructured data and interact with content using natural language. Docusign: Automates agreement generation, routing, signature tracking, and workflow management. Workday: Enhances HR processes, including onboarding and benefits management, by automating self-service workflows. Salesforce states that these partnerships will help businesses implement AI-driven workflows that improve productivity across various industries. Comprehensive AI Solutions AgentExchange introduces new partner-built components, allowing businesses and developers to expand the capabilities of AI agents within Agentforce. These components include: Actions: Prebuilt integrations such as APIs, workflows, and automation scripts. Prompt Templates: Standardized prompts for guiding AI interactions and responses. Topics: Predefined workflows that structure AI agent behavior for specific tasks. Agent Templates: End-to-end AI solutions that incorporate multiple actions and topics for industry-specific applications. Salesforce notes that these features simplify AI adoption by allowing businesses to discover, test, and implement AI solutions directly from the marketplace or within Agentforce’s development tools. AgentExchange aims to facilitate collaboration among businesses, partners, and developers. Companies can access industry-specific solutions while engaging with the broader Agentblazer community to refine AI agent capabilities. “AgentExchange empowers customers to seamlessly integrate trusted AI solutions within their workflow,” said Alice Steinglass, EVP & GM of Platform, Integration and Automation at Salesforce. “Now our developer community can directly tap the expertise of our partner ecosystem to get the right industry-specific solutions so they can build and implement AI agents, and be the pioneers turning their businesses into Agentforce companies.” Image: Salesforce This article, "Salesforce Unveils AgentExchange, Expanding the Digital Labor Market" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Borrowing costs rise amid global sell-off sparked by GermanyView the full article

Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) has launched Photoshop for iPhone, bringing its widely used image editing and design application to mobile devices. The new app, available starting today, delivers Photoshop’s core tools, including layering, masking, and Firefly-powered Generative Fill, in a mobile-friendly interface. An Android version is set to launch later this year. The mobile expansion is part of Adobe’s broader initiative to make Photoshop more accessible, with the new mobile app and an enhanced web experience now included in all current Photoshop plans. According to Adobe, these additions provide flexibility for established Photoshop users while also welcoming a new generation of creators. The introduction of Photoshop’s mobile app marks the first time the software’s advanced editing capabilities are available in a single free mobile application. Users can create and edit visuals with Photoshop’s signature tools, including selections, layers, and masks. The app also features the Tap Select tool for easy image adjustments, the Spot Healing Brush for removing distractions, and Firefly-powered generative AI tools like Generative Fill and Generative Expand. The mobile app integrates with Adobe Express, Adobe Fresco, and Adobe Lightroom, allowing creators to transition between workflows seamlessly. Additionally, users can access Adobe Stock’s extensive asset library for added creative elements. Adobe has introduced a new Photoshop Mobile and Web plan, priced at $7.99 per month or $69.99 annually. This plan provides expanded access to Photoshop on the web and advanced editing features for mobile and iPad users. Features available in this plan include: Seamless transitions between mobile and web for cross-device editing Firefly-powered AI tools, such as Generate Similar and Reference Image, to enhance creativity More than 20,000 fonts with the ability to import additional options Object Select for precise selections of people and objects Advanced retouching tools like Remove Tool, Clone Stamp, and Content-Aware Fill Enhanced control over transparency, color effects, and blend modes Lighten and Darken tools for non-destructive image adjustments All current Photoshop paid plans now include Photoshop on iPad, Photoshop on the web, and the new mobile app. Adobe has emphasized its commitment to ethical AI development, ensuring that Firefly-powered tools are commercially safe. “Firefly is commercially safe and only trained on content that Adobe has permission to use, including licensed content from Adobe Stock and public domain content where copyright has expired,” the company stated. Additionally, content created using Firefly-powered tools will include Content Credentials, which serve as a “nutrition label” for digital content, promoting transparency in AI-generated media. Photoshop for iPhone is now available worldwide in the Apple App Store. The Android version is expected to launch later this year. Existing Photoshop customers will receive access to the new mobile app at no additional cost as part of their current plans. Image: Adobe This article, "Adobe Brings Photoshop to Mobile" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) has launched Photoshop for iPhone, bringing its widely used image editing and design application to mobile devices. The new app, available starting today, delivers Photoshop’s core tools, including layering, masking, and Firefly-powered Generative Fill, in a mobile-friendly interface. An Android version is set to launch later this year. The mobile expansion is part of Adobe’s broader initiative to make Photoshop more accessible, with the new mobile app and an enhanced web experience now included in all current Photoshop plans. According to Adobe, these additions provide flexibility for established Photoshop users while also welcoming a new generation of creators. The introduction of Photoshop’s mobile app marks the first time the software’s advanced editing capabilities are available in a single free mobile application. Users can create and edit visuals with Photoshop’s signature tools, including selections, layers, and masks. The app also features the Tap Select tool for easy image adjustments, the Spot Healing Brush for removing distractions, and Firefly-powered generative AI tools like Generative Fill and Generative Expand. The mobile app integrates with Adobe Express, Adobe Fresco, and Adobe Lightroom, allowing creators to transition between workflows seamlessly. Additionally, users can access Adobe Stock’s extensive asset library for added creative elements. Adobe has introduced a new Photoshop Mobile and Web plan, priced at $7.99 per month or $69.99 annually. This plan provides expanded access to Photoshop on the web and advanced editing features for mobile and iPad users. Features available in this plan include: Seamless transitions between mobile and web for cross-device editing Firefly-powered AI tools, such as Generate Similar and Reference Image, to enhance creativity More than 20,000 fonts with the ability to import additional options Object Select for precise selections of people and objects Advanced retouching tools like Remove Tool, Clone Stamp, and Content-Aware Fill Enhanced control over transparency, color effects, and blend modes Lighten and Darken tools for non-destructive image adjustments All current Photoshop paid plans now include Photoshop on iPad, Photoshop on the web, and the new mobile app. Adobe has emphasized its commitment to ethical AI development, ensuring that Firefly-powered tools are commercially safe. “Firefly is commercially safe and only trained on content that Adobe has permission to use, including licensed content from Adobe Stock and public domain content where copyright has expired,” the company stated. Additionally, content created using Firefly-powered tools will include Content Credentials, which serve as a “nutrition label” for digital content, promoting transparency in AI-generated media. Photoshop for iPhone is now available worldwide in the Apple App Store. The Android version is expected to launch later this year. Existing Photoshop customers will receive access to the new mobile app at no additional cost as part of their current plans. Image: Adobe This article, "Adobe Brings Photoshop to Mobile" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Sweeping geographic labels had sparked break-up speculation and been deemed inappropriate by some staff View the full article

As society becomes increasingly aware of people’s diverse needs, accessible design has become the hot topic. Years ago at Michael Graves Design, our president Donald Strum, our chief design officer Rob Van Varick, and I were reviewing student portfolios. All the designs were about sustainability. Today, we see a lot of focus on accessibility. We love it. This makes sense, because gaining empathy for your products’ future users is at the core of product design. The design community is ready for accessibility. Our challenge today is proving that it makes great business sense. At Michael Graves Design, we have long embraced accessible design; our North Star is activities of daily living (ADLs), a term used to describe the fundamental skills required to successfully live independently. Guided by our “Delight for All” philosophy, and with the ADLs prioritizing the most impactful objects to design, we’re dedicated to designing products that people love and products that enhance lives, regardless of age or physical ability. To do that, we look for product opportunity gaps—unmet consumer needs—and fulfill them with new product designs. By definition, this is pioneering, creating solutions that previously have not existed. We embrace pioneering as a cherished value that we want to share. Our true mission has been to design everyday objects in a way that works for the widest audience possible. At the same time, the products should look great and make users love them because the products enhance their lives. Brands want to make emotional connections with consumers and helping someone do something that was previously a struggle is the best way to fall in love. We understand that expanding the addressable market size is fundamental to growth and that people always want a better mousetrap. We’re designing products that give equal focus to style and safety. Democratization of design Michael Graves, an esteemed architect and designer, founded our firm with a visionary mission to shift design from abstract modernism to a human-centered approach that puts the person at the center of all design decisions. This philosophy brought color and art back into the built environment, and prioritized human comfort, understanding, and joy. This approach provides cognitive accessibility. Later, Michael Graves Design’s partnership with Target defined America’s expectation that great design should be affordable to everyone. Design became a corporate strategy. The democratization of design was born, and our company delivered financial accessibility. Over his last decade, after becoming paralyzed, Michael discovered the indignities the built environment imposed on people, and he became a passionate advocate among the disabled. This moved our company to focus on physical accessibility, directing the power of design to improve lifestyles and healthcare experiences for every body. Michael transformed the role of the architect in society and left the world a better place than he found it. Delight for All Now, our mission is Delight for All, to create moments of joy through products that are visually appealing, full of character and purpose, and designed to enhance people’s lives. We take pride in being one of the most accessible design brands, creating functional, beautiful products for every body and encourage other companies and designers to do the same. We’ve brought over 2,500 products to market, from our iconic teakettles to healthcare products that transform the acute care experience, to home products that prioritize universal accessibility and appeal. We create products with purpose and personality, safety, and style, so that no one has to choose between living with one or the other—the concepts can coexist harmoniously. This approach is rooted in empathy and an understanding of how profoundly good design improves quality of life, making everyday environments more intuitive and enjoyable for everyone. “Design for All” led to good design becoming a “cost of entry” consideration for most companies. Our brand ethos is now pushing other companies and designers to consider physical accessibility from the onset of their design processes rather than as an afterthought. Once this reaches critical mass and competition is everywhere, the promise of universal design will be achieved and we want to get there together. How is this done? To design any product with a Delight for All vision, a rigorous ethnographic research process, known as “Design With,” is essential to the discovery of novel functional enhancements. We start each design project by generating insights based on the lives of real people. We conduct interviews and observations with a diverse range of potential users, including older adults and individuals with disabilities. By understanding the unique needs of these communities, we ensure that our products are not only aesthetically pleasing but also practical and empowering, making them suitable for every body. Human-focused ethos This human-focused ethos guided our recent collaboration with Pottery Barn, where consumer preference testing feedback informed the designs for our new products. By prioritizing user feedback, companies can create designs that blend safety with style, showing that accessibility is as essential to great furniture design as are aesthetic considerations. Design has the power to enrich all of our lives and this collaboration allows us to make beautiful and purposeful furniture available to everyone. We also focus on collaborating with design schools and advocacy groups to raise awareness about the importance of accessibility in design, ensuring this ethos spreads. Our goal is to set new consumer expectations with products that seamlessly blend safety with style, proving to the world that accessible design makes great business sense by broadening the total addressable market. We remain committed to redefining accessible design, ensuring that innovation and empathy continues to shape a more inclusive world and want to see more brands do so with us. Accessible design is part of our ongoing mission: to create functional, accessible, and beautiful products that enhance the lives of every body, paving the way for a more inclusive world. Ben Wintner is CEO of Michael Graves Design. View the full article

A coalition of national financial organizations filed a friend-of-the-court brief for preemption after regulators filed one against it in a key servicing case. View the full article

On Wednesday, Utah became the first state in the country to pass legislation mandating that app stores verify users’ ages and get parental consent for certain activity on minors’ accounts. The controversial App Store Accountability Act, which will now head to the desk of Utah Governor Spencer Cox, has pitted app store giants Google and Apple against social media companies like Meta and is part of a wave of similar proposals that have been introduced in a number of states, including Texas and Alabama. The bill received broad support from the social media platforms that have borne the brunt of criticism for failing to protect children online. Those platforms have long argued that app stores themselves ought to take on more responsibility to shield kids from harmful apps. In a statement provided on behalf of Meta, Snap, and X, a Meta spokesperson applauded Utah for “putting parents in charge” with the passage of the law. “Parents want a one-stop shop to verify their child’s age and grant permission for them to download apps in a privacy-preserving way,” the statement reads. “The app store is the best place for it.” App stores, of course, see things differently. Google declined Fast Company’s request for comment, and Apple didn’t respond. But Chamber of Progress, a tech advocacy group that represents both companies, has come out forcefully in opposition of the legislation. In public testimony and writing platforms, the group has accused the bill of infringing on the First Amendment rights of Utah’s citizens and violating their privacy by forcing app stores to collect sensitive data in order to verify ages. Chamber of Progress has argued the law would require companies to collect even more data than they already do. In a statement to Fast Company, Chamber of Progress’s government relations senior director Robert Singleton suggested a legal battle would inevitably follow if the bill is signed into law. Indeed, another law in Utah that attempted to require social media platforms to verify users’ ages was blocked in court last year on First Amendment grounds. Similar social media age-verification laws in other states have also been blocked, but that has not deterred states, including Utah, from approaching the issue from a new angle. And yet, Singleton predicted, “The same thing is likely to happen here. This bill invades everyone’s privacy and forces even adults to share sensitive data just to use their own devices.” Utah state representative Jim Dunnigan, who sponsored the bill in the State House, says parent groups were a significant force in getting the legislation over the finish line. “This is at least partly driven by parents who are concerned about the adult contacts that their children have available to them,” he says. “Parents aren’t always there, and their kids are curious. We’re trying to protect them until they get older.” One leading child advocacy group that has been circulating the bill across the country as model legislation is the Digital Childhood Alliance. In a statement, the alliance’s founding chair Melissa McKay said, “The momentum behind this issue is growing, and today’s victory is a testament to the urgent need for accountability from the platforms that shape the digital lives of children.” In addition to requiring app stores to verify ages and get parental consent every time a child wants to download or purchase something on an app, the bill would require app stores to share age categories and consent data with developers. It would also enable minors or their parents who have been harmed to file a civil suit against app stores. Utah’s governor was supportive of the social media age-verification law that was blocked, and according to Rep. Dunnigan, Governor Cox is expected to support this new bill as well. If that happens, it seems unlikely the app store giants will go down without a fight. A recent investigation by the Wall Street Journal revealed how Apple’s lobbying blitz in Louisiana helped kill a similar attempt to regulate the App Store. In the meantime, the company appears eager to send a message that it’s prepared to implement changes without regulation. Last week, in apparent anticipation of the law’s passage, Apple announced a slew of new child-safety offerings, including giving parents the ability to share their children’s ages in the App Store—information that is then passed on to app developers. That’s a welcome step, says Rep. Dunnigan, but “we need consistency across all platforms, and that’s what this bill tries to accomplish.” View the full article

As steep tariffs on Canadian goods took effect this week, banks on both sides of the border expressed concern about the economic fallout and the uncertainty their customers face. View the full article