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We may earn a commission from links on this page. Hulu doesn't always get the recognition of competitors like Netflix and Max, but the streamer has an unfailingly reliable and rotating selection of theatrical films, as well as some impressive original releases. These are some of the best, buzziest, and/or most fun movies currently streaming on the service, across a variety of genres. Anora (2024) Writer/director Sean Baker (Tangerine, Red Rocket) has a long run of impressive film credits to his name, but comedy-drama Anora was the film that put his name firmly on the map, winning him a Best Director Oscar and the film a Best Picture prize. Mikey Madison (who also won Best Actress) plays the title's Anora, an exotic dancer whose life changes when she falls in love with the son of a Russian oligarch. It's all going very well until his parents show up to get the wedding annulled. You can stream Anora here. Tombstone (1993) This '90s cult classic is a pretty good and stylish take on the events surrounding the famous, and frequently dramatized, gunfight at the O.K. corral involving Wyatt Earp and company—so frequently dramatized, in fact, that a totally different movie about the same events (called Wyatt Earp) came out within six months of this one. Tombstone has something none of those others had, though: the late Val Kilmer as the hard-drinking, idiosyncratic Doc Holliday. It's almost certainly Kilmer's most indelible role, and remains cinema's most memorable take on the tubercular gunfighter. You can stream Tombstone here. The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat (2024) One of those great Soul Food/Steel Magnolia-style tearjerkers, The Supremes stars Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, Sanaa Lathan, and Uzo Aduba as three middle-aged friends who've been through the wringer together. Following the three virtually from birth, we find them facing a seemingly endless number of twists and turns (unplanned pregnancy, cancer, alcoholism, and more) with a lot of heart and plenty of humor. You can stream The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat here. Longlegs (2024) Oz Perkins, more recently of The Monkey, directs this horror thriller starring Maika Monroe as a young FBI agent hunting the title's menacing Longlegs (Nicholas Cage). The serial killer's trail has gone cold, but Agent Harker's seeming clairvoyance has put the two on a collision course, even though there's no evidence the suspect was ever even present at the killings for which he's apparently responsible. Stylish and nerve-jangling, with an unhinged (of course) performance from Cage, it's a real killer thriller. You can stream Longlegs here. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002) Nia Vardalos and company kicked off an unlikely franchise with this beloved rom-com about a young Greek-American woman (Nia Vardalos) who falls in love with a non-Greek (John Corbett). Shenanigans ensue when she struggles to get her family (including Lainie Kazan, Michael Constantine, Andrea Martin, and Joey Fatone) to accept her husband-to-be, while she also battles her own mixed feelings about her cultural identity. You can stream My Big Fat Greek Wedding here. A Complete Unknown (2024) Another multiple Oscar-nominee (though it didn't take home any prizes), A Complete Unknown comes from director James Mangold, whose resume includes award-season faves like Ford v Ferrari, Wolverine and Indiana Jones franchise movies, and another Oscar-winning musical biopic, Walk the Line. In this one, Timothée Chalamet stars as Bob Dylan alongside Ed Norton as Pete Seeger, with the narrative rotating around the moment in 1965 when Dylan went electric, scandalizing the Newport Folk Festival, and leading fans to question whether the voice of his generation had sold out. You can stream A Complete Unknown here. Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes (2024) Awkward title notwithstanding, this fourth entry in the modern-day Apes series retains the technical mastery of its predecessors, as well as their revolutionary spirit, while also serving as a soft reboot that doesn't demand an extensive knowledge of what came before. Generations after the death of Andy Serkis' Caesar, human civilization continues to decline; Owen Teague plays Not, a young chimp forced from home when a tyrannical rival ape faction destroys his village over twisted and conflicting interpretations of Caesar's teachings. It's an impressive continuation of our smartest and most consistent modern movie franchise. Hulu has an array of earlier Apes movies, as well. You can stream Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes here. The First Omen (2024) These legacy sequels have been hit or miss—though more the latter than the former. If you had told me that a prequel to this long-defunct franchise would be one of 2024's more effective horror movies, I'd have looked at you the way everybody looked at Gregory Peck when he tried to kill his satanic kid way back in the 1976 original. But here we are! First-time feature director Arkasha Stevenson brings a ton of '70s period style and an appropriately paranoid vibe to the story of future antichrist Damien's birth, blending (extremely timely!) themes of bodily autonomy with genuine horror—and one of the freakiest birth scenes in movie history. You can stream The First Omen here. Fire Island (2022) Or maybe you prefer your gay flicks with more of a warm-weather vibe? A queer, contemporary take on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, Fire Island also takes aim at the overabundance of fat/femme/Asian stereotypes in the gay community. Social commentary aside, it's also a funny, smart romantic comedy with a great cast that includes Joel Kim Booster (in the Lizzy Bennett role—he also wrote the screenplay), Bowen Yang, Conrad Ricamora, and Margaret Cho as a group of friends who travel each summer to the titular island—but this summer proves more dramatic (and romantic) than most. You can stream Fire Island here. Triangle of Sadness (2022) One of the darkest (and funniest) satires of recent memory, Ruben Östlund's wild film feels like at least three movies in one, with narratives that take sharp right turns at unexpected moments, taking potshots at greed and skewering capitalism all the way. A memorable central section onboard a luxury cruise ship divided between the haves (passengers) and have-nots (the crew) climaxes in literal explosions of vomit and shit. That's before a satisfying role-reversal inspired by Lord of the Flies. Brilliant and hilarious, if you've got the stomach for it. You can stream Triangle of Sadness here. The Worst Person in the World (2021) Renate Reinsve brilliantly plays Julie, a medical student—briefly—who has no idea what she wants to do with her life, and a complete fear of commitment to anything and anyone. She's that most frequently exhausting movie trope: a messy 20-something young woman, in ways that you've seen before in other, lesser movies. The Worst Person in the World, though, plays that for all it's worth, offering up all the joys of cinematic romantic dramas that we've seen before while feeling a bit more like real life. People are messy! It's all surprisingly sweet and life-affirming. You can stream The Worst Person in the World here. Prey (2022) Wild that the best Predator film since the first (and probably better still) was dropped as a streaming-only release on Hulu. Regardless of the movie deserving a theatrical release, Prey is a thrilling action movie that expands the Predator universe while also feeling deeply personal. Set in the Great Plains of 1719, Prey stars Amber Midthunder as Naru, a young Comanche warrior who winds up being the only person who can defend her tribe from the hunter from outer space. You can stream Prey here. The Princess Bride (1987) A flawlessly entertaining fantasy, The Princess Bride works on almost every level: as a quotable comedy, a soaring romance, and a Robin Hood-style action movie that has fun with the tropes of those kinds of movies. It's simply a delight. You can stream The Princess Bride here. The Promised Land (2023) In 18th-century Denmark, down-on-his-luck war hero Capt. Ludvig Kahlen (Mads Mikkelsen) hopes to turn his meager retirement pension into some kind of life for himself by cultivating a portion of a vast wilderness that no one else has been able to make anything of. A covetous local magistrate quickly finds himself threatened by Kahlen's reputation, with the intent of spoiling all his plans. The beautiful—but bleak and forbidding—Nordic drama plays out much like an old-school western. You can stream The Promised Land here. Happiest Season (2020) Never too early for the winter holidays! (Say many wonderful people who are definitely not me.) Hulu’s Happiest Season is, perhaps, not on anyone’s list of cinematic masterpieces. Very few (if any) films of the modern, Hallmark-style coming-home-for-Christmas genre would clear that kind of bar. Still, there’s a reason we love these things, and this one adds a bit of prestige to its charms in both cast (Kristen Stewart, Aubrey Plaza, Victor Garber, etc.) and directing (Clea DuVall). What’s more, the movie served as a high-profile torchbearer for queer representation in 2020, the year having kicked off a small but significant wave of LGBTQIA+ holiday films. You can stream Happiest Season here. Deep Water (2022) Adrian Lyne (9½ Weeks, Fatal Attraction, and Indecent Proposal) returned to the director’s chair after an absence of two decades for this Hulu original. Ben Affleck is probably a rough equivalent in star power and sex appeal to the male leads of yore, and Ana de Armas is a good choice as a co-lead, even if the casting does remind us that age gaps in these movies will always favor the idea of an older man with a significantly younger woman. Here, Affleck’s Vic agrees to overlook his wife’s string of affairs in order to preserve his marriage, but then becomes the prime suspect when her lovers start turning up dead. It’s a solid setup (taken from a Patricia Highsmith novel) that doesn’t quite connect, but still serves as fun throwback to the golden age of sexy thrillers. You can stream Deep Water here. Die Hard (1988) It’s the Christmas movie that came along and kicked It’s a Wonderful Life right off the 35th floor of Nakatomi Plaza tower. A brilliantly entertaining action classic, and possibly Bruce Willis' crowning achievement. You can stream Die Hard here. Infinity Pool (2023) Writer/director Brandon Cronenberg (son of David) brings a palpable rage and an unmistakable sense of style to this blend of sci-fi and horror, even as it muddies those genre classifications like the best of his famed father's work. A couple vacationing in a strange country leave their resort and run afoul of the law, only to learn that, for a price, they can outsource the punishment to clones of themselves. You can stream Infinity Pool here. 13 Assassins (2010) Near the end of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the utterly sadistic (not to mention corrupt) Lord Naritsugu is to be offered a seat on the Shogunate Council, a promotion that will not only see the cruel lord’s power increase, but will likely set off a civil war between his supporters and those who hate him. The Shogun’s justice minister decides that assassination is the only way, and so hires a dozen samurai in order to carry out the execution. The kinetic and violent film reminds us that director Takashi Miike made his name in several memorably visceral horror films. You can stream 13 Assassins here. How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2023) A non-fiction work adapted as an action-thriller, How to Blow Up a Pipeline follows eight individuals committed to bombing an oil pipeline in two separate locations. The movie, like the book on which it's based, makes the case that property damage isn’t the worst thing in the face of environmental catastrophe, but that the level of commitment involved to carry out such an act takes a deeply personal toll. You can stream How to Blow Up a Pipeline here. Mrs. Doubtfire (1993) A deeply, deeply stupid premise involving a divorced dad reconnecting with his family by dressing up as an elderly British nanny is elevated by the lead performances from Robin Williams and Sally Field. Williams is at his silly best, but both he and Field play the emotional beats for all they're worth. You can stream Mrs. Doubtfire here. Midnight Kiss (2019) Technically an episode of Hulu's Into the Dark anthology series, the feature-length Midnight Kiss finds a bunch of gay friends (and their straight woman friend) heading out to a gorgeous place in the desert for an annual tradition: They'll each pick someone at random to kiss at midnight. Old resentments bubble to the surface, egged on (unbeknownst to most of them) by a serial killer. It's no spoiler to suggest that they won't all make it to New Year's Day. You can stream Midnight Kiss here. Quiz Lady (2023) Awkwafina and Sandra Oh star as two sisters is this wild road-trip comedy in the best tradition of '90s gems like Romy & Michele's High School Reunion. One is tightly wound, the other a complete mess. They're forced to work together to cover their mother's gambling debts, a problem complicated when the loan shark kidnaps a dog to hold hostage in exchange for the cash. Good thing Awkwafina's character is a quiz-show savant who drowned her childhood sorrows in binge-watching a Jeopardy-esque game show with a big cash prize. You can stream Quiz Lady here. The Personal History of David Copperfield (2019) Dev Patel stars as the Dickens hero in this ultra-stylish adaptation from Armando Iannucci (Veep, The Death of Stalin). In one sense it reinvents the novel on which it's based, in that it feels nothing like other, stuffier takes—but mostly it's just bringing the wit and humor of Dickens to the forefront while staying true to Copperfield's themes and characters. Patel is joined by Peter Capaldi, Hugh Laurie, Tilda Swinton, Ben Whislaw, Benedict Wong, and Gwendoline Christie among others. You can stream The Personal History of David Copperfield here. A Real Pain (2024) Jesse Eisenberg (who also wrote and directed) and Kieran Culkin (who won an Oscar for the role) play a couple of cousins who reunite for a Jewish heritage tour through Poland as a means of honoring their late grandmother, and have to confront a more immediate family legacy along the way. A tonally deft blend of comedy and drama with a couple of excellent lead performances. You can stream A Real Pain here. View the full article

Four space tourists who orbited the north and south poles returned to Earth on Friday, splashing down in the Pacific to end their privately funded polar tour. Bitcoin investor Chun Wang chartered a SpaceX flight for himself and three others in a Dragon capsule that was outfitted with a domed window that provided 360-degree views of the polar caps and everything in between. Wang declined to say how much he paid for the 3 1/2-day trip. The quartet, who rocketed from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Monday night, returned off the Southern California coast. It was the first human spaceflight to circle the globe above the poles and the first Pacific splashdown for a space crew in 50 years. The Chinese-born Wang, now a citizen of Malta, invited Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, German robotics researcher Rabea Rogge and Australian polar guide Eric Philips, all of whom shared stunning vistas during their voyage. “It is so epic because it is another kind of desert, so it just goes on and on and on all the way,” Rogge said in a video posted by Wang on X while gazing down from orbit. Mikkelsen packed the capsule with camera equipment and spent much of her time behind the lens. All four suffered from space motion sickness after reaching orbit, according to Wang. But by the time they woke up on day two, they felt fine and cranked open the window cover right above the South Pole, he said via X. Besides documenting the poles from 270 miles (430 kilometers) up, Wang and his crew took the first medical X-rays in space as part of a test and conducted two dozen other science experiments. They named their trip Fram2 after the Norwegian sailing ship that carried explorers to the poles more than a century ago. A bit of the original ship’s wooden deck accompanied the crew to space. Their medical tests continued at splashdown. All four got out of the capsule on their own, heaving bags of equipment so researchers could see how steady returning space crews are on their feet. They pumped their fists in jubilation. SpaceX said its decision to switch splashdown sites from Florida beginning with this flight was based on safety. The company said Pacific splashdowns will ensure that any surviving pieces of the trunk — jettisoned near flight’s end — falls into the ocean. The last people to return from space to the Pacific were the three NASA astronauts assigned to the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz mission. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. —Marcia Dunn, AP Aerospace Writer View the full article

The Mail app on iPhone got quite a visual overhaul in iOS 18.2. Suddenly, there was a whole AI-powered Priority mailbox, smart Categories up top, and an icon from every sender. For longtime Mail app users on the iPhone, that's a big shift—with seemingly minimal returns. The contact photos feature is perhaps the worst offender here, as most icons are just stock Apple icons. Even if you get an email from Lifehacker, it won't show the Lifehacker website logo, like it does when you visit the website in your browser. And this is the case with the vast majority of email addresses. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Thankfully, Apple seems to have listened to these complaints—in iOS 18.5, they are adding a toggle to remove contact photos altogether. And you don't need to go all the way into Settings to do this, either. As of this writing, iOS 18.5 is only available as a developer beta, though it should be available as a public beta soon enough. Anyone can now sign up and download the iOS developer beta, though I generally don't recommend it. Developer betas are more susceptible to early bugs and issues, since Apple releases these versions of the betas first. These things are usually ironed out by the time the public beta hits. The public beta is also easier to install, and more stable. To access this feature, I would suggest you wait for the 18.5 public beta, or the wider stable release that will be sometime in early-to-mid May. How to disable contact photos in the Mail appTo get rid of the contact photos, open the Mail app and tap the three-dotted Menu button, then uncheck Show Contact Photos. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Instantly, the column of icons on the left edge will disappear, and the email contents will take up all the available space. Ah, the good old days. Alternatively, you can also use the Settings app to disable this feature. This option has existed all the way since iOS 18.2 launched, but it's hidden quite deep in the Settings app. Here, go to Apps > Mail and then disable the Show Contact Photos option. How to remove Categories and other Mail AI featuresBut you might notice you're still not back to how the Mail app used to be. That's because of the Categories View and the Priority Mail section. Credit: Khamosh Pathak Both those features can be disabled from the same Menu popup, and you don't need to be using iOS 18.5 either. Every iPhone running iOS 18.2 or higher will see these options in the menu. Here, switch to List View to get rid of the Categories section, and then uncheck Show Priority to remove Priority Mail. To find out more about removing all the AI features in Mail, check out our detailed guide. View the full article

The following content is brought to you by Lifehacker partners. If you buy a product featured here, we may earn an affiliate commission or other compensation. We're all tired of receiving text messages and calls from random marketers on our personal numbers. Whenever you give out your number to sign up for stuff online, your information is very likely sold to a marketing company, then sold again—until your phone is blowing up in the middle of the night with texts from who knows. Surfshark Starter Package Generate a virtual number, mask your email, and take advantage of other VPN subscription benefits. Learn More Learn More But sometimes, you have to hand over your digits to subscribe to a service you want, score deeper discounts, or sign up for text alerts. This is where Surfshark is a lifesaver. Sign up for a Surfshark Starter package for $3.49 per month for the first 24 months, plus an extra four months free. And in addition to getting the Surfshark Virtual Privacy Network (VPN) and Alternative ID, you’ll also receive an alternative phone number to use on your online accounts or wherever you want. Here’s how to get on a Surfshark plan and protect your phone number from prying eyes. What is the Alternative Number? Although you can't directly make calls using your Surfshark Alternative Number, you can use your number to receive endless calls. And you're able to send and receive messages, all through the Surfshark app. This way, you can keep your privacy, not just when you sign up for all your favorite sites, subscriptions, and special discounts but also for all your conversations, too. Your Alternative Number is included with the Surfshark Starter package deal, beginning at just $3.49 per month. How to use your Surfshark number When you give out your Surfshark Alternative Number, all of the spammy messages and calls are forwarded to your phone, but only through the Surfshark app. Your personal number remains private and is safe from marketers, hackers, and data brokers. You can also delete your Alternative Number whenever you want, or swap it out for a new one for free every 30 days for extra privacy. Bundled Surfshark security perksThe Surfshark Starter bundle also includes their award-winning VPN service and a handy Alternative ID. The Alternative ID gives you a whole new online identity, including a name and age of your choosing, and you get a second email address, which, like your alternative phone number, keeps your personal email off those lists. For even more online protection, Surfshark’s VPN routes your internet traffic through a remote server and masks your IP (Internet Protocol) address. Not only will the VPN protect your online privacy, a must when using public Wifi these days, but it can also reduce location-based price discrimination, a nice perk. Surfshark’s Starter bundle includes all you need to sign up for everything online while steering clear of spam, IP tracking, and potential hacks. Sign up today for $3.49 per month for the first 24 months and get an additional four months free. 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. If you’ve been eyeing a pair of noise-canceling headphones but don’t want to spend over $300 for the usual suspects, this deal on the Anker Soundcore Space One Pro might be worth a closer look. It’s currently going for $129.99 on Woot for the next three weeks or until it sells out, which is $70 less than the current Amazon price. It’s new, has an 18-month manufacturer warranty from Anker, and ships free if you have Amazon Prime (if not, it'll cost you $6 for shipping). Just keep in mind, Woot only ships to the 48 contiguous states—so if you're in Alaska or Hawaii, this sale won't work for you. The headphones themselves strike a good balance between comfort and portability. They’re made from a mix of plastic and metal, and despite being lightweight, they don’t feel flimsy. The earcups and headband are lined with faux leather and stay put without clamping too tightly. They fold inward and the cups swivel flat, which makes them easy to slide into a bag, although you’ll have to be careful—no hardshell case is included, just a soft pouch. The headphones charge via USB-C and include a 3.5mm jack for wired listening. Controls are split between both earcups and are customizable via the Soundcore app. You can tweak what the buttons do, including toggling between ANC, transparency, and normal modes. As for performance, the Space One Pro holds its own. There are 40mm dynamic drivers delivering sound from 20Hz to 20kHz. That said, the out-of-box sound leans bass-heavy, but with some tweaking, you can get a more neutral sound. The app-based EQ is robust, with plenty of presets and manual options to dial in the sound. The ANC doesn’t quite match the Bose or Sony flagships, but it handles low-end droning sounds like plane engines surprisingly well, notes this PCMag review (though higher-pitched voices or sudden loud noises can still creep in). Also, there’s support for LDAC, so if you’re using a compatible Android device, you’ll get better quality over Bluetooth. Battery life is strong too—up to 55 hours without ANC and 40 with it on, which should get most folks through a week without needing to recharge. View the full article

Bank of England governor set to serve three-year term at Financial Stability Board from July View the full article

We're now seeing significant AI upgrades from the big players in the field almost every week, with most new features quickly copied by rival companies as each one looks to stay ahead. Now it's time for Microsoft Copilot to play catch-up, as it adds a host of features we've previously seen tested by Microsoft or launched for other AI chatbots. Copilot now has Deep Research, for example, to match all the Deep Research tools elsewhere, while Copilot Search has been upgraded. Microsoft has also rolled out its own AI-hosted podcast generator, a tool that's been available for a while on competing services. There's a lot to explore, and each new feature is explained below. These updates have just been announced and are rolling out over the "coming weeks and months," depending on "platform, market and language." At the time of writing I wasn't able to access or test any of them except Copilot Search, but this is all the information we have about them from Microsoft. Copilot MemoryCopilot can now remember more about you, and personalize its answers accordingly. In return for a little less privacy, you get a little more convenience: The AI bot won't suggest a mushroom recipe if it knows you hate mushrooms, for example, and can recall previous anniversary gifts for your partner so you don't purchase the same item twice. This matches what we've seen with Gemini and ChatGPT, and does raise some questions about how much we should really be sharing with these AIs. Microsoft says a full set of privacy options will be coming to the Copilot dashboard, and you'll be able to "choose which types of information it remembers about you or to opt out entirely." Copilot ActionsCopilot is joining the ranks of the AI agents—bots that can actually carry out tasks for you, such as booking hotel rooms or buying gifts for friends (nothing says you care like having AI do the work of purchasing gifts, after all). It's called Copilot Actions, and the launch partners are 1-800-Flowers.com, Booking.com, Expedia, Kayak, OpenTable, Priceline, Tripadvisor, Skyscanner, Viator, and Vrbo. This is in some ways an elaborate upgrade on autofill: For example, tell Copilot where you want to stay and when, and it'll do the job of filling out all the forms with that information (and your address and payment details) on the hotel website. As with other AI agents, like Opera's Browser Operator, it has the potential to be very useful and also go very wrong. Copilot VisionCopilot Vision isn't actually new, having made its debut on the web last year, but it's now coming to the apps for Windows, Android, and iOS. It means you'll be able to point your device camera at something and have Copilot identify it, or answer questions about it—so the AI is essentially seeing the world around you at the same time as you. AI tools have long been able to identify the contents of images and photos of course, but Copilot Vision adds real-time processing and interpretation. The Copilot app for Windows will be able to run the same sort of analysis on whatever's on your computer screen as well, and even interact with files and apps if needed. Copilot Vision is expanding to more devices, including Windows. Credit: Microsoft Copilot PagesCopilot Canvas is a bit like ChatGPT Canvas combined with ChatGPT Projects, or something along the lines of the Notion app, giving you space to organize disparate thoughts and notes in one central hub. It'll come in handy for creating content, exploring ideas, and running research projects. This isn't completely new either, having previously been available to business customers signed up for Microsoft 365 Copilot—where it can be used as a way of collaborating with other people, like a giant Google Docs file with added AI. Now it's rolling out so individual users can explore it too. Copilot PodcastsYou may well have come across the AI podcasts you can magic up through Gemini or NotebookLM from Google, and now Copilot can do the same: You can either choose one of Copilot's suggestions based on your interests and what you've been chatting about, or feed it specific documents and websites for content prompts. It's possible to interact with the podcasts while they're playing, Microsoft says, and it gives you another way of exploring topics beyond the default to-and-fro of the text conversation. This is one of the more clever tricks that AI chatbots have managed so far, so it's no surprise to see Copilot joining in with a version of its own. Copilot is getting into the AI podcast game. Credit: Microsoft Copilot Deep ResearchMicrosoft obviously saw ChatGPT Deep Research, Perplexity Deep Research, and Gemini Deep Research, and decided that name was as good as any for its own matching feature inside Copilot. As with the competitor offerings, the idea is you give Copilot a topic to research, and it'll go away and scour the web for relevant articles and resources. All the information it finds will then be put together in a carefully curated and formatted report at the end, almost like an actual person has done it. Microsoft says queries run with Deep Research enabled will take between three to six minutes to complete; unless you're on Copilot Pro, you'll be limited to five Deep Research queries a month. Copilot ShoppingIf you've ever felt your online shopping could use some AI help, you're in luck: Copilot has added some extra enhancements to its ability to scour the web for the best deals. You can now get the chatbot to research the details of items, and compare them against each other (like the Pixel 9a and the iPhone 16e), in more detail. Microsoft is also going to start adding direct links to buy products from within Copilot, as well as the option to track prices as they rise and fall—so you might get an alert from the AI assistant telling you the Samsung Galaxy S25 Ultra is now cheaper than ever. And this is something Copilot does better than its AI rivals right now. Copilot SearchCopilot and Bing go way back, but now Microsoft is taking on Google AI Overviews and ChatGPT Search more directly with a more prominent and widely available search offering: Copilot Search will serve you "intelligently curated information" with the goal of avoiding "potentially misleading information" as much as possible. This is something that's live now globally, so I could test this one out. As with the Google and ChatGPT offerings, information is neatly laid out, with small citation and source boxes dotted around just in case you want to check the human (or AI?) writing on the web the answers have been scraped from. Copilot Search correctly identified R.E.M.'s first album for me (mainly by regurgitating Wikipedia—thank you, human contributors), and properly explained how DNA worked—though it was interesting that it quoted a "guest author" on DailyNewsHungary as well as Healthline for this one. Perhaps more work on sources is needed. View the full article

When the Google Pixel 9 series launched, it came with a number of exclusive software features to tempt more people into upgrading, including Pixel Screenshots and the Add Me tool for composite photos. The latest Pixel 9-only feature to roll out is called Connected Cameras, and it means you can use any Pixel 9 series handset as a viewfinder and remote for a compatible GoPro camera, or another Pixel phone. It's easy to see why this could be useful: You could mount your GoPro on your helmet, or put another Pixel phone in a spot you can't easily get to (like on a high wall), and then control these cameras and see what they're seeing from your Pixel 9 handset. For this to work, you need any Pixel 9 model to get the feature set up, then either a GoPro 10 (or later) or a Pixel 6 (or later) as the camera to connect to. The process of getting everything configured varies slightly depending on whether you're using an action camera or a phone, and you need to have the latest software installed on all your devices. Connecting to a second camera Credit: Lifehacker First, you need to turn the Connected Cameras feature on. From the Pixel 9 you want to use to control another camera, open Settings and then tap Connected devices > Connection preferences > Connected Cameras. Read all the info shown on screen, then enable the Use Connected Cameras toggle switch. If you're connecting to a GoPro, it needs to be paired over Bluetooth. Back on the Connection preferences screen, tap Bluetooth, and make sure it's turned on. Then, tap Pair new device. Put your GoPro into pairing mode (on the latest models, swipe down from the top of the rear touchscreen, then swipe left and choose + Pair Device), and it should appear on your phone as a Bluetooth device you can connect to—just tap the GoPro name to connect. For making a connection to another Pixel phone, they both need to be linked to the same Google account, and they both need to have cross-device services enabled: To check this is switched on, open Android Settings, then tap your name at the top and choose All services, then Cross-device services. As long as those two criteria are met, Connected Cameras should work. A few considerations to bear in mind: You can only use one remote camera at a time, so if you want to switch, you need to disconnect from the current remote camera first. The audio will be sourced from the camera you've connected to (as well as the images and video), but if you're doing this over Bluetooth then you might notice some degradation in the sound quality. Capturing content inside apps Look for this camera picker in compatible apps, like Snapchat. Credit: Lifehacker Once you've got a device connected you're almost there, but you can't simply launch the Camera app on your Pixel 9 and start snapping away: You need to use an app that's compatible with Connected Camera, and right now the apps that qualify are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. Each of these apps can capture images and video, as well as set up livestreams, and they all feature a camera picker that lets you choose a camera other than the one built into the phone they're running on. You can even switch between the camera on your Pixel 9 and the remote camera while recording or livestreaming a video. Open up any of the five apps supporting the feature, and whenever you get to a screen for shooting photos or video, you should see the camera picker icon: It looks like a little digital camera, at the side of the screen. Tap this, and you'll see any connected GoPros listed, as well as the option to Add Pixel (which will connect you to another Pixel phone—you'll need to confirm the connection on the other Pixel too). Once the connection is made, you're able to capture photos and videos in the app as normal. To change the camera, just tap the camera picker icon again. Based on my brief testing, it all works as advertised, though the Bluetooth connection to a GoPro can take some moments before it's fully established. View the full article

Popular culture for kids has fragmented so much lately that what's familiar to one 14-year-old might be utterly foreign to another. But the progress toward everyone having their own personal culture isn't complete. So I'm taking a look at some of things all (well, most) kids relate to and love, including A Minecraft Movie, Labubus, and the literary techniques developed by Spanish author Jorge Luis Borges in the 1940s (for real). Will A Minecraft Movie become a generational touchstone? I'm writing this on the day A Minecraft Movie comes out, and signs point to the release being one of those vanishingly rare events that capture the collective imaginations (and disposable incomes) of a generation. It's a cultural event that everyone (under a certain age) will experience and remember. But probably for a different reason than you expect. The main audience for the movie is younger kids (and their bored parents who are dragged into theaters, of course). Six-year-olds are going to love seeing Minecraft on screen in a genuine way, but many teenagers are attending the movie ironically. It's like that time kids gathered the squad and wore suits to the Minions movie a few years ago. A Minecraft Movie hasn't been getting good pre-release reviews, but it is getting good pre-release memes. And there is no better marketing for hard-to-reach kids than their peers making TikToks. I love that the memes all seem to tacitly accept that the movie will be bad, like this one, in which the trailer is cut down to only words from the video game: This Tweet is currently unavailable. It might be loading or has been removed. Or vids like this one with a single cheesy phrase: or this one with a ton of cheesy phrases: Or this brain-rot video: If I had any money at all, I'd bet it all on the creators of the movie having made it like this on purpose. They know that little kids are going to love A Minecraft Movie regardless of the bad CGI, the canned "catchphrases," and the clichéd plot; kids are terrible at critical thinking. They also must know that older kids wouldn't accept a kiddie version of Minecraft if they took it seriously. Minecraft, the game, is so open-ended that the version of it a teenager experiences is very different than the one a little kid experiences: There's no way to "stay true" to the source material like you can with Super Mario, so the movie's producers didn't try. They leaned into the cheesiness instead, in the hopes of catching an ironic wave because there's nothing older kids like more than laughing at things they used to like (even though we adults know that, deep in their hearts, they still love it.) Or I could be wrong and the thing could be a flop; what am I, Nostradamus? What's the deal with Labubus? Credit: Labubu Parents: if you haven't heard of Labubus, I predict you'll know everything possible about them between now and Christmas. The slightly edgy-looking plush dolls with vinyl faces are destined to become the must-have toy of the 2025 holidays—we're talking Beanie-Babies-in-1997 levels of hysteria here, so be prepared. A creation of Hong Kong-based illustrator Kasing Lung, Labubus were first marketed in 2015 by a company called Pop Mart. Over the last decade, they've taken over Asian markets, spread to Europe and America, and have recently reached worldwide critical mass. The popularity is partly because the characters are undeniably adorable and cool, but also because they're collectible. People love collecting things. Labubus are available as keychains, dolls, and emblazoned on other merchandise. There are over 300 variations of the toy, with more on the way, so you'll never run out of Labubus to buy, ever. A main difference between Labubus and Beanie Babies is that Labubus are sold in black boxes, so a buyer doesn't know exactly what they're getting before the purchase. Some are more rare than others, so if you want to collect 'em all, you're going to be getting a lot of doubles. As you'd expect, there's a ton of Labubu content on social media and a thriving secondary market for the toys, full of collectors and quick-buck artists, has sprung up. Ordinarily, I'd suggest would-be Labubu millionaires take a look a what happened to people who "invested" in Beanie Babies and invest in a IRA instead, but I'm not sure that advice applies: If you invest in Labubus instead of a mutual fund, at least you'll have some cool dolls to hug. Yarn face makeup trend terrifies, intrigues The "yarn face" makeup trend on TikTok isn't being widely practiced yet, but I hope it catches on: Using makeup for reasons other than "so I look prettier" is the kind of subversion of expectations the world needs more of. It's scary and weird, but I want to see people walking around looking like they were crocheted every time I go outside. The technique was invented by extremely talented SFX makeup artist @annamurphyyy in this video, which was was viewed over 52 million times: Before long, other cosmetic influencers responded with their own takes on the trend, resulting in videos like these: Viral video of the week: My Most UNHINGED Video [Amanda The Adventurer 2] This week's viral video, "My Most UNHINGED Video [Amanda The Adventurer 2]" has been viewed over four million times on its first day online. It's from game-streamer CoryxKenshin, and works on a lot of levels. Here's some explanation: 1) Game streaming: This isn't exactly new, but young people love watching other people play videos games, often for long stretches; this video is over two and a half hours long. 2) CoryxKenshin: This streamer has over 20 million subscribers on his YouTube channel. He mainly plays horror games, a popular genre for streamers, probably because watching people get scared is fun. 3) Reaction videos: CoryxKenshin might be described as a combination of game streamer and reactor. His videos are half about the game he's playing and half about his reaction to it. 4) Amanda the Adventurer 2: A sequel developed by indie studio MANGLEDmaw Games, Amanda the Adventurer 2 is a puzzle-heavy horror game about a kids' TV show from the early 2000s that's connected to something supernatural and sinister involving missing children. It is an example of "analog horror" and horror revolving around nostalgia for childhood, both popular among young people. 5) Analog horror: This popular-among-younger-people analog horror subgenre isn't usually gory or overly violent. It's not usually adult horror. The idea is to create a disconcerting, dreadful vibe through highlighting the limitations of older forms of media, then breaking the tension with an occasional jump scare. You play Amanda the Adventurer 2 by controlling a character who is watching old VHS tapes of a children's TV show. Amanda, the show's main character, invites interaction from the audience. She's somehow alive inside the VHS tapes, and you progress in the game by figuring out what Amanda wants and giving it to her (or not giving it to her), thus unveiling the story behind the tapes and the missing children. Like many popular horror games, Amanda's scares are based on referencing media the audience remembers from childhood—in this case, Dora the Explorer. 6) Multi-layered, nested narrative: Creating complex fictional structures that distance the reader from the story was popularized in horror literature by Mark Z. Danielewski's House of Leaves, but you can go back further and credit Phillip K. Dick or Jorge Luis Borges if you want. The interesting part to me is how artistic conventions that were once the sole purview of pointy-headed intellectuals are now fully accepted by 14-year-olds who have never read a book. Consider what you're doing right now: You're reading a description of a YouTube video of a person playing a game in which the "real" person watches VHS tapes of a fictional character that's based on "actual" fictional character Dora the Explorer. Like I said: There are many levels. View the full article

It’s no secret: Landing a job in today’s economy can feel overwhelmingly difficult. Qualified candidates regularly apply to hundreds—sometimes even thousands—of positions before receiving that one coveted offer. In fact, over half of unemployed job seekers have been searching for four months or longer, highlighting how competitive the market has become. And it’s not just the job market itself that’s challenging. We’re living through one of the most turbulent periods in modern history: The U.S. unemployment rate rose to 4.1%, the highest in over two years. 23,000+ tech layoffs occurred in the first three months of 2025 alone. Nearly 50% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Consumer debt hit an all-time high of $18.04 trillion, with credit card delinquencies increasing sharply. University degrees are no longer a guarantee of success. Even government jobs, once considered safe, are under threat. It’s no wonder many job seekers feel anxious or fearful about asking for more. Negotiation expert and career coach Ted Leonhardt notes that the fear of asking for higher pay has always been an obstacle. And in today’s volatile environment, that fear can feel even more paralyzing. But he emphasizes: Workers at any level are more vulnerable today than any time in memory, perhaps since the Great Depression. This makes knowing your worth and advocating for yourself all the more essential. Here are six essential tips for confidently negotiating your salary in today’s tough economy. 1.Hide your desperation A Pew Research Center survey found that most U.S. workers did not ask for higher pay the last time they were hired, with men slightly more likely than women to negotiate (32% vs. 28%). Even if you’re surviving on ramen and desperately need the job, don’t let it show. Employers often interpret eagerness as desperation, leading to lower initial offers. Take your time to respond—usually 24 to 48 hours—and subtly indicate you’re considering multiple opportunities. This helps maintain your negotiating power. Leonhard further advises: “Always be developing a new opportunity for yourself. A side gig. A better job elsewhere.” Having other options in progress or appearing to can drastically reduce that sense of desperation. 2. Know your worth and back it up with data Before negotiating, gather salary benchmarks from sites like Glassdoor, Payscale, and LinkedIn Salary. Present clear, data-backed reasons for your requested salary based on your experience, skills, and current market rates. Leonhardt succinctly puts it: “Know your value and use it as leverage. Leverage is always your superpower.” Staying true to your worth can provide dividends. Annie Papp, executive vice president at Career Group Companies, advises that: “In any job market, applicants should be prepared to come right out and ask for a raise or negotiate higher compensation. While it may seem obvious, most people don’t do this, assuming their employer will offer a raise without prompting—which is rarely the case.” 3. Quantify your value Make a detailed list of your accomplishments and quantify your impact whenever possible. For example: “Increased sales by 300% within one year” or “Managed projects that increased revenue by $X amount.” Even before the negotiation, review this to remind yourself of your accomplishments and the value you bring, boosting your confidence. 4. Bet on yourself and plan for the future If the job offer isn’t quite where you want it to be, focus on creating a clear path to get there over the next year. Jason Giagrande, CEO of Hospitality Farm, suggests: “Bet on yourself. Propose a lucrative bonus structure with aggressive milestones or KPIs that your boss would be happy to pay if accomplished. Everyone wins, and it will motivate your growth individually as well as help your company grow.” Not only does this show initiative, but it also aligns your compensation with company goals, making it easier for employers to say yes. 5. Be willing to walk away (if you truly are) One key to negotiation success is the willingness to walk away. Listen carefully, remain composed, and always take time to consider the offer before responding. 6. Consider negotiating benefits, not just salary If salary negotiations stall, consider other forms of compensation. Diversify your requests to reach a deal that satisfies both sides. Signing bonuses, professional development funds, flexible work arrangements, or extra vacation days can all hold significant value. “This market is different because employers are being more cautious when it comes to hiring and budgeting. A few years ago, on the heels of the pandemic, applicants could negotiate higher salaries much more easily because every employer was in a desperate race to retain talent. Now, that’s not the case. The frenzy has slowed, and employers are taking their time.” While inflated salary increases may no longer be the norm, advocating for growth is still crucial. “Losing strong talent can ultimately have a far greater cost than providing a reasonable raise,” Papp says. If higher compensation isn’t immediately feasible, ask for a timeline to revisit the conversation. Finally, Leonhardt offers a lasting piece of advice: “Always be developing your connections and community both online and off. Connections with those you help are always the best opportunity for your continuously evolving future.” Negotiation can feel intimidating, especially in a fragile, uncertain world. But by advocating for yourself thoughtfully and strategically, you’re not just setting yourself up for immediate success—you’re safeguarding your long-term career stability. View the full article

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Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Interim leadership is on the rise in the U.S. Nearly a quarter of new CEOs named in the first two months of 2025 were hired on an interim basis, versus 8% in the same period last year, according to a recent report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. The surge in interim leadership coincides with significant tumult in the C-suite. The Challenger report shows that 247 U.S. companies named new CEOs in February, the second-highest total for any month since the firm started tracking CEO changes in 2002. “A lot of times when a company brings in an interim CEO it’s when they’ve been caught off guard by the CEO’s departure,” says Andy Challenger, senior vice president of the outplacement firm. “It’s not part of a structured succession plan.” An interim CEO can buy a board time to conduct a thoughtful search for the right executive, especially if it feels the company needs skills that the existing leadership team lacks. Management experts say they’re also seeing companies—particularly mid-market and investor-backed businesses—hire temporary CEOs during changes such as restructuring, merger integration, or executing a new strategy. “Their expertise can be crucial to navigating complex changes that require seasoned leadership—even temporary solutions can be transformative for an organization,” says Sunny Ackerman, global managing partner of on-demand talent at Heidrick & Struggles, the executive search firm. The Temp-to-perm CEO Interim roles also can serve as a “tryout” for prospective CEO candidates. And companies can engage an interim executive while they figure out what they need in a leader. Ackerman recalls working with her team on an early-stage medical technology company that sought to replace its founder with a full-time CEO. Heidrick & Struggles brought in a life sciences consultant who had been a CEO to create a plan for market entry. The board then hired that consultant as interim CEO to execute the plan. Once they saw his operational skills and market expertise in practice, the board eventually decided to convert him to permanent CEO. Other temp-to-perm CEOs include Chipotle’s Scott Boatwright, who went from interim in August 2024 to permanent status three months later, and Lance Tucker, who last month was named CEO of Jack in the Box after a 36-day stint as interim CEO of the restaurant company. Avoid leadership limbo Companies need to be careful not to let interim leadership linger. “If [an] interim is in place too long, it may communicate the wrong message to the market and employees and create uncertainty about the future leadership of the organization and its strategy,” says Janice Ellig, CEO of executive search firm Ellig Group. “Employees and the market like certainty. They want to know who is at the helm and what direction they are headed.” And in the absence of clear guidance from the board, some interim chiefs may act like caretakers instead of leaders, causing the company to lose ground during the search for a permanent CEO. One thing’s for sure: Interim CEOs aren’t going away. Ackerman notes that many of the CEOs exiting business right now are baby boomer and Gen X retirees who are eager to remain active by taking on interim roles, “generating a larger pool of independent talent than we’ve ever seen before,” she says. Are you a temp-to-perm leader? Are you a CEO or leader who turned a temporary or interim role into a permanent one? How did you win your role? Send your stories to me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. I’d love to share your experiences in a future newsletter. Read more: temps in the C-suite The great fractionalization may be coming to your leadership team How to step in as an interim manager Interim CEO posts: intense and eye-opening View the full article

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According to the latest Gallup State of the Workplace report, employees are seeking new jobs at the highest level since 2015. This trend has been coined “The Great Detachment.” A key reason for this is increasing employee dissatisfaction with management. For instance, Gallup’s research shows that those who work in companies with bad management practices are nearly 60% more likely to be stressed, and stress is the second most-cited factor influencing employees’ decisions to quit. People’s values have also changed post-COVID-19. Employees prioritize well-being. They expect their contribution to be recognized, and if they aren’t valued or supported, they aren’t prepared to tolerate it. The rise of Gen Z in the workplace also needs to be considered. They now make up 27% of the workforce across the 38 high-income countries that make up the OECD. This generation wants to be coached, not directed, and if they don’t feel that they’re progressing or that their employer wants to cultivate them, they’ll simply leave. Yet, management practice has remained unchanged, with managers still using outdated and clunky methods unsuited to today’s workplace. Managers are ill-equipped to give feedback and handle challenging conversations in this rapidly changing work environment and consequently default to directing employees rather than enabling them. Companies need to upskill their middle managers urgently to keep employees engaged and stop hemorrhaging talent. After all, talent is critical for success—companies in the top quartile of employee engagement achieve 23% higher profitability than those in the bottom quartile. If you’re losing your top talent to your competitors and suspect poor management may be a cause, here are three things to do: 1. Shift the prevailing management mindset from ‘managing’ to ‘enabling’ Managers are often high-performing employees promoted for their technical strengths rather than their people skills. Their management style is typically “command and control”—simply directing and providing solutions for employees’ problems without engaging their capabilities. This can be incredibly demotivating for employees, signalling their ideas aren’t valued or welcomed. Over time, they lose autonomy over their work and wait for direction from their managers before following their instructions, leading to increased disengagement. Managers urgently need to change their mindset from perceiving themselves as the manager and solver of all problems to becoming the enabler of other people’s talents and capabilities. Affording team members the space to contribute creates opportunities for them to grow and advance. To do this, managers need to adopt an enquiry-led approach by learning to ask powerful and insightful questions that encourage reflection at the point that would be most helpful to someone’s thinking. Instead of asking “why” questions such as “Why did this happen?” shift to asking “what” questions. For instance, “What are the reasons behind this outcome?” or “What could have gone better?” “What” questions remove the personal sting from a “why” question and promote reflection without triggering defensiveness. This simple change signals a shift from being the all-knowing manager to being a supportive enabler, which is beneficial not only for employee growth but also for building an inclusive and collaborative team culture. 2. Give better feedback to stimulate high performance Giving feedback is often associated with challenging conversations, as managers try to share something they want people to change or improve upon. Moving to more intentional, appreciative and developmental feedback can support employee development. Instead of constantly identifying problems or behaviors that need fixing, managers should seek out moments when someone has excelled in a particular situation. Visibly pointing out the skills or behaviors that made a positive difference to outcomes is a great way to build trust and an openness to constructive feedback. It also creates an environment where employees look forward to coming to work and are motivated to build on their strengths and contribute at their best, increasing job satisfaction. 3. Encourage more collaboration within teams Rather than defaulting to a “command and control” style of fixing everyone’s problems, managers must develop their awareness and tune in to coachable moments throughout the day. For example, instead of stepping in to solve every issue brought to them, managers learn to recognise the potential for a better outcome by engaging team members to explore their problem-solving capabilities, giving them the space to suggest ideas and talk them through. They might ask what ideas they’ve thought of themselves that could offer a way forward and explore the steps they would need to take to progress those options. Using a more purposeful approach to asking questions intended to stimulate other people’s thinking in the flow of work has been recognised as an advance in management practice known as Operational Coaching.® Practitioners learning this new approach stop firefighting and instead adapt their management style to engage their team, acknowledge their capabilities, and invite greater collaboration. This demonstrates that employees’ thinking and contributions are valued, increasing employee satisfaction, and managers win back valuable time from not stepping in to every problem. Why these strategies help retain top talent As a result of the behavioral work we were engaged in, we developed the STAR® model to help managers apply these skills in their daily lives. STAR® consists of four steps: STOP – Step back and change state THINK – Is this a coachable moment? ASK – Powerful questions and actively listen RESULT – Agree on next steps and an outcome from the conversation By applying this model, managers can learn to adopt new coaching-style “behaviors” in the moment, enabling them to challenge, support, and grow the capabilities of their team members in ways that measurably benefit both the individual and the organization. When employees feel valued for their contributions, have autonomy in their work, and sense their managers care for their development and advancement, their relationship with work improves. As workplaces evolve, businesses must recognize the need to shift managers from their task-focused mindset to a people-focused mindset. This simple but vital step will help foster an environment that values every employee and ensures that top talent is appreciated, nurtured, and retained. View the full article

The first few weeks of working for a new boss are exciting. You’re ready to jump in, hopeful for growth opportunities, and eager to please. Your boss is enthusiastic, too, likely welcoming you with open arms, setting up 1-1’s, and taking a keen interest in your professional development. You both want to make a great impression on each other. Yet, as the new job glow wears off, you may find yourself confused by how quickly your boss’s attention vanishes. The leader you were excited to work for becomes the person ignoring your emails, giving haphazard feedback, and postponing your 1-1 (again!). Working for a boss who is overwhelmed is a frustrating, yet not uncommon experience. A growing number of managers report feeling burnt out. Yet, employees are eager for growth opportunities, mentorship, and regular communication with their leaders. This tension often results in teammates feeling under-supported and confused, while managers feel overloaded and guilty. Even if your manager is spiraling, you’re not powerless. Through intentionally leading yourself, you can form a supportive and impactful partnership, getting the most out of your manager’s often limited time. Make it easy to say yes When your manager is juggling a million things, they don’t have time to read between the lines or guess what you need. Most leaders want to support their team—they just need a little direction. That’s where you come in. Rather than hoping your manager will “support you,” be specific. Ask them to role-play a tough conversation with you, join a high-stakes meeting, or advocate for your work to leadership. The clearer you are about what you need, the easier it is for them to step up and help. Don’t just hope for “growth opportunities”—go after them. Find the conference you want to attend, break down why it matters, how much it costs, and then ask your manager for approval. A clear, direct request is way more likely to get a yes than a vague wish for development. Same goes for flexibility. Instead of saying you need “more work-life balance,” be specific. Ask to work from home on Fridays or swap early mornings for late nights—whatever actually helps you. Your manager is busy, and broad requests like “support” or “professional development” are easy to push to the bottom of the list. Spell out exactly what you need, make it an easy yes, and watch how much more you get. Take charge of your 1-1s If your manager is showing up to your 1-1’s frazzled and in need of a deep breath, you’re not alone. The challenge is that overwhelmed managers spend most of their time on near-term fires. They’re often worried about getting through the week, not building a successful year. Left unchecked, this can leave your long-term strategies and professional growth high and dry. Address the pop-up windows in your manager’s brain first, but then take it upon yourself to proactively bring up longer-view horizons by asking questions like: · What skills should I be proactively developing to excel in my role? · How can I further support our organizational strategy of X? Or mitigate the challenge of Y? · Who should I be building relationships with beyond our immediate team? 1-1’s that don’t go beyond immediate deliverables won’t hurt your manager, they’ll hurt you. Surface what’s most important to your career growth; don’t wait for your manager to bring it up. Create a paper trail A leader who is overwhelmed will often forget what happened, what they said, and what the next steps are. Their brain is either in overdrive or stuck in a survival response. If your leader is overwhelmed, create a paper trail. It’s on you to recap conversations, confirm prioritizations, and document timelines. This is of service to you and your manager. For you, creating a paper trail saves you time. When your manager can search their inbox for information, they’re less likely to ask you to recap or remind. When they inevitably ask you anyway, you have a simple email to forward. A paper trail is also a form of self-protection. Overwhelmed bosses are more likely to give unclear directions, change timelines, and constantly change their minds. Protect yourself and your work product by documenting important conversations. Busy managers are juggling a hundred things at once, and sometimes, they don’t even realize they’ve given unclear or conflicting feedback until they see it in writing. That quick comment they made in passing? It might not hold up once it’s written down. That timeline they casually agreed to? It might suddenly seem impossible when it’s laid out in black and white. If your boss is moving a mile a minute, a clear, written recap can be a lifesaver—it gives them a chance to process things at their own pace and catch any misunderstandings before they turn into bigger problems. Bottom line: don’t leave things up to memory or interpretation. Put it in writing and protect yourself from the dreaded “I never said that.” Be the change you seek Don’t add fuel to the never-ending corporate fire drill. People mirror the energy around them—regardless of hierarchy. Want your manager to be more engaged? Show up engaged. Wish they were less frantic? Bring calm and focus to your meetings. Yes, working for an overwhelmed boss can be frustrating. But odds are, they don’t want to be this way. They probably wish they had more time to support you, but they’re drowning in emails, answering to their own micromanager, or buried under deadlines. Here’s the good news: You don’t have to wait for them to change the dynamic. You can shift the tone—no title required. 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On Maui’s North Shore, inside an industrial building that was once a pineapple cannery, an architecture office sits across the hall from a surfboard manufacturer. When the architects first moved in, they noticed something: Every few days, the dumpsters in the back would fill up with scraps of foam from making the boards. David Sellers, one of the architects, realized that the foam could be used in a building material—insulated blocks that are typically made from a mix of concrete and new polystyrene foam. “I was just like, ‘We shouldn’t be throwing this away,’” says Sellers, principal architect at the firm, Hawaii Off Grid. “We live on an island, with limited space. So how can we use this to make houses?” In 2023, the team got a small grant to pursue the idea of recycling the surfboard waste into new blocks. Then came the Lahaina fire, which destroyed more than 2,000 homes and other buildings. The small firm paused the project and focused at first on helping redesign houses. “But we also said, we’re going to need a lot of building materials,” he says. “And we’re going to need building materials that are fire resistant.” The blocks have some advantages. In addition to resisting fire, they’re also four times as strong as a two-by-four framed wall in a hurricane. They’re impervious to mold, mildew, and termites, all issues in Hawaii. The insulation properties are twice what’s required by code. (The fact that it’s energy efficient is especially important for Hawaii Off Grid, which focuses on the carbon footprint of each of its projects; the firm actually requires all of its clients to commit to net zero buildings.) The blocks use only about a third as much cement as is used in cinder blocks. It’s also an accessible alternative to wood. “Lumber is at an all-time high again, and the availability of building materials is stretched thin,” Sellers says. “This is another option that people can utilize and hopefully help them rebuild faster and not be pinched by the current tariffs that we’re dealing with in the building industry.” To make the blocks, the company uses a large machine to grind up the foam into tiny beads. Then those are mixed with Portland cement, making a consistency that Sellers compares to rice crispy treats, and pressed together in wooden molds. The one-foot-high blocks are five feet long, making them faster to stack together during construction. The design-build firm has just completed its first house using the surfboard-waste-based blocks, on the edge of the burn zone in Lahaina. More are coming. Though the fire happened 20 months ago, the process of rebuilding is just beginning, delayed by the need to decontaminate properties and by red tape. Now, as construction begins to ramp up, materials will be in more demand. With the volume of foam waste produced by its neighbor alone, the firm has calculated that it would have enough to build 10 to 20 houses a year, much more than it currently needs as a small firm. Sellers has also talked to companies like Lowe’s about recycling foam packaging after appliance deliveries. (In theory, old surfboards could also be recycled, though surfers tend to hang on to old boards and display them rather than throw them away.) The idea could be replicated by other builders, Sellers says. But he’s hoping that polystyrene foam can eventually be phased out—at which point, they’d stop using the blocks as a building material. “I hope we won’t be using petroleum-based solutions, moving forward,” he says. Surfboard companies are already experimenting with alternative materials, and other companies are trying to find foam alternatives for packaging. For now, the architects plan to keep recycling as much foam as possible to keep it out of the dump and out of nature. “We have a stockpile of foam,” Sellers says. “We’re trying to not let any foam go in the landfill.” View the full article

While home sales and remodeling rates remain low, Thumbtack—which connects homeowners with professionals to do work on their houses—says business is booming. In fiscal 2024, Thumbtack saw revenue of $400 million, up 27% from the previous year, with billions of dollars going to the roughly 300,000 small businesses that book work through the platform. Cofounder and CEO Marco Zappacosta attributes the company’s success to more than 15 years of work helping users find the right, trustworthy professional—even if they’re not entirely sure what they need to fix a problem in their home—bolstered by recent advances in artificial intelligence. “You’ve got to remember this is, on average, a $1,000 purchase,” Zappacosta says. “It’s not something you do casually.” Zappacosta believes it’s inevitable that the vast majority of home maintenance and remodeling bookings will ultimately move online, similar to the travel and transportation industries. What sets this industry apart, however, is the sheer number of service types—Thumbtack lists professionals in about 500 different categories, from ceramic tile installation to black mold remediation. To help users understand what’s available and how services match their needs, the company has offered an AI-powered search feature since last year. It allows users to describe home issues in plain language, rather than rely on keyword searches or Yellow Pages-style lookups for terms like “plumber” or “electrician.” Thumbtack is also testing an AI feature that lets users upload photos of home issues, such as a leak through the ceiling, to get help finding the right professional. As AI grows more powerful, it can help transform the experience of booking home services from a traditional internet search into something more like a conversation with a savvy neighbor, Zappacosta suggests. “The opportunity that AI creates for our business is at any point in the process, if you have a question or concern, or if you have to make a decision, we can arm you with the relevant context to help you evaluate that and confidently take action,” he says. Even before the rise of large language models, the company offered a collection of home project guides, including advice to help people decide when to tackle a task themselves and when to hire an expert. Alongside reminders of scheduled work and tools to rebook trusted pros, the Thumbtack app also provides customized guidance on when to perform various maintenance tasks—guidance Zappacosta suggests will only improve as AI systems advance and the company gathers more data about users, their homes, and their needs. AI can also likely help professionals optimize their use of Thumbtack, Zappacosta says, enabling them to better configure platform features to find sales leads suited to their businesses. “The focus on pros is always how we can provide them more consistent value,” he says. Thumbtack’s technical edge, says Sequoia Capital partner and Thumbtack board member Bryan Schreier, gives the company a strong chance of becoming the go-to platform for home services—akin to Uber for ride-hailing or DoorDash for delivery. “Owning a home is complex, and so I think it’s just taken a while to deliver the technical achievement that is required to become the Uber of the home services space, because it is so complex,” Schreier says. “In the last couple of years, in terms of its growth and profitability, I think the secret behind [Thumbtack’s] emergence is the fact that they have cracked the technological nut behind what had been holding back a company from becoming the Uber of the home services space until now.” In parallel with its AI efforts, Thumbtack has forged partnerships with other online platforms, including providing search results for home improvement-related terms on Nextdoor. The company was also recently featured in an Amazon preview of upcoming AI enhancements for Alexa, which would be able to book professionals on users’ behalf. These partnerships now account for 10% of Thumbtack’s annual revenue and help deliver its services to users even if they don’t visit the site directly. “Hiring pros and dealing with your home is a huge activity—it happens in a ton of places on the internet,” says Zappacosta. “And increasingly, platforms are utilizing us as the best way to fulfill a homeowner’s hiring needs.” View the full article

When the House of Cinema in Tashkent, Uzbekistan, was demolished in 2017, it was an architectural awakening for the city. A large circular concrete building completed in 1982, the House of Cinema was an instant cultural and architectural landmark in the city, then part of the Soviet Union. Its demolition, to make way for a controversial commercial development project, spurred many in the city to worry about which landmark would fall next. That led the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation to launch a citywide research project to document endangered buildings. Most were built between the late 1960s and early 1980s when the Soviet Union sought to frame its ambitions through civic architecture. Many buildings from this time embraced modernism, with swooping facades, inventive structural forms, and artful mosaic panels adorning interiors and exteriors. As public buildings, their fates were at the whims of government leaders eager to develop the city into a 21st century economic powerhouse, which is how the House of Cinema was destroyed. Tashkent: A Modernist Capital To try to stop others from falling, the Uzbekistan Art and Culture Development Foundation funded a team of international researchers, historians, and architects to undertake Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI, a research project documenting the city’s modernist structures, and rallying for their preservation. Tashkent: A Modernist Capital “The concentration of modernist architecture is very high in Tashkent, but what truly sets it apart is the remarkable number of well-planned, innovative, and elegantly designed public buildings,” says architect Ekaterina Golovatyuk, one of the experts involved in the project and a co-founder of Grace Studio, a Milan-based architecture, design, and urbanism firm. Underway since 2018, the research project has documented 24 key modernist sites across the city. Of those, 21 have secured national heritage site status, along with 154 mosaic panels, protecting them from demolition. These buildings, and the ongoing effort to save them, is the subject of a pair of new books, Tashkent: A Modernist Capital, published by Rizzoli New York, and Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI, published by Lars Müller Publishers. The books reveal Tashkent as an under appreciated hotbed of modernist architecture, and a historical turning point for both Soviet and post-Soviet Central Asia. At one point the fourth largest city in the Soviet Union, Tashkent was chosen in the 1950s as a showcase of the “Soviet Orient,” which resulted in an architectural boom. “The city was meant to demonstrate how well socialism could adapt to a different cultural context,” Golovatyuk says. “This initiated a very interesting search for local identity, contended between architects from Tashkent and Moscow. The result was a transformation of traditional architectural elements within the framework of a modernist language.” Tashkent: A Modernist Capital This building spree took on new urgency in 1966 when a massive earthquake damaged much of the city. The city’s recovery coincided with a Soviet Union-wide emphasis on prefabricated building and new forms of construction, leaving Tashkent with a wide variety of inventive and modern buildings. Tashkent: A Modernist Capital The Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI research project has put this legacy under a new spotlight, helping to save many buildings from demolition while also underscoring their significance as the city grows. Some of these buildings are also being seen in a broader context. Golovatyuk and Giacomo Cantoni, co-founder of Grace Studio, were recently named curators of Uzbekistan’s national pavilion at the upcoming Venice Architecture Biennale. Their exhibition will focus on one project included in the research project, a large-scale scientific complex outside Tashkent known as the Sun Heliocomplex. Dedicated to studying solar energy, it was ahead of its time in both design and intention. Tashkent: A Modernist Capital Golovatyuk says this project and others that are being saved through the Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI research project are finding new relevance, especially within Uzbekistan, where contemporary architects are building on their heritage. “I think the search for national identity restarted almost from scratch when Uzbekistan gained independence in 1991,” says Golovatyuk, who first visited Tashkent in 2006. “Many buildings have sought to establish continuity with the pre-Soviet past through ornamentation, probably in a more exuberant manner than during the modernist period.” Tashkent: A Modernist Capital An emerging generation of young architects is taking particular inspiration from the buildings being preserved through the Tashkent Modernism XX/XXI research project, creating what Golovatyuk calls “a more sophisticated dialogue with both tradition and the modernist past.” Tashkent: A Modernist Capital The effort to save and recognize these buildings is city-specific for Tashkent, where modernism is now a kind of calling card. But it’s also a fight that exists in cities around the world, such as Philadelphia, where an internationally renowned police headquarters building is losing a long preservation battle, and Boston, where the government center complex is a perennial demolition target. Tashkent: A Modernist Capital “A few of these buildings faced at least some risk of transformation, but I believe it is to be expected. The city has been undergoing rapid growth for the past eight years, there is significant pressure on all real estate,” Golovatyuk says. “This kind of pressure is the fate of modernism not only in Tashkent, but worldwide.” The research project’s success in securing protected status for Tashkent’s modernist buildings could be a playbook for other cities to follow. View the full article

Chinese aerospace giant Comac has unveiled its plans for the C949, a supersonic aircraft designed to fly 50% farther than the Concorde and produce sonic booms quieter than a hairdryer. Scheduled to debut in 2049—coinciding with the centenary of the People’s Republic of China—the aircraft positions China to challenge US supersonic projects like NASA’s X-59 and Boom Supersonic’s Overture in a race to redefine global air travel. “The most important thing here is that this shows supersonic is a race—and China’s interested,” says Blake Scholl, CEO and founder of Boom Supersonic. “Advanced airplanes symbolize technological superiority, and it’s no accident that China wants that crown.” In a scientific paper published last month in the peer-reviewed journal Acta Aeronautica Sinica, Comac engineers detailed a Mach 1.6 aircraft capable of flying 4,225 miles, surpassing the Concorde’s 2,796 miles. The key to its design is a “reverse-camber” fuselage. In aerodynamics, this term refers to an unconventional curvature design in the fuselage or wings that inverts traditional airfoil shapes (which usually turns down from front to back). For the Comac C949, this term specifically describes a concave midsection—curving inward rather than outward—along the aircraft’s body. The team claims this curved midsection weakens shockwaves. This silhouette combines with a long needle-shaped nose that splits pressure pulses, and aerodynamic bulges near the engines to disperse exhaust turbulence. The airplane doesn’t have a regular cockpit. Similar to the X-59 If the long dart shape looks familiar, it’s because you probably saw it before: NASA’s X-59 uses a very similar design. According to the research paper reported by the South China Morning Post, the team led by Comac’s chief aerodynamicist Wu Dawei did simulations that demonstrate that the C949 aerodynamic features will reduce its sonic boom noise to just 83.9 perceived level decibels (PLdB), about the sound of a hairdryer. This is only 5% of the 105 PLdB noise generated by the Concorde. NASA’s aircraft will have a 75 PLdB boom—comparable to the hum of a dishwasher—so the C949 will be slightly louder. Comac, like NASA with the X-59, believes that a quieter boom will make the case for removing the supersonic flight ban over land that’s been in place since 1971. The company says that the take-off noise will be within the international limits for take-off in airports near cities. The state-owned company, which aims to become the next Boeing or Airbus, knows that this is crucial for its commercial viability all around the world. Both the C949 and X-59 employ elongated noses and redesigned fuselages to fracture shockwaves, but the C949 adds artificial intelligence systems not found in NASA’s demonstrator. The paper claims that its artificial intelligence-powered ‘fly-by-wire’ control system adjusts the aircraft’s surfaces 100 times per second to counteract instability at high speeds. The C949’s twin turbofans—the jet engines that provide the thrust—are adaptive-cycle, which means that they will alternate between two modes. One, when flying at a cruise altitude of 52,000-feet, is a fuel-efficient mode at 1.7 times the speed of sound (Mach 1.7). The other one, at lower altitudes, a “low boom” mode at Mach 1.6. Like the C949, the X-59 features a 30-meter needle-shaped nose—nearly half its length—to stretch and disperse shockwaves, while its engine is positioned atop the fuselage to direct noise upward. “It’s all about the geometry,” Lockheed X-59 program director Dave Richardson told me in an interview. “There’s no exotic technology, just a meticulous way to turn a bang into a dull thud.” Lockheed has envisioned that, using its aerodynamics, a 44-passenger commercial aircraft would be 61 meters long. Richardson acknowledges there will be obstacles: “Scaling [the X-59] requires engines that can sustain Mach 1.8 without afterburners—a challenge, but not impossible.” The Chinese engineers will have to develop a new engine too, just like Boom Supersonic. NASA’s Quesst prototype uses a virtual cockpit system that uses HD cameras to project the frontal outside view on internal screens that traditional pilot’s glass cockpit. This eliminates protuberances from the fuselage that would amplify the sonic boom sound. While Comac hasn’t disclosed if the C949 will feature a full digital cockpit, it’s the only possible design option. Overture will also use one, like the Boom Supersonic XB-1, the prototype that served Scholl and his team to test their design ideas for Overture and their idea of boom-less supersonic flight. The Overture avoids these extreme aerodynamic shapes, leveraging an atmospheric phenomenon called Mach cutoff. At 18,000 meters, its “boomless cruise” technique uses temperature and wind gradients to bend shockwaves upward, preventing them from reaching the ground. The sonic boom occurs but never reaches the ground. Not even as a dull thud, like the C949 and X-59. The company demonstrated this in two supersonic flights over the Mojave Desert, California, just a few months ago. “It’s not magic, just math,” says Scholl, who aims to offer Mach 1.7 flights at business-class prices by 2029. “We don’t need new materials, just smarter engineering,” he adds. Challenges and advantages According to Scholl, the X-59 and the C949 won’t be able to operate at current airports due to their size and shape, hindering their commercial adoption. The X-59 requires new airport infrastructure—it’s too long for existing gates, tells me. Overture, by contrast, fits current airports,” he says. Regardless, Comac faces considerable challenges. It’s a relative newcomer to commercial aviation. Its first airliner, which includes a first homegrown engine, the C919, entered service in 2023. The company lacks the certification experience or supply chain power of Boeing or Airbus. Still, its ambitious timeline includes delivering a wide-body airplane called the C929 (an equivalent to the 787 Dreamliner) by 2027; and an ultra-long haul, 400-seat airplane called the C939 (equivalent to Boeing’s 777-9) by 2039. Then it plans to launch the C949 in 2049. So many complex projects, all built from scratch, carry the risk of delays, especially with unproven engine technology, according to industry experts. But if any country can pull this off, it’s China. Beijing has developed a very mature aerospace industry. The country is manufacturing a completely new, homegrown Chengdu J-20 Mighty Dragon stealth fighter in large quantities. It is now testing two different new sixth-generation fighters, which broke cover months before the U.S. announced its future sixth-generation fighter, the F-47, for now just a 3D render. And, to top it all, Beijing is ahead in another key aerospace race: hypersonic flight. General Mark Milley, then chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, recognized this fact when the Pentagon detected a Chinese secret test that “defied physics” in 2021, qualifying it as “close to a Sputnik moment,” referring to the day the Soviet Union left the U.S. behind in the space race. China has the economic and technological power to make it happen, and state funding shields Comac from market pressures. The supersonic endgame It’s a real danger, especially when “the U.S. is abdicating leadership,” warns Scholl. “Look at Boeing—they haven’t launched a new plane in decades” [Boeing’s last new commercial airliner was the Dreamliner, which was announced in 2003 and took off in 2009 for the first time] China aims to replicate their industrial success in aviation. “Look at what happened with cars. Chinese cars take over in markets without any tariffs. That shift happened in 10 years,” he says. “China aims to replicate this in aviation.” The C949 is feasible and fits into Chinese aerospace ambitions, but Comac still have to turn its idea into reality—and from scratch. For now, NASA’s X-59 must demonstrate that its boom is acceptable to regulators. Boom Supersonic has shown that quiet supersonic flight is possible, but needs a new fuselage and new engines that balance speed and efficiency. Almost everything remains to be done, and the race has just begun. But Scholl warns: “They have put a date on it. They have a model number. They are very serious. They’ll move as fast as engineering allows, without our regulatory red tape.” “We’ve seen what happened in semiconductors when we lost leadership. We can’t let that happen here,” Scholl urges. And Wu and his team knows it, as they write in their paper: “The winner will dictate 21st-century aviation.” For now, all three contenders are rewriting the rules for this race, almost silently. 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When my emergency IAR app sounds at 3 a.m., there’s no room for ego, second-guessing, or hesitation. In that critical moment, all that matters is trust, teamwork, and execution. While I have spent decades in the corporate world, some of my most valuable leadership lessons have come from my experience as a volunteer EMS first responder. In the field, when I’m assisting in a life-threatening trauma situation or responding to a car accident, leadership is put to the test under extreme pressure. But whether I’m piloting an ambulance on a dark highway or guiding my company through turbulent times, the principles remain the same: Know your role, remove the noise, maintain a true north, and harness the power of the collective. First responders make real-time decisions under pressure, relying on trust and collaboration, and CEOs today must embrace the same mindset. While I see some leaders reverting to top-down management in response to rapid change and shifting policies, this approach can actually hinder long-term success. True leadership isn’t about command and control—it’s about creating an environment of clarity, trust, and adaptability, where teams are empowered to act decisively and navigate uncertainty together. It’s especially critical that executives embrace this ethos as their organizations—and their teams—are increasingly beset by outside noise and pressures that can potentially distract from their mission. Here’s what leaders can learn from first responders: Know When to Take a Back Seat In emergency response, knowing your role is crucial. A 17-year-old EMT might direct someone twice their age, and that’s exactly as it should be. Whether you are administering first aid, navigating traffic, or coordinating logistics, each team member must be clear about their responsibilities so they can work together in harmony. I recently watched a young ambulance corps captain in her mid-20s take command of a complex mental health emergency. With police on the scene and tensions high, she led with a calm, tactical presence that turned a chaotic situation into a controlled, compassionate response. Her ability to take charge had nothing to do with age or rank—it was about skill, confidence, and knowing when to step up. The same holds true in any organization. Leadership isn’t about titles or hierarchy; it’s about recognizing strengths and empowering the right people to lead when it matters most. Remove the Noise, Focus on Your North Star In an emergency, chaos surrounds you: passing traffic, weather conditions, bystanders, distraught family members. First responders must filter out this noise to focus on their task at hand. A clear example of this is a severe car accident I responded to where an older gentleman had driven off the highway into the woods. The vehicle was so badly damaged that we couldn’t even identify what kind of car it was. In these emergency situations, it’s the moments you take to assess the situation that make all the difference. Moving quickly doesn’t mean rushing in. It means taking the time to carefully evaluate the scene, calculating the arrival time of fire and additional emergency services, and identifying the right individual to enter the vehicle. By filtering out the surrounding chaos—the twisted metal, the external commotion, the emotional intensity—we were able to focus on our critical mission of saving the man’s life. As a leader, removing noise isn’t about ignoring those external factors. It’s about relying on a wealth and depth of experience to create a protective structure that allows your team to execute effectively. I approach an important meeting the same way I handle an emergency situation: by carefully assessing the context, gathering critical data points, and clearly outlining the objective. This ensures my team has all the information they need to contribute meaningfully toward our shared goal. Time is our most valuable currency. By setting a clear direction, I keep the focus on what matters, enabling diverse perspectives to inform—but not derail—the final decision. The Power of the Collective Individual skill is essential, but the power of the collective is truly transformative. Every first responder brings their own expertise and intuition, but success comes when these individuals work together in harmony. A single person may perform a critical task, but it’s the combined effort of all team members that ensures the best possible outcome. For executives, operating in isolation is a recipe for failure. Just like AI algorithms, leadership decisions are only as good as the inputs we apply. To harness the power of the collective, you must value every voice—regardless of volume. Some team members are naturally outspoken, while others hold back critical insights. Effective leaders create spaces that draw out diverse perspectives, whether it’s proactively calling on a subject matter expert to weigh in or setting up a roundtable discussion to give everyone a chance to chime in. It’s not just about making space; it’s about knowing when a nudge is needed. Getting Comfortable with Change Change has always been a constant in business, but its pace and unpredictability have grown in recent years. Just like in emergency response, where rapid shifts require clear thinking and decisive action, businesses must not only accept change but develop the confidence to navigate it effectively. The leaders who build strong, agile teams—not just obedient followers—will be the ones who thrive. It’s about creating the conditions where teams can perform at their best, even in the most challenging circumstances. I see this firsthand every Monday night when I’m on call from 6 p.m. to 6 a.m.—and it continues to shape my leadership long after the shift ends. 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The fallout from ‘Liquidation Day’View the full article

As renewable energy gathers steam around the world, the harms of mining its mineral components continue to grow. On the environmental front, for example, there’s the destruction of Indonesian rainforests to mine nickel and the draining of precious South American groundwater reserves to obtain lithium. There’s also the human toll, which can be seen in forced displacement and child labor exploitation in the cobalt-rich Democratic Republic of the Congo, as well as violence toward Indigenous people living on nickel-studded lands in the Philippines. The devastation raises the question: Is the world better off just sticking with the status quo? With these factors, is renewable energy and clean technology any better than fossil fuels? Whatever the answer, the comparison must account for the continued and additional coal, oil, and gas use that will happen in the absence of a mineral-powered energy transition. Not only does the status quo involve devastating greenhouse gas emissions that wreak havoc on the whole planet, but it also requires local ecological disruption in the form of fossil fuel extraction, which will continually expand as existing fuel deposits are depleted. Fracking and drilling for oil and gas can cause groundwater contamination, oil spills, and the uncontrolled release of planet-warming methane. And mining for coal, of course, is similarly destructive as other kinds of mining. While “there’s a lot of room for improvement with metals mining,” said Julie Klinger, a mineral supply chains expert at the University of Delaware, “look at the devastation that fossil fuel extraction has brought.” Indeed, the most mined resource today is coal, with around 8.7 billion tons produced in 2023 alone. We need fossil fuels in such large quantities precisely because they are fuels, continuously shoveled into power plants to generate energy. By contrast, solar panels and wind turbines require a fixed quantity of metals only during the construction phase—and once built, they can produce energy for several decades without additional inputs. Because of this, experts agree that the world will actually see a net decrease in energy-related mining if we replace fossil fuels with metals-powered technologies. In 2023, a team of scientists and Deloitte consultants in the Netherlands projected future metal and coal demand under an ambitious scenario where humanity reaches net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. They found that, despite a more than sixfold increase in demand for energy-related metals—bringing the total up to just over 3 billion tons—total global ore extraction would decrease by a third because of the decline in coal mining. In any case, mining for energy transition minerals will likely only ever constitute a relatively small proportion of global mining activity. Mines cover less than 0.02 percent of Earth’s surface, but many of them are for iron and aluminum, which we need in ever-increasing quantities to build the world around us, regardless of where we get our energy. “That will dwarf anything that’s actually used for the energy transition,” said geologist Gawen Jenkin of the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom. Most importantly, perhaps, while fossil fuels can only be burned once, many minerals can in principle be used many times over. The Netherlands study estimates that we could slash energy-related mining demand by an additional third in the 2050 net-zero scenario if we were to massively upscale recycling of EVs, wind turbines, and solar panels. The fundamental issue, said Raphael Deberdt, a socioeconomic mining expert at the Colorado School of Mines, is that our economic system incentivizes as much extraction as possible in order to fuel infinite consumption. But shifts to reduce resource consumption—think electric buses and trains rather than SUVs, and reusing old solar panels and EV batteries wherever possible, for instance—and a circular economy that makes the best use of every resource would do wonders to ease the burden of mining. There are other actions we can take to further reduce the adverse effects of mineral mining. For example, engineers can substitute materials connected to labor or human rights abuses with ones that can be more responsibly sourced; Tesla, for instance, has begun to equip its electric vehicles with iron-phosphate batteries that are cheaper and don’t require cobalt or nickel, which have been linked to environmental and social damage in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia, respectively. This reflects a broader shift across auto industries—with manufacturers like Renault and Volkswagen reportedly following suit—while iron-phosphate batteries are also becoming increasingly popular for general electricity storage. There are also many opportunities to extract minerals from the waste of existing mines that were originally built for different purposes. Research by mining and sustainability expert Tim Werner of the University of Melbourne has estimated that waste from a single Canadian zinc mine could supply several years’ worth of global demand for indium, which is used in solar cells, and there are already efforts to recover cobalt from old lead mines in Missouri. Nascent attempts to recover critical minerals from ocean water, plant life, and even asteroids have shown promise, though they are not developed enough to displace traditional methods. In short, the mantra “reduce, reuse, recycle”—in precisely that order—retains its importance in an all-renewables world. The more of these changes we adopt, the more luxury we’ll have to choose where and how minerals are mined. “This transition needs to happen,” Werner said. “But we have to be really strategic, really smart, and really conscientious and responsible about where they’re coming from.” — Katarina Zimmer, Grist This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Sign up for its newsletter here. View the full article