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We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Bang & Olufsen’s Beosound A1 (2nd Gen) is a speaker that packs a serious punch for its size. Normally priced at $299.99, it’s down to $139.99 on Woot for the next 13 days or until stock runs out—and if you have Amazon Prime, shipping is free. Non-Prime members will have to pay $6, but either way, it’s only available to the contiguous U.S. (no shipping to Alaska, Hawaii, or PO boxes). Bang & Olufsen’s Beosound A1 (2nd Gen) $139.99 at Woot $299.99 Save $160.00 Get Deal Get Deal $139.99 at Woot $299.99 Save $160.00 PCMag gave this Bluetooth speaker an Editor’s Choice award when it launched in 2020, and it’s still a strong contender today. At just 1.2 pounds, the Beosound A1 is not exactly light for its size, though it comes with a leather lanyard for easy carrying. With an IP67 rating that can handle dust, sand, and submersion, it's ready to accompany you on outdoor adventures. Setup is handled through the Bang & Olufsen app, which also enables its built-in Alexa—though you’ll need to link accounts first. It's Bluetooth 5.1-compatible with support for AAC and AptX Adaptive codecs, though it doesn’t have LDAC support for high-res listening. The battery life of the Beosound A1 is rated at 18 hours, but that’ll depend on your volume settings. This little speaker gets loud, driven by a 3.5-inch woofer and a 0.4-inch tweeter, both powered by dedicated 30-watt Class D amps. The result is a deep bass (enough to shake a table but without the speaker itself moving around) that stays full even at moderate to high volumes. It’s a bass-heavy tuning, which makes sense given its size—though at max volume, the DSP kicks in to prevent distortion, thinning out the sound slightly, notes the PCMag review. Its frequency range of 55Hz-20kHz means you’ll get solid lows and clear highs, but don’t expect a perfectly balanced studio monitor sound. The app’s EQ adjustment isn’t the most intuitive, using a circular chart instead of sliders, but it offers some control over tuning. If you’re looking for something newer with the latest Bluetooth tech (and one that's a little more budget-friendly), the Beats Pill is currently $99.99 (down from $149.95) and might be worth considering instead. View the full article

Rising insurance costs are leading providers and condo associations to consider changes to policies that would make some loans ineligible for GSE sale. View the full article

Delaware is trying to protect its status as the corporate capital of the world amid fallout from a judge’s rejection of billionaire Elon Musk’s landmark Tesla compensation package, although critics say fast-tracked legislation will tilt the playing field against investors, including pensioners and middle-class savers. A Delaware House committee was expected to vote Wednesday on the bill, which is backed by Democratic Gov. Matt Meyer who says it’ll ensure the state remains the “premier home for U.S. and global businesses” to incorporate. Backers say it’ll modernize the law and maintain balance between corporate officers and shareholders in a state where the courts, for a century, have settled all sorts of business disputes as the legal home of more than two million corporate entities, including two-thirds of Fortune 500 companies. Critics—including institutional investors, pension funds and asset managers—say it’ll lower corporate governance standards, curb shareholder rights and, as a result, limit the ability to hold corporate officers accountable for decisions that violate their fiduciary duty. The bill passed the state Senate unanimously last week. What happened in Elon Musk’s case? A Delaware judge last year invalidated Musk’s compensation package from Tesla that was potentially worth more than $55 billion. Lawyers for shareholders had sued over the package that Tesla’s board of directors awarded Musk in 2018. Chancellor Kathaleen St. Jude McCormick said it was developed by directors who weren’t independent of Musk and approved by shareholders who had been given misleading and incomplete disclosures in a proxy statement. The ruling bumped Musk out of the top spot on Forbes’s list of wealthiest people, although he has since climbed back up. Musk and Tesla are appealing in the state Supreme Court. But Musk unloaded on Delaware, saying “Never incorporate your company in the state of Delaware” and instead recommended competitors Nevada or Texas as destinations. Now, lawmakers are being warned by corporate lawyers that their clients are considering heading to the exits—making a “Dexit,” as it’s been dubbed—and that startups are being advised to incorporate elsewhere. What did Musk and others do? Must took his own advice, moving Tesla’s corporate listing to Texas after a shareholder vote and his companies SpaceX to Texas and Neuralink to Nevada. Backers of the bill say corporate unrest had been simmering the past couple years over various Delaware Supreme Court decisions in corporate conflict-of-interest cases and that Musk inflamed the discontent. The fallout seemed to accelerate in recent weeks when the Wall Street Journal reported that Meta Platforms—the parent company of social media platforms Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp—was considering moving its incorporation to Texas. Meta didn’t confirm the report. DropBox, the online file-sharing platform, moved its corporate listing to Nevada, and Bill Ackman, founder of Pershing Square Capital Management, a major hedge fund, said he’d leave Delaware, too. On Feb. 1, Musk took to his social media platform X to crow about it, saying, “Companies are flooding out of Delaware, because the activist chief judge of the Delaware court has no respect for shareholder rights.” That said, critics of the bill say there’s no evidence that corporations are fleeing Delaware in any numbers. What does the bill do? It changes several things. One, it gives corporations more protections in conflict-of-interest cases—such as a pay package for a CEO or intercompany agreements—in state courts when fighting shareholder lawsuits. Two, it limits the kind of documents that a company must produce in court cases and makes it harder for stockholders to get access to internal documents or communication that could prove time-consuming and expensive for a company to produce—not to mention, damaging to its case. Eric Talley, a Columbia University law professor, has compiled a running list of three dozen Delaware Supreme Court precedents that the legislation stands to change. Lawrence Hamermesh, a former professor at Widener University’s Delaware Law School, disagreed. Hamermesh, who helped draft the legislation after Meyer asked him last month, said perhaps only a couple doctrines would be wiped out. A legal challenge is widely expected should Meyer get the bill and sign it into law. Meanwhile, institutional investors say such a law may prompt them to push corporations that they own to incorporate elsewhere. Why is this a big deal for Delaware? Money. Approximately one-third of Delaware’s state government revenue—about $2.2 billion—comes from corporate license fees and associated tax revenues, according to the governor’s office. That helps the state to maintain a 0% sales tax and keep property taxes relatively low, a nice perk for the beach vacation home industry along its Atlantic coast. Beyond that, Wilmington is home to a cottage industry that caters to the corporate lawyers who live, stay, dine and shop around the state Supreme Court and the Chancery Court of Delaware buildings where they argue their cases. __ Follow Marc Levy on X at: https://x.com/timelywriter. —Marc Levy, Associated Press View the full article

Decision comes even as government joins other European countries in seeking to raise military spending View the full article

Nestlé USA is voluntarily recalling a limited quantity of Lean Cuisine and Stouffer’s frozen meals after reports of potential contamination with “foreign matter,” namely wood-like material. The Arlington, Virginia, company emphasizes that no other varieties of Lean Cuisine or Stouffer’s meals are involved in the recall and that there is no evidence of other products being contaminated. A notice was also posted on the website of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Here’s what you need to know: What products are affected? This recall is isolated to a limited quantity of batches of the following items, which were produced between August 2024 and March 2025 and distributed at major retailers in the United States between September 2024 and March 2025. Lean Cuisine Butternut Squash Ravioli Lean Cuisine Spinach Artichoke Ravioli Lean Cuisine Lemon Garlic Shrimp Stir Fry STOUFFER’S Party Size Chicken Lasagna What to do if you bought these products If you have purchased any of the affected products, you are encouraged to dispose of them or return them to the store for a full refund. “We are committed to the quality and safety of the food we provide our consumers,” Nestlé USA said in its recall notice. “We are taking proactive steps to remove affected products from stores and to ensure that no other products are impacted by this issue.” View the full article

Nestlé USA is voluntarily recalling a limited quantity of Lean Cuisine and Stouffer’s frozen meals after reports of potential contamination with “foreign matter,” namely wood-like material. The Arlington, Virginia, company emphasizes that no other varieties of Lean Cuisine or Stouffer’s meals are involved in the recall and that there is no evidence of other products being contaminated. A notice was also posted on the website of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Here’s what you need to know: What products are affected? This recall is isolated to a limited quantity of batches of the following items, which were produced between August 2024 and March 2025 and distributed at major retailers in the United States between September 2024 and March 2025. Lean Cuisine Butternut Squash Ravioli Lean Cuisine Spinach Artichoke Ravioli Lean Cuisine Lemon Garlic Shrimp Stir Fry STOUFFER’S Party Size Chicken Lasagna What to do if you bought these products If you have purchased any of the affected products, you are encouraged to dispose of them or return them to the store for a full refund. “We are committed to the quality and safety of the food we provide our consumers,” Nestlé USA said in its recall notice. “We are taking proactive steps to remove affected products from stores and to ensure that no other products are impacted by this issue.” View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. This will be an extremely pedantic post, and one that I am terribly sorry to have to write. I’ve been into weight lifting (two words) for a long time, but about six years ago I got into weightlifting (all one word). It turns out these are two very different things. Weightlifting, all one word, is the sport that is contested in the Olympics in which people—wearing what look like old-timey swimsuits—pick up barbells loaded with brightly colored weights. In one of the events, the snatch, the bar is lifted from the ground to overhead in one swift movement. In the other, the clean and jerk, the bar is lifted to the shoulders and the lifter pauses to breathe and question their life choices before using another sudden movement to shove it sky high. (You can lift more weight the second way, which is why they are separate events. Each lifter’s best snatch and best clean and jerk are added together to find out who wins.) Weight lifting, two words, refers to the action of lifting a weight—any weight. If you’ve never heard of this distinction or never thought of it when you said or heard the word “weightlifting,” bear with me here. Why "weightlifting" refers to the sport of the snatch and clean and jerkEarly weightlifting competitions, in the 1800s, evolved out of circuses and stage shows where a strongman would show off feats of strength to an audience. Sometimes these strongmen would challenge each other, and would bring in judges to verify the weights and ensure a fair competition. Gymnasts around this time trained with dumbbells and barbells as well, and would also set up their own friendly competitions. By the time the first (modern) Olympics rolled around in 1896, there was enough interest in weightlifting as a competitive sport that it was one of the sports contested. It took decades after that for competitive weightlifting to evolve into the form we can still see in the Olympics. The dumbbell lifts and one-hand lifts were dropped; by 1928 the sport had three barbell lifts, each of them done with both hands. In 1972, one of them (the clean and press) was dropped from competition. This leaves the two-lift sport we know and love today. (We all do love it, right? It's our favorite? Good.) Olympic Weightlifting: A Complete Guide for Athletes & Coaches $44.37 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg Shop Now Shop Now $44.37 at Amazon /images/amazon-prime.svg The idea of lifting weights for fun and health didn't become popular until after the competitive sport became established. The name "weightlifting" was already taken, so when some weightlifters decided to challenge each other in other lifts, like the squat and bench press, they had to choose a different name. (Thus was born powerlifting.) Other offshoots chose names, too. The "World's Strongest Man" TV specials led to the sport of strongman, where people (not just men) lift a variety of implements like stones and kegs and log-shaped barbells, and no two competitions are the same. Probably the most famous strength sport is bodybuilding, where competitors don't actually lift anything in competitions; they just show off the body that they built through lifting weights. Much of gym culture as we know it today was born from the bodybuilding style of training, as bodybuilders and barbell manufacturers collaborated to write and publish magazine articles for the masses. If you think of your strength training in terms of "reps" or "muscle groups," this is why. You can also, of course, just lift weights. This isn’t weightlifting, because that's the name for the Olympic sport; it’s “lifting weights” or “lifting” or “strength training” or "resistance training." You can, if you must, call it “weight lifting.” I'm a weightlifter, and I agree that this makes no senseI hate that I have been forced to become so pedantic about this. Weightlifting is an awful, terrible, no-good, very-bad name for one of many sports in which people lift weights. Powerlifting, by the way, is almost as badly named; it's actually the Olympic lifts that showcase power, and the “power lifts” that showcase strength. So people like me are left protesting that we are weightlifters, not powerlifters or bodybuilders, and the average person curling a dumbbell in the gym has no clue why we care so much about whether or not there is a space between “weight” and “lifting.” The problem, ultimately, is that nobody ever came up with a better name for the sport they have in the Olympics. Some people will call it “Olympic lifting,” leading to confusion when you tell your friends that you do it but also that you are not going to the Olympics for it. Crossfitters have found a workaround by casually referring to “oly lifting,” which I support in theory, but weightlifters have not embraced the term. We compete in weightlifting, and clarify what we mean by saying “you know, weightlifting weightlifting,” while miming the motion of a snatch. I’m sorry. This is the best we have for now. View the full article

Chinese carmaker’s second shock announcement of the year could put others out of business, say analystsView the full article

In 2021, Netflix’s executive vice president of game development Mike Verdu made a big announcement: “Let the Games Begin.” Four years later, Verdu is out—and Netflix’s grand experiment in gaming still feels like a work in progress. Netflix bet big on gaming. They brought in Verdu from Facebook and EA, and then went on a buying spree, acquiring a handful of mobile gaming studios like Boss Fight and Night School. But, by the end of 2022, only about 1% of the Netflix subscribers were actually playing its games. At the time, co-CEO Ted Sarandos said that gaming had “a bunch of positives” even if growth was slow: “These are small numbers, we’re good with that.” (Netflix declined Fast Company‘s request for comment.) But, after years of stalled development and only a handful of successes, Netflix is pivoting. They’ve canned multiple games that were in development, and gutted entire departments like experimental video. Netflix is, once more, recalibrating its approach The stunted rise of Netflix gaming Gaming looked like Netflix’s next big frontier. The interactive Black Mirror: Bandersnatch was a hit—despite a prolonged legal battle Netflix eventually settled. At the time, The Verge called Netflix’s gaming push the company’s “secret sauce for continued domination.” They started to buy up major game developers, and even built an in-house studio for themselves. This initial voyage had its snags. Their rollout of games varied between different devices. The initial crop, which included two Stranger Things-themed games, was available on Android only. Netflix teased that iOS support was “on the way,” frustrating Apple users. And, since Apple bars third-party apps from operating as its own gaming market, Netflix’s iOS rollout demanded users download their games as stand-alone applications. It took two more years for Netflix to open up gaming availability on TVs. While Netflix started by releasing a variety of themed and original games, they quickly leaned hard into IP. In 2023, Sarandos pointed to a gaming adaptation of reality show Too Hot To Handle as a major success. That game has since been given two sequels. They’ve also released gaming spin-offs of shows like Love Is Blind and The Queen’s Gambit. To date, their most successful game is an adaptation of Squid Game. Then came the cuts. Netflix built an internal AAA studio (codenamed “Blue”)—but reportedly shut it down in 2024 before releasing a single title. The company then delisted almost all of their interactive titles. Bandersnatch, once a beacon of hope, is now one of the last of its type remaining. In January, Netflix shelved six upcoming games. Verdu, once the leader of this new department, took on a new title of “VP of GenAI for gaming,” before leaving the company entirely. Can Netflix pivot? Netflix’s gaming division isn’t dead—but it’s entering yet another reboot. In 2024, just before Verdu transitioned to his AI-focused role, Netflix announced a new hire. Alain Tascan of Epic Games joined as a new president of games. Tascan is now making changes to his team internally. They’ve also pivoted away from a mobile-first approach, now opening up the possibility of cloud gaming on smart TVs. Netflix has also had some recent successes that suggest possible longevity. Squid Game: Unleashed, which was released with season two of the hit drama show, racked up 42 million plays by the end of 2024. Netflix touts that Unleashed was the “#1 Free Action Game in 57 Countries.” The WWE mobile games will also be exclusively available through Netflix in fall 2025 with their content deal. After years of slow starts and sharp pivots, Netflix still hasn’t proven games belong in its subscription model. The next few years will test whether Tascan can turn things around. View the full article

Google’s next Pixel phone, the Pixel 9a, has finally been announced. And for the first time in a Pixel since 2020’s Pixel 5, it ditches the camera bar. It’s also, as expected, a little cheaper and comes with a few additional AI tricks not available on the Pixel 8a, but really, it’s the new look that’s the biggest surprise here. That’s because the 9a, unlike the 8a before it, really doesn’t look much like the Pixel 9 or 9 Pro. Dimensions are roughly equivalent to the standard Pixel 9 (although it is a little more lightweight at 6.6 oz vs. 7 oz) and the screen has almost pound-for-pound the same specs except for a halved contrast ratio, but people familiar with the past half-decade of Pixel phones might not realize it’s even part of the same family at first. Pixel 8a (left) vs. Pixel 9a (right) Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt Without the camera bar, the Pixel 9a instead looks much more like an iPhone than arguably even a Samsung Galaxy, with two rear lenses in the top-left corner inside a small ovular black bump next to a flash. This makes for a much thinner and flatter profile overall, even if the body itself hasn’t changed much, and I’m excited to both get my hands on it and see how the cases turn out. I’ve never loved the camera bar, but this has me considering the Pixel again. Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt As for the specs on those cameras, they’re part of a trend of internal specs that don’t really compare well to either the Pixel 9 or the Pixel 8a. The rear camera lenses are 48MP and 13MP, respectively, while the front is 13MP, although the various aperture details and field-of-view settings don’t cleanly map onto an existing Google phone. I’m also curious to see how shots turn out once I get my hands on this phone. Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt Similarly, another detail that doesn’t have an outright comparison with an existing Google phone is battery life, which Google promises is 30+ hours on the Pixel 9a, a little longer than on either the 8a or the Pixel 9. RAM and storage is equal to the 8a at 8GB and a starting value of 128GB, respectively, although the processor has been bumped up to the Google Tensor G4, the same as on the Pixel 9. All of that adds up to make for a unique release with what could have simply been a pared-down Pixel 9, perhaps giving you additional reasons to get it over its more expensive cousin than simply saving a few dollars. That said, even with the lower cost, which is $500 vs. the Pixel 9’s $800, Google is promising some extra software here than on the Pixel 8a. These include a Macro Focus mode and unique Pixel AI features like Add Me (which can put you into shots you weren’t present for, albeit with mixed results). Credit: Michelle Ehrhardt While you’ll get the usual options for black, white, and pink, there’s also a new purple color, which hearkens back to the Pixel 8's light blue color that I missed so much on the base Pixel 9. All in all, it’s shaping up to be a surprisingly exciting release for an A-series model, and I’m hoping it’s a hint at bigger things in store for the Pixel 10 when it inevitably comes out later this fall. An official release date is still TBA, so keep an eye on this space for more down the line. View the full article

Purdue Pharma asked a bankruptcy judge late Tuesday to consider the latest version of its plan to settle thousands of lawsuits over the toll of the powerful prescription painkiller OxyContin, a deal that would have members of the Sackler family who own the company pay up to $7 billion. The filing is a milestone in a tumultuous legal saga that has gone on for more than five years. Under the deal the family members — estimated in documents from 2020 and 2021 to be worth about $11 billion — would give up ownership of the company in addition to contributing money over 15 years with the biggest payment up front. Family members resigned from Purdue’s board, stopped receiving money from the company and ceased other involvement before it filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019 as it faced lawsuits from thousands of state and local governments, plus others. The new entity would be run by a board appointed by state governments, and its mission will be to abate the opioid crisis that has been linked to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the U.S. since OxyContin hit the market in 1996. The first wave of deadly overdoses were tied to OxyContin and other prescription drugs, and subsequent waves have involved first heroin and more recently illicit versions of fentanyl. This settlement plan was hammered out in months of mediation involving groups that sued Purdue, and nearly all of them are supporting it, according to mediator reports filed in court. Approval would take at least several more months. A previous version had bankruptcy court approval but was rejected last year by the U.S. Supreme Court because it protected members of the Sackler family from civil lawsuits even though none of them filed for bankruptcy protection themselves. Under the new version, plaintiffs will have to opt in to get full shares of the settlement. If they do not, they can still sue Sackler family members, who agreed to put in about $1 billion more than under earlier plans. The Sacklers’ cash contribution would depends in part on how many parties join the settlement and on the sale of foreign drug companies. Some of the money they put into the settlement is to be reserved to pay any judgments if they are sued and lose; but if that doesn’t happen, it’s to go into the main settlement. Members of the family have been cast as villains and have seen their name removed from art galleries and universities around the world because of their role in the privately held company. They continue to deny any wrongdoing. Other drugmakers, distribution companies, pharmacy chains and others have already reached opioid lawsuit settlements worth about $50 billion, according to an Associated Press tally. Purdue’s, which would also include about $900 million from company coffers, would be among the largest if finalized. The deals require most of the money be used to fight the opioid crisis. Purdue’s is the only major one that also provides direct money for victims — potentially more than $850 million total in pools for people who became addicted, their families and babies born in withdrawal. That figure is more than in the previous incarnation. The deadline to apply for a piece of those funds passed years ago. In earlier versions, individuals were expected to receive between about $3,500 and $48,000. Families were split over the deal. Purdue would also provide millions of documents to a repository that would make them public. The company has also been producing a low-cost version of naloxone, a drug that reverses overdoses. —Geoff Mulvihill, Associated Press View the full article

Since the term “design thinking” took off in 2000, the once boutique industry of design became a household term. Spurred on by the stratospheric growth of Apple after the iPhone launch in 2007, businesses invested untold sums purchasing design companies and building design proficiency in-house. The cherry on top arrived when McKinsey published a report in 2018 cementing the value of design in leading businesses cross-sector. And then? For the last several years, the design industry has quietly lost some of its luster. We’ve published multiple stories examining how the world of business broke up with design, while a generation of design leadership has grappled with the effects. Truth be told, the reality is more complex. Design is still vastly more present within companies than it was decades ago, but it’s certainly been deprioritized during a business cycle that’s championing technology and marketing. Things look so bad because, for a moment, they looked so good. At Chicago’s The Future Of… conference in early March, dozens of design leaders—chief design officers, VPs, and other high ranking designers at companies including P&G, 3M, Ford, J.M. Smucker, Verizon, Duracell, Whirlpool, and GE Healthcare—gathered to respond to the provocation: “Is Design Dead?” My favorite moment was when design teams from Coca-Cola and PepsiCo formed an impromptu circle mere feet from a careful assortment of each company’s products on ice. Consultant John Gleason—who organized the conference alongside David Butler (Coca-Cola’s first VP of design) and industry vet Fred Richards—kicked things off by sharing some disquieting data. In analyzing hundreds for Fortune 500 companies, he found that 39% had cut the top one to two levels of their design organization, downgrading the level or title of heads of design. Nine percent had eliminated half of their design team in the last year. And in 84% of all cases, design reported not to the CEO, but to a specific function (like marketing) or functional executive. And in 74% of those cases? The head of design was not even reporting to the head of their functional unit. [Photo: Andrew Boynton] I was invited as the only journalist to attend the conference, to both share my perspective on stage and listen in to private, frank debates about the state of design and its future. Given the sensitivity of corporate perspectives being shared, I agreed to Chatham House Rules reporting. In other words, I could publish themes and even quote what was said, but for the protection of everyone, nothing will be attributed to anyone. [Photo: Andrew Boynton] Here were my 10 takeaways from two days of talks, though I would offer a significant caveat: Most designers in attendance worked for CPG companies, meaning this information is heavily biased toward that industry, versus what we might hear from technology, UX, product, interior design, etc. For the tl;dr version, let me say: Design is a practice as old as humankind. It can never and never will die. But for the industry to re-achieve its peak relevance, the practice needs to evolve, think bigger, and maybe go get that MBA already. 1. Yes, design is hurting at a lot of companies Companies have slashed back and demoted their design practices. With definite exceptions in the room, the general consensus was that designers were struggling to be relevant, and even have jobs, at their companies. “It’s a shitshow out there,” one person put it, bluntly, while another offered that “design is not healthy.” 2. Designers blew their big moment Out of 2010, the investment big in design teams promised true business innovation. When one panelist challenged the room to cite a major breakthrough design generated in this era, they were met with crickets. “We were sexy,” one person put it, but the farther you ride, the farther you fall.” The solution to earning back credibility in the meantime is that designers need to “do less with less,” another suggested, taking a more “surgical approach” to projects that could meet needs in the business. 3. We’re in a down cycle One of the most commonly recurring themes from the panels were about cycles of investment. That for whatever reason, we’re in a down cycle of design. I agree with this argument, and presented a take of my own: We are in a technological cycle and a marketing cycle. Gen AI drove the need for immediate investment in core technological capabilities. Mature social media (TikTok in particular) rewarded rich investment in data driven marketing campaigns. And in the meantime, design was deprioritized as a less essential job during years of cost cutting layoffs. However, designers will ultimately be the ones that turn AI into functional products, and there are only so many marketing collabs Gen Z will buy before they, too, prioritize more meaningful consumption, and sustainability (hopefully) becomes a global priority again. But for now, companies are abandoning climate pledges to build AI data centers. 4. Designers sell their practice without solidifying their value One theme I noticed was that designers in the room that still boasted rich investment from their companies proselytized the quantifiable impact of their work—often that they saved their company money, or measurably added brand equity—whereas most admitted that designers were poor at articulating the ROI of their own practice. But you know who is great at talking ROI? CMOs. “Marketing leaders can outline their strategy. Design leaders can’t,” someone said. “No wonder design has trouble competing with marketing on solutions.” These days, many design teams are answering to a CMO, which is a failure of designers’ self-marketing inside the company. As one design leader pointed out, they see three paths forward: One, marketing takes over design. Two, marketing and design share responsibilities. Or the third, where marketing reports to design. To most designers, the third option is the most ideal—but it also might be the most sustainable for business. Design as a broad practice can contain marketing, while marketing does not naturally contain the umbrella of design. 5. Designers have failed to speak the language of business Why don’t designers keep the ear of the C-suite? “Enough designers don’t speak the language of business,” one person put it, flatly. And over two days, several people pointed out that designers simply do not know the proper lingo to be taken seriously inside companies. Designers tend to be spreadsheet adverse as they hang their hats on liberal arts. Especially at large organizations, most business units will be run by MBAs and traditional, business-minded people. This mismatch creates friction to sway a CEO, sure, but the issue compounds as designers really need buy-in from cross functional teams to make things happen. “Our gift is synthesis, which is why we need to bring in our own data,” said one leader. “I spend all my time building relationships [across the company] to get to that data.” 6. Design thinking has undercut the value of design Over two days of talks, I witnessed all variety of reaction to the term “design thinking.” But especially with the fall of Ideo—the mecca of design thinking—it’s clear that the term has often become shorthand for, what an IDEO partner once framed to me as enabling a “theater of innovation.” It’s a methodology to problem solving akin to the scientific method, and it’s every bit as intelligent as the person wielding it. Yet the design industry has spent two decades rallying behind the term, leveraging it to get buy-in from companies that used it to teach everyone “how to think like a designer.” But “Design thinking is not design, and there’s a huge disservice done when educating business on how to run a design thinking session,” said one panelist. Namely, it cheapens the practice of design, commoditizing a craft to something you learn over a box lunch. “If the height of the [design] curve was the Ideo shopping cart video, we may be in the pit of despair right now,” joked another. Not everyone at a company is a designer. Just like they aren’t all an accountant. Or an IT specialist. 7. Maybe design needs a new name There is no vagary what someone means when they tell you they are an “architect.” But what does a “designer” conjure? A million possible things. “The term ‘design’ is a problem,” says one expert, noting that we’ve tried being more specific with “CX” and “UX” but each permutation comes with its own costs. “The term ‘interior design’ is more limiting than effective,” they posit. The terms seem either too big, or too small, for designers to fit any definitional impact. 8. Design’s lack of diversity limits its reach We’ve reported on the lack of diversity within design for the last decade and, over that time, the numbers haven’t measurably improved. Noting the majority of whiteness in the room, one designer said, “We design for people who don’t look like most designers.” I’ll admit some disappointment by how shocked some in the room were at this statement. (Should we really be surprised to contemplate that design is too white in 2025?) But that doesn’t make it any less true. With the current administration’s attacks on DEI, diversifying design is only a greater uphill battle. However, design representation isn’t just a path toward equality; it’s a path toward understanding the needs and desires of more customers. 9. Corporate reorgs kill design strategy Whether it’s a new CEO or a completely new org chart, the increased instability of business drives an instability of the design practice. “I’ve had seven reorgs in four years,” one designer lamented—who was not the only one to share such a sentiment during the week. But why is this bad for design? As many echoed through the conference, designers think well in the medium- to long-term, strategizing for the future. When that lead time is disrupted through a change in leadership or a reorg—or even just the quarterly whims of Wall Street—any true long-term design strategy cannot take off. As a point of example, CEO Bracken Darrell was cited as turning around Logitech in four years alongside designer Alastair Curtis. And now, as the two have landed VF Corporation, they’ve charted a decade-long strategy. 10. Design is still better off than it was 25 years ago While design may be in something of a corporate slump, I continue to believe in its unequivocal value. And I do think it’s worth taking a little rewind through history. Design was not something most people knew about 25 years ago–especially in the U.S. The corporate world only got its first chief design officer in 2010, when Mauro Porcini (now of PepsiCo) took the position at 3M. “We don’t know the half life of a CDO yet,” one leader pointed out. “A CEO is about four years, a CMO is about two years.” The truth is that, while design is an impossibly old practice across culture, its serious role within business is still nascent. View the full article

Early in their leadership journey, many leaders believe they need to have all the answers and be experts in every aspect of their team’s work. They assume that credibility comes from knowing every detail, every strategy, and every technical nuance. However, the most effective leaders soon realize that leadership isn’t about having all the answers—it’s about knowing enough to ask the right questions, spot key trends, and guide their teams toward success. Rather than micromanaging or dictating processes, strong leaders focus on creating clarity through shared goals and measurable outcomes. By setting clear performance metrics, they establish a common language with their teams—one that ensures alignment, fosters trust, and allows experts to do what they do best. This approach empowers teams to take ownership of their expertise while enabling leaders to maintain strategic oversight without unnecessary interference. Ultimately, leadership isn’t about proving intelligence or control—it’s about fostering an environment where knowledge thrives, collaboration is seamless, and results speak for themselves. Establish Clear Metrics As a leader, I’ve learned that I don’t need to be the expert in every area my team works in, but I believe knowing enough to be dangerous is critical. This means understanding the core concepts, being able to ask sharp questions, and spotting potential red flags when performance or processes seem off. I see my role not as the person with all the answers, but as someone who can guide the team to ask the right questions and evaluate results critically. One specific strategy I actively follow to foster collaboration and mutual respect, especially when my team members have deeper expertise than I do, is establishing clear performance checklists and standardized metrics that we all align on upfront. These metrics have become our common language. This approach ensures that my team can apply their knowledge and creative ideas while I focus on ensuring we’re all steering toward the same outcomes. For example, I don’t try to dictate every ad copy or keyword with my PPC team. I know they have far more hands-on expertise than I do. What I focus on instead are the critical numbers: cost per lead, conversion rates, search query analysis, and quality scores. These metrics tell me whether campaigns are moving in the right direction or if we need to step back and reevaluate. This allows me to ask the right performance-based questions without interfering in their technical process, reinforcing their confidence and autonomy. This balance of freedom with accountability has helped me create a culture where my team members feel respected for their expertise and understand that outcomes matter. What I’ve also noticed is that this mutual respect encourages better communication. When I respect their deep technical knowledge, they’re more open to educating me about emerging trends or evolving challenges in their domain. At the same time, because I stay focused on the bigger picture, they appreciate my strategic insights that might otherwise get lost in day-to-day execution. Ultimately, I believe that a leader’s role is to create a framework where expertise thrives, not to compete with it. By respecting my team’s knowledge and adding value through clear direction and outcome monitoring, I’ve fostered collaboration, innovation, and a healthy sense of shared ownership across projects. Sangeeta Kumar, vice president, marketing, Healthcare DMS Facilitate Knowledge Sharing In my opinion, a good leader will be happy when their team members have more expertise in certain areas. It means they’ve hired well. The key is to create an environment where that expertise is shared and valued, not feared. One specific strategy I use is to regularly set up “knowledge-sharing sessions.” We make it clear that everyone, including myself, is there to learn. The goal is to encourage questions and create a space where everyone feels comfortable contributing. This approach does a few things: It shows the expert that their skills are appreciated, it spreads that knowledge throughout the team, and it builds respect because everyone sees the value that person brings. Shantanu Pandey, founder and CEO, Tenet Embrace Reverse Mentoring Leaders should embrace the expertise of their team members by shifting from a traditional top-down approach to a collaborative mentorship model, where learning flows both ways. One effective strategy is reverse mentoring, where experienced team members regularly share insights with leadership in structured sessions. Instead of positioning themselves as the ultimate authority, leaders can schedule monthly knowledge exchanges where subject-matter experts within the team lead discussions on industry trends, technical skills, or new strategies. This fosters a culture of shared learning and mutual respect, allowing leaders to stay informed while empowering their teams to take ownership of their expertise. By acknowledging and valuing specialized knowledge, leaders build trust and encourage open collaboration. This approach not only strengthens decision-making but also creates an environment where innovation thrives, as employees feel their insights are heard and acted upon. Chris Giannos, cofounder and CEO, Humaniz Practice Curiosity-Driven Leadership One of the most underrated yet powerful leadership strategies when managing a team with more expertise is Curiosity-Driven Leadership, a mindset that shifts a leader from “knowing” to “learning,” fostering an environment of psychological safety, collaboration, and mutual respect. Instead of feeling pressure to match their expertise, leaders should ask insightful questions, elevate the knowledge of their team, and integrate their expertise into strategic decisions. Here’s how: 1. Ask insightful questions Instead of pretending to know the answer, leaders can ask, “What would you do if you had full autonomy over this decision?” or “What are we not considering here?” This shifts the power dynamic from leader-to-expert to peer-to-peer, making the expert feel valued rather than managed. 2. Elevate expertise publicly A leader’s role is to shine a spotlight on expertise. A simple way to do this is by saying in meetings: “I defer to [Team Member] on this. It’s their area of mastery.” Giving credit and public recognition fosters mutual respect and trust. 3. Integrate expertise into strategic decisions The difference between a leader who listens and a leader who leverages expertise is action. Instead of collecting insights and making an isolated executive decision, involve the expert in shaping the outcome. This might look like saying, “Based on your recommendations, how do you think we should implement this?” Leaders who embrace curiosity over control gain the trust of their team, create an environment where expertise flourishes, and ultimately make better, more informed decisions. When leaders stop trying to be the smartest person in the room and instead become the most curious, they unlock the full potential of their team. Manuel Schlothauer, founder, HeyManuel.com Co-Create With Your Team Great leaders recognize that expertise isn’t a threat—it’s an asset. When managing a team with specialized knowledge, the key is to shift from “command and control” to “coach and empower.” One effective strategy is co-creation—involving experts on your team in decision-making rather than dictating solutions. By facilitating open discussions, asking insightful questions, and positioning themselves as a strategic guide rather than the smartest person in the room, leaders create an environment where innovation thrives. This approach not only fosters mutual respect but also ensures that the best ideas rise to the top, driving both team engagement and business success. A helpful mindset practice for leaders in this situation is intellectual humility—embracing the idea that you don’t need to have all the answers, but you do need to ask the right questions. Practicing this means shifting from feeling like you must prove your value to instead recognizing your value as a facilitator of expertise. A simple habit is to start meetings with curiosity-driven prompts, such as, “What’s a perspective I might not have considered?” or, “What are the potential risks or opportunities you see?” This keeps the focus on collective problem-solving rather than hierarchical decision-making, reinforcing trust and collaboration. Shannon Garcia-Lewis, chief people officer, Pella Windows & Doors, Rocky Mountain Encourage Your Team To Speak Up As a business leader, I don’t expect to be the expert across all areas of the business, and I embrace the situations when my ideas are challenged. Bringing in new ideas and approaches to solving problems is critical to our business growth. When interviewing candidates for open roles, we look for the personality types that will challenge the norm and don’t hesitate to speak their mind. We believe in this so much we layered it into the foundation of our team culture which we share on our careers page. Specifically, we ask our team to: “Mean it—share opinions honestly and respectfully. Don’t be afraid to pick a side and defend it.” Jared Brown, CEO, Hubstaff Lean Into Team Expertise In order to solve our most pressing and challenging business problems, sometimes we need someone with more expertise than us to carve a path forward. For some leaders, relying on someone with more expertise can lead to stress or worry that they’re losing control, unable to keep up with the latest industry trends, or worse yet, viewed by their colleagues and boss as out-of-their-league. But at the end of the day, we must always keep the big picture in view, and be willing to discover what we “know we don’t know” so we can take questions we have to our teams and lean into each person’s expertise to build trust across the team, and collectively drive our efforts forward to success. I lead an analytics department, and we recently migrated our HR organization’s data to a central hub from multiple SaaS vendors whose built-in reporting features weren’t cutting it. Pretty quickly, I realized I was in over my head. But by sharing with my team the bigger picture of what our collective success would look like when we finished this project, I was able to encourage an ongoing, open dialogue that allowed team members to volunteer new ideas and approaches, which in turn allowed me to ask better questions. By relying on everyone’s expertise and trusting them to drive their areas as they best saw fit, I had more time to clearly define my expectations of the team at each stage, and lean into their expertise to collaboratively craft an even better solution than any single one of us could have come up with alone. This also forced me to better learn the challenges each person faced through the project, and either remove obstacles in their path, or guide their efforts around roadblocks to keep progress moving forward. Knowing and acknowledging our limits as leaders is critical; we can better realize what we “know we don’t know,” and use those opportunities to build better solutions for our clients, while also building team trust along the way. Casey Meadows, head of talent acquisition analytics, Upstart View the full article

Buying a house is a stressful, expensive project—something most people understand. That's why they do their diligence. The research the property and the area, they hire a home inspector, they pay a lot of money for title insurance, and they ask questions. Lots and lots of questions. Most of those questions are common sense, concerning the history of the house, the age and condition of the roof or the HVAC system, and the neighborhood. But there are some not-so-common questions that are also worth asking. These eight questions might seem a bit random, but they can alert you to big problems before you sign your life away. Was the home ever used as a business?A lot of people use their homes for their livelihood. If that means a home office for telecommuting, it’s nothing to worry about. But if the previous owner ran any kind of physical business out of the house, you need to know, because it could impact your enjoyment of the property in a few ways: Old customers might show up unannounced, unaware that the house has been sold, as happened to this unhappy new homeowner. This could potentially include folks who are upset with their experience with the business, or to whom the business owes money. Shipments, bills, and other deliveries or correspondence might continue to arrive, forcing you to deal with someone else’s business—especially if the previous owner demands that you forward materials and mail to them. Has the house ever been hit by a car?This might seem like a crazy question to ask, but if the house you’re considering buying is located at an intersection, at the bottom of a hill, or around a blind corner, it's worth asking if it’s been hit by cars—and if so, how often. Homes being hit by cars isn’t common, but if the house has been hit once, there’s a good chance the conditions that caused the accident still exist, and it could be hit again. For example, this house in San Jose has been hit 23 times in 50 years. This house in Ohio has been hit three times (plus one near-miss). And this house in North Carolina was hit by cars six times over the course of a decade. The worst time to find out that a nearby highway exit ramp or dangerous curve slings cars into your home on a regular basis is after you’ve bought it. What exactly will I own?Most of the time you can safely assume that what you see in and around the house will be yours once the checks clear and the deed is transferred. That usually includes the outdoor spaces, like a backyard, the appliances, and, say, the finished basement. But you should never assume, because sometimes what you see is not at all what you get. This couple in Washington and bought a house only to discover that the back yard—starting at their back steps—was actually a separate lot. They only learned this when the lot was put up for auction, and they found themselves desperately trying to buy their own backyard. And if you want the appliances in the kitchen or laundry room, you should make sure their inclusion is specified in the contract, or you might be in for a few extra expenses when you move in to find the fridge missing. There’s even a story about a seller who literally removed an entire finished basement from the house, leveraging the fact that below-grade areas are usually not considered part of the living space. You might not need to worry about the basement in your dream home, but it underscores the wisdom of making sure you know everything that is included in the sale. Do all the outlets work?Older homes often don’t have enough power outlets. They were often designed and constructed in a different era, when people didn’t have TVs in their bedrooms or a dozen gadgets charging at all times. One of the easiest upgrades people put into older homes is additional outlets, often as part of an overall upgrade to the electrical wiring. But an unscrupulous homeowner might add nonfunctional outlets to give the appearance of such an upgrade, leaving it to you to actually connect them. Or, maybe the house has old wiring that only looks like it was upgraded and modernized. Either way, asking if the outlets all actually work—or, better yet, testing them with a volt meter yourself—is a good idea. Is it considered historic?If you’re buying an older home, it’s often a good idea to ask if it’s located in a historic district or designated a historic building, and if there are any restrictions that come along with that designation. Homes that are considered historic in some way often come with limitations to the kind of renovations you can do without explicit approval, and may come with extra expenses or responsibilities. You’d assume something like that would be disclosed before the sale, and it usually is if it’s the house itself that has officially been deemed historic. But if you move into an area considered historic, you might be subject to rules regarding how you can alter or update a home that haven't been previously disclosed to you, just like this unlucky homeowner. If your new house has old charm, it’s worth asking, or checking directly with the local government. Why exactly was the basement renovated?If you’re touring a house that obviously hasn’t had a major renovation in a while, you might be okay as long as the bones are good and you have a vision (and a budget) for renovations. But if you head down to the basement and discover a brand-new, just-finished renovation it’s time to ask one question: Was there a flood? While many homeowners tackle their home renovations in stages, if only the below-grade areas of the house that have been updated, it’s time to worry about significant water damage that’s been erased or hidden. If the basement flooded once, it will likely flood again—so you need to know why it was singled out for a rehab. Is there a buried tank on the premises?Old houses sometimes have ancient oil tanks buried underground. If a house had oil heat in the past, burying the tank hid it from view—no one wants an ugly, rusting tank sitting in their backyard. And if the tank was properly decommissioned—drained, filled with foam, and capped—it’s nothing to worry (at least until you decide to dig up the yard). But if the tank wasn’t decommissioned, it could be a huge problem. If it leaks, your health could be impacted, and if the leak spreads and poisons your neighbors’ property, you’ll be liable. And removing a tank can be expensive—around $10,000 if you’ve got an environmental disaster on your hands. Best to ask about it before you assume that responsibility. How are those trees doing?Trees are terrific, and offer a lot of benefits to a property. But trees can become a real hazard if they’re not cared for properly—they can fall and damage the house, become a home for insects and rodents that infiltrate the house, and can cause conflict between you and your neighbors. Taking care of trees can be expensive, so many homeowners prefer to just enjoy the shade and assume that nature will take care of itself. It pays to ask about the trees on your potential property—how often were they pruned and trimmed? Has an arborist inspected the trees for diseases, infestations, or damage? If the trees are old and haven’t been properly cared for, you might be buying a lot of work and problems instead of a beautiful, shady yard. View the full article

Growing seeds is a relatively simple process: Bury seeds in dirt, add water, heat, and light from the sun, and in most cases, something is going to sprout. The problem is, most of us conduct this process inside, because we’re trying to get a jump on the growing season. Inside, where there’s no sun, heat is hard to control, and the most your seedlings can stretch out their new little root legs is the size of the plastic cell they’re planted in. As such, it takes some practice to grow strong, resilient seedlings, and beginners make plenty of mistakes. The good news is, most of them are solvable. Not enough light This is how close lights should be to seedlings that haven't germinated yet or just have. Credit: Amanda Blum This is one of the easiest problems to diagnose, because it is also one of the most likely problems. Remember, when growing seeds inside, you have to try to replicate the sun. When people estimate how much light they need to reproduce the sun, they almost always underestimate. The tell is easy: Your seedlings will be “leggy" with long stems that aren’t strong enough to support the leaves of the plant. The stem is often curved, almost like the plant has scoliosis. The seedlings may bend towards the light, too. The solution is, of course, to add more light. I find too often people starting out seeding for the first time buy one growing lamp to arc over their entire shelf of seedlings, when each tray needs 2000-5000 lumens (that's a lot of lumens). It’s not just how strong the light is but also how long they’re on: Seedlings need 14-16 hours a day of sunlight. Those lights need to be much closer to your seedlings than you think, too. Six to eight inches above your seedlings is the right distance. If your seedlings are already too leggy, you can try a few things. First, if they’re tomatoes or peppers, you’ll be able to bury the stem deep into the soil when you pot up the seedling or plant it outside, and this will solve many problems. If it’s another kind of seedling, like cucumber, they don’t usually require the same strong stems, and will likely correct themself over time. It will help to run a fan in the room and run your hands over the seedlings a few times a day. Both will encourage the stems to strengthen. Too much light You can see how close the lights are to most seedlings, and how much light is applied. Credit: Amanda Blum With most plant diagnosis, it can be frustrating to hear, “it may be too much or too little.” This isn’t true with light. It’s really easy to tell if there’s not enough, as above, or too much. Like us, plants can get sunburned. They develop scorch marks with the leaves at the top bearing almost white or golden splotches. The splotches don’t have a pattern to them, either. Now, seedlings are susceptible to a lot of diseases, fungus, and virus, so you may find yourself concerned with knowing whether this is sunburn or something else. The good news is, it doesn’t matter because the solution is the same: Cut it off. The sunburned leaves can’t absorb light or nutrients and can’t recover, so cut them off entirely, and let the rest of the plant recover. Obviously, move the lights farther away, but don’t overcorrect. While seedlings can get closer to traditional lightbulbs, my experience is they burn easier with LEDs, so while traditional tube lights can be within inches of my seedlings with no issue, I keep LED lights six inches or more away. No germinationOf all the seeds you plant, some just aren’t going to germinate. There are a lot of reasons for that, but let's cover the most likely causes. First, you may have buried the seed too deep or not deep enough. On the back of each seed package are directions for how deep to plant seeds—and it’s not a loose recommendation. While the difference between a seed planted an inch deep or one and a half inches deep might not matter, there’s a huge difference between seeds that need to be lightly covered—like carrots and most flowers—and those that get buried, like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and sunflowers. Another tell is this: The bigger the seed, the deeper you bury it. Zinnia seeds barely get covered, but pea seeds need a depth of an inch or so, and large bean seeds need to be buried deep in the soil. This is, unfortunately, one of those problems you need to solve ahead of time. If a seed has been sitting in wet soil for too long, and it hasn’t germinated, it has likely gone rotten. You’d just need to start over; by the time you’ve figured out a seed isn’t germinating, it’s likely only a few weeks since you planted, so you haven’t lost too much time. Another reason might be that the seeds are simply expired. Every kind of seed has an expiration date. It can be very short, like alliums (onions), which are good for a year. Experienced gardeners will know that these are merely guidelines; you can always test your seeds by trying to germinate them to see if they’re still OK. The seed mat you’re using to heat up your seeds could also be too hot, cooking your seeds. You want the seeds and soil to remain between 70-80°F, but no more. Once your seeds are cooked, they’re goners, so start over with fresh seeds. Too much waterYou can over-love your plants. Too much water, even if your plant survives, discourages your seedlings from growing strong root systems. Under-watering is always the better solution, so long as the plants have enough to survive, since it causes the roots to reach out in search of more resources, forming stronger root systems. Watering methods for seedlings that allow them to only uptake as much water as they need are the most ideal, such as bottom watering, which leaves a little water in the tray for the soil to wick up. But even if you water from the top, you want soil that is lightly moist, but never soaking wet. Yellowing leaves or mushy plants are usually a sign of overwatering. If the plants start to smell bad, mold is likely developing in the water, which is another sign there’s too much water. In those cases, the solution is to go the other way and use less water. Your plants may or may not recover. If you trim away any root rot or squishy leaves and stems, it may recover. However, most seedlings will develop some green or white fungus on top of the soil, and that is not necessarily a bad sign. It just happens, and it won’t affect your seedling in any way. Not enough water If seedlings grow with the right amount of light, the stems will be strong enough to support a taller plant, even in a small pot. Strong root systems will develop with the right amount of water. Credit: Amanda Blum Droopy seedlings usually need water. Tomatoes, in particular, will start leaning over and will quite literally look sad. This can happen toward the end of the watering cycle, and if not left to fester, it's not a problem, but it's a sign that you should water them. You should see plants immediately perk up, within an hour or two of watering. If your soil block is really dry, that’s never a good sign. You want your soil to always be lightly moist, not dry. If you’re having trouble keeping your soil moist, you should consider bottom watering, as mentioned above, because it is a consistent method. The soil takes up what it needs. View the full article

Tech groups and financial institutions join forces in plans to build data centres and energy projects to underpin AI boom View the full article

Marriage: The sacred union of two hearts, two souls, and, less romantically, two tax returns. While poets and romantics wax lyrical about eternal love, accountants and financial advisors see matrimony through a different lens. After all, marriage is a significant economic transaction with its own balance sheet. Let's take a cold, calculating look at the institution that promises "for richer or poorer"—and find out which one you're more likely to experience. The financial pros of marriageFor the most part, there are plenty of ways in which "I do" means "we save." Tax benefits (sometimes)For some couples, marriage delivers an immediate return on investment through the "marriage bonus." Couples with disparate incomes often find themselves in a lower tax bracket together than they would be separately. However, the IRS doesn't send wedding gifts—this benefit typically favors traditional arrangements where one spouse significantly out-earns the other. Check out this calculator from the Tax Policy Center to see how much federal income tax two people might pay if they were to marry. It compares the taxes a married couple would pay filing a joint return with what they would pay if they were not married and each filed as single or head of household. Healthcare savingsNothing says romance like discounted health insurance premiums. Many employers offer family coverage that costs less than two individual plans. Plus, you'll only need to meet one family deductible instead of two individual ones when you both get sick from the same wedding buffet. Economies of scaleMarried or not, two can live almost as cheaply as one—especially when it comes to housing, utilities, and streaming subscriptions. Why maintain two half-empty refrigerators when you can maintain one completely full one? The shared-expense model makes everyday living more efficient, assuming you can agree on a thermostat setting. Social security advantagesMarriage offers a built-in retirement safety net. Surviving spouses can claim their deceased partner's Social Security benefits if they exceed their own. It's the government's way of saying, "Sorry for your loss—here's some money." The financial cons of marriageWhen "I do" becomes "I'm due...to pay." Hey, not all of my wordplay is perfect, OK? The marriage penaltyThis is the flip side of the marriage bonus. Some dual-income couples with similar earnings find themselves paying more in taxes together than separately—the infamous "marriage penalty." Nothing strengthens a relationship like realizing you're paying thousands more annually for the privilege of filing jointly. Here's that calculator again. Shared debtsWhen you marry someone, you don't just get their charming quirks—you might get their debt too. While premarital debt typically remains separate, any debt accumulated during the marriage can become shared responsibility, depending on your state's laws. Their student loan debt remains theirs, but their impulsive decision to finance a luxury boat "for weekend getaways" becomes your shared financial burden. Before you assume you’re on the hook for a debt, it’s usually worth it to take a breath and dig into whether you’re actually responsible. Divorce as a financial riskApproximately 40-50% of marriages end in divorce—a statistic that financial planners can't ignore. The average divorce costs between $15,000 and $30,000 in legal fees alone, not counting the financial aftermath of dividing assets, potential alimony, and the cost of establishing two separate households. No wedding DJ ever announces, "And now, let's factor in the statistical probability of spending $20,000 to undo this entire event!" Benefit complicationsSome income-based government benefits may decrease or disappear entirely when household income is calculated jointly. Marriage can inadvertently disqualify individuals from financial aid, assistance programs, or income-based repayment plans for student loans. Tips to protect yourself financiallyYou'll hear people say, "Sign a pre-nup," but what exactly does that entail? And what else can you do to protect your finances in your marriage? The prenuptial agreement conversationNothing says "romance" like discussing how to divide assets in case of divorce before you've even cut the wedding cake. Despite its unromantic reputation, a prenuptial agreement provides clarity and protection for both parties. Think of it as insurance—you don't buy home insurance because you expect your house to burn down, but because you recognize it could. Prioritize financial transparency Before marriage, schedule a judgment-free financial disclosure session. Reveal credit scores, debt loads, assets, spending habits, and financial goals. Finding out your spouse has $60,000 in credit card debt during your honeymoon makes those "for richer or poorer" vows feel a bit more literal than intended. Establish a financial frameworkDecide early how you'll handle money: Will you merge everything, keep separate accounts, or create a hybrid system? Determine who pays for what, how savings will be allocated, and how major purchases will be decided. This prevents the "I thought you were paying the electric bill" conversation in the dark. Create an exit strategy for your accountsConsider maintaining some financial independence, like a personal emergency fund or credit card in your own name. This isn't about planning for divorce—it's about maintaining financial identity and credit history, which becomes crucial if you face unexpected circumstances like a spouse's death or incapacitation. The bottom lineMarriage represents many things: a romantic milestone, a legal contract, and—whether we like to admit it or not—a financial partnership with significant economic implications. While love may be the reason you marry, money will likely be something you discuss daily for the rest of your lives together. The good news? Financial compatibility doesn't require identical views on money—just open communication, mutual respect, and occasionally, the willingness to compromise on whether a $7 daily latte habit constitutes "essential spending." After all, as the old saying goes: Love may be blind, but marriage is a long-term investment strategy with variable returns and significant tax implications. View the full article

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Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Company’s work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions. Q: My coworkers are always complaining. What should I do? A: The world is made of all kinds of people, and so it follows that in any workplace you’ll also find a lot of personality types: The narcissist, the interrupter, the martyr, the workplace BFF (if you’re lucky), and the straight up jerk (if you’re unlucky). The office complainer is challenging in their own way. If you have one who is getting on your nerves, here are some ways to handle the situation. Consider the bigger picture Just as complaints from your partner are rarely actually about the dishes or the trash, it’s possible that your coworker’s complaints about the new software or the end of Bagel Fridays are actually about something bigger. Complaints about the loss of perks like free food might be masking fears about how the company is doing financially. Complaints about adjusting to a new software system could be a cover for fears about adapting to change or being pushed out because they are older. Consider the possible deeper context and, if you can, speak to management about these bigger concerns. If there’s nothing within your power that you can do to address the underlying larger concerns, at least the knowledge that it’s masking more legitimate gripes might make you feel more sympathetic. Just listen and let them vent Sometimes when someone has a complaint they just want someone to listen to them complain and validate that they are right to feel annoyed. Empowerment speaker Erica Latrice says: “If you are in an environment where you have to be around complainers a lot, just use the phrase, ‘If I were you, I would feel the same way.’” She says that a phrase like that allows them to feel heard and may stop them from feeling the need to keep repeating their complaint. Many people jump into problem-solving mode when they hear a complaint by either offering solutions to “fix” the complaint or reasons why it’s not as bad as the complainer says it is. Both of these approaches might be well-intentioned, but can feel dismissive to the person complaining (and could backfire by having them repeat their complaint until they feel heard). Ask for their ideas If offering unsolicited advice is the wrong approach, try asking the complainer for their thoughts on a solution. This is a great approach for those in management to address employee complaints, but also it also works for peers. The complaint might actually be the employee wanting to start a conversation about how to fix a problem. Simply asking, “what do you think we should do about it?” might open the floodgates. If not, dig a little deeper: “What would make the process easier?” “If we can’t change that, how do you think we should adapt?” “Do you think there’s a way to convince them to change their minds?” “Is there a better method you’ve seen work?” Beat them or join them If all else fails, you can decide to just live with the office Debbie Downer, or you can try to protect your peace and be honest with them. Saying something like: “Things are hard right now and I’m trying to stay positive. I’m not really in the headspace to handle so many workplace complaints right now.” That will likely not be well-received (and you may become the topic of their next batch of complaints), but it sends a clear message and they aren’t likely to share their thoughts with you anytime soon. Then there’s the “if you can’t beat them, join them” approach: Sometimes misery just wants company. So long as you trust the person you’re talking to (and you don’t take it too far and say something you’ll regret), you can join in with your own complaints. Want more advice on dealing with complainers at work? Here you go: The right (and wrong) way to complain at work What it’s like to go without complaining for a month 8 ways to deal with chronic complainers View the full article

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. On Tuesday, Zillow economists published their updated forecast model, projecting that U.S. home prices, as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index, will rise 0.8% between February 2025 and February 2026. That’s another downward revision. Last month, their 12-month forecast projected a 1.1% increase in U.S. home prices, and the month before that, they expected a 2.9% increase. “The rise in [active] listings is fueling softer price growth, as greater supply provides more options and more bargaining power for buyers,” wrote Zillow economists on Tuesday. “Potential buyers are opting to remain renters for longer as affordability challenges suppress demand for home purchases” Not only do Zillow economists predict soft national home price growth this year, but they’re also predicting that the housing market will only see 4.1 million U.S. existing home sales in 2025. That would mark the third straight year of suppressed sales of existing homes. For comparison, in pre-pandemic 2019, there were 5.3 million U.S. existing home sales. Zillow economists added that: “As the home-buying season nears, Zillow anticipates a temporary boost in sales during the spring, followed by a seasonal slowdown. However, with little relief expected from mortgage rates, existing home sales are likely to remain below pre-pandemic levels. Until mortgage rates fall—to improve housing affordability— some downward pressure on home sales is expected to persist.” Among the 300 largest U.S. housing markets, Zillow expects the strongest home price appreciation between February 2025 and February 2026 to occur in these 10 areas: Atlantic City, NJ: +5.1% Knoxville, TN: +4.7% Kingston, NY: +4.7% Torrington, CT: +4.6% Bangor, ME: +4.6% Rochester, NY: +4.4% Vineland, NJ: +4.4% Concord, NH: +4.2% Norwich, CT: +4.1% Fayetteville, AR: +3.9% And these are the 10 areas where Zillow expects the weakest home price appreciation between February 2025 and February 2026 to occur: Houma, LA: -7.3% Lake Charles, LA: -7.0% New Orleans, LA: -5.5% Lafayette, LA: -4.6% Shreveport, LA: -4.4% Odessa, TX: -4.1% Beaumont, TX: -3.7% Alexandria, LA : -3.3% Chico, CA: -3.0% Midland, TX: -3.0% While Zillow expects home prices across most of Florida to rise over the coming year, ResiClub remains skeptical. After all, Florida has experienced a significant increase in active inventory and months of supply over the past year, which could signal potential pricing weakness. Indeed, single-family and condo prices are currently declining in most Florida housing markets. View the full article

Ukrainian president says Putin broke his promise to pause attacks on energy infrastructureView the full article

For decades, talk of UAPs—unidentified aerial phenomenon, for the uninitiated—was relegated to conspiracy forums and X-Files reruns. Not anymore. The Age of Disclosure, which premiered to a standing ovation at South by Southwest this month, reframes the conversation with journalistic clarity and a big assist from some of the most powerful people in government going on the record. With critics and audiences alike buzzing over the documentary, director Dan Farah is pushing the UAP conversation out of the shadows and into the mainstream. That momentum is owed in large part to the fact that Farah (who is otherwise best known as a producer on the 2018 adaptation of Ready Player One) didn’t just scrape the surface, he went straight to the top. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Mike Rounds, former National Intelligence Director Jim Clapper, and dozens of other government officials lend their voices to a film that’s less “little green men” and more national security urgency. If disclosure feels like a cultural inflection point, that’s because it just might be. Fast Company spoke with Farah about how he landed these interviews, what shook him the most, and what happens if the truth really is out there. What sparked your interest in UAPs? It’s not a subject you’ve really explored in your filmmaking before. I’ve been interested in this topic my whole life. I’m 45, so my childhood was the ’80s and ’90s, and I grew up watching movies like ET and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s just always been a lifelong interest. They made me curious about big questions: Are we alone in the universe? Does the U.S. government know more than they shared with the public? I was doing research on the topic a few years ago, and I started getting introduced, through some mutual friends, to people who have worked on this topic for the U.S. government. I started to realize that this is very serious and has incredible bipartisan support at the most senior levels of our government. At a time when Democrats and Republicans don’t agree on anything, Democratic and Republican leadership agree this is an extremely important topic and should be taken extremely seriously. The average person doesn’t know that Senator Schumer from the Democratic Party and Senator Rounds from the Republican Party co-sponsored the UAP Disclosure Act that attempted to bring this information out to the public. When you read the language of that act, it’s shocking. They’re talking about technology of nonhuman origin, they’re talking about all these things that seem very extraordinary but they’re taking it very seriously. The more I learned about it, and the more I became excited and motivated to make a credible, non-sensationalized documentary on the topic. When I started socializing my vision for it within intelligence, military, and government circles, I started to get a lot of support. Why do you think they offered that support? Why did they agree to sit down for an interview? I think I was presenting an opportunity that they hadn’t heard before. I was committed to making this independently so they didn’t have to worry about a studio or a network sensationalizing it. I gave the interview subjects strength in numbers: I was setting off to interview dozens of people and wasn’t asking any one person to go out on a limb. I had the support early on of a lot of people who were very influential in that space, including Luis Elizondo, Jay Stratton, Christopher Mellon. They all really believed in what I was trying to do, and not something to do in a “Hollywood” way. Now, something to keep in mind: Almost all the people I interviewed have knowledge on this topic at a classified level that they obviously cannot talk about. But there’s a lot of information that they can talk about, and historically they’ve just been discouraged from doing so, or they haven’t had a comfortable opportunity to share what they can lawfully disclose. To the best of your understanding, why has the government been so secretive? Historically, there have been understandable and valid reasons for secrecy. And there are also very valid reasons now for making some of the information more known to the public. For you, what was the most interesting discovery during this process? An interesting realization that came out of this is just a reminder of how our government works in general. Our elected officials largely pay attention to what their constituents tell them that they want them to pay attention to, right? So there’s a lot of very senior leadership in our country that knows this is a very serious situation, and they’re not really putting their bandwidth toward it because they’re worried about an historical stigma around the topic, and they’re not sure it’s one of the top issues for their constituents. I have great respect for the leaders of both parties right now who are taking it very seriously and putting themselves out there like Secretary Rubio, Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, and on the House level people like you Representative Carson, Representative Garcia, Representative Luna—these people are really putting themselves out there. The film comes at a moment when our two major parties can’t seem to agree on much. I wonder what kind of political implications mutual acknowledging of the issue would have. This might be the one thing that could actually bring parties together—and maybe bring adversarial nations together: the acknowledgement that we’re not alone in the universe. But as the documentary points out, there’s also a lot of negative things that could come out of disclosure—it’s just another thing that nations could fight over. It’s really interesting to think about the fact that people who participated in the documentary share this extremely significant information that has extremely high stakes and impacts us all. And it’s very serious, yeah, but there’s still so much information they have that is informing their opinion that they can’t disclose, and you wonder what that is. View the full article

Stakeholders predict the future of homebuying will offer two distinct paths: an all-in-one bundle from companies like Rocket Mortgage and the traditional, local homebuying experience. View the full article

In an industrial park in North Las Vegas, near an Amazon warehouse and a waste storage facility, a new carbon removal plant is beginning to pull CO2 from the air and store it permanently. Called Project Juniper, it’s the first “integrated” plant of its kind in the U.S., meaning that it handles both carbon capture and storage in one place. (As a bonus, it also generates clean water.) Clairity Tech, the startup behind it, designed the new plant after raising a seed round of funding led by Initialized Capital and Lowercarbon Capital last year. After spending the last few months setting up the facility, it ran its full system for the first time last week. Founder Glen Meyerowitz, who previously worked on rocket and spacecraft propulsion testing at SpaceX, pivoted to carbon removal in 2022. “As I look at it, this is really the existential threat of our time and the most important problem that needs to be addressed,” he says. In order for the world to have any chance of meeting climate goals, CO2 needs to be captured from the air at a massive scale at the same time as the economy decarbonizes. As Meyerowitz researched the space, he saw an opportunity to take a slightly different approach than some other companies. The Clairity direct air capture reactor in Nevada [Photo: Clairity] First, Clairity uses a different material to capture CO2 from the air. “It’s in the same family as baking soda,” Meyerowitz says. “The materials are produced in millions of tons per year for a range of applications.” It’s abundant, cheap, and after it’s filled with CO2, it takes relatively little energy to remove it. Unlike some other chemicals used for direct air capture, it doesn’t degrade, so it can also be used longer. The plants are cheap enough to build that they don’t have to run continuously to make economic sense. That means that it’s also possible to run on cheap, intermittent solar power from the grid. (The caveat: The company will be competing with data centers that also want to run on renewable energy and may be willing to pay more.) Sorbent cartridge being inserted into adsorption station [Photo: Clairity] While many companies in the space plan to inject CO2 into underground wells, that system isn’t ready yet in the U.S. Clairity is starting with another direction: adding the CO2 to materials. For example, if it’s combined with fly ash—a byproduct from coal power plants—it can be used to make lower-carbon concrete. It won’t be the first direct air capture company to use CO2 in concrete: A startup called Heirloom previously partnered with a cement company. But Clairity is unique in that it handles both steps itself. The CO2 can also be injected into other waste materials to permanently store it. Building an underground storage well costs millions of dollars, and the process of getting regulatory approval is slow; building the company’s “ex-situ” mineralization equipment costs less than $70,000. It’s at a much smaller scale, but it allows the company to begin storage now. “We can actually deliver credits today and not from some future project,” Meyerowitz says. There’s also the potential to make more money by selling value-added products rather than only selling credits for storage. The company expects to be one of two facilities in the world to deliver certified credits for carbon stored this year. The other, 4,000-plus miles away in Iceland, is Climeworks, which partners with a company called CarbFix to inject its captured CO2 into Iceland’s deep rock formations and naturally turn the CO2 into stone. Clairity chose Vegas as its first location for a few reasons. First, the particular sorbent it uses to capture the CO2 works best in an arid climate (some others, like Climeworks’s, are better in humid climates). Nevada has abundant access to renewable power. The state has relatively little arable land, so there are more potential locations; the company plans to expand in Nevada and other parts of the Southwest. And because the company’s process generates clean water on the side, there’s also a potential market to sell that water to local utilities. (The water is produced when the company heats up its sorbent to release the captured CO2; water comes out at the same time and is separately stored.) “You can imagine that in water-stressed Las Vegas, that’s a really interesting side benefit,” Meyerowitz says. For now, it’s operating on a tiny scale. Project Juniper can capture 100 metric tons of CO2 a year; society generated more than 40 billion tons of CO2 last year. Clairity’s cost right now is around $700 per ton of captured CO2—which will need to dramatically decline to be feasible over the long term. (Federal tax credits currently help with the cost, and may be more likely to stay in place than some other climate-related incentives because of strong Republican support.) Despite the challenges, Meyerowitz believes it’s possible for the startup to scale up to an ambitious goal: 10 megatons of CO2 removal in the next decade, or 100,000 times more than its first project. View the full article