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Philippe Lazzarini says ‘primary intent’ of US-backed proposal is to push population south and even out of stripView the full article

Some Republicans warn that a tax-cutting budget will destroy the party’s standing with working-class votersView the full article

In the entertainment industry, as in life, change is the only constant. It wasn’t that long ago that streaming services such as Netflix were the outsiders making waves and altering the way audiences watched movies. Today, there’s a new kid on the block rapidly growing in popularity. Vertical dramas, essentially a 90-minute soap opera broken down into one-minute episodes viewed—you guessed it—vertically on smartphones, are here to shake things up even further. (I know this firsthand as an actor who has recently worked on some of these projects.) Joey Jia, the CEO of Crazy Maple Studios, is at the forefront of this movement. His content creation company was named one of 2024’s TIME100 Most Influential Companies and has offices in Shenzhen, Beijing, Silicon Valley, Los Angeles, Canada, Mexico, and the Philippines. Under this banner, Jia created ReelShort in 2022, a short-form video-streaming app, when he realized there was an opportunity to marry growing romance book trends and Asian micro dramas. “I noticed there is a trend,” Jia told Fast Company. “People started shooting short-form content, especially five minutes long, 10 minutes long. That inspired me to have this idea: What if we revamp the video industry?” Jia decided to put stories into one-minute bite-size content, made specifically for mobile phones as a way of testing how the market would respond. Spoiler alert: It responded well. ReelShorts’s production on track to triple in 2025 as compared to 2024. While Crazy Maple Studios declined to share revenue figures, it says it’s seen impressive growth in monthly active users, from around 45 million in October to between 55 to 60 million monthly active users. Suffice it to say, it’s in demand, paving the way for a story format that might be the future of scripted entertainment. At the intersection of art and tech The growing popularity of vertical dramas could never have occurred without the proper technology in place. The first smartphone, the Simon Personal Communicator, was invented by IBM in 1992, but it would take 18 years before these devices made their way to everyone’s pockets. Apple’s iPhone, famously announced to the world by Steve Jobs in 2007, played a big role in spreading the adoption of smartphones. The next stepping stone to verticals was social media. When TikTok was first released in 2016, it further trained users to create and view videos vertically. Instagram strengthened this habit when the app released its similar Reels feature in 2020. The stage was set for professional creators to monetize this technology. How China got there first In 2019, the Chinese company iQIYI released a special feature on its app dubbed the Vertical Video Zone, which comprised 25 sets of video, all shot in portrait mode to be viewed on a mobile phone. Around the same time, the Chinese social media platform Kuaishou unveiled “Kuaishou Small Theatre” on its app. This comedy-centered, short-form content would lead to the “micro-drama” brand Xingmang Micro Drama. By 2023, the platform would have over 94 million paid users. That same year, the larger micro-drama industry in China brought in $5.3 billion, making it 70% as large as the country’s traditional film industry. According to DataEye, a Shenzhen-based research firm, micro-dramas out-earned domestic box office sales the following year, as the Los Angeles Times reported. The American company Quibi, led by Jeffrey Katzenberg and Meg Whitman, tried to put its own spin on this trend, launching in April of 2020. This app utilized “turnstyle” technology that allowed viewers to watch content both vertically and horizontally. However, its short-form videos were expensive to make, running about 10 minutes utilizing Hollywood stars. Just seven months after its creation, Quibi was forced to shut down due to low subscriber counts. ‘Emotion-driven stories,’ made for humans by humans Jia saw a potential opening in the American market and learned from Quibi’s failure. He attributes ReelShorts’s success to its focus on “emotion-driven stories.” Plot is “the missing component,” he says, “So our job is to come up with a feel-good moment, feel-good stories, and we always have data to make sure we are on the right track. So our stories are evolving.” Vertical dramas tend to use well-known, over-the-top storytelling tropes, such as enemies to lovers, Cinderella-type makeovers, and corporate revenge. Some even explore fantasy plotlines, such as werewolves and different historical eras. ReelShorts’s subscription service differs from traditional streamers because it is not a flat monthly fee. The first 10 or so episodes are free, but to see the story’s conclusion, users have to pay based on consumption. This forces writers to make sure their content is fast-paced but not so quick that the audience gets lost. “There is a fine balance between the story beats and the emotions. So this is really tricky,” Jia mused. Jia trains directors, producers, and screenwriters in-house and does not utilize artificial intelligence. “I think of creativity coming from a human being, so I don’t trust AI, to be honest,” Jia explained. He also uses simple, inexpensive sets and costumes, and unknown nonunion actors. What does the future hold? When asked if Jia thinks vertical dramas complement or disrupt the traditional movie and television industry, he replied: “I think it’s a disruptor. I think mobile entertainment will become a brand-new industry in the next few years. It will coexist with a traditional film industry, but it will bypass and beat the size so it gets bigger and bigger.” He thinks colleges will in the not-so-distant future add this format to its film school curriculum. As more and more people forgo traditional movie theaters while staying glued to their phones throughout much of the day, his predictions don’t feel that far-fetched. Indeed, the average ReelShort user might surprise you. “We initially thought the majority of our audience is like a teenager and younger demographic—but no, it’s full spectrum,” Jia explained. Jia has already been approached by big-name studios but finds it difficult to work with established intellectual properties because of all the rules and hoops to jump through. Verticals are inexpensive to make and move quickly, with a movie essentially completed in about 11 days. That doesn’t mean he isn’t open to bigger collaborations. In the next five years, Jia aims to prove that this space has merit, saying he feels there is still very much a stigma attached to it. “There’s wide opportunity here,” he says. “So the door is always open.” Jia is not alone in this space. Shelly Caldwell founded DramaBox, a mobile TV series company, in 2022. Similarly, ShortMax, a Chinese-based media company, was created in 2023 by Jiuzhou Wenhua. Other players in the game include FlexTV and LokShorts. Even Netflix is dipping its toe in the pool. It recently announced that for some select users, its app will begin testing a vertical video feed. Meanwhile, ReelShort is expanding into new genres, such as action. Undercover Prison King, the story of a private prison owner who poses as an inmate to reveal corruption, is performing very well. The recent in-person premiere of Wings of Fire: The Dragonslayer Is My Ex-Lover in Culver City successfully signaled verticals’ legitimacy to the larger City of Angels. Jia also recently launched ReelShort Publishing House, a new division that will novelize popular romance titles on the app, a full circle moment for the man who saw the desire for this content early on. With a distribution deal with Amazon already in place, audiences may soon find themselves asking which came first, the vertical or the novel? As the way we consume media continues to evolve, Jia’s foresight appears to have been the fulfillment of a prophecy of sorts. What direction is the future of entertainment going? It appears to be vertical. View the full article

I’ve served the NASA space program for many years as an adviser, research scientist, flight surgeon—and astronaut. My career has encompassed both in-flight and non-flight contributions to NASA, supporting space missions, space medicine, and research in advancing human space flight. Space exploration encompasses a fair amount of uncertainty by nature. The space program’s early days were fraught with a number of crew losses, including the Apollo 1 mission, and the Challenger and Columbia space shuttle missions. The challenges of space flight were on full display during the Apollo 13 crew’s near-disastrous mission on the way to the moon in 1970. We all know those infamous words: “Houston, we have a problem.” But the determination of a mission control team led by flight director Gene Kranz—marked by the phrase “failure is not an option”—ended in a successful mission. Anyone, though, can pick up smart leadership lessons from space travel, even if you’re not headed to the moon yourself. Here’s how the best leaders think like astronauts. Recognize The Power of Vision Every great leader starts with a vision. Whether you are leading a company, a team, or a personal endeavor, the ability to see beyond present circumstances and chart a course for the future is what separates extraordinary leaders from the rest. When I first dreamed of becoming an astronaut, I had no road map. The road ahead was full of uncertainty, doubts, and obstacles. After determining that doctors were needed in the space program, my pathway was set. My goal was to become a physician with the knowledge and skills to work in space. But I learned early on that it’s not about having all the answers—it’s about having the courage to pursue a vision, adapt to challenges, and inspire others along the way. In business, just as in space exploration, those who succeed are the ones who remain focused on their mission despite adversity. Turn the Vision into a Mission The mark of a good leader is their ability to transform the vision into tangible goals and objectives for the mission. We accomplish this at NASA through extensive training and mission preparation. The flight crew and mission support team dedicate countless hours to training in simulators and facilities, preparing for every scenario, whether it’s smooth sailing or unforeseen challenges. They focus on identifying the critical factors for success, then conduct “nominal” training for ideal outcomes and “off-nominal” training to tackle potential setbacks. We have a saying in the Astronaut Corps: “Fly as you train.” Training reflects conditions similar to those of the mission so we’re best prepared for the unexpected. Once those conditions are clear, we set high expectations to drive high performance. People and organizations can achieve amazing things when they know what’s expected of them. The most successful leaders embrace challenges, set high expectations, remain adaptable, and focus on the greater impact of their work. Let High Expectations Drive High Performance Leaders who expect mediocrity will get just that, while those who challenge their teams to push beyond limits foster excellence. On my second flight, STS–63 in February 1995, we had multiple challenges. During my spacewalk, my fellow crew member and I experienced unexpected extreme temperatures of -165°F at orbital night and +200°F during the day, which exceeded the temperature capability of the space suit. There were other malfunctions on the mission, like issues with critical equipment on the spacecraft that almost canceled our rendezvous with the Russian space station. NASA’s training program assumes that astronauts must be prepared for the unknown. The same principle applies in business. Leaders must prepare their teams for challenges that may not yet exist, setting expectations that encourage innovation, accountability, and excellence. If you want to see growth in your organization, ask yourself: Are you setting high-enough expectations? Are you fostering a culture where your team is encouraged to reach beyond what they believe is possible? Success is often the result of leaders who challenge their teams to think bigger, work harder, and embrace bold ideas. Buckle into Resilience in Challenging Times One of the most valuable leadership lessons is understanding that failure is not the enemy—complacency is. Some of the best business leaders I have met share one trait: they’re not afraid of failing. They see failure as feedback, as a necessary component of growth. I also had moments of uncertainty during my first flight—STS-55 in April 1993. As we were about to launch, one of the three main engines of the Space Shuttle Columbia failed 2.5 seconds before liftoff. Fortunately, the safety system worked, cutting the fuel to the engine while simultaneously putting out the ensuing fire. This event certainly got my attention, as we say when things don’t go well. I’m lucky to be here today. During my astronaut training and missions, I faced countless setbacks. Physical demands of endless hours of spacewalk training underwater in the neutral buoyancy facility pushed me to my limits, technical challenges of microgravity simulation forced me to rethink strategies, and high-stakes flight simulations that exposed weaknesses I needed to improve. Had I let failure define me, rather than energize me, I would never have made it to space. Resilience is just as crucial for leadership in life and business. Markets change, competitors arise, and setbacks occur. The best leaders are those who are resilient and thrive to adapt, learn, and continue forward with an unwavering commitment to their goals. Maintain Confidence in the Face of Adversity Great leaders possess both confidence and humility. Confidence allows you to make bold decisions, take risks, and lead with conviction. But humility ensures that you remain open to new ideas, feedback, and growth. In my career at NASA, in venture capital, and as an entrepreneur, I’ve worked with some of the most brilliant minds in science, engineering, and business. The leaders who stand out are those who strongly believe in their abilities yet understand they don’t have all the answers. They surround themselves with talented individuals, listen more than they speak, and remain adaptable in the face of change. In your leadership journey, have the confidence to make difficult decisions and the humility to recognize that leadership is a lifelong learning process. Build a Legacy of Impact After my time at NASA, I joined SpaceHab as an SVP and chief medical officer, contributing to one of the pioneering companies in commercial spaceflight. In 2002, I founded a venture capital firm focused on telemedicine and healthcare technologies. Later, I founded the Harris Foundation and Institute, which has been involved in math and science education for over 25 years. Leadership is not just about personal success—it’s about the impact you leave behind. For business leaders, this means looking beyond profit margins and quarterly results. It means fostering a culture where employees feel valued, innovation thrives, and measuring success by long-term impact rather than short-term gains. Ask yourself: How do you envision the legacy you wish to leave as a leader? Are you investing in people? Are you creating a vision that extends beyond yourself? Leadership lessons from space Leadership is a journey of vision, mission, expectation, resilience, and confidence. The most successful leaders embrace challenges, set high expectations, remain adaptable, and focus on the greater impact of their work. As you lead your organization, your team, or even your own personal ambitions, remember that the key to success lies not in avoiding obstacles and uncertainty, but in using them as stepping stones to greater achievements. View the full article

A year ago today, Microsoft unveiled what it believed would be the future of home computing. Copilot+ PCs, optimized to harness the power of AI, were introduced with the promise of revolutionizing how we interact with our laptops and desktops. The reaction, however, was far from enthusiastic. Critics mocked the addition of an AI button on the keyboard, likening it to the redundant action keys from late-1990s PCs. More concerning was the backlash to Recall, a feature designed to continuously record user activity to provide smarter assistance. Many found the idea invasive. Public alarm grew when it became clear that Recall stored this data off-device, raising serious privacy concerns—particularly with sensitive tasks like entering bank details. The feature was eventually, well, recalled. “Copilot+ PCs are finally here. You don’t want one—yet,” read one scathing op-ed published in Computer World at the time. Fast-forward a year, and the landscape has shifted. AI adoption continues to grow, and the once-ridiculed concept of agentic AI has gained traction. That shift in sentiment has helped normalize features like Recall, which quietly returned in the April 2025 Windows 11 update. This time, it’s opt-in rather than opt-out, and stores screenshots locally instead of on the cloud. In the background, Microsoft has been refining its AI offerings. The company’s updated Copilot+ strategy seems more measured, and after a year of growing accustomed to AI in our daily lives, users may now be more ready for what these devices offer. Microsoft says Copilot+ PCs accounted for “up to 15% of premium-priced U.S. laptops” during the 2024 holiday quarter—the first specific sign of market traction. Analysts at Gartner predict that by the end of 2026, every enterprise PC sold will be AI-equipped, with consumer adoption expected to follow soon after. Persistence also plays a role in adoption. “It’s become more and more prominent in Windows 11 in particular,” says Catherine Flick, a researcher in AI and ethics at the University of Staffordshire. “People who might otherwise be skeptical or not want to touch it, might just go in because it’s so conveniently there,” she says. “It doesn’t seem to cost anything at the moment, so yeah, basically people are going to use it.” Every new user represents a win for Microsoft, helping to normalize AI as part of everyday workflows. While there may still be no single “killer app” that compels users to buy an AI-powered PC, growing familiarity can be just as powerful as clever marketing. With momentum building, the moment for Copilot+ PCs may have finally arrived. View the full article

Some office buildings are simply not blessed with natural light. Maybe they’re standing in the shadows of something taller. Or perhaps their windows are mostly oriented to the dark north instead of the sunny southwest. Or maybe they’re so big and wide that sunlight can’t find its way into their murky depths. Whatever the reason, the lack of natural light presents problems ranging from additional energy usage to diminished human well-being and productivity. CBT, an architecture firm based in Boston, has been exploring unique ways of solving these problems. Using passive design approaches that require no additional energy, the firm is finding innovative ways to bring more natural light deeper into office buildings. There’s no single solution, according to Tyler Lombardi, an associate principal at CBT, but there is an increasingly accessible toolbox of approaches that architects can use to bring more light into buildings, including reflective surfaces and finishes, data-informed adjustments to building facades, and even curving walls that bend light in a space. Lombardi says these approaches have been put to work in recent office projects, including for law firms and financial services companies. He says these industries have tended to prioritize private offices with good views, turning an office building’s perimeter into well-lit spaces and the rest of the floor into a dark pit. “They’re all 90-degree angles and it’s very rigid, ” he says of these projects, noting that many of the firm’s clients are confidential. “We’re trying to find ways to make that space feel more visually connected.” To do so, CBT has altered floor plans to include curving walls that wind their way into the center of a floor. “We’ll use the natural light coming in from a courtyard or a balcony or an exterior window and then we’ll shape the wall so that the light is exposed 40 or 50 yards down,” Lombardi says. Reflective paints or shiny surfaces can also be deployed strategically to milk even more brightness from this distant light. The interventions can be very subtle. Even shadows inside a room can build up. So, working with lighting designers, Lombardi says he’s been on projects that have focused on minute details like the edges of shelving units, which can be beveled and smoothed to cast a shadow line that’s less harsh. Technology plays a large role in this work, Lombardi says, with 3D modeling programs capable of performing light and contrast studies while projects are in the design phase. Small changes to wall curves or window heights can translate into significant increases in light at certain times of the day, or different ways of moving light into a room. “You really get into the details of certain nominal dimensions that will work for washing light versus bending light versus reflecting light,” he says. “It can be very technical and very complex, but a successful project may hide those complexities.” Many of the design interventions that can make a space brighter are actually simple material choices. CBT uses its physical modelmaking shop to test out some of these materials, including paints with glossy finishes or metals with various amounts of sheen. “The nature of being in the design world, everyone’s looking for the latest and greatest product or material or strategy or tech tool,” Lombardi says. “When it comes down to some of these architectural principles we have to sometimes remind ourselves, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every time.” View the full article

Yair Golan says Israel not ‘acting like a sane country’, as UK, France and Canada threaten action in response to offensiveView the full article

The year, 1993. A rudimentary computer-generated T. rex—a reptilian skin stretched over a wire frame—played on a loop in a computer at Industrial Light & Magic in California. Three film legends—VFX supervisor Dennis Muren, animator Phil Tippett, and director Steven Spielberg—watched silently as the implications sank in. “Cinema history changed,” Rob Bredow recounts in his April 2023 TED Talk, which has just been published on YouTube. Tippett, a stop-motion pioneer, dryly told Spielberg, “I feel like I’m going extinct.” As most movie buffs know, that line landed in Jurassic Park. Tippett’s fear, however, turned out to be unfounded. The legendary effects company fused Tippett’s stop-motion puppetry with nascent CGI, using a “dinosaur input device”—a rigged armature with motion encoders—to digitize frame-by-frame animation. The result? A seismic shift that expanded artists’ tool kits worldwide and opened a new era in filmmaking. Bredow was only 19 when that happened. Now, as SVP of creative innovation for Lucasfilm and chief creative officer of ILM, he sees a direct parallel to today’s artificial intelligence debates. “Headlines say, ‘AI is coming for our jobs,’” he says in the TED Talk. From the Dykstraflex—the computer-controlled motion camera that enabled Star Wars’s iconic dogfights—to the StageCraft—a 270-degree LED curved wall that projected hyperrealistic 3D environments for The Mandalorian and now many other shows and movies—Bredow argues that ILM’s 50-year history is a demonstration of how technological leaps redefine, rather than replace, artistry. Stop-motion transformed and merged with 3D effects. So did physical models, full-size sets, and matte paintings. Just like it’s happening now with AI. “Innovation thrives when old and new technologies are blended,” Bredow argues. ILM was late to the AI game. This became painfully obvious when the effects company created a rejuvenated version of Mark Hamill for the Season 2 finale of The Mandalorian (despite fans cheering on Luke Skywalker’s return to the screen). Done with traditional computer face tracking and 3D models—the same technique used to create Peter Cushing as Grand Moff Tarkin and Princess Leia—Return of the Jedi Luke was slammed for being unrealistic. Then a Star Wars fan and AI aficionado called Shamook re-created the scene using AI. The former took hours. The latter took weeks. There was no doubt about which one looked more realistic. The difference was so obvious that the company realized it had to act: ILM hired Shamook days after the deepfake remake was released. He worked on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, where ILM merged generative AI, trained on Harrison Ford’s past performances, with a meticulously handcrafted CG model to de-age the actor. The AI captured Ford’s micro-expressions; artists fine-tuned subtleties like eye moisture and skin texture. Ford himself said it was pretty good and really felt like him. Because it did. AI is just another tool in the toolboxThe ethos that now guides its AI integration has been in ILM’s DNA since its origin. It was what drove George Lucas to pair engineers with artists to solve visual storytelling challenges. “We’re designed to be creative beings,” Bredow says. “We love seeing tech and creativity work together.” Bredow hinted at ILM’s embrace of AI tools in a Fast Company interview back in August 2024: “I do see a path forward with some combination of the algorithmic tools that we’ve had and some machine learning-based tools that we either already have or can imagine developing, that are really going to help accelerate artist workflows.” Now he has made clear that AI has reached a point in which it is just another toolbox in ILM’s toolbox. His stance about the technology is one that I have been seeing more and more since independent filmmaker Paul Trillo, one of the pioneers in using generative AI for his shorts, told me the same years ago. Trillo thinks that AI will enable indie projects to achieve blockbuster-grade VFX: “It is just a powerful tool in a creative’s arsenal.” It’s just too bad that the example that Bredow presented in the TEDTalk was so underwhelming: A video that shows some uninspired sci-fi animals that looked like Photoshop-made images quickly turned to video using Kling, a commercial AI video generation tool developed by Chinese tech company Kuaishou. He described it as ILM’s “moving mood board,” but it falls short of what you would expect from the mother of all VFX houses. But his points and the lesson from ILM’s half-century of visual innovation stand. The Dykstraflex didn’t kill cinematography—it birthed a new process and visual language. CGI dinosaurs didn’t erase animators—they just demanded hybrid skills. Now, as AI reshapes VFX, Bredow says we are witnessing another T. rex moment: one where artists, armed with generative tools, push storytelling beyond current limits. Adaptation is nonnegotiable. New tools should be embraced as long as they are not unethically taking advantage of other people’s artwork. “The next game changer,” he said, “will light up screens worldwide.” The credits won’t fade on human creativity. Hordes of people’s names will keep rolling. At least for a few more years to come. View the full article

Dallas and Houston are just 250 miles apart, but a train trip between the two cities currently takes more than 23 hours, including a seven-hour stopover in San Antonio’s Amtrak station. The Texas Central high-speed rail project aims to change that. The proposed project would cut the travel time down between the nation’s fourth- and fifth-largest metro areas to 90 minutes, using Japanese technology to propel the trains 200-plus mph. It also would include a stop in the Brazos Valley. Former President Joe Biden’s Department of Transportation was eager to help advance the project. Amtrak came aboard in August 2023 to determine if it was viable. The DOT also issued a $63.9 million planning grant last year. But the DOT under President Donald The President quickly reversed course. Last month, the department announced that it had rescinded the grant and that Amtrak would no longer be involved in the project. “If the private sector believes this project is feasible, they should carry the preconstruction work forward, rather than relying on Amtrak and the American taxpayer to bail them out,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy stated in the news release announcing that the department was canceling the $63.9 million grant. The move comes as the U.S. continues to lag behind other wealthy countries in its pursuit of high-speed rail—a mode of transport that’s safer, more efficient, and more sustainable than traveling by car. High-speed trains can cover the 820 miles between Beijing and Shanghai in a little over four hours. In Europe, a new high-speed train connecting Paris and Berlin launched in December. Even though it’s a red state, Texas has recently been pursuing high speed rail—and it could certainly use it. For example, Houston ranks among the 10 most congested cities in the country and among the 10 most polluted. The state of Texas hasn’t gone a day without a death on its roads since November 7, 2000. High-speed rail in a pro-car administration The The President administration’s early actions show that the next four years are likely to be challenging for high-speed rail projects. The DOT has set its sights on two of the country’s three most advanced high-speed rail projects. In February, it announced a review of a high-speed rail project in California—another state with air quality and congestion issues—that would connect San Francisco and Anaheim. Eric Goldwyn, an assistant professor at New York University’s Marron Institute of Urban Management, said it’s not a great moment to be working on a high-speed rail project—particularly one that needs public funding. That said, it’s not totally clear how the The President administration will come down on projects that rely on private financing. “Right now, it sort of has the feeling of dramatic statements coming from USDOT and dramatic gestures, but less substantive actions,” Goldwyn said. The President’s DOT seems to favor privately funded projects. In the announcement about the California High Speed Rail probe, the department praised Brightline, a private company that operates a rail line between Orlando and Miami and plans to open another line between the Los Angeles area and Las Vegas in 2028. Even those projects require public support, including a $3 billion grant for Brightline West—of which the company has spent $98 million thus far. The San Bernardino County Transportation Authority also received $25 million from the federal government for Brightline West stations in Hesperia and Victor Valley, California. The long and winding history of Texas Central The Texas Central project has seen many iterations since it first kicked off in 2014. In fact, the state’s efforts to build high-speed rail go back to 1989 when it created the Texas High Speed Rail Authority. As for Texas Central, it appeared to be dead when transportation projects nationwide slowed to a halt during the pandemic, but the partnership with Amtrak helped to revive it. Peter LeCody has been advocating for high-speed rail in Texas since the early 2000s and has watched the entire Texas Central battle play out. LeCody, who’s the president of the Texas Rail Advocates, sees a line between the two cities as a no-brainer. “You’ve got two of the largest population areas in the country that really don’t have much of a transportation system, unless A. you want to drive, or B. you want to fly,” he said. Now, he said the project is on the “10-yard line,” because of the regulatory hurdles it has cleared. The FRA approved the route in 2020. The Texas Supreme Court ruled that the Texas Central project had eminent domain authority in 2022. The preference for privately backed rail projects could portend well for the Texas project. As Amtrak exits the project, Texas Central has turned to the private sector. Kleinheinz Capital Partners, a Fort Worth-based hedge fund, became the lead investor on the project earlier this year, although they declined to share specifics about how much they had invested so far. (Kleinheinz Capital did not respond to a request for an interview but in a statement said the project was “shovel ready” and would create new jobs in Texas. “We agree with Secretary Duffy that this project should be led by the private sector, and we will be proud to take it forward.”) A representative from Texas Central told Texas legislators the project could be completed in 80 to 86 months during an April 17 hearing. John Kleinheinz, the company’s CEO, told the Houston Chronicle that he believes the The President administration is “interested in this deal” if it comes from the private sector. Kleinheinz, a longtime Republican donor, will likely be looking to bring aboard additional investors to push the project across the finish line. The DOT news release stated that the project cost is $40 billion. A project with bipartisan support—kind of Despite having some bipartisan support, skeptics and opponents remain. In November, State Representative Brian Harrison filed a bill seeking to strip Texas Central of its eminent domain authority. State Representative Cody Harris filed a bill that would bar the state from spending on a high-speed rail project operated by a private entity. It also would forbid the state from spending money to alter the roadway for high-speed rail. “For years, I’ve led the fight to expose the truth about Texas Central and protect our landowners from an overreaching, taxpayer-funded boondoggle,” Harris said in a statement. At the time of publication, neither Harrison’s nor Harris’s bills have been voted on by the Texas House of Representatives. ReRoute the Route is one of the groups opposed to the project. While they aren’t opposed to high speed rail in theory, the group says it wants the rail’s alignment moved from its currently proposed route to run alongside I-45—the highway that connects Houston and Dallas—instead. ReRoute the Route spokesperson Jennifer Stevens said the organization wants the project to proceed without “taxpayer dollars,” but said she isn’t confident Kleinheinz is the right person to lead the project. “We’ve had a lot of discussion about his overall lack of knowledge or experience in the rail industry,” she said. Stevens added that her group has not met with Kleinheinz, who has been an investor in the project for 10 years. Jim Mathews, president and CEO of the Rail Passengers Association, said high-speed rail projects should be seen as an enticing investment for private entities. “All these rail investments, they’re very capital-intensive, but they return enormous, enormous multiples on what you put into them,” he said. “When you put the money in, you get alongside it mixed-use, retail, condo buildings, high-rises. . . . That, in turn, generates additional economic activities.” He added that the DOT’s decision to rescind the grant isn’t necessarily a death blow to the project, but he said government money is typically needed for well-run high-speed rail systems. High-speed rail doesn’t exist yet in the U.S., Mathews said. In fact, it’s so unique that the FRA needed to create a special set of rules for the Texas Central project. But he and other advocates say high-speed rail is attractive to Americans. A 2015 APTA survey found that 63% of Americans said they were likely to use high-speed rail if it were available to them. “From a policy and a psychology standpoint, we tie bricks around our ankles and then we wonder why we can’t run,” Mathews said. “It gets done everywhere else. We’re just uniquely bad at it. There’s no reason we have to be.” View the full article

Twenty-four-hour customer support with zero hold time, infinite personalization, customized care, and behavior-based response are all aspects of the customer experience that will be expected sooner rather than later from every one of your customers. All of this is becoming reality, thanks to agentic artificial intelligence. Agentic AI is the most advanced form of artificial intelligence to date. It works autonomously, can understand natural language, sets goals and plans workflows, and makes decisions in real time based on the data it collects and examines. It learns from results and then teaches itself a new way to satisfy the needs of those that interact with it, immediately. An Expert Answers Every Question Agentic AI agents never need a break, never need vacation, and don’t need benefits or mental health days. They can work without respite for as long as your company exists. This is important because your customers hate waiting. Waiting for a mere two minutes will cause 60% of potential customers to hang up and call a competitor, and if your competitor deploys agentics before you, your customers will become their customers. You’ll either want to outsource to a top-end team or to use your more talented in-house programmers to finalize design and create your AI guardrails before deployment. This one implementation will free up revenue dedicated to customer service agents, alleviate time your current team has to spend solving mundane simple questions and issues, and leave your top talent free to solve customer challenges that actually require a creative solution. AI-Powered Personalization at Scale People will become increasingly accustomed to advertising and products tailored to feel exclusive to them. A staggering 91% of people will shop with a company that provides personalized, relevant offers and recommendations, and 68% of people have increased brand affinity due to personalization. On the flip side, 62% of customers will abandon a brand if they are not delivered a personalized experience. The days you could rely on simple generic offers in an ad or subject line are dead. Remember, you’re not sending an email to an inbox; you’re sending it to a person. Think of your inbox every morning, filled with dozens of emails you’ve been meaning to unsubscribe from that don’t speak to you. Every email you send is being seen exactly as the ones you receive. What Employees Will Fear The surface level fear around agentic AI centers around loss of jobs, but a deeper dive shows employee fears are far more complex. A recent survey revealed that 47% of employees feel AI lacks emotional intelligence, 40% are not comfortable submitting AI-generated work, and 34% don’t think AI-produced work will be as good as theirs. Involve your most trusted employees throughout the duration of your AI development. This will make them a part of the process, giving them a sense of ownership. Additionally, the better they understand the process from start to finish, the more likely they are to trust it—and trust that your use of the technology isn’t just to save costs or cut jobs, but for their benefit as well. They will become the ones that can sell the rest of your workforce on your new processes and technology. The message must be that this technology is being used to better serve customers, stay ahead of the competition, and grow the business. With that growth comes opportunity for current employees to grow and advance. Preparing Your Business for Ethical AI Integration Stricter audits and bias-free practices need to come first for any AI system implementation. All components that enter the system need careful planning, such that each instruction and training parameter reflects focused ethical direction. Assemble a cross-functional advisory group—comprised of trusted leaders and high-performing team members—to collaboratively design, test, and evaluate your AI tools. This internal coalition acts as a safeguard, ensuring that your deployment adheres to both ethical standards and your company’s values. A Human-Centric Approach to AI Deployment The adoption of AI should always be in service of your workforce, not in place of it. Before rolling out any system, ask: Does this enhance or hinder the employee experience? AI systems deliver their best results when organizations prioritize human needs at the start of their integration efforts. From the outset, align your AI strategies with your organizational culture and principles. Transparent Communication is Equally Crucial Engage your team in open conversations about the role of AI, and how it will enhance the customer experience and lighten the load on the workforce. Present clear background information while scheduling question-and-answer discussions, or an open office hour, accepting feedback from the team. Reinforce that AI is not a replacement but a reinforcement—designed to improve working conditions and to elevate team performance and customer satisfaction. The use of agentics will only increase across industries in the months and years to come. As its prevalence grows, any end user that interacts with it will become accustomed to the experience. They will start to expect quicker complaint resolution, zero wait times, personalized communication, and tailored product and service recommendations, and they will reject any generic approaches from companies. Ultimately, as business leaders, we bear a collective responsibility to uphold excellence—not only in our products and services but also in the systems we use to build and support our teams. Your willingness to embrace this technology for the benefit of your clients, your employees, and ultimately your business are what will keep you ahead of your competition and on a clear path to growth and increased relevancy. 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It’s no secret that when it comes to simplicity and convenience, insurance has lagged behind modern businesses across most industries. While many legacy products have been overturned by newer, intuitive solutions or adapted to meet today’s consumers’ needs, insurance offerings have remained a complex anomaly—built more for business and regulatory needs rather than real people. We already know that healthcare in America is too expensive, and far too many people simply can’t afford to get sick. Health insurance deductibles are at an all-time high, while denied and delayed claims payments persist. Insurance companies have continued making money while a staggering number of people are putting off care because of the cost, or pulling money out of their 401(k) plans early to pay for medical expenses. We also know that there is no shortage of people who are fighting for healthcare policy changes, more accountability around business practices, and broader reform. But consumer patience is running out. And with 100 million American adults in medical debt, incremental regulatory changes won’t be quick enough to take on the challenges that so many people face today in affording basic, and sometimes unexpected, costs related to their healthcare. Consumer Sentiment It’s time we ask the question: Can we start making progress by rethinking how health insurance products are fundamentally designed? In order to do this, we have to accept some consumer truths about health insurance today. First, more than 50% of Americans don’t understand their health insurance. That’s because, unlike most other industries that have embraced simplicity and ease, insurance remains complex, filled with exclusions, jargon, and unnecessary paperwork. So even with the best of educational tools, we’re looking at a large literacy gap. Second, consumer animosity toward health insurance companies is almost as old as the business itself. Even traditional supplemental health insurance offerings like Accident Insurance and Critical Illness that are intended to provide extra support were not designed to cover very much. And the amount of money that goes back to the insured at the end of the day is low for every dollar of premium paid. So it’s not surprising that people are tired of frequent claim denials and delays, and don’t trust that their coverage will minimize their out-of-pocket exposure as much as they need it to. It’s obvious that we have to start with addressing what’s covered, and how we pay claims, which is core to any insurance product. We can’t just slap technology onto insufficient coverage and hope that it’ll improve consumer confidence and trust. But there are some things we can do today to help health insurance catch up with other consumer industries through human-centered design. Here are three: 1. We can set up insurance products like subscriptions Digital simplification across industries has been happening since the dawn of Amazon and Uber, and has taught consumers to have certain expectations around their apps and online experiences. Just for the purposes of this exercise, let’s think about insurance in terms of the direct-to-consumer fulfillment model—and treat insurance like a subscription where care is the purchase and benefits are refunds. Thinking of benefits as refunds enables us to align insurance innovation with the digital simplicity today’s consumers expect. By removing the complexity wrapped around benefits, we can make claims intuitive and the delivery of benefits seamless. We have to eliminate the common limitations and restrictions as well as the excessive paperwork and evidence required for claim approval to enable quicker benefit decisions. People should be able to track the status of their claim in real time, so they can stop chasing their insurance companies for answers. Payment should be electronic, and take days, not weeks. In doing this, we can start to replicate the standards of efficiency and transparency people today are accustomed to when they buy and return products, and build a modern insurance experience that meets digital consumers’ expectations and needs. Treating health coverage like a subscription also provides clear opportunities for engagement. And insurance companies across sectors are just starting to take note. Beam Technologies tracks teeth-brushing habits through a Wi-Fi-connected toothbrush to tailor dental insurance discounts, while Discovery offers its Vitality Program that rewards customers with points for preventative checkups. By encouraging consumers to engage with their coverage, motivating them to use it by offering rewards and discounts like other consumer businesses, these companies drive utilization and deliver value as a result. 2. We can take an (active) back seat Another school of thought tells us that the best insurance companies are the ones that people don’t think about at all. Unlike the previous approach, which assumes consumers will use their coverage like they do their subscriptions, this strategy doesn’t expect that the modern consumer wants to interact with their insurance company at all. Instead, it offers a simple promise of value without any participation required. This approach provides obvious opportunities for leveraging data and automation to set up a product experience where the claim end-to-end is managed by the health insurance company, with no necessary intervention from the insured at all. Innovators in the space are just getting started automating several, if not all, aspects of the claims process. Current players like ClaimsMinder, Human API, and Claritev are just beginning to unlock the power of data to streamline the notification, filing, processing, and payment of a claim so that employees can get more out of their benefits. Ansel Health offers “medical claims integration,” which enables them to determine when individuals have a covered condition and are eligible for a benefit, and pays them directly without requiring them to ever file a claim. In doing this, we eliminate coverage disputes, delayed claims payments, or even just make someone’s day a little bit easier—and maybe then begin to build some trust. 3. We can become a logical extension of the modern care-delivery revolution When people get sick, they don’t see their preventative care or treatment and their health insurance as two separate entities, but rather one experience. Unlike insurance, modern care delivery has evolved at a rapid pace over the past 25 years. Digital and in-person clinics like Wally, Maven, Tia, Omada, Parsley, and One Medical are setting new standards for the way people experience care, and even legacy care providers are mimicking their practices with apps and more. Notably, most of these providers have chosen to offer subscription-based or up-front payment models and to “cut out the insurance middleman.” Why? Because it just doesn’t align with their promise of simplicity and empathy through the provider experience. By applying human-centered design, we can bridge this gap—creating insurance brands that look and feel like a natural extension of the modern care delivery experience. Companies like Oscar, Rightway, and Sana are already proving this is possible, offering an integrated experience that resonates with today’s consumers. It’s a fair question to ask, but why will business stakeholders care? A part of it will be about finding a set of believers and innovators who are both mission-aligned and consumer-focused. But it’s also important to acknowledge that fixing the flaws in the health insurance experience doesn’t just address the financial crisis around healthcare, it aligns with business needs too. In fact, there’s a clear business case for creating simpler health insurance products. According to the Integrated Benefits Institute, serious illnesses, when not treated, result in an average of 1.5 billion lost work days per year, costing employers $575 billion annually. When employees don’t delay or skip care because they’re confident in their health coverage, they’re less likely to require sick time, workers’ compensation, disability, or family and medical leave. Employers see higher retention, insurance brokers and agencies build deeper trust with their clients, and insurance companies see a higher rate of renewals. Established companies can participate too through partnerships with modern solutions, allowing them to stay competitive in an evolving marketplace, benefiting new, innovative players seeking broader distribution. Our goal is simple: In 10 years’ time, we want people to be talking about how complex health insurance used to be, and finally build some real trust. View the full article

Country’s prime minister says the US has accepted many gifts from allies in the past, including the Statue of LibertyView the full article

Of all of its ingredients, it’s perhaps the signature pepperoncini at Papa Johns that most differentiates the pizza chain from its competitors. Papa Johns places one of its Mediterranean-grown pepperoncinis in every pizza box along with complimentary garlic dipping sauce. Like fortune cookies at a Chinese restaurant or Andes mints at Olive Garden, these freebies are a bit of hospitality meant to delight customers and build loyalty in a notably unfaithful fast-food category. Now Papa Johns is taking the pepperoncini a step further by placing it right into your drink: “Cini Dirty Soda” is citrus soda with a zesty, pepper kick. How Papa Johns went all in on a pepper brand The brand expansion is happening at a time when Papa Johns is investing $25 million more in marketing this year to improve on its 1% year-over-year revenue growth. While such shocking food collabs are nothing new, in this case the pizza chain has been working pepperoncini deeper into its brand for a while now. Papa Johns released a new brand identity last year that includes a pepperoncini yellow-green in its color palette alongside colors like reds that evoke sauces and pepperonis. Coupled with a doughy custom font called Pappy, it’s a brand that’s designed to remind you of pizza with a free side of pepper. Now the pepperoncini has become the inspiration behind a limited-edition drink with Mountain Dew. Rather than selling the drink in its stores, Papa Johns made it as a limited-edition, do-it-yourself kit available only online. The Papa Johns recipe calls for 8 ounces of Mountain Dew and a quarter ounce of pepperoncini brine with a pepperoncini-brine-and-Italian-seasoning rim and a pepperoncini for garnish. It already sold out, and Papa Johns says it was one of the most engaged sweepstakes the chain has ever done. “The dirty-soda trend is on the rise, and with our revamped approach we thought it was the perfect opportunity to infiltrate culture with our iconic fan-favorite garnish,” Papa Johns CMO Jenna Bromberg tells Fast Company. “Our quality ingredients are our point of differentiation, which is where we’re focusing as a brand.” The “Cini Dirty Soda” taps into the dirty-soda craze of shops like Swig and Sodalicious while embracing the trend toward adventurous flavor profiles for products like the pickle soda Popeyes released last month. It also links the pizza chain to Mountain Dew, a soda brand that recently overhauled its visual identity and is making investments in becoming more culturally relevant. For a category as competitive as pizza, such small gestures as a free pepper and sauce can go a long way toward growing and cementing loyalty. Papa Johns is finding new ways to lean into its signature freebie. View the full article

Yields soar after dismal auction, raising concerns that Japanese investors could sell foreign assets and bring money homeView the full article

Huw Pill opposed this month’s reduction over inflation concerns View the full article

Recently, an ear infection and subsequent case of hives kept me in bed for a week. The first few days, I was tired and told myself to rest. But the rest of the week? Well, I enjoyed staying in bed, drinking coffee, and lingering over Wordle, Spelling Bee, and emails. So, the following week, I stayed in bed a little longer than usual, too. Turns out, I was hurkle-durkling. Hurkle-durkle is a Scottish term that originated in the 1800s. It means “to lounge in bed when you should be up and about.” While it was meant to be judgmental, it became a TikTok self-care trend with mindful mornings that prioritize mental health over productivity. In the U.S., the practice goes one step further. Bed rotting, a term added to Dictionary.com in 2024, refers to spending the entire day in bed under the guise of self-care. According to a recent survey by the mattress manufacturer Amerisleep, nearly three in five Americans hurkle-durkle. Gen Zers have embraced the practice, with four out of five choosing to hang out in bed; and women are 23% more likely than men to hurkle-durkle. It’s Not All Dreamy, Though While lounging in bed for several minutes or even hours sounds like a wonderful indulgence, it can have unintentional negative consequences. In the Amerisleep survey, non-hurkle-durklers reported better mental health, physical health, and sleep quality than hurkle-durklers. For example, 48% of non-hurkle-durklers reported feeling satisfied with their careers, compared to 42% of hurkle-durklers. (Of course, it’s not clear that hurkle-durkling is the only cause. If you feel less satisfied with your job, you might be less inclined to get out of bed.) A more structured morning routine can help set a positive tone for the day, explains April Mayer, Amerisleep’s sleep expert. “Those who get out of bed promptly upon waking might feel a sense of accomplishment, which could lead to improved motivation and mental clarity throughout the day,” she says. The survey also found that people who hurkle-durkle are five times more likely to procrastinate than those who don’t. That’s because lingering in bed can make it harder to transition into an active mindset, says Mayer. “We found that those who stay in bed long after waking are significantly more likely to delay responsibilities,” she says. “Additionally, delaying the start of the day may reinforce avoidance behaviors, making it easier to put off tasks and harder to build productive momentum.” I have to admit that I felt this myself. For a week, I felt off. It was harder to get back into a productive mindset. I told myself it was the after-effect of antibiotics. Possible. It’s also possible it was the tone I had set for the day. Finding the Balance Instead, Mayer recommends finding a balance between a gentle wake-up and excessive lounging. “According to our findings, most people who stay in bed for around 5 to 10 minutes after waking don’t experience negative impacts, but those who remain for 20 to 30 minutes or longer may struggle with procrastination and decreased productivity,” she says. “A brief period of wakeful relaxation can help ease into the day, but too much lingering may disrupt morning routines and make it harder to feel energized.” What you do while lingering in bed also matters. “Technically, checking emails in bed is an activity, but it’s not necessarily productive,” says Mayer. “If it leads to immediate action, like responding to urgent messages, it might be useful. However, if it turns into mindless scrolling or stress-inducing work thoughts before fully waking up, it could be counterproductive. Establishing boundaries—such as waiting until you’re out of bed to check emails—can help create a healthier morning routine.” I also found myself working in bed. While it’s convenient, Mayer says it could negatively affect my sleep quality and focus because it blurs the line between rest and productivity. “Spending excessive time in bed outside of sleep can disrupt circadian rhythms, making it harder to fall asleep at night,” she says. “Working in bed can signal to the brain that the bed is a workspace rather than a place for relaxation, potentially leading to poor sleep hygiene.” Thankfully, there are ways to start the day that also create the self-care you crave. For example, Mayer recommends doing some slow stretching exercises, such as toe touches or easy torso twists. You could also sit quietly for five minutes, focusing on your breathing. A brief mindful relaxation practice can serve as a gentle transition into the day. “The goal isn’t to eliminate comfort and rest from our mornings,” Mayer says. “It’s to create intentional routines that energize us for the day ahead.” View the full article

The companies behind AI models are keen to share granular data about their performance on benchmarks that demonstrate how well they operate. What they are less eager to disclose is information about their environmental impact. In the absence of clear data, a number of estimates have circulated. However, a new study published in Cornell University’s preprint server arXiv offers a more accurate estimation of how AI usage affects the planet. The research team—comprised of scientists from the University of Rhode Island, Providence College, and the University of Tunis in Tunisia—developed what they describe as the first infrastructure-aware benchmark for AI inference, or use. By combining public API latency data with clues about the GPUs operating behind the scenes and the makeup of regional power grids, they calculated the per-prompt environmental footprint for 30 mainstream AI models. Energy, water, and carbon data were then consolidated into an “eco-efficiency” score. “We started to think about comparing these models in terms of environmental resources, water, energy, and carbon footprint,” says Abdeltawab Hendawi, assistant professor at the University of Rhode Island. The findings are stark. OpenAI’s o3 model and DeepSeek’s main reasoning model use more than 33 watt-hours (Wh) for a long answer, which is more than 70 times the energy required by OpenAI’s smaller GPT-4.1 nano. Claude-3.7 Sonnet, developed by Anthropic, is the most eco-efficient, the researchers claim, noting that hardware plays a major role in the environmental impact of AI models: GPT-4o mini, which uses older A100 GPUs, draws more energy per query than the larger GPT-4o, which runs on the more advanced H100 chips. The study also found that the longer the query, the greater the environmental toll. Even short queries consume a noticeable amount of energy. A single brief GPT-4o prompt uses about 0.43 Wh. At OpenAI’s estimated 700 million GPT-4o calls per day, the researchers say total energy use could reach between 392 and 463 gigawatt hours (GWh) annually—enough to power 35,000 American homes. Individual users’ adoption of AI can quickly scale into significant environmental costs. “Using ChatGPT-4o annually consumes as much water as the drinking needs of 1.2 million people annually,” says Nidhal Jegham, a researcher at the University of Rhode Island and lead author of the study. “At a small scale, at a message or prompt scale, it looks small and insignificant, but once you scale it up, especially how much AI is expanding across indices, it’s really becoming a rising issue.” View the full article

For people who want to wear their opposition to President Donald The President on their sleeve without being too conspicuous, there’s the subtle anti-The President world of Etsy. During The President’s first term, Democrats were loudly proclaiming “Resist.” During former President Joe Biden’s time in office conservatives used “Let’s Go Brandon” as a euphemism for how they really felt about him. But today, anti-The President messages can be much more veiled, from “8647” to coded ways to communicate the not-safe-for work sentiment that can be abbreviated “FDT.” Etsy—which saw its revenue grow last year despite a drop in gross merchandise sales—has all that and more written across T-shirts. It’s all part of an emerging genre of almost quaint The President 2.0 resistance design that the site collects into a category it calls “subtle left leaning.” Former FBI director James Comey’s since-deleted social media post showing an image of seashells arranged to say “8647” has brought the slogan to a wider audience, with “86” being hospitality-industry slang for kicking someone out of a restaurant and “47” standing for The President being the 47th president. Though Comey was interviewed by the Secret Service over whether the slogan was intended as a threat toward The President, Republicans used “8646” as an anti-Biden message before, and it’s not necessarily meant as an incitement to violence but a way to signal opposition to The President in just four numbers. On Etsy, “8647” doesn’t look threatening at all, written in flowers on a butterfly in one T-shirt design and over the stems of a dandelion in another. Another shirt obscures the message even more with an image of four dominoes with dots that total up to eight, six, four, and seven. Generally, these designs embed anti-The President messages into otherwise apolitical illustrations of flowers, butterflies, books, and dogs, like the “French bulldog, Doodle, Toy fox terrier” T-shirt that uses dog breeds as a stand-in for “FDT.” A coffee-themed version spells out the initials in acrostic—“Foamy, Double shot, Tea latte.” A pasta version says “Fettuccine, Ditalini, Tortellini.” One turns the acronym into a message about self-improvement: “Flourish • Dream • Thrive.” These shirts are meant to go unnoticed, with slogans that likely won’t be caught by the passing eye. Some shirts write out “FDT” messages in tiny type—like the small scribbles on a T-shirt with an illustration of strawberries—or hide them in a larger image, as the creator of another T-shirt did with an elaborate mandala with “8647” woven subtly into the design. Others are designed like typical tourist-town tees that say “Gulf of Mexico.” It’s a form of protest that just so happens to look like a shirt you maybe bought on vacation a few years ago. Resistance to The President so far looks different in his second term than his first, and as Etsy’s “subtle left leaning” section shows, that sometimes means its less conspicuous instead of more. View the full article

Tesla sales continue to plunge. But a former Tesla employee’s startup now has a long waiting list for a very different type of product: an electric motorcycle aimed at customers in Africa and South Asia. The startup, called Zeno, officially launched its first product today, a sport utility electric motorcycle called the Emara. Ranging from $1,000 to $1,500 depending on the market, it’s designed to be cheaper than gas alternatives—and do a better job of carrying heavy loads or multiple passengers on rough roads. The battery, which is sold separately, can either be charged or instantly switched out at swapping stations. After a soft launch with several dozen customers in small Kenyan cities several months ago, it already has loyal fans. Zeno’s founder and CEO, Michael Spencer, had never been a car guy. Instead, he’d worked at Tesla because of its bigger vision for sustainable energy—how battery storage and solar power fit in with mobility, and what it would take to replace fossil fuels at a larger scale. But then he realized it would be possible to work faster outside of Tesla. Spencer left Tesla in 2022, after four years of scaling up the Model 3 and Y, deploying Superchargers, and leading the company’s energy business. “I had a pretty deep understanding of what was and wasn’t working at Tesla,” he says. He also had worked in Africa in the past, and recognized that the fastest growth in greenhouse gas emissions was happening in emerging economies. “I came to some conclusions that the original Tesla master plan was going to be, somewhat paradoxically, easier to execute on and accomplish and achieve in emerging markets,” Spencer says. “[These are] markets where there’s still a lot of greenfield development opportunity for energy infrastructure. A large portion of the population isn’t grid connected yet, but is being grid connected quickly. GDP growth is increasing, the middle class is growing, and energy consumption is increasing.” One point of intervention: motorcycles. When someone living in a country like Kenya earns enough money to buy a vehicle, it’s typically a gas motorcycle. Spencer saw an opening for a better electric version. Chinese manufacturers make electric scooters, but they aren’t well suited to the common use in Africa: three or four passengers, with heavy loads, on rugged, bumpy roads. High-end electric motorcycle brands for other markets, like Damon, were unaffordable. Other companies hadn’t focused on redesigning the standard, mass-market 150cc motorcycle from the ground up. “We started with a similar thesis as we did at Tesla, which is, whatever we make has to be as good or better than the options that [customers] have currently,” says Spencer. “It has to be a more delightful vehicle to operate. We set out to create a better vehicle than the most popular 150cc motorbikes: carry more load, go faster, handle rougher terrain, go up steeper hills. Better across all of those, but then still affordable and accessible.” Adding performance and range to the vehicle added cost. So to make it affordable, the startup had to rethink the business model. Customers have the option to buy the bike without a battery—the most expensive part—and then rent batteries at swapping stations. “It allows you to treat the vehicle and the battery separately, as two different commercial assets, and allows you to sell the vehicle up front more affordably and spread the cost of the battery out over time,” Spencer says. “And it solves for range. You can swap a battery at a Coca-Cola-sized vending machine. In about half the time it takes to fuel a motorbike, you can get another charged battery and sufficient range.” The biggest draw for customers is cost: Gas motorcycle drivers in Africa routinely spend more on fuel, in absolute terms, than commuters in California. In relative terms, it’s much more: a $3,000 annual fuel bill can be 30% to 50% of their income. When the company soft-launched the product in small towns in East Africa several months ago, with a small network of charging stations, the first customers immediately saw a financial benefit. “From the day after they’ve purchased it, they’re seeing their take-home income going up 25%, or in some cases 35% or 40%. It’s like going to somebody who commutes from Oakland to Palo Alto who drives a Toyota Corolla and makes $100,000 a year and saying, ‘Look, switch to a Model 3, and you’re going to now see your take-home income go to $125,000 a year,’” Spencer says. The cost was critical for investors. “One piece of the puzzle for us is, do the economics work, or are you asking somebody to pay a green premium?” says Mike Winterfield, founder and managing partner at Active Impact Investments, which invested in a seed round in 2023 and another follow-on round in 2024 along with Lowercarbon Capital, Toyota Ventures, and others. (Zeno has raised $17.92 million to date.) “Like, oh, I want a motorbike that’s better for the environment, so I’ll pay a little bit more—we don’t like that. We like stuff that’s cheaper, better, faster already for the consumer, and the environment is a drag-along benefit, so there isn’t sales friction.” The design was another selling point. Some competitors were also working on electric motorcycles for the African market, but they “sort of like slapped together components from other bike manufacturers and ended up with something that was subpar, and getting quite poor reviews from their early customers,” Winterfield says. Zeno, he says, “built something that customers adored” from the beginning. The batteries can play another role: When they’re plugged in to charge, they can support the grid by charging when demand is low. Customers can also take the batteries home. If they have access to electricity at home, they can charge the batteries there. But if they don’t, the batteries can charge other devices when they’re not in the bikes. “We’ve got customers today who are driving all day on their motorbikes, swapping at swap stations, and then cooking on their batteries with energy-efficient induction cookstoves,” Spencer says. “And then repeating the cycle the next day.” Through word of mouth, the company has already built up a waitlist of thousands of people, ranging from families who want to use the motorcycles to take children to school and run errands to ride-hailing drivers who use motorcycles on Uber-like platforms. Today’s official launch opens up the first product to preorders in Kenya and India. The company is designed to scale rapidly, from building the product to charging infrastructure, and it plans to expand to other parts of Africa and Asia, Spencer says. While a small number of the motorcycles are already on roads, the company plans to deliver the next set of vehicles in 2026. View the full article

With Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” as a soundtrack, nurses at New Orleans’s University Medical Center walked off the job for the third time, picketing along the city’s Canal Street thoroughfare earlier this month. “We will picket, shout, bargain, petition, and strike again, and again, and again until the nurses win the first contract!” Terry Mogilles, an orthopedic trauma clinic nurse, told a rapt crowd on May 1. The crowd comprised about 100 nurses and their supporters, with many of the nurses wearing scrubs or red shirts with white lettering reading “We Will Strike for Our Patients!” Mogilles and roughly 600 University Medical Center nurses voted to unionize with National Nurses United in December 2023. They are in their 16th month of union representation but say their employer is stalling on a contract that would actually improve their jobs. (Disclosure: National Nurses United is a funder of Capital & Main.) Observers say nurses may be waiting even longer. On average, healthcare unions go around 17 months before obtaining first contracts. Today, the nurses not only have to overcome their employer’s resistance but also the downstream effects of the The President administration’s policy changes. In November, University Medical Center Management Corp. filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board, blaming the union for delays in negotiations. Workers say it is UMC that is delaying, and LCMC, the parent corporation for UMC and one of only two hospital administrators in the city, declined Capital & Main’s request for comment. * * * Nurses at University Medical Center are running up against a systemic flaw facing most newly organized workers—made worse by the current presidential administration, said Margaret Poydock, senior policy analyst at the Economic Policy Institute. While the National Labor Relations Act mandates that employers must “bargain in good faith,” the law does not enforce a timeline on negotiations; more than half of all newly organized unions take over a year to get a contract, and the average as of 2022 was 465 days. There’s also a built-in incentive for anti-union employers to delay first contracts: One year after workers win union recognition, they can vote to dissolve their union. A long delay can enable employers to restart union-busting efforts. “There are not really legal penalties,” said Poydock, because the National Labor Relations Board cannot fine employers for prolonging negotiations. Furthermore, said Poydock, in the case of unions who believe that their employer is not bargaining in good faith, “The only legal recourse workers have is through the board.” However, the The President administration has thrown the National Labor Relations Board into turmoil. One week after his inauguration, The President fired the Joe Biden-appointed NLRB chair, Gwynne Wilcox, leaving the five-member board with just two members. The agency cannot issue decisions without a quorum of three members, giving reluctant employers even less incentive to bargain in good faith, knowing cases brought against them can be prolonged. While Wilcox has sued for reinstatement, the case has bounced between judges and is still in litigation. If Wilcox loses her case, the board may remain without a quorum; if Wilcox wins reinstatement, The President can appoint two more members to the board, creating a conservative majority. “That might make workers more hesitant to bring cases to the board, because they potentially will not have a ruling that favors them,” said Poydock. President The President also signed an executive order gutting the Federal Mediation & Conciliation Service (FMCS), cutting its staff from 220 to about a dozen and “eliminating [the FMCS and six other agencies] to the minimum presence and function required by law.” The service helped workers and companies reach contract agreements. Though National Nurses United did not comment on whether it planned to seek FMCS involvement, without protections from the National Labor Relations Board or support from FMCS, unions like the one at University Medical Center have fewer options—outside of strikes—to force their employers to negotiate with them. * * * New Orleans nurses say they walked out because workplace conditions have failed to improve. The union has struck twice before, in October 2024 and February 2025. Both times, management locked them out, costing LCMC a reported $2 million per day, or a total of $16 million. In the months since, nurses say workplace violence has continued, pay is not sufficient, and University Medical Center has moved too slowly on contract negotiations. “We had a number of nurses who were hurt on the job by patients; the potential for danger went up instead of going down,” said Mogilles. Nurses also say there have been several instances in which guns have been found in the hospital, and that chronic understaffing has continued, endangering patients and nurses alike. Negotiations over pay have also contributed to the strike. Nurses say University Medical Center officials took eight months to respond to a seven-page wage proposal nurses had submitted last July. The hospital response, they say, was one paragraph long. Umer Mukhtar, an ICU nurse and bargaining team member, said the hospital’s delayed response “was a very strong motivation for us to come out and picket again.” Mukhtar said retention at the hospital is poor, noting that eight nurses left his ICU in the past month. “They [LCMC Health] want to keep [telling] lies while they buy time to union-bust and hopefully—for them—decertify the union,” he said. “They’re trying to make [the majority of nurses think that] the union is not an effective bargaining tool.” On Canal Street’s rain-washed stage, Mogilles earned riotous applause as she closed out her speech. “Asking politely does not work!” she said. “LCMC, you not like us! And we’re so glad we not like you.” —By Jesse Baum, Capital & Main This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues. View the full article

When the annual U.N. climate conference descends on the small Brazilian rainforest city of Belém in November 2025, it will be tempting to focus on the drama and disunity among major nations. Only 21 countries had even submitted their updated plans for managing climate change by the 2025 deadline required under the Paris Agreement. The U.S. is pulling out of the agreement altogether. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and the likely absence of—or potential stonewalling by—a U.S. delegation will take up much of the oxygen in the negotiating hall. You can tune them out. Trust me, I’ve been there. As chair of the California Air Resources Board for nearly 20 years, I attended the annual conferences from Bali in 2007 to Sharm el Sheikh, Egypt, in 2023. That included the exhilarating success in 2015, when nearly 200 nations committed to keep global warming in check by signing the Paris Agreement. In recent years, however, the real progress has been outside the rooms where the official U.N. negotiations are held, not inside. In these meetings, the leaders of states and provinces talk about what they are doing to reduce greenhouse gases and prepare for worsening climate disasters. Many bilateral and multilateral agreements have sprung up like mushrooms from these side conversations. This week, for example, the leaders of several state-level governments are meeting in Brazil to discuss ways to protect tropical rainforests that restore ecosystems while creating jobs and boosting local economies. What states and provinces are doing now The real action in 2025 will come from the leaders of states and provinces, places like Pastaza, Ecuador; Acre and Pará, Brazil; and East Kalimantan, Indonesia. While some national political leaders are backing off their climate commitments, these subnational governments know they have to live with increasing fires, floods, and deadly heat waves. So, they’re stepping up and sharing advice for what works. State, province, and local governments often have jurisdiction over energy generation, land-use planning, housing policies, and waste management, all of which play a role in increasing or reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Their leaders have been finding ways to use that authority to reduce deforestation, increase the use of renewable energy, and cap and cut greenhouse gas emissions that are pushing the planet toward dangerous tipping points. They have teamed up to link carbon markets and share knowledge in many areas. In the U.S., governors are working together in the U.S. Climate Alliance to fill the vacuum left by the The President administration’s efforts to dismantle U.S. climate policies and programs. Despite intense pressure from fossil fuel industry lobbyists, the governors of 22 states and two territories are creating policies that take steps to reduce emissions from buildings, power generation, and transportation. Together, they represent more than half the U.S. population and nearly 60% of its economy. Tactics for fighting deforestation In Ecuador, provinces like Morona Santiago, Pastaza, and Zamora Chinchipe are designing management and financing partnerships with Indigenous territories for protecting more than 4 million hectares of forests through a unique collaboration called the Plataforma Amazonica. Brazilian states, including Mato Grosso, have been using remote-sensing technologies to crack down on illegal land clearing, while states like Amapá and Amazonas are developing community-engaged bioeconomy plans (think increased jobs through sustainable local fisheries and producing super fruits like acaí). Acre, Pará, and Tocantins have programs that allow communities to sell carbon credits for forest preservation to companies. Global Forest WatchCC BY States in Mexico, including Jalisco, Yucatán, and Oaxaca, have developed sustainable supply chain certification programs to help reduce deforestation. Programs like these can increase the economic value in some of foods and beverages, from avocados to honey to agave for tequila. There are real signs of success: Deforestation has dropped significantly in Indonesia compared with previous decades, thanks in large part to provincially led sustainable forest management efforts. In East Kalimantan, officials have been pursuing policy reforms and working with plantation and forestry companies to reduce forests destruction to protect habitat for orangutans. It’s no wonder that philanthropic and business leaders from many sectors are turning to state and provincial policymakers, rather than national governments. These subnational governments have the ability to take timely and effective action. Working together to find solutions Backing many of these efforts to slow deforestation is the Governors’ Climate and Forests Task Force, which California’s then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger helped launch in 2008. It is the world’s only subnational governmental network dedicated to protecting forests, reducing emissions, and making people’s lives better across the tropics. Today, the task force includes 43 states and provinces from 11 countries. They cover more than one-third of the world’s tropical forests. That includes all of Brazil’s Legal Amazon region, more than 85% of the Peruvian Amazon, 65% of Mexico’s tropical forests, and more than 60% of Indonesia’s forests. From a purely environmental perspective, subnational governments and governors must balance competing interests that do not always align with environmentalists’ ideals. Pará state, for example, is building an 8-mile (13 kilometer) road to ease traffic that cuts through rainforest. California’s investments in its Lithium Valley, where lithium used to make batteries is being extracted near the Salton Sea, may result in economic benefits within California and the U.S., while also generating potential environmental risks to air and water quality. Each governor has to balance the needs of farmers, ranchers and other industries with protecting the forests and other ecosystems, but those in the task force are finding pragmatic solutions. The week of May 19 to 23, 2025, two dozen or more subnational leaders from Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Indonesia, and elsewhere are gathering in Rio Branco, Brazil, for a conference on protecting tropical rainforests. They’ll also be ironing out some important details for developing what they call a “new forest economy” for protecting and restoring ecosystems while creating jobs and boosting economies. Protecting tropical forest habitat while also creating jobs and economic opportunities is not easy. In 2023, data show the planet was losing rainforest equivalent to 10 soccer fields per minute, and had lost more than 7% since 2000. But states and cities are taking big steps while many national governments can’t even agree on which direction to head. It’s time to pay attention more to the states. Mary Nichols is a distinguished counsel for the Emmett Institute on Climate Change and the Environment at the University of California, Los Angeles. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

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