What's on Your Mind?

It’s a tough time to be looking for a job. Amid wider economic uncertainty, some analysts have said that businesses are at a “no-hire, no fire” standstill. That’s caused many to limit new work to only a few specific roles, if not pause openings entirely. At the same time, sizable layoffs have continued to pile up — raising worker anxieties across sectors. Some companies have pointed to rising operational costs spanning from President Donald The President’s barrage of new tariffs and shifts in consumer spending. Others cite corporate restructuring more broadly — or, as seen with big names like Amazon, are redirecting money to artificial intelligence. Federal em…

The controversy over Apple removing ICE tracking apps from its App Store isn’t over. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a digital rights group, has filed suit to compel the Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security to release documentation of their communications with Apple and other tech platforms that led to the app removals. It began in October when Apple first removed an app called ICEBlock, which allows users to report Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) activity in their area. Attorney General Pam Bondi took credit for the takedown, telling reporters, “We reached out to Apple today demanding they remove the ICEBlock app from th…

The The President administration announced on Thursday new oil drilling off the California and Florida coasts for the first time in decades, advancing a project that critics say could harm coastal communities and ecosystems, as President Donald The President seeks to expand U.S. oil production. The oil industry has been seeking access to new offshore areas, including Southern California and off the coast of Florida, as a way to boost U.S. energy security and jobs. The federal government has not allowed drilling in federal waters in the eastern Gulf of Mexico, which includes offshore Florida and part of offshore Alabama, since 1995, because of concerns about oil spills…

New research has found that AI-powered content moderation systems from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and DeepSeek don’t always come to the same conclusions about bad language on the internet. View the full article

President Donald The President is considering pressuring states to stop regulating artificial intelligence in a draft executive order obtained Thursday by The Associated Press, as some in Congress also consider whether to temporarily block states from regulating AI. The President and some Republicans argue that the limited regulations already enacted by states, and others that might follow, will dampen innovation and growth for the technology. Critics from both political parties — as well as civil liberties and consumer rights groups — worry that banning state regulation would amount to a favor for big AI companies who enjoy little to no oversight. While the d…

I think back to freshman year, when my friends and I would cram onto a lumpy dorm-issue twin bed and huddle around one phone, collectively cringing as we swiped through Hinge. That was my first foray into dating apps. It took me a week—and a handful of dead-end chats—before I deleted it. As it turns out, I’m far from alone. According to mobile app analytics company AppsFlyer, 65% of dating apps downloaded in 2024 were deleted within a month. This year, that number has climbed to 69%, AppsFlyer told Fast Company. During the pandemic, dating apps were a lifeline. Gen Z spent much of their formative years—high school, early college—on Zoom, and online dating…

This weekend, “Remove the Regime” protests in the capital are demanding an end to the The President administration’s deployment of National Guard troops in Washington, D.C., as well as President Donald The President’s impeachment, calling the deployment an overreach of presidential powers and politically motivated. A federal judge ruled Thursday that the troops’ deployment in D.C. is “unlawful.” This follows a similar ruling from a Tennessee state judge. The President has also deployed National Guard troops to a number of other American cities, including: Portland, Oregon; Los Angeles; Memphis, Tennessee; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago—all cities run by Democrats, …

Silicon Valley’s giants crowd the list of the world’s most valuable companies, but drugmaker Eli Lilly is hot on their heels. The company topped a market capitalization of one trillion dollars on Friday, becoming the first business in the health industry to hit that milestone. Lilly’s achievement comes during a tense week for stock watchers. AI chipmaker Nvidia, which itself became the first $5 trillion company less than a month ago, beat expectations with its latest quarterly earnings. But with AI overrepresented among the world’s top businesses and massive AI investments making headlines every day, investors remain skittish that excitement over the tech might be ove…

The gap between the release of the movie musicals Wicked: Part I and Wicked: For Good feels like the longest intermission ever. Eager fans had to wait a year before seeing the story’s conclusion, which premieres November 21. The creative team behind Wicked claims to have tried to condense the plot down to just one film, but an overabundance of material led to the decision to split it into two. Financial considerations also likely came into play as two films will make more money than one. As fans celebrate Wicked: For Good’s release week, let’s get you up to speed on everything you need to know, including projected box-office figures. Who’s in the movie? Sin…

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, a once-loyal supporter of President Donald The President who has become a critic, said Friday she is resigning from Congress in January. Greene, in a more than 10-minute video posted online, explained her decision and said she’s “always been despised in Washington, D.C., and just never fit in.” Greene’s resignation followed a public fallout with The President in recent months, as the congresswoman criticized him for his stance on files related to Jeffrey Epstein, along with foreign policy and healthcare. My message to Georgia’s 14th district and America. Thank you. pic.twitter.com/tSoHCeAjn1 — Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (…

How can you tell if someone is a great leader? They always want to know more. They’re interested in mastery of a subject or skill. They ask great questions. And, as they find out more, they sometimes change their mind. They’re a “learner.” But these days, most CEOs and other leaders take the opposite approach. They think of themselves as “knowers.” They appear to have all the answers. That’s bad for them, their direct reports, and the organizations they lead. That insight comes from researcher and author Brené Brown and Wharton professor and author Adam Grant. The two behavior experts had an open-ended discussion about the nature of courageous leadership during a rece…

As I said in previous articles, executives like to say they’re “integrating AI.” But most still treat artificial intelligence as a feature, not a foundation. They bolt it onto existing systems without realizing that each automation hides a layer of invisible human work, and a growing set of unseen risks. AI may be transforming productivity, but it’s also changing the very nature of labor, accountability, and even trust inside organizations. The future of work won’t just be about humans and machines collaborating: It will be about managing the invisible partnerships that emerge when machines start working alongside us . . . and sometimes, behind our backs. The ill…

There’s a scene in Office Space where Peter sits across from two consultants during a company downsizing. They ask him, “What would you say you do here?” He hesitates, smirks, and admits he only works about 15 minutes a week. The rest of the time, he’s pretending. It was comedy in 1999. It’s confession now. That question has come back to us. For years, we filled our calendars, stayed visible, and kept the machine moving. Our worth was measured in hours, output, and presence. It had to be. Humans were the system, and the system required us to keep it running. We didn’t question it because that was how things got done. AI has changed that. It can now do many…

When entrepreneurs list their principal reasons for launching a company, small business owners often cite being their own boss, flexibility in setting their working hours, and turning a commercial concept into reality as their main motivations. Now, new data identifies another incentive that may convince future entrepreneurs to take the plunge. According to a recent analysis by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, the average self-employed person earns significantly more income during their career than people who work for someone else. However, the report’s findings also note the widely varying levels of income among small business owners, and the length of time u…

As it faces a growing number of lawsuits alleging it helps facilitate child sexual exploitation, online gaming platform Roblox has unveiled a new age verification system. That system, however, could open it up a different sort of criticism. The popular app, which has roughly 151 million users, announced last week that it plans to require a facial age check for all users who utilize the Roblox chat system. User verification can be accomplished by either submitting a government ID or by submitting a selfie, which AI will examine to estimate the age of the user. The verification will begin rolling out in early December in select markets (which do not include the U.S.…

In late October, Tucker Carlson invited Nick Fuentes, a 27-year-old white-nationalist streamer, onto his popular podcast and Youtube show for a friendly interview. Fuentes has amassed a loyal following with hundreds of thousands of viewers who tune into the racist, misogynist, and antisemitic sentiments he voices in lucid monologues on his nightly show, America First. A talented broadcaster with a biting sense of humor and a combative persona, he’s tailor-made for the no-holds-barred environment of big-tech platforms—so long as he manages to stay on them. In 2021, he was booted from essentially every tech platform for hate speech, forcing him to start his own streaming se…

More children are cashing in their Make-A-Wish requests to meet their favorite content creators, with creator wishes more than doubling in the past decade. Make-A-Wish Foundation has been granting life-changing wishes for children with a critical illness since 1980. Now, alongside A-Listers and sports stars, YouTubers and TikTokers are also flooding requests, Axios reported. Requests to meet content creators make up 32% of the wishes granted within the entertainment industry, per Axios, the second largest source of requests behind the music industry. Several of the creators say they’ve been granting wishes for years and more than 50 creators and influencers …

As a parent, shopping for holiday gifts for your kids can be a dilemma. Of course you want to surprise the little ones with exciting presents, but you also know that most flashy toys won’t hold their attention for very long. They’ll likely lose interest in them within a few days and you’ll be stuck with plastic toy cluttering up their rooms, destined for the donation bin. In addition to being a waste of money, it’s terrible for the planet. What if you could surprise them with something that’s both beautiful and practical? Here’s some ideas for gifts that they’ll be able to use for years. A purse of their own State, $60 At some point, your child will nee…

Every good salesperson knows the 7-step process in which you identify and qualify a prospect to understand their needs, then present your offer, overcome objections, close the sale and follow up. It’s proven so consistently effective that its concepts have been the standard for training salespeople for decades. Many business leaders come up through sales and marketing, so it shouldn’t be surprising that they try to use similar persuasion techniques for large-scale change. They work to understand the needs of their target market, craft a powerful message, overcome any objections and then follow-through on execution. Unfortunately, that’s a terrible strategy. The tr…

World shares and U.S. futures were mixed on Monday after Wall Street was buoyed by revived hopes for an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve. The future for the S&P 500 was up 0.2% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was nearly unchanged. Germany’s DAX gained 0.5% to 23,201.85, while the CAC 40 edged less than 0.1% lower to 7,978.77. Britain’s FTSE 100 inched up 0.1% to 9,547.77. Markets in Japan were closed for a holiday. Hong Kong’s benchmark, the Hang Seng, rose 2% to 25,716.50. It got a boost from a 4.7% gain for e-commerce giant Alibaba, which has reported strong demand for its updated Qwen AI app. Alibaba is due to report earnings on Tuesday.…

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning. Being a life sciences CEO is not for the faint of heart. Drug discovery and patent approvals are costly and time-consuming, and even if an executive can steer a company to clinical trials, there’s a very small chance the product will be commercialized. One study says that 90% of clinical dr…

As I uploaded a 1940s photo of my grandpa Max and hit a few buttons in Google’s Veo 3 video generator, I saw a familiar family photo transform from black and white to color. Then, my grandpa stepped out of the photo and walked confidently toward the camera, his army uniform perfectly pressed as his arms swung at the sides of his lanky frame. This is the kind of thing AI lets you do now—virtually bring back the dead. As a hilarious Saturday Night Live sketch this weekend highlighted, though, just because we can reanimate our departed loved ones, that doesn’t necessarily mean we should. Grilling the dog The sketch, which The Atlantic has alrea…

When an X user recently pointed out the eye-popping increase in billionaires’ wealth since 2015, entrepreneur Mark Cuban, a billionaire himself, responded with his opinion on why, but he urged followers to consider a different question: “Why are we not giving incentives to companies to require them to give shares in their companies to all employees, at the same percentage of cash earnings as the CEO?” Cuban said. It is the right question to be asking. Because while the debate over wealth inequality continues, the solution has been hiding in plain sight for decades. The top 10% of U.S. households now control 67% of all wealth, while the bottom half holds just …

The line had just died down at Hong Kong’s Apple flagship store on Canton Road when I arrived on what happened to be the release day for the iPhone Pocket, the company’s new and very buzzed-about design collaboration between Apple and Issey Miyake Design Studio. I purchased it immediately—a short one in Sapphire blue, as the cross-body version was already sold out. I observed neither pomp nor circumstance with the overwrought packaging, which I shed on the spot despite its velum-bound elegance and prominent Miyake branding. I was on a working vacation after all, and so I simply looped the Pocket around the strap of my nylon cross-body bag and went about my day in a ci…

At 3:20 a.m. on January 8, Steve Gibson and his wife were jolted awake by a phone call: the Eaton fire was approaching their home in Altadena, California, and they had to evacuate. “We left in about 15 minutes,” Gibson says. “So we only took our passports, our insurance papers, three pairs of underwear, and our little dog, Cantinflas.” They thought that they’d be able to come back within a few hours. But they soon learned that their house—and their entire block—had been destroyed. They spent the next few weeks moving from short-term rental to short-term rental, and finally moved into an apartment, though they knew that insurance would only cover the cost temporar…