What's on Your Mind?

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…

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…

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.…

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…

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 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 …

You’ve heard the gospel: AI is going to change everything. Good, great, grand. But when you’re staring down a deadline and 80 unread emails, you don’t need philosophy, you need a cheat sheet. The fastest way to master AI isn’t by watching lectures, it’s by finding a way to replace an hour of your grind with a 10-second prompt. Here are five specific, repeatable ways to automate your most time-consuming professional tasks. Grab your chatbot of choice (Gemini, ChatGPT, Claude, Copilot—whatever floats your boat) and let’s get to work. Writing Staring at a blank page. Tedious, formulaic first drafts. Enough. You are a professional. You shouldn’t be spen…

In the modern working world, employees have a lot on their minds. From stressing about high costs of living and pressing political issues, there are no shortage of worries to go around. But worries at work are stacking up, too, with many feeling uncertain about their future employment in the face of AI. While workplaces are seeing some benefits to automating tasks with AI, there’s another not-so-secret problem with the technology taking off: employee anxiety. In part, that’s because workers are deeply stressed about being replaced, but there are also learning curves that come with working alongside the technology. Also notable, one recent study found that AI is …

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Zillow economists just published their updated 12-month forecast, projecting that U.S. home prices—as measured by the Zillow Home Value Index—will rise 1.5% between October 2025 and October 2026. Heading into 2025, Zillow’s 12-month forecast for U.S. home prices was +2.6%. However, many housing markets across the country softened faster than expected, prompting Zillow to issue several downward revisions. By April 2025, Zillow had cut its 12-month national home price outlook to -1.7%. In late spring, Zillow stopped issuing downward revisions. In A…

A snaggle tooth. A gap in someone’s smile. A birthmark or mole. What do each of these facial features have in common? They all have wabi-sabi. That’s according to TikTok’s latest trend, which has users highlighting their imperfections and labeling them “wabi-sabi.” Not to be confused with the sushi accompaniment, wabi-sabi is a Japanese aesthetic philosophy that finds beauty in imperfection and the natural process of aging—something we could all use a little more of in the age of “preventative facelifts.” The concept celebrates imperfection and the natural wear and tear that occurs with the passage of time, whether that’s a gently worn step, a chipped mug, or…

As best I can tell, the über-wealthy believe the world as we know it is ending, that there won’t be enough to go around, and that this means they need to accumulate as much money and land as possible in order to position themselves for the end of days. The way they do that is with an induced form of “disaster capitalism,” where they intentionally crash the economy in order to have some control over what remains. So the function of tariffs, for example, is to bankrupt businesses or even public services in order to privatize and then control them. Stall imports, put the ports out of business, and then let a sovereign wealth fund purchase the ports. Or as is happening r…

In 2023, Pop-Tarts changed the world of brand mascots forever when it sacrificed the life of a Strawberry Pop-Tart and fed its remains to the Kansas State football team as a reward for winning the Pop-Tarts Bowl game. The weirdly macabre stunt got 4 billion media impressions, and in the eight weeks following the game, parent company Kellanova sold 21 million more Pop-Tarts than in the eight weeks before the game. Riding on that success, the brand upped its ambitions and brought three flavors to the Pop-Tarts Bowl last year, letting the winning team’s MVP choose which one was toasted and eaten (Iowa State’s quarterback, Rocco Becht, picked Frosted Cinnamon Roll). Now …

Jon Armstrong never intended to create the booming live-commerce platform Stacked Golf. All he wanted was to join the local golf club, but his wife, Ashley, gave him an ultimatum: Yes, he could join, but only if he could find a way to pay for it himself. His solution? Start a YouTube channel reviewing golf balls. The problem was that he didn’t even have the money to buy balls to review, so he scoured the woods at his Daytona Beach golf club for lost balls and started making videos comparing the Titleist Pro V1 balls he plays to whatever he found in the rough. Zero budget. Zero business plan. Just a guy with a phone and a hunch that people might search for golf ba…

Sometimes, a simple summary is all you need. Me? I’m a man of many words. (Understatement of the century, I know.) I appreciate interesting writing, where language matters and a person’s personality shines through in the prose. But let’s be real: 99% of the articles you encounter on this musty ol’ web of ours aren’t exactly awe-inspiring. They’re a means to an end. The same is true for most videos, too. And in any such scenario, you aren’t in it for the pleasure of reading or viewing and being entertained. You just want to get the gist of what’s happening without wasting any time wading your way through unimaginative drivel. The next time you find yourself…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. John Rogers, the chief data and analytics officer of Cotality (formerly known as CoreLogic), returned to ResiDay this year to give a two-part presentation: first, how risk—insurance, climate, construction cost—is reshaping the housing market, and second, how AI is about to turn property professionals into “superheroes.” In 2011, the firm was predominantly a U.S. mortgage-data company. Today, Cotality is a multicountry, multi-industry analytics platform that supports more than 1 million real estate agents, touches more than 8 out of every 10 U.S. mort…

As Sesame Street’s 56th season gets underway, Elmo, Big Bird, and the Sesame organization are navigating a volatile chapter in the show’s history—marked by government funding cuts, evolving new media habits, and AI’s impact on education. Sherrie Westin, CEO of Sesame Workshop, discusses balancing risk-taking with brand trust, partnering with Netflix, and why emotional well-being and kindness are the skills that matter most in today’s world. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with t…

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…

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…