What's on Your Mind?

When Winter storm Fern tore across the country in late January, more than a million Americans lost power. In Nashville, the utility recorded its highest outage total in history. In Louisiana, some families waited nearly two weeks for the lights to come back on. Officials issued emergency orders in several states as the storm exposed the fragility of our centralized energy system. And yet, during that same storm, a different story was quietly playing out. Households with the ability to generate and store their own power with home solar and storage kept the lights on, ran their heat, and charged their devices. They were independent of a grid that was buckling under the …

Companies today are facing a paradox they can’t seem to solve: Roles are going unfilled while millions of capable workers remain overlooked. Work has changed. That much is undeniable. Artificial intelligence, automation, demographic shifts, and economic pressure are reshaping how companies operate and who they need to hire. The future of work isn’t on the horizon; it has already arrived. Yet the way most organizations approach hiring and workforce development remains rooted in the past. The consequences are increasingly visible. Job growth has slowed from its post-pandemic peak. Layoffs are rising across sectors. And still, critical roles in healthcare, cybers…

For the next two weekends (April 10-12 and April 17-19), Los Angeles is going to be quieter than normal. This is because many Angelenos will be hitting the road to attend the popular Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival located in Indio, California. For those who aren’t able to attend in person, never fear: There’s a free livestreaming option that allows you to avoid port-a-potties. Here’s everything you need to know about both weekends of this rocking event, including how to watch from your living room. How did Coachella begin? The Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival was created by concert promoters Rick Van Santen and Paul Tollett in 1999. T…

Ever find yourself behind the wheel watching all the other cars go by and think to yourself, “Man, I’m a much better driver than all these clowns on the road?” It’s a funny thing about this question. Pretty much everyone reading this is likely to say “yes.” It seems we all think we’re better drivers than the next guy. In a landmark 1981 study, psychologist Ola Svenson asked people in the U.S. and Sweden to rate their driving skills compared to the average person. The results? Around 80–93% rated themselves “above” average—statistically impossible—with an eye-popping 93% in the American sample doing so. Psychologists call this “illusory superiority,” the human …

For those of us not born tall and strong, using a shared electric bike can sometimes be cumbersome—they’re often big, heavy, and hard to maneuver. Bike-share giant Lime has taken note, releasing a new generation of bikes tailored for riders who could benefit from more accessible design. One of the first dockless micromobility companies, Lime launched in 2017, eventually filling the streets of major cities across the U.S., Europe, Australia, and the Middle East with its bright-green two-wheelers. Now the company has introduced an alternative model to its standard Gen4, designed to reach riders—particularly women and older adults—who may have found its original model ch…

If you’re in the market for a car, you might be one of a growing number of people considering a used EV. In the past month alone, Cars.com says searches for used EVs jumped 25.5%, pointing to how quickly interest is shifting. Gas prices likely won’t drop much anytime soon, even if the Strait of Hormuz can stay open. And with hundreds of thousands of used EVs coming off lease this year, consumers have affordable options, even though the federal tax credit went away last year. You get more for your money than with used gas cars: for the same price as a five-year-old Toyota Camry or RAV4, you can get a newer Tesla Model 3 or Volkswagen ID4 with tens of thousands of fewer…

For decades, the millions of American women who dye their hair had two options: They could spend three hours and upwards of $300 in a salon or grab a $10 box off the drugstore shelf, squint at the ingredient list, and hope for the best. There was no middle ground. Amy Errett thought that was absurd. “There was no prestige product that a woman could buy for at-home use,” the founder and CEO of hair color startup Madison Reed tells me. “Just because you color at home does not mean you can’t afford good color. That was, in my opinion, a very elitist viewpoint.” Errett established Madison Reed in 2013, right as the direct-to-consumer wave was cresting. But while brand…

With most of New York City surrounded by water, climate change poses a grave threat to its infrastructure, as devastating storm surges and coastal flooding have shown. Inland blocks are in danger, too. Researchers at the New York Botanical Garden have created a new interactive map of the city showing the areas most at risk of flooding. They’re calling them “Blue Zones,” places where water is, used to be, or will be due to climate change. More than one-fifth of the city is in a Blue Zone, according to a paper published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. “Everybody was startled, including us,” Eric Sanderson, vice president of urban conservation at t…

Twenty years ago, honeybees first started to disappear in mysteriously large numbers. Stories in the media were everywhere, as were solutions to try to save the bees. But today, you hear less about the crisis. Has it simply been drowned out by the constant hum of breaking world news, or is the bee crisis over? There are some people who argue that we have “saved” the bees, while others say honeybees never needed saving in the first place. In truth, the problem hasn’t gone away. “Our losses have been getting higher and higher over the last few years,” says Zac Browning, a fourth-generation beekeeper from North Dakota. This winter, he lost more than half of his bees…

Nobody wants to sound weak. We all have a desire to be heard and taken seriously when we speak in meetings and other situations. But so many people pack their prose with words that discourage people from taking them seriously. Avoid the following words if you want to come across as a strong, convincing speaker. 1) JUST This word is an attention killer! Yet it is used all the time by speakers. For example “I just want to say,” or “It’s just a thought,” or “Let me just add that….” In all these instances the word “just” reduces the speaker by suggesting that what follows is of little value. A throwaway gift to the audience. By removing “just” from your spe…

Issa Rae’s next project is coming to you vertically—and on TikTok. Hoorae Media, the star’s media production company, and TikTok announced on Wednesday a partnership to bring free exclusive micro-series content to TikTok and its PineDrama app. The collaboration launches later this April starting with Screen Time, produced by Hoorae Digital. This will be Hoorae’s first micro-drama series, with the media company co-developing a slate of additional micro-series with TikTok as part of the deal. The partnership marks Rae’s return to her digital roots, she said at TheWrap’s Creator x Hollywood Summit on Wednesday. Her first digital series, “The MisAdventures of …

Economists and academics are still not clear on how, exactly, AI will change the jobs that are most vulnerable to its advances. Some jobs may disappear altogether, while others will simply evolve and be augmented by AI. But new research from Goldman Sachs this week indicates that the workers whose jobs are hit hardest by AI will find it particularly difficult to secure a new job—and suffer real economic setbacks in the aftermath. Drawing on four decades of federal data—which captured the lives of over 20,000 Americans from the 1950s to 1980s—the report found that the workers who were most impacted by technological shifts struggled to recover and took a month lon…

Waymo and Waze are teaming up to prevent people from driving into potholes. On Thursday, the companies announced a joint pilot program that will take pothole data collected by Waymo’s robotaxis and display it on Waze for Cities. The robotaxis already have cameras, radar, and other sensors that can be used, among other things, to note potholes. Waze and Waymo are both owned by Google parent Alphabet. The tool is an additional means of spotting potholes on Waze. Users have long been able to report any potholes they see through the Waze app. “This pilot program with Waymo adds another source of data to that effort, giving cities a clearer picture of road co…

In the 55 years since Walt Disney World first opened its gates, the theme park has undergone plenty of changes—and in many ways, it’s stayed the same. Some attractions from the park’s opening day in 1971 and the decade that followed have cemented themselves as indisputable classics, like Jungle Cruise and The Haunted Mansion (both of which are iconic enough to warrant their own film adaptations). One such ride is Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, which first opened in the Magic Kingdom’s Frontierland area in 1980. The mine train roller coaster went largely unchanged for more than 40 years, before the park announced that it would close in January 2025 for a year-long reno…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. When assessing home price momentum, ResiClub believes it’s important to monitor active listings and months of supply. If active listings start to rapidly increase as homes remain on the market for longer periods, it may indicate pricing softness or weakness. Conversely, a rapid decline in active listings beyond seasonality could suggest a market that is heating up. Since the national Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out in 2022, the national power dynamic has slowly been shifting directionally from sellers to buyers. Of course, across the country that s…

Every April, the internet fills up with green logos, limited-edition packaging, and pledges that will be quietly retired by May. We’ve gotten good at calling that out. Greenwashing is understood, documented, and increasingly prosecuted. What we talk about less is the other problem: the brands that are actually doing the work, but have stopped saying so. Both are failures. Just different kinds. Here’s what’s actually happening. The share of S&P 100 companies using “ESG” in their sustainability report titles dropped from 40% in 2023 to just 6% in 2025. But the work hasn’t stopped. According to a 2025 EcoVadis study, 87% of U.S. companies have actually increased …

GoPro’s announcement that it plans to cut 23% of its workforce this week didn’t come as a complete shock to anyone who’s been following the wearable camera maker over the past few years. Once a leader in the action camera market, the company has seen its stock fall from highs of more than $93 in 2014 to just 80 cents today. The $10 billion valuation it once boasted is a distant memory. (GoPro’s current market cap is just under $122 million.) Now it’s betting on an ongoing turnaround plan to stabilize the business. Part of that plan involves becoming an even leaner operation. GoPro will lay off 145 of its 631 employees starting in the second fiscal quarter. That wi…

The title cards for British actor Riz Ahmed’s new dramedy, Bait, are a colorful explosion of letters and numbers. If you look a little closer, each one reads like a code hidden in plain sight for you, the viewer, to unravel. Bait is a six-episode series that debuted on Prime Video on March 25. It stars Ahmed (who also created and cowrote the show) as Shah Latif, a struggling actor whose leaked audition to play James Bond incites a media frenzy. Each episode tracks Shah’s exponential spiral as his private life is made public, forcing him to contend with his own identity, belonging, self-worth, and the cultural narratives mapped onto him as a British-Pakistani actor com…

Google’s Chrome is taking browser tabs vertical. The company announced this week that it’s beginning to roll out an option for users to stack their tabs in a panel on the left side of the browser instead of horizontally at the top. For tab hoarders like me—who get lost in a million tabs while trying to remember which favicon went with which website, or who have multiple websites open with the same favicon—vertical tabs will give us more information to determine which tab is where. It even works when you have so many open that you have to scroll to reach the end. The vertical tab interface has two modes: a collapsed version with just the favicons, and an expand…