What's on Your Mind?

New Jersey has a million acres filled with towering pitch pines. It’s springtime and the trees stand straight, bare and bonelike, above a carpet of winter needles that worry state fire service professionals. This week, a swath of the Pine Barrens went up in flames, a stark warning of what might be a treacherous fire season. About 11,500 acres were affected by a fire that started Tuesday morning in the Greenwood Forest Wildlife Management Area of Ocean County, New Jersey Forest Fire Service said midday Wednesday. The Garden State Parkway was shut down for miles as thick smoke wafted into neighborhoods and thousands of households and businesses were evacuated for hours …

Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has spent its first 100 days slashing government programs and firing employees. Yet Musk views DOGE not just as a downsizing force, but also as a team of technologically elite shock troops tasked with rapidly modernizing outdated government systems. One of DOGE’s primary targets on that front is the Office of Personnel Management’s antiquated retirement application system, which still relies on paper forms and manual processing. The system handles retirement applications and manages benefits for former federal employees and their families, coordinating closely with agency HR teams and payroll centers. DOGE and its…

GLP-1 weight loss treatment can be pricey. But employers who cover the treatments could end up saving on employee medical expenses overall. The finding is according to a new analysis of health insurance claims by global professional services firm, Aon, released Wednesday. The report looked at data for more than 50 million commercially insured people in the U.S., including 139,000 taking GLP-1 drugs, from 2022 to 2024. It found that after an initial spike in costs related to weight loss treatment with drugs like Ozempic, Mounjaro, and Wegovy, costs fell — drastically. Cost growth for the group receiving GLP-1 treatment trended at half the rate of the control group in…

For well over a decade now, consumers have been used to new iPhones coming out in the fall, like clockwork. However, according to a series of reports, Apple may be planning to change its iPhone release schedule drastically. The change could significantly impact when you can buy your next preferred model of the iPhone. It could also provide Apple with several key advantages in an increasingly competitive smartphone landscape. A staggered iPhone release Apple released the original iPhone on June 29, 2007. For the following three years, Apple released a new iPhone every June or July. But in 2011, Apple altered its iPhone release window, shifting to a fall launch date …

Warren Buffett’s announcement Saturday that he would be retiring as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway came as a surprise to lots of people, including the person who was elected to succeed him the next day. Greg Abel has been Buffett’s right-hand man for many years and the public heir apparent for the past five, but Buffett, in making his announcement, said he hadn’t told Abel the moment was coming. Buffett, 94, will stay on as chairman at Berkshire, but by the end of this year, Abel will be in the driver’s seat – and will have a big legacy to follow. Buffett took over Berkshire Hathaway in 1965. Things began to take off in 1978, when he convinced his friend Charlie Munger to …

Epic Universe is massive. Spanning over 110 acres, the new Florida theme park from Universal Studios, which opens today, has created four different themed lands that captivate the imagination and offer a wide array of thrills for park enthusiasts: The Wizarding World of Harry Potter Ministry of Magic, Super Nintendo World, How to Train Your Dragon Isle of Berk, and Dark Universe. That count jumps to five if you count Celestial Park, the hub of Epic Universe, with several restaurants and two big rides of its own. The park is massive financially as well. Universal spent an estimated $6 to $7 billion to create the theme park. Dr. Sean Snaith, director of the University o…

May often brings not only flowers, but also a highly anticipated—and in some cases, dreaded—event for college seniors: graduation. On their final day as students, they will walk across the stage to applause from peers, receive their diplomas, and start their lives as adults. Some of them will already have jobs lined up, while others may still be looking. A recently updated report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York suggests that how employable those graduating seniors are could well be influenced by which college majors they chose in their freshman and sophomore years. What do those choices say about a student’s future job prospects? The report offers a number o…

Hinge Health Inc, the digital physical therapy health startup that is expected to make its market debut on Thursday, in a closely watched initial public offering (IPO) that will test the market’s interest for a new digital health offering, after what has been a challenging few years for the sector. Recently, there have been fewer tech IPOs, but they could be making a comeback, according to CNBC. The San Francisco-based company priced shares at $32 on Wednesday, the higher end of its expected range, in an offering led by Morgan Stanley, Barclays, and BofA Securities. The stock will list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the “HNGE” ticker symbol. Bas…

Is a side hustle really the only thing separating you from the life you desire? Listening to some influencers on social media could certainly have you thinking so. Side hustles encompass a range of self-directed entrepreneurial activities undertaken while also working a job. For young people with limited access to capital, they’re the most accessible opportunity to engage in entrepreneurship. Yet, we still know very little about who takes them on and why, and what kind of impact they have on working life in economies like Australia. Our new report, Side Hustles: How Young People Are Redefining Work, presents the first wave of findings from an ongoing three-yea…

A decade ago, inventor Jeneva Bell launched a startup called Ruggable that seemed radical at the time: A rug brand with products that you could throw in your home washing machine when they got dirty. Rugs have been a household staple for thousands of years, adding warmth and color. But wool and cotton rugs are delicate and require expert cleaning—which creates challenges for people who have toddlers, or pets, or cups of coffee that occasionally spill. Bell knew there was another way, so she designed a rug with two parts—a base and a polyester top layer—that could be separated and cleaned in a home washing machine. She believed that if she created a product that lo…

One of the best performing stocks on the market yesterday was Webull Corporation (Nasdaq: BULL), which saw its shares surge nearly 375% in a single trading session to end the day at $62.90. The stock price surge in BULL occurred on its second trading day after the stock-trading platform merged with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) to go public. But in premarket trading today, BULL shares are down a significant amount—about 15% as of the time of this writing. Here’s what to know about the stock and what could be next for Webull shares. What is Webull? Webull Corporation is the owner of the Webull trading platform. The online platform allows users to …

The hottest parties right now are happening in the metaverse. VRChat, a video-game-like social platform hosted in virtual reality, saw more than 130,000 people in attendance on New Year’s Day 2025, according to a VR culture blog. Before 2020, VRChat had hardly seen more than 20,000 concurrent users, according to Wired. While virtual clubbing began in the early 2000s on platforms like Second Life, VRChat, and AltspaceVR, the COVID-19 lockdowns brought a new wave of virtual ravers as traditional nightclubs closed and people looked for online alternatives. Today, VR clubbers line up each week for dozens of fully immersive virtual parties hosted across the U.S., Europ…

It looks like it could be sitting on the campus of any number of major universities across the country, but this sleek, glass-lined educational building is far from the conventional teaching space: It’s a new training facility for the Ironworkers Local 63 union in Chicago. The training facility is being used to give young ironworkers hands-on experience welding, climbing, and installing the essential elements that underlie buildings around the world. As anxiety snowballs over just which professions will survive the emergence of artificial intelligence, physical trades like ironwork are seeming more and more AI proof—the building itself a counterargument to the percept…

The death of Joann fabrics is turning out to be a big gain for at least one other retailer. Following the beloved craft chain’s bankruptcy and subsequent plan to wind down its operations, discount retailer Burlington Stores—formerly known as Burlington Coat Factory—is moving to scoop up dozens of leases from former Joann locations across more than 20 states, court documents reveal. The 45 locations, some of which have been home to Joann’s stores for decades, were listed as being taken over by various Burlington subsidiaries on a bankruptcy court filing last week, with the company expected to assume control of most of the leases on June 1. In January, Joann fi…

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has long encouraged people to use their phones, whether through the forsaken Poke on Facebook or uploading Reels on Instagram. But the company’s newest idea for how and when to take out your phone might be too big an ask for some cinema lovers: Meta wants people to use their phones in movie theaters, specifically for its chatbot Movie Mate. The chatbot, which Meta has reportedly claimed will “get audiences back in theaters,” works by sending moviegoers trivia, quips, and questions about the movie, according to the New York Times. The catch? All of this happens while the film plays in front of them. Fast Company has reached out to Meta fo…

Home ownership is receding further out of reach for most Americans as elevated mortgage rates and rising prices stretch the limits of what buyers can afford. A homebuyer now needs to earn at least $114,000 a year to afford a $431,250 home—the national median listing price in April, according to data released Thursday by Realtor.com The analysis assumes that a homebuyer will make a 20% down payment, finance the rest of the purchase with a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage, and that the buyer’s housing costs won’t exceed 30% of their gross monthly income—an often-used barometer of housing affordability. Based off the latest U.S. median home listing price, homebuyers need to ea…

Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost, who was just elected as the new leader of the Catholic Church, seems to have similar views on the environment as his predecessor, Pope Francis. Prevost, who is taking the name Pope Leo XIV, has been outspoken about the need for urgent climate action and voiced his support for the use of climate technology such as solar panels and EVs. Pope Francis, who died in April, made the climate crisis a central issue of his papacy. He urged fossil fuel executives to transition to clean energy, calling the rising greenhouse gas levels “disturbing and a cause for real concern”; he declared a global climate emergency; and he launched a project to po…