What's on Your Mind?

Recently, Angela Parker, cofounder and CEO of Realized Worth, posed a sharp question on LinkedIn: What is the point of a conference anyway? For years, the standard CSR conference playbook was built around a familiar formula: strong production, polished panels, practical takeaways, sponsor visibility, and enough inspiration to send people home feeling energized. But Angela is right. At a time when many professionals are navigating fatigue, fear, scrutiny, and real uncertainty about how to lead, it is not enough. Across industries, people are not showing up to gatherings simply looking for content. They are showing up carrying tension. They are asking harder questio…

Before there was an iPod, an iPhone, an iPad, or an Apple Watch—before there was a Macintosh or Apple II or even an Apple-1—there were a couple of kids who came of age in Silicon Valley in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were brought together by a shared fascination with electronics. Supported by friends, family, and a burgeoning community of hobbyists, technologists, and entrepreneurs, just as the microprocessor was ushering in a new era, they channeled their strikingly different skills into joint projects. On April 1, 1976, along with Jobs’s former coworker Ronald Wayne, the two Steves formed a partnership to market Wozniak’s latest …

In the rush to adopt artificial intelligence, many employers are now requiring that employees use AI tools. Fully 64% of employers are encouraging the use of AI, according to Owl Labs, and 58% are requiring its use, according to HRTech Edge. How should you get started? And how can you make your best human contribution while also adopting AI? CLARIFY EXPECTATIONS AND EXPERIMENT One of the most important starting points is to clarify your employer’s expectations. Are they demanding that you use AI for certain parts of your work? Are they requiring new levels of output based on AI? Or are they just seeking to build a tech-forward culture of learning? Clear expectation…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. In calendar year 2025, the U.S. recorded 4.06 million existing home sales—tying 2024 and coming in just below the 4.09 million recorded in 2023. That marks three straight years with the fewest U.S. existing home sales since 1995. However, when accounting for population growth, the slowdown is even more pronounced. The U.S. had around 99 million households in 1995, compared to roughly 135 million households in 2025. Adjusted for that larger population base, resale turnover over the past three years has been the lowest in more than four decades. You’d have…

In a greenfield industrial park in rural Aiken County, South Carolina, Meta is building a new $800 million data center that’s much like any of the other hyperscale data centers giant tech companies are scrambling to construct. Set on 300 acres with two massive data halls making up most of its 715,000 square feet of buildings, it’s the kind of gargantuan facility that has become the de facto built form of the race to harness the lucrative power of artificial intelligence. But past the sprawling data hall buildings, a comparably modest administration building has a unique design feature. Instead of the concrete and steel used in the data halls and countless other data …

Visual truth is going down in flames, thanks to new generative AI models that produce synthetic media that looks indistinguishable from reality. But a team of university researchers has figured out a hardware fix that just might save us. Engineers at ETH Zurich have designed a working prototype of a camera that physically stamps a cryptographic seal of authenticity onto every photo or video right at the image sensor (electronic chip) that captures each photon from the actual world. “Trust in digital content is eroding. We wanted to create a technology that gives people a way to verify whether something is genuine,” co-developer Felix Franke explained in a press releas…

In 2012, Google conducted research to identify the factors that determine effective teams. This research, now famously known as Project Aristotle, analyzed hundreds of teams and individual members to crack the code on what enables some to operate at high levels while others flounder. What their study revealed is something Harvard Business School professor Amy Edmondson had discovered almost two decades prior: the most important factor for high performing teams is psychological safety. That is to say, teams perform better when their members feel safe taking risks and being vulnerable with each other, without fear of punishment. Google’s watershed study brought light to Edm…

“If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, yours is the world, and everything that’s in it.” —Rudyard Kipling Right now, CEOs are confronting a grim reality. The global trade system that has underpinned business planning is unravelling. Ships pile up in harbor, supply chains that have taken years to build are being undermined, and the diplomatic relations that hold world trade together are fraying. The most destabilizing feature of our current situation is the uncertainty it breeds about the future. If leaders could reliably predict the next catastrophe, at least they could plan and prepare for it. But right now, th…

Below, Matt Kaplan shares five key insights from his new book, I Told You So!: Scientists Who Were Ridiculed, Exiled, and Imprisoned for Being Right. Matt is a science correspondent at The Economist, where he has written about everything from paleontology and parasites to virology and viticulture over the course of two decades. His writing has also appeared in National Geographic, New Scientist, Nature, and the New York Times. What’s the big idea? Science often suppresses bold, unconventional, or threatening ideas due to ego, hierarchy, competition, sexism, and fraud. This culture harms progress. To truly serve society, science needs structural and cultural ref…

As businesses race to become AI-ready, job seekers are racing just as quickly to keep up. New data shows that candidates are getting the message: AI skills are showing up more often on resumes. But this change is exposing a deeper disconnect: the labor market increasingly rewards AI fluency, while the education system often discourages it. According to a new report from Monster.com, the number of resumes that mention AI skills has surged in just two years, going from 3.7% in 2023 to 12.8% last year. Per the report, the most notable increase was from 2024 to 2025 when the number of mentions ticked up by 7.6 points. The previous year, it only accelerated by 1.5 poin…

Most people don’t actually want to give up their phone. They just want it to stop tugging at them like a needy toddler. There’s a difference. One suggests extremism and poor reception. The other is far more sensible: learning how to live with technology without letting it quietly take charge of your attention, mood, and nervous system while pretending it’s being helpful. Because for most of us, the problem isn’t “addiction” in the dramatic sense. No one’s pawning the sofa for screen time. It’s accumulation. A thousand tiny habits layered together until checking becomes automatic and being offline feels faintly unsettling, like you’ve forgotten something important …

Artificial intelligence is moving into everything. It’s in the phone in your pocket, the watch on your wrist, the TV on your wall, and the appliances in your kitchen. As companies race to build AI wearables and ambient assistants, there’s a risk we skip a crucial step: grounding this future in the devices people already trust and use constantly. For most of us, that foundation is the smartphone. Smartphones sit at the center of daily life, helping with communication, payments, creativity, navigation, entertainment, and more. About 91% of Americans own one, according to Pew Research. They are personal, always with us, and deeply embedded in our routines. If AI is t…

There’s a tremendous, ageless opportunity hiding in plain sight, but marketers need to look through a different lens to see it. Right now, there are some 35 million U.S. empty nester women, as I calculate it, and a growing percentage of them are single. They aren’t retreating into rest and relaxation; they are stepping out to exult in activities they finally have the time, money, and motivation to pursue. Historically, marketers have largely overlooked this demographic. Or, if they address this market, it’s only for margin and share growth. That’s the wrong framework. The real opportunity isn’t just about capturing their spending power, it’s about recognizing a profo…

Meta laid off hundreds of employees this week, just months after notable cuts to its virtual reality and metaverse division. These job losses amount to less than one percent of the company’s overall workforce, reportedly impacting about 700 employees across a number of departments. But recent headlines indicate there’s likely more to come: Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Meta was planning large-scale cuts to its workforce that could slash 20% of jobs—or more—to help offset the company’s investments in artificial intelligence. (At the time, Meta dismissed those claims as “speculative reporting about theoretical approaches.”) Layoffs are not exactly unexpected…

Many people enjoy sleeping with their pets. Who wouldn’t? After a hard day of work, cuddling up with a cute animal that shows you unconditional love is just the thing many people need. But sadly, after digging into a newly released study, they may start to think twice before letting their furry friends into bed at night. The Conversation recently published an article highlighting the major findings of a study by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine that examined the pros and cons of having pets sleep in bed with them—something that 46% of respondents do. Though the research suggests that sleeping with your pet in bed may have psychological benefits, it may actually …

Be careful what you like on social media – you never know when a billionaire’s lawyers might be going over your likes with a fine-toothed comb. Elon Musk’s lawyers requested that a judge with a history of presiding over his legal battles step aside this week. The reason? A post she liked on LinkedIn. In a motion for recusal, Musk’s legal team requested that Delaware Chancery Court Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick remove herself from a pair of Tesla lawsuits to “avoid an appearance of bias.” The post in question celebrated a verdict in a San Francisco federal court that found Musk defrauded Twitter investors in the chaotic days before he bought the social network. In…

For many job seekers, it might seem like there’s never been a harder time to find a job. Hiring for white-collar jobs has been especially weak, part of what economists call a “low-hire, low-fire” job market in which businesses are largely holding onto their workers while hiring remains sluggish, making it difficult for younger workers to land permanent work. Technology is also shaking up the hiring process. Automated systems enable job seekers to easily apply to more jobs, but those same systems also makes it even tougher to get noticed. According to data from hiring platform Greenhouse, the average recruiter has 3.5 times more job applications to sift through tha…

The AI behemoth Anthropic released a report this week about the widening “AI skills gap.” In it, the research suggests that a widening gap may be emerging between those who use AI frequently for work and those who don’t. The report data shows that those with at least six months of experience with the company’s chatbot, Claude, have a higher success rate when collaborating with the system than those without. This can lead to an advantage in an ever-changing labor market landscape as AI becomes an integral part of the job market. In an interview with TechCrunch, Anthropic’s head of economics, Peter McCrory, spoke about how the report does not yet prove a broader sh…

Two decades after the original film, Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep are returning to the world of The Devil Wears Prada for its long-awaited sequel. The Devil Wears Prada 2, which also sees the return of stars Stanley Tucci and Emily Blunt, follows Hathaway as journalist Andy Sachs and Streep as Miranda Priestly, the editor-in-chief of fictional fashion magazine Runway, crossing paths again 20 years after the events of the first movie. When Streep and Hathaway starred in the original Devil Wears Prada, it was an untested franchise that fashion houses hesitated to lend their clothes and brand names to. But the sequel is an entirely different story, with the fashion…

One of the most distinctive features of the U.S. military’s high-energy laser weapon of choice isn’t the system itself—it’s how operators control it. In a 60 Minutes segment on military laser weapons that aired on March 15, CBS News correspondent Lesley Stahl traveled to Albuquerque for an up-close look at defense contractor AV’s 20-kilowatt LOCUST Laser Weapons System, which has been watching over U.S. service members abroad (and triggering occasional airspace shutdowns near the U.S.-Mexico border at home) in recent years. With Iranian Shahed now pummeling the Middle East and the U.S. Defense Department racing to field inexpensive countermeasures to address the ever-…

With help from AI, I finally tackled some computer chores that I’ve been putting off for months. My Downloads folder is cleaner than it’s been in ages. The photos that OneDrive blandly sorted by month are now arranged into folders by event. The obscure, unpurchasable jazz album I ripped from YouTube ages ago is now properly sliced into separate tracks, tagged with metadata, and sitting inside my media server at last. Instead of spending hours on those tedious tasks myself, I delegated them to Manus, an AI assistant whose desktop app is free to download for Mac and Windows. Manus launched in March of last year with an emphasis on being able to accomplish tasks auto…