What's on Your Mind?

Watch any sporting event live or on television, and you’re guaranteed to be treated to the spectacle of at least one athlete celebrating. Football players develop elaborate dances in the endzone following a touchdown. Soccer players will tear off their shirts as they run to the corner of the field after a goal. Volleyball teams will congregate on their side to congratulate each other on winning a rally. In sharp contrast to these ubiquitous celebrations, many of us fail to acknowledge great things that have happened in the workplace. Work successes are also worth some demonstration of joy. So, why do athletes get to have all the fun? There are several reasons why …

These days, when you head to a shop to buy clothes, most brands package your purchases in a recyclable paper bag, which looks more eco-friendly than plastic. But behind the scenes—in back rooms that most customers never see—every single clothing retailer has enormous piles of flimsy plastic bags (sometimes called poly bags). These bags keep clothes clean as they travel across the complex global supply chain before arriving at the store. “We need to keep clothes in good condition as they move from factories to shipping containers to trucks,” says Candan Erenguc, chief operations officer at Anthropologie. Most local recycling facilities don’t have the equipment …

It’s simple to accidentally become entranced by an endless loop of videos on Instagram or TikTok. But sometimes, that mindless scroll is interrupted by a reminder that what you thought was a 10-minute break spent on your phone was closer to 30 minutes. Olivia Yokubonis, armed with a kind voice and scientific research, often pops up in feeds on social platforms, gently reminding viewers that they might not remember the video they saw two videos before she appeared on the screen. Yokubonis is a content creator who goes by the name Olivia Unplugged online, making videos to combat overuse or mindless use of social media. For the most part, people who view her videos w…

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 …

Ever since DeepSeek burst onto the scene last month, there’s been no shortage of opinions about what the Chinese startup’s artificial intelligence accomplishments mean for America’s AI giants like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Meta. However, there’s one company that’s usually been absent from any discussion of just how bad DeepSeek’s arrival is for many of America’s tech giants: Apple. Whenever a tech insider or analyst mentions Apple and DeepSeek together, its usually to suggest that the arrival of the Chinese LLM could be beneficial to the iPhone maker. Is that really the case? AI technology is moving so quickly (DeepSeek virtually appeared out of nowhere) th…

In early 2024, Ryan Broderick, a surgeon at UC San Diego Health, was commiserating with some colleagues about the profusion of screens in today’s operating rooms. Though the displays provided essential guidance for minimally invasive operations in progress, they also added complexity. “We were looking around the operating room,” he remembers. “We have a lot of monitors, a lot of clutter. We were like, ‘There’s got to be a better way to do this.’” It wasn’t just about tidiness. ”For [a] monitor to be in the ideal position for surgery, it really should just be directly in front of your head without having to turn your neck or adjust your body,” explains Dr. Broderick. “Bu…

Apple will turn its Siri assistant into a full-fledged chatbot by next year. The company is working on a personal AI device to compete with the one OpenAI is building with Jony Ive. And Apple is putting control over its AI strategy into new hands within the company. So say a flurry of new reports, all advancing the larger story that Apple is doing what it can to get itself back in the AI race. And it’s doing it in a way that may allow it, in classic Apple fashion, to lead from behind. That is, it may hang back and benefit from the hard lessons learned by others marketing a new technology, then arrive fashionably late with a more polished product. Apple and Goog…

The historically long security lines currently snaking through U.S. airports are the painful result of extreme circumstances. Callouts, no-shows, and resignations by Transportation Security Administration workers fed up with a lack of pay during a partial government shutdown, combined with a bump in spring break travelers, have created unusually congested airport security checkpoints. For the architects and airport authorities that work together to design these heavily regulated spaces, it’s the kind of convergence you can’t exactly plan for. But, according to some of the designers of these spaces, airports are increasingly incorporating design features that can help …

Do artists and scientists see the same thing in the shape of trees? As a scientist who studies branching patterns in living things, I’m starting to think so. Piet Mondrian was an early 20th-century abstract artist and art theorist obsessed with simplicity and essence of form. Even people who have never heard of Mondrian will likely recognize his iconic irregular grids of rectangles. Tableau I by Piet Mondrian, 1921. [Image: Kunstmuseum Den Haag] When I saw Mondrian’s 1911 “Gray Tree,” I immediately recognized something about trees that I had struggled to describe. By removing all but the most essential elements in an abstract painting, Mondrian demonstrated som…

When brands hire illustrators, animators, or other artists, they typically know what they’re paying for: a defined set of creative assets, delivered on deadline, with clear usage rights. But in the age of generative AI, that’s no longer the whole picture. Commissioned artwork is increasingly being used not just in finished campaigns, but as training data to power AI models—models that, in turn, generate new, derivative outputs. Often, this use isn’t spelled out in contracts. It’s not malicious. It’s just . . . new. That’s left brands, agencies, and artists in a tricky spot—trying to apply old licensing logic to a new generation of tools. The result is a growin…

Kendrick Lamar. Drake. Lady Gaga. The charts of music streaming services pretty much all look the same these days, with familiar names dominating the top spots—except on up-and-coming Spotify competitor Audiomack. The current No. 1 album on Audiomack belongs to Nigeria’s Seyi Vibez, whose hypnotic Afrobeats tracks have amassed around 1.8 billion plays on the platform. Vibez is one of many African and Caribbean artists who have found breakout success on the platform. Many of them consistently draw larger audiences on Audiomack than on Spotify or Apple Music, largely due to the platform’s strong presence in local markets. “We are the most-used streaming service in a…

This Sunday will see the Seattle Seahawks face off against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX. The game will also mark the conclusion of the tenth football season featuring Next Gen Stats, the analytics system that delivers detailed data about every game to coaches and broadcasters through a partnership with Amazon Web Services. Next Gen Stats began in 2015, when the National Football League deployed RFID chips in player shoulder pads and even in the football itself, enabling the league to capture location data multiple times per second through sensors installed throughout stadiums. It has since become a mainstay of football broadcasts and training sessions…

László Toth, a Hungarian Jewish architect and Holocaust survivor, emigrates to the United States after World War II in search of a new life. After a rough start, a wealthy businessman recognises his talent and offers him a job that will change his life. This is a very brief summary of Brady Corbet’s film The Brutalist, which stars Adrien Brody as Toth. While the protagonist of this almost four-hour film is fictional, his story is inspired by many real figures. During the rise of Nazism in Germany, and especially after the de facto demise of the Weimar Republic in 1933, many intellectuals, scientists and other educated people chose to emigrate in search of a…

The great jazz The Presidenteter Miles Davis once said, “Sometimes you have to play a long time to be able to play like yourself.” This is why the best artists are not only masterful at their craft but also distinctive in their voice; they’ve committed themselves to the process of being themselves. Subsequently, this means they committed themselves to the failure that comes along with it also. But that’s the part no one talks about—the work required to “become” who we are or, better yet, who we want to be. It’s as if we’re expected to go to the gym and walk out with a six-pack. That’s not how the gym works, nor is it how work works. And we know this. There’s a process to …

From the Three Graces in ancient Greek and Roman mythology to the Three Wise Men in the Bible, the number three has been revered throughout history as a symbol of balance and harmony. Jackie and Shadow, the internet-famous bald eagles of Big Bear, California, would probably agree—their last egg has officially hatched, bringing their final chick count this season to three. These little fluffs might not have names yet but that hasn’t stopped 1.73 million people and counting from following their journey. Let’s break down the numbers and timeline of Chick 3’s arrival in the nest. The webcam that captured the attention of the world The bald eagle live streams a…

On a scorching hot Saturday in San Antonio, dozens of teachers traded a day off for a glimpse of the future. The topic of the day’s workshop: enhancing instruction with artificial intelligence. After marveling as AI graded classwork instantly and turned lesson plans into podcasts or online storybooks, one high school English teacher raised a concern that was on the minds of many: “Are we going to be replaced with AI?” That remains to be seen. But for the nation’s 4 million teachers to stay relevant and help students use the technology wisely, teachers unions have forged an unlikely partnership with the world’s largest technology companies. The two groups don’t always se…

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket successfully made its way to orbit for the second time on Nov. 13, 2025. Although the second launch is never as flashy as the first, this mission is still significant in several ways. For one, it launched a pair of NASA spacecraft named ESCAPADE, which are headed to Mars orbit to study that planet’s magnetic environment and atmosphere. The twin spacecraft will first travel to a Lagrange point, a place where the gravity between Earth, the Moon, and the Sun balances. The ESCAPADE spacecraft will remain there until Mars is in better alignment to travel to. And two, importantly for Blue Origin, New Glenn’s first stage booster successfull…

If you’ve been on Google or virtually any social media website over the last few days, you might have seen stories about Amazon layoffs making the rounds. And if you were curious enough to click through to any of those stories, you might have discovered that Amazon is supposedly planning to lay off 14,000 managers by the end of this quarter—a stunning figure, even for a company as big as Amazon. But that figure is untrue. Not only that, it seems to have been essentially conjured up out of nowhere, before being picked up by a stream of headlines on Google News, viral Reddit threads, and would-be LinkedIn influencers dissecting it as if it were fact. In reality,…

Recruitment is a big part of what HR teams do, but it’s no secret that it can be both challenging and expensive. According to the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM), replacing an employee can cost a company anywhere from six to nine months of their salary. For highly trained positions, research shows that number can climb to as much as 213% of their salary! No matter your company’s size or industry, that’s a serious expense. The good news? A brand-savvy HR team can help bring these costs down. By addressing the key concerns of potential employees and attracting top-tier candidates who are a great fit, they can save valuable time and money in the recruitment …

Efficiency dominates conversations about AI. We celebrate its ability to automate and optimize so businesses can move faster and people can work smarter. But AI is becoming more integrated into people’s lives in ways that go far beyond productivity. In a world obsessed with speed and efficiency, the future of AI isn’t just intelligent—it’s beautiful. AI is now a force that enhances creativity, self-expression, and confidence. AI does not just optimize life—it elevates it. Consumers are embracing AI for everything from recipe creation and travel planning to interior design and fitness regimens. They are turning to AI for recommendations on shows, movies, music, restaur…