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Every hour, the McDonald’s in Hong Kong’s crowded Admiralty Station sees more than 1,200 people bustle through its golden arches to grab a coffee or a burger. That’s one customer every three seconds. It’s the second-busiest McDonald’s in the world and the most-frequented restaurant in Asia—and now, it’s getting a makeover. To celebrate 50 years of McDonald’s in Hong Kong, the Admiralty Station has been renovated for the first time in 10 years. The design takes inspiration from the subway station itself, using a clever new installation to set a mood, evoke the excitement of travel, and, crucially, keep foot traffic moving through the bustling restaurant. It also takes a te…

Once upon a time, back in 1995, BYD was a little-known battery maker. Today, it is the world’s largest electric vehicle producer after surpassing Tesla in global sales in 2024. This rise reflects a relentless focus on automation and vertical integration. It controls every part of its supply chain. It makes its own batteries, with features unmatched in the industry, even mining raw materials like lithium. Its factories are robotic wonders that run about 97% on their own, building a never-ending stream of cars better than Western equivalents at lower price points. And it also transports its own cars across the world with its own fleet of ships specially designed to carry au…

Hotel art has changed. In the last few years, generic photography and reproductions of works by Old Masters have given way to remarkable pieces of artwork befitting top-notch museums and the world’s best private galleries. Though it may feel like a 180-degree shift from the boring artwork that preceded these new and imaginative displays, hotels becoming cultural destinations unto themselves, by hanging up artwork ideal for the world’s top museums and private galleries, makes sense. “The standard used to be that you’d put a picture in a frame and call it a day—but hotels don’t cut it anymore with this,” says Spencer Bailey, editor-in-chief of a multivolume book s…

Because hiring staff is typically a time-consuming and costly process, many companies are now opting to interview multiple candidates at once. The Society for Human Resource Management reported that group interviews have become increasingly popular among employers. For applicants, this changes the interview experience significantly. Instead of fielding questions about your résumé in a one-on-one setting, you’ve now got to vie for a role alongside other applicants and take part in real-world workplace scenarios designed to showcase your leadership skills. Tech companies and brands such as Disney, Starbucks, and The Gap are choosing to adopt the trend. Not only can…

Launched in September, Overdrive, has taken an unconventional approach to harm reduction. Founded by Brian Bordainick, who also started emergency contraception company Julie and acne patch company Starface, the company has used its playbook of taking a fun, edgier branding approach to drugstore products—in this case testing kits for fentanyl and for seeing if a drink has been spiked— to appeal to a newer generation of consumers. Unlike sterile, medical-looking drug testing kits, Overdrive’s are designed to stand out with industrial-themed packaging that resembles a cigarette carton. It’s all in the service of turning lifesaving testing into less of a buzzkill on a nig…

Is your green my green? Probably not. What appears as pure green to me will likely look a bit yellowish or blueish to you. This is because visual systems vary from person to person. Moreover, an object’s color may appear differently against different backgrounds or under different lighting. These facts might naturally lead you to think that colors are subjective. That, unlike features such as length and temperature, colors are not objective features. Either nothing has a true color, or colors are relative to observers and their viewing conditions. But perceptual variation has misled you. We are philosophers who study colors, objectivity, and science, and we argue …

Social media users have been having a field day with Waymo’s autonomous vehicles, sharing videos that poke fun at the driverless cars getting stuck, acting unpredictably, or simply navigating the world a little too awkwardly. The latest wave of posts follows Waymo’s recent expansion into Austin, where users are already documenting bizarre and frustrating experiences with the service. TikTok user Becky Levin Navarro posted a video on April 20 claiming a Waymo car trapped her and her fellow passengers on the side of a highway after heading in the wrong direction. “This is the most insane thing. We’re in a Waymo, here, under Mopac,” she said. “It was going the wrong …

Fun fact: The saying “work smarter, not harder” is coming up on its 100th birthday. Coined in the 1930s by industrial engineer Allen Morgenstern, this simple, pithy directive is arguably more achievable today than ever before. Thanks to generative AI chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Anthropic’s Claude, it’s never been easier to quickly create text, images, code, and more. Here are few practical ways you can leverage them to power up your productivity. Create content If you spend any time crafting marketing copy, drafting emails, outlining blog posts, or even brainstorming ideas, generative AI tools can save you an incredible amount of tim…

Social media is terrible for teens’ mental health—or is it? At the same time that rising rates of poor mental health among youth have been called a national crisis, and as parents and regulators call on social media companies to do more to keep young people safe online, a recent study by the Pew Research Center found that social media—while flawed—can sometimes be a positive influence on teenagers. In a survey of U.S. teens ages 13 to 17, 74% said social media makes them feel more connected to their friends, and 63% said online platforms give them a place to show off their creativity. There’s more good news: About half—52%—said social media makes them feel mor…

As Liverpool FC stars Mo Salah, Trent Alexander-Arnold, and Virgil van Dijk celebrated winning the Premier League club’s 20th title on Sunday, you can bet that across the ocean thousands of American fans were ordering shirts with their names on the back. There are 24 million Liverpool fans in the U.S. Many of them are spread across 67 different club supporters groups in 35 states. Americans buy more Liverpool kits and merchandise than any other international market. Sales were up 14% last season, and that coincides with more than 30 million U.S. fans watching the club on TV, up 42%. More than half of Liverpool’s partners are headquartered in the U.S., including Nike,…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. While national active housing inventory for sale at the end of March 2025 was still 20% below pre-pandemic March 2019 levels, on a year-over-year basis national active listings are up 29% between March 2024 and March 2025. This indicates that homebuyers have gained some leverage in many parts of the country over the past year. One of the biggest year-over-year increases is happening in California—where active inventory for sale is up 50% year-over-year. Despite the 50% year-over-year jump in active California housing inventory for sale—in…

If you’ve followed Apple for any length of time, you’ve no doubt come across the notion that the company doesn’t rush into adopting cutting-edge technology; instead, it waits until it can do it right. “We don’t feel an impatience to be first,” CEO Tim Cook told Bloomberg in 2017. “Our thing is to be the best and to give the user something that really makes a difference in their lives.” But I’m starting to wonder if something else is going on. Sure, a lot of Apple’s Android competitors have sometimes been accused of throwing features at the wall. These days, though, I think their hardware is often just markedly better—and it hits the market earlier. There hav…

If the tariff-triggered drop in your 401(k) balance has got you sobbing into a pint of Ben & Jerry’s, you’re not alone. U.S. and global markets have yo-yoed in reaction to the current administration’s inexplicable tariff wars. And since this market downturn is a direct result of American foreign economic policy, we may not be able to just wait for a recovery in the next few months (or years). While there’s no promise of fiscal unicorns and rainbows at the other end of this, economic history may offer some guidance. The Smoot-Hawley Tariffs None of us has ever lived through a tariff-triggered market crash, which is part of the reason why we’re all chewing ou…

What is “happiness”—and who gets to be happy? Since 2012, the World Happiness Report has measured and compared data from 167 countries. The United States currently ranks 24th, between the U.K. and Belize—its lowest position since the report was first issued. But the 2025 edition, released on March 20, the U.N.’s annual “International Day of Happiness,” starts off not with numbers, but with Shakespeare. “In this year’s issue, we focus on the impact of caring and sharing on people’s happiness,” the authors explain. “Like ‘mercy’ in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, caring is ‘twice-blessed’—it blesses those who give and those who receive.” Shakespeare’s plays of…

Greg Walton, PhD, is the co-director of the Dweck-Walton Lab and a professor of psychology at Stanford University. Dr. Walton’s research is supported by many foundations, including Character Lab, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. He has been covered in major media outlets including The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, The Chronicle of Higher Education, The Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and Los Angeles Times. What’s the big idea? Stanford psychologist Greg Walton reveals how small psychological shifts—known as wise interventions—can create profound change in our live…

The 2025 Kentucky Derby is horse racing’s most exclusive starting gate. Twenty horses will post at Churchill Downs on May 3—an elite field, even by exclusivity’s standards. Y Combinator admits less than 3% of startups. Fewer than 1% of those who apply to NASA become astronauts. Google famously hires less than 0.2% of applicants. Yet these standards look almost lax compared to the 0.11% of North American thoroughbreds that make the Kentucky Derby each year, as only 20 of the 17,146 thoroughbred foals eligible earn the honor of participating in the race. Here’s how the fortunate 20 get to Churchill Downs. A sophisticated global qualification system The Kentuc…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Just because a home listing gets a price cut doesn’t necessarily indicate that the home actually sold for less than its comps. Some real estate agents use pricing strategies that intentionally list too high to test the market or create negotiation room. After all, even during the pandemic housing boom—when home prices were surging—18.7% of U.S. homes for sale in March 2021 still saw a price cut. That said, if the share of inventory receiving a price cut rises beyond typical seasonal patterns, it can suggest a market where homebuyers are gaining lever…

There’s never a dull day in the world of weight-loss medication. This week brought new restrictions on compounded GLP-1 medication, the cheaper, copycat versions of brand-name drugs that telehealth companies like Hims & Hers and Noom had been offering. Other developments include news that GLP-1 pills are on the way, and that a bankruptcy filing by weight-loss giant WeightWatchers is imminent. Let’s dive in. The end of copycat weight-loss drugs When the Food and Drug Administration declared that GLP-1 drugs were in short supply in 2022, it opened the door for compounding pharmacies to legally fill the gap and make copies of brand-name medications by altering som…

Every now and then, you run into a tool that truly wows you. It’s rare—especially nowadays, when everyone and their cousin is coming out with overhyped AI-centric codswallop that’s almost always more impressive on paper than in practice. And that, if you ask me, makes it all the more satisfying when you track down a tool that really, truly impresses. My friend, today is one of those days. Prepare to have your mind blown. Be the first to find all sorts of little-known tech treasures with my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. One useful new discovery in your inbox every Wednesday! Your instant audio enhancer Our tool for today comes fro…