What's on Your Mind?

When announcing her new album, The Life of a Showgirl, on the New Heights podcast, Taylor Swift said, “You should think of your energy as if it’s expensive. . . . Not everyone can afford it.” She was encouraging people to have a healthy relationship with social media and not get sucked into online drama and endless scrolling. As a working mom with three kids, this hit me deeply—about much more than social media. I have spent a good portion of my adult life talking about productivity, apps, and tools to save time. But Swift used a different word: energy. I can do dozens of things to save time in my day, but if I don’t have any energy left, what have I really gained? …

Greetings, salutations, and my thanks—as always—for reading Fast Company’s Plugged In. Me: “Are you here just to monitor for safety?” Guy sitting in the driver’s seat of the Tesla Model Y I’m riding in: “I can’t specify.” That was the extent of the conversation during a recent trip I took using Tesla’s Robotaxi service. I was curious why the car that picked me up had a human in it: After all, Tesla bills its service as “the future of autonomy,” and the car did, in fact, drive itself for the entirety of my 4.5-mile journey. But I didn’t get any answers from this guy—or Tesla the corporate entity, which prides itself on ignoring the media and didn’t reply to my …

Abu Dhabi carrier Etihad said Friday it is launching flights to Kabul, making it the latest airline to offer direct routes to the Afghan capital. Etihad, which announced a record $476 million profit in 2024, said the new service responded to “growing demand” for travel between the United Arab Emirates and Afghanistan and that the three weekly flights starting in December would support “trade, travel, and community ties.” “The UAE hosts one of the largest Afghan communities in the Gulf, with around 300,000 Afghans living and working in the country, according to the Afghan Business Council,” the airline said in a statement. “The new flights will further strengthen these e…

Pope Leo XIV encouraged international news agencies on Thursday to stand firm as a bulwark against the “ancient art of lying” and manipulation, as he strongly backed a free, independent and objective press. History’s first American pope called for imprisoned journalists to be released and said the work of journalists must never be considered a crime. Rather, journalism is a right and a pillar upholding “the edifice of our societies” that must be protected and defended, he said. “If today we know what is happening in Gaza, Ukraine and every other land bloodied by bombs, we largely owe it to them,” Leo said of journalists. “These extraordinary eyewitness accounts are the …

The other day, a friend confessed her new nightly routine: hiding in the bathroom for ten minutes after putting her kids to bed. The reason wasn’t to scroll TikTok, but to breathe. “It’s either that or cry into the mac and cheese,” she laughed. It struck me: parenting in 2025 often looks like quietly triaging our own stress while juggling work deadlines, permission slips, Slack pings, and dinner prep. Headlines scream about the youth mental health crisis, but what rarely makes the front page is the state of the people raising those kids. Working parents are running on fumes. And here’s the part we can’t gloss over: our kids’ emotional health is directly tied to ours. …

To survive in today’s market, enterprises must deliver experiences that feel instant and intelligent. Customers expect brands to anticipate their needs and guide them through interactions that are seamless and personal. It’s the promise of having the right conversation at exactly the right moment. But here’s the reality check: While “real time” dominates boardroom conversations, most data ecosystems are anything but. MOVING BEYOND “NEXT BEST ACTION” For years, the “next best action” model has been the playbook for customer engagement. It takes available data, analyzes it, and delivers a single, data-driven response, like recommending a product or sending an off…

Nearly every company I work with is focused on using AI to drive productivity and efficiency. They are starting to see real gains, and that’s leading to excitement about AI’s future potential. However, AI used to drive efficiency is only the starting line, and there’s real risk if we stop there. In my work with Fortune 500 leaders across the C-suite, from chief HR officers (CHROs) to CTOs and CMOs, I’ve seen that the very best organizations recognize a bigger opportunity: using AI to help managers build connection and trust with their teams. The companies that are able to leverage AI both to drive efficiency gains and to build highly motivated teams will be the ones that …

YouTube is giving some creators previously banned for spreading misinformation a chance to get back on the platform. The company opened up a pilot program on Thursday inviting YouTubers who were kicked off of the video sharing site under now-outdated rules to apply for a new channel. The company announced the second chance process last month, describing it as a “limited pilot project” for some creators, including those with channels banned under policies the platform has since abandoned. YouTube’s announcement came the same day that the company issued a conciliatory letter to Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, who has pressured YouTube and other social media companies for y…

Ever had a song you couldn’t get out of your head? That happened to me the other day. Pink Pony Club. It’s everywhere right now; I can’t escape it. And even though I really don’t like that song, it’s catchy. And as you’ve probably experienced, once you get a song like that stuck in your head, it can feel impossible to get out. What you might not know is there’s a scientific reason for this: It’s called ironic process theory. Or, you may have heard it by its more common name: The white bear problem. But there’s a tried and tested brain hack that helps you to get a song out of your head. What’s more, you can use it to replace negative or harmful thoughts with po…

In the 1960s, IBM embarked on what Fortune called the $5 billion gamble. It was a bet-the-company investment on a scale nobody had seen before. The payoff was the legendary System/360 mainframes, which revolutionized computing and set the stage for two decades of IBM dominance. That $5 billion would be roughly the equivalent of $50 billion today, but even that princely sum is dwarfed by the $364 billion that tech giants are expected to invest in artificial intelligence this year. And the spending won’t stop there. McKinsey projects that building AI data centers alone could demand $5.2 trillion by 2030. Today, the AI investment boom is probably the single biggest f…

This year, Columbus Day, also known as Indigenous Peoples’ Day, lands on Monday, October 13. While it’s a federal holiday and many schools have it off, there are plenty of businesses still open—as well as U.S. stock markets. Here’s what to know about the holiday, and what’s open and closed today. Why is the holiday called Columbus Day and Indigenous Peoples’ Day? Columbus Day, named after Italian explorer Christopher Columbus, occurs on the second Monday in October of every year, and celebrates Columbus’s arrival in the Americas on October 12, 1492, in the Bahamas. However, due to criticism over the treatment of Native Americans who were here when Colum…

As a learning designer at Zapier, I used to spend my days helping my teammates learn: I built and led trainings, created enablement resources, and helped folks better understand how their work contributed to company strategy. Now, I sit inside our HR team as an AI automation engineer. But the through line is the same: I still help my teammates (and now customers, too!) do their best work. What is an AI automation engineer? AI automation engineer sounds like a vague title, so here’s the job, plainly: I embed with a team (HR, in my case), spot opportunities to enhance the team’s work, and build AI-powered workflows that jump on those opportunities. The goal is to cre…

Long Beach Airport had a trailer problem. Long Beach’s quaint municipal airport originally opened in 1924 when airplanes flew using propellers—and the art deco terminal hadn’t undergone a full-scale renovation since. Instead, it adapted to the increased spatial demands of late 20th and early 21st century air travel, like increased security screening and modern baggage handling, in a rather temporary way: trailers. “It was known as the trailer park airport,” says Michael Bohn, a partner at Studio One Eleven, a Long Beach-based architecture and design firm. “It just became a hodgepodge. You went down these crazy aisles, and through different trailers. They had ven…

Last week, Disney briefed the press on how it’s bringing the entire Hulu catalog into its Disney+ app, with a dedicated tab for accessing Hulu’s more adult-oriented fare. But despite all the headlines you might’ve seen about the Hulu app shutting down, Disney says it’s not happening anytime soon, if at all. According to Disney, the company has no timeline for getting rid of the dedicated Hulu app, and will continue to sell stand-alone Hulu subscriptions. The company still sees Hulu as an important part of its streaming strategy, serving as a catchall for content that doesn’t fall under tentpole Disney brands such as Star Wars and Marvel. Outside of the United States, …

“Tron: Ares” powered up the box office grid in the top spot this weekend, but Disney’s third entry in the sci-fi franchise fell short of expectations. Despite some favorable reviews — including a three-out-of-four-star one from The Associated Press — the new “Tron” film starring Jared Leto, Greta Lee and Jeff Bridges earned $33.5 million, according to Comscore estimates on Sunday. The big-budget project, reported to cost around $150 million, arrived 15 years after “Tron: Legacy” opened to $44 million before grossing more than $400 million globally. The latest chapter follows a battle between two powerful technology firms, Emcom and Dillinger, who face off against the s…

Uncertainty over the economy and tariffs is forcing retailers to pull back or delay plans to hire seasonal workers who pack orders at distribution centers, serve shoppers at stores and build holiday displays during the most important selling season of the year. American Christmas LLC, which creates elaborate holiday installations for commercial properties such as New York’s Rockefeller Center and Radio City Music Hall, plans to hire 220 temporary workers and is ramping up recruitment nearly two months later than usual, CEO Dan Casterella said. Last year, the company took on 300 people during its busy period. The main reason? The company wants to offset its tariff …

JPMorgan Chase will directly invest up to $10 billion in U.S. companies with crucial ties to national security. The investment plan revealed Monday will focus on four areas: supply chain and advanced manufacturing in critical minerals, pharmaceutical precursors, and robotics; defense and aerospace; energy independence, with investments in battery storage and grid resilience; and strategic technologies, including artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, and quantum computing. The investment is part of the bank’s Security and Resiliency Initiative, a $1.5 trillion, 10-year plan to facilitate, finance, and invest in industries critical to national security. “It ha…

’Tis the season for carved pumpkins, god-awful candy corn, and an inevitable workplace costume that lands someone a well-earned talking-to from HR. Halloween is near, which means it’s the perfect time to reflect on a tale from the cubicle that’s even spookier than Tales From the Crypt. It starts with three words that would strike fear in the heart of anyone who’s ever worked in corporate America. Performance. Improvement. Plan. Taken at face value, the phrase sounds gentle, maybe even helpful, like the start of a company-sponsored self-care journey. In reality, a PIP is usually the workplace equivalent of a death sentence, a corporate guillotine that gives “being …

Repeat after me: You do not need expensive software just to make basic edits to PDF files. Maybe if you’re a legal professional collecting countless e-signatures on confidential documents, a tool like Adobe Acrobat is a necessity. For the rest of us who just need to sign, merge, split, or fill out PDF documents, there are simple online tools that do the job just as well. The latest advancement in online PDF editing? One that doesn’t require you to upload any of your personal files—and doesn’t even need an internet connection to function. This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and g…

For more than a century, a stretch of riverfront in Toronto was an industrial wasteland, with oil storage tanks, factories, and shipping infrastructure sitting on former wetlands. Now, part of the site is a sprawling new park, and next year, construction will begin on a new neighborhood inside it. “It’s incredibly transformed,” says Emily Mueller De Celis, a landscape architect at the firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, which won a competition to “renaturalize” the area in 2007. “Rather than walking around in and amongst oil refineries and other industry, now you are immersed in nature, walking along the banks of a river with spectacular views back to the cit…

Data centers have become the starting blocks in the global race for AI supremacy. Tech giants like Meta, Alphabet, and OpenAI have committed hundreds of billions of dollars collectively to building more of them. States are offering incentives for their development, and President Donald The President signed an executive order in July cutting regulations to speed up construction. For all the breakthroughs they promise, the environmental toll of these facilities is already staggering: According to the International Energy Agency, U.S. data centers used roughly 185 terawatt-hours of electricity in 2024—more than all of Pakistan’s 248 million people used that year. To keep…

The top prize in landscape architecture has just been awarded to Mexican designer Mario Schjetnan, a multifaceted landscape architect whose work has transformed parks across Mexico City and vastly expanded social housing projects across his home coountry. Schjetnan and his firm, Grupo de Diseño Urbano (GDU), were announced winners of the 2025 Cornelia Hahn Oberlander International Landscape Architecture Prize, a biennial award from the Cultural Landscape Foundation recognizing the most influential and impactful practitioners in the field. Schjetnan and GDU have designed some of the most significant parks in Mexico, including Chapultepec Forest and Park, the se…

Cabinet dealers, interior designers and remodeling contractors in the U.S. hope new tariffs on imported kitchen cabinets, bathroom vanities and upholstered wooden furniture that kicked in Tuesday will create more business for them and eventually boost domestic production of those products. But several small business owners in the home improvement industry say they expect some short-term pains from the import taxes: Clients with projects already on the books might balk at having to pay more for the budget-priced cabinets they selected. Potential customers may postpone kitchen and bathroom renovations until costs — and the economy — seem more stable. “I think the volatili…

Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba‘s cloud business unit has launched its second data center in Dubai, it said on Tuesday, nine years after its first, as it expands its global cloud computing services to meet growing demand. Alibaba Cloud, the digital technology and artificial intelligence division, said in a statement the launch was part of the technology major’s pledge to invest 380 billion yuan ($53 billion) over three years. No financial details were disclosed in Tuesday’s statement. “The Middle East’s advantageous position in fast-tracking AI adoption and its collaborative ecosystem are crucial enablers for private and public sector companies to thrive,” said E…

You’ve just lost your job. It hard. It’s really, really hard. There’s the initial shock, rage or panic—but then it’s time to immediately hop on the endless merry-go-round of excruciating applications, unresponsive recruiters, pleading LinkedIn DMs, and occasional existential crises. You can quickly feel hopeless, all alone, adrift, angry, and at wit’s end. That’s where we come in. Fast Company—the go-to authority on career development, workplace innovation, and business news—is debuting Between Jobs: a brand new pop-up newsletter, written for folks freshly out of work and on Day 1 of navigating their new normal. Want to hire a ghostwriter for your LinkedIn pro…