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Paramount is the latest company to join the bloodbath of layoffs this week. The entertainment giant began cutting around 1,000 workers on Wednesday, with twice that many pink slips expected in the days to come. In a memo to staff, new Paramount CEO David Ellison characterized the reductions, which will ultimately shrink the company by 10%, as a necessary step for the company’s long-term growth. “In some areas, we are addressing redundancies that have emerged across the organization,” Ellison wrote in a memo obtained by The Guardian and other outlets. “In others, we are phasing out roles that are no longer aligned with our evolving priorities and the new structure…

The latest buzzword is “AI literacy.” Much like “social media,” “ESG,” and “CSR” before it, employers are now looking for proof of fluency on résumés, and individuals are desperate to differentiate themselves to show that they are keeping pace. And it’s everywhere, mentions of terms like “agentic AI,” “AI workforce,” “digital labor,” and “AI agents” during earnings calls increased by nearly 800% in the last year, according to AlphaSense data. Over the last five years, workers across industries have become expected to be well-versed in a technology that is ever-evolving and still relatively new for so many, including the leaders implementing it. The trouble with AI is…

Below, Paul Leonardi shares five key insights from his new book, Digital Exhaustion: Simple Rules for Reclaiming Your Life. Paul is a professor of technology management at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a frequent consultant and speaker to a wide range of companies, such as Google, Microsoft, YouTube, McKinsey, GM, and Fidelity. He is also a contributor to the Harvard Business Review. What’s the big idea? We are the first generation in human history to carry the entire world’s information, connections, and distractions in our pockets. It’s no wonder that the technology once promised to make life easier now leaves us tired and overwhelmed. Pa…

Hurricane Melissa, which made landfall in Jamaica on Tuesday, October 28, was one of strongest hurricanes to make landfall in the Atlantic ocean ever recorded. And it was supercharged by the effects of climate change. As it approached the Caribbean, Melissa—a Category 5 storm with winds of 185 mph—moved over exceptionally warm waters. The ocean was 2.2°F (or 1.2°C) warmer than average for this time of year—conditions that were “made up to 900 times more likely by human-caused climate change,” according to the scientists at the research nonprofit Climate Central. Carbon emissions from human actions trap heat in the atmosphere, but our oceans absorb most of tha…

Every single day, the average working person plays many roles: sassy coworker, office comedian, and deadline stickler, to name a few. The labor doesn’t stop when one gets home—with new job titles coming into play, such as mom, brother, pet parent, and more. On Halloween, you get to choose which character you want to inhabit instead of having society dictate your role. This frivolity requires forward thinking and planning. If you find yourself running out of time, popular culture and a few easy-to-obtain items can come to the rescue. Here are nine easy costume ideas that range from classic to timely. The Louvre museum robbers This one is perfect for last-min…

If you blinked this week, you might’ve missed a few major moves. Netflix decided it’s time for a stock split, Amazon trimmed thousands of jobs, and Walmart is already dropping “Black Friday” prices before the Halloween candy wrappers are even off. Meanwhile, housing trends, climate shocks, and AI budgets kept reshaping the conversation about what’s next for growth. Here’s a look at what mattered most this week, and why these stories could shape the months ahead. Mortgage-free America hits a new high A record 40.3% of owner-occupied homes are owned free and clear, up from 39.8% last year. Aging baby boomers and longer lifespans concentrate equity among older…

Most people still measure performance in hours. They pack their calendars as full as possible, track time down to the minute, and take pride in squeezing more into each day. However, the best performance comes from harnessing rhythm—the alignment of energy, capacity, and focus. It’s what turns effort into flow. In the industrial age, managing time made sense: productivity was tethered to factory shifts and desk schedules. But in today’s BANI—brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible—world, hours spent no longer translate neatly into value created. The leaders who thrive now are those who sense and harness the rhythms of their team. Energy rises and falls acros…

Below, coauthors Bruce Schneier and Nathan Sanders share five key insights from their new book, Rewiring Democracy: How AI Will Transform Our Politics, Government, and Citizenship. Bruce is a security technologist, teaching at the Harvard Kennedy School and the Munk School at the University of Toronto. He is also a board member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Chief of Security Architecture at Inrupt, Inc. Nathan is a data scientist affiliated with Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center. He is focused on making policymaking more participatory, with his research spanning machine learning, astrophysics, public health, environmental justice, and more. What’s the…

Voters are filling in their ballots today to choose who will lead America’s largest city for the next four years. New York being a center of global finance and business means that its local elections will always attract some degree of attention outside of the five boroughs, but the city’s mayoral race this year has garnered far more national interest than usual. That’s in large part thanks to Zohran Mamdani, the assemblymember from Queens who was virtually unknown outside of New York before he launched his campaign a year ago. Mamdani went viral early in the race with entertaining person-on-the-street videos in the wake of Donald The President’s second pres…

If the three years since the release of ChatGPT have signaled OpenAI’s dominance of generative artificial intelligence, it’s worth recalling that the company’s rapid rise would have been impossible without another Big Tech backer. In 2019, Microsoft agreed to supply OpenAI all the compute it needed, with near exclusivity. In exchange, Microsoft retained the right to use OpenAI’s tech until the arrival of artificial general intelligence, or AGI: the point at which AI systems are able to act like humans and respond to whatever task they’re given, regardless of whether they’ve been trained to solve it. As generative AI’s capabilities blew past initial expectations, t…

Have you ever wondered how the letter “A” got its shape? Or why some fonts instantly look “psychedelic”? Or where the word “text” even came from in the first place? Kelli Anderson, a graphic artist, author, and master of all things paper, has asked all of those questions—and she’s answering them with a massive new pop-up book called Alphabet in Motion. The book takes readers through an interactive journey about the history of typography from A to Z, starting in ancient Egypt and moving all the way into the digital age. But it’s no ordinary history tome. Anderson hand-designed 17 different pop-ups, including light projections to colorful sliders and mind-bending i…

Nintendo’s hard-line approach to piracy has shut down a streamer who seemingly specialized in unauthorized content. Jesse Keighin has been ordered to pay Nintendo $17,500 in damages after livestreaming gameplay footage of at least 10 different games on at least 50 occasions before the games were released to the public. Included among those were Super Mario Party Jamboree, Mario & Luigi: Brothership, The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom, and Pikmin 4. Keighin was served with takedown notices by Nintendo dozens of times for those streams. Yet he continued to air himself playing the games, encouraging viewers to support him on loco.gg, an Indian live-streaming a…

As the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history drags on, federal workers are left in financial limbo—and the airline industry is feeling the strain as flight delays and cancellations mount at the nation’s busiest airports. In the midst of this upheaval, American Airlines has announced “small” reductions in management and support roles at its Texas headquarters, raising the stakes at a particularly challenging moment. According to the Associated Press, the move is described as a way to align staffing with current operational needs and boost organizational efficiency. A company statement emphasized that investments will continue in other areas supporti…

“Get laid off with me.” So read the closed captions of a recent TikTok post. “My boss just put a 15 minute sink on my calendar,” creator @mbraindump said in the now-viral post. “I can’t believe this is really happening. Getting laid off, okay, here we go.” It is a sinking feeling that’s sadly familiar to myriad workers. In just the past week, thousands have fallen victim to mass layoffs at Amazon, Target, Paramount, CBS, and other large companies. After Amazon laid off 14,000 corporate employees last week, or 4% of its white-collar workforce, a number of workers started cropping up on social media to document their experiences. The trend of documenting be…

As the longest government shutdown in U.S. history continues, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has ordered flight reductions at 40 major airports, including Atlanta, New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. The move begins with affecting 4% of flights, with plans to ramp up to impact 1 in 10 flights at those airports, disrupting travel plans for thousands of Americans every day. But Patriotic Millionaires, a group of high-net-worth individuals who advocate for more progressive taxes in order to close the wealth gap, is suggesting an alternative that it says would spare commercial airline passengers and still offer relief for air traffic controllers: Just canc…

Since 1818, loyal readers of the Farmers’ Almanac have turned to the publication for weather predictions, gardening tips, astronomy calendars, and more. But, on November 6, the Farmers’ Almanac announced that the 2026 edition of the magazine will be its last. The news came through a post to the Farmers’ Almanac website by editor Sandi Duncan and editor emeritus Peter Geiger. “It is with a great appreciation and heartfelt emotions that we write to share some sad news,” the note reads. “After more than 200 years of sharing a unique blend of weather, wit and wisdom, we’ve made the very difficult decision to write the final chapter of this historical publication.” P…

Over the past 50 years in the shoe trade, I have had my fair share of failure. The biggest lesson I learned, at the start of my career, is not to devote time and energy to a business or project that has little chance of success. This might sound obvious, however sometimes you are so involved in the detail of the day to day running of the business that you don’t stand back and question the future viability of what you are doing. I was a women’s shoe manufacturer in London in the 1980s. If I had looked at the big picture I would have seen that the future of manufacturing in the U.K. for low technology, high labor content businesses like footwear manufacturing, was u…

Below, Ranjay Gulati shares five key insights from his new book, How to Be Bold: The Surprising Science of Everyday Courage. Gulati is a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. He is a leading expert on purpose-driven leadership and helps organizations unlock growth and meaning. What’s the big idea? Courage is essential in the uncertain world we live in. It allows us to expand our horizons, grow in unexpected ways, and reach our fullest potential by taking bold action. How to Be Bold provides a road map for understanding what courage really is, explains why it’s important in our personal and professional lives, and offers a set of pract…

Every professional faces cycles consisting of booms, busts, restructurings, and reinventions. The difference between those who endure and those who fade isn’t luck or timing; it’s adaptability. In volatile economies, careers built on curiosity and agility thrive long after others stall. No market cycle lasts forever. Careers, like economies, move through expansions and contractions. It’s vital to continue upskilling, remain flexible, and adapt to market cycles. They are not always predictable, but the leaders who adapt, always learn, network, reflect, and rebalance will outperform the cycles. Adaptability Is the New Alpha In finance and beyond, resilience has …

Tesla is getting into the rental car market. Drivers can now rent a Tesla in two Southern California locations—San Diego and Costa Mesa—for three to seven days, starting at $60 daily, according to Electrek. Tesla will be renting, not leasing its EVs, and plans to continue rolling out additional U.S. locations starting this month. Fast Company has reached out to Tesla for comment. The news comes as the electric vehicle (EV) maker looks for new ways to head off further declines in U.S. sales following the expiration of its federal tax credits, and comes amid continued backlash against the company for CEO Elon Musk’s role in the U.S. government, coupled with gro…

Recently, New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat moderated a debate on the Interesting Times podcast between Helen Andrews and Leah Libresco Sargeant, two conservative critics of modern feminism. The podcast received major blowback, starting with (but not ending with) the fact that the original headline of the conversation was “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” Quickly, after the predictable backlash hit, the headline was changed to “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?” But the diversion didn’t help the conversation’s case all that much. While the headline was softened to perhaps dress up the discussion as an urgent political issue, mostly, it felt like intelle…

Apple said it has pulled two of China’s biggest gay dating apps, Blued and Finka, under pressure from Chinese authorities, in the latest sign of a tightening grip on the LGBTQ+ community. An Apple spokesperson said in a statement that the company removed the two dating apps from China “based on an order from the Cyberspace Administration of China”, without further elaborating. “We follow the laws in the countries where we operate,” the spokesperson told The Associated Press. A check by The Associated Press on Tuesday found that the two apps are not available on Apple’s app store in China, although an “express” version of Blued could still be found. It was uncl…