What's on Your Mind?

For years, email, texting, and messaging apps have ruled how we communicate. But one timeless human skill—often neglected—is quickly becoming a true difference-maker in the digital age. Active listening. It’s both an art and a discipline, and it’s what separates average leaders from exceptional ones (while making them instantly likable in the process). The truth is, active listening is the foundation of effective communication and the heartbeat of strong relationships. Yet as technology consumes more of our attention, we’re losing touch with this skill—and with it, a powerful competitive advantage in business. When you focus on your people—their growth, th…

The people of New York have spoken. In electing Zohran Mamdani mayor, they voted for generational change, democratic socialism, and joyful pop-culture politics. The historical significance of Mamdani’s victory will be parsed for days, weeks, and years to come. But the people of New York did not just elect a mayor, they also voted to change the way housing gets built in one of the tightest housing markets in the United States. Voters passed three ballot initiatives designed to speed up and increase housing production by an even greater margin than Mamdani’s victory. With these ballot initiatives, Mamdani also won a huge victory—one he didn’t even campaign for, th…

How I spend my hours in the day is how I live. To make the most of my waking hours, I practice the one-hour rule—a simple habit that helps me learn, reflect, and think. I give myself 60 uninterrupted minutes a day to try and become a little wiser than I was yesterday. I consciously take control of my growth to transform how I think, how I decide, or live. It takes commitment. But just an hour a day learning, thinking, and reflecting is helping me improve my life processes. That’s it. Sixty minutes. Five hours a week. And you are upgrading yourself daily. That means reading something that stretches you. Reflecting on what went wrong and why. Sitting in silence and lett…

During an annual condominium meeting, at the end, the leader asked if anyone had any suggestions or questions. I spoke up: “How about we convert a portion of our common storage into a small gym?” My idea was met with uncomfortable silence, and eventually the leader responded hesitantly: “I honestly don’t know how to address that,” before promptly closing the meeting. In that moment, I began doubting myself, wondering, Was my idea really that bad? Was it stupid? Years later, small gyms in condominiums became a popular trend, adding real value to properties. My idea wasn’t rejected because it lacked merit. It was dismissed because the environment wasn’t open to new …

Many entrepreneurs launch beauty startups because they see a glaring gap in the market. It’s only after they’ve formulated their products and launched them that they learn how incredibly difficult it is to turn a profit as a beauty business. That wasn’t the case for Tisha Thompson, founder of LYS (short for Love Yourself), a clean cosmetics brand that is inclusive to all skin tones. Since launching the line in 2021, Thompson has grown LYS’s sales to upward of $10 million. And she did so in a counterintuitive way: by building a bootstrapped brand that launched immediately into Sephora with just $500,000 in startup capital. Thompson’s success is remarkable, particul…

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…

In President Donald The President’s ongoing second-term White House remodel, even the typography is getting the Mar-a-Lago treatment. New signage has begun rolling out at the White House this fall. First, the words “The Presidential Walk of Fame” appeared in September in the gold Shelley Script on the West Colonnade. The signage appears above the presidential portraits The President installed to troll former President Joe Biden. Now new images show lettering that reads “The Oval Office” written in the same font, and which appears to be going up on its exterior wall. The White House press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment about whether…

Being laid off is bad enough. Falling victim to “strategic realignment” or “the growth playbook”? That’s just adding insult to injury. Last week, Amazon shared a memo sent to staff as the company implemented mass layoffs. The post detailed the overall reduction in its corporate workforce of 14,000 roles (about 4% of its white-collar workforce). While news of the layoffs attracted media attention, the focus across social media wasn’t so much on the contents of the memo as the headline itself: “Staying nimble and continuing to strengthen our organizations.” “Corporate buzzword masterclass,” Morning Brew wrote in a now-viral post on X. “You weren’t fired, you w…

My “aha” moment about how to use artificial intelligence effectively came from an engineering group that built an operating model for experimenting with AI. They didn’t “pilot” AI once and move on—they built lightweight checklists and safety rails so teams could try, learn, and scale, week after week. Some guidance was deeply technical, but the lesson was universal: Make continuous experimentation part of how the team works. Not a side project. That’s the job in front of every leader now. AI is changing work at two levels at once: Individuals’ capabilities are being augmented, and teams are collaborating differently. The best results don’t come from isolate…

Ikea is ready to begin overhauling its smart home products. The Swedish furniture manufacturer began dabbling in smart home products as early as 2012, but in July it announced plans to soon debut a revamped range. The goal, it says, is to make products that are more universally compatible and more intuitive to use—in other words, bringing the connected smart home experience to the masses. Now, Ikea’s 21 new smart home products are here. The collection includes new smart bulbs that come in more color and light intensity options than previous versions, an array of sensors and controls, and a smart plug that can make any “dumb” lamp or small appliance smart. Pricing …

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…

Travelers through some of the busiest U.S. airports can expect to learn Thursday whether they’ll see fewer flights as the government shutdown drags into a second month. The Federal Aviation Administration will announce the 40 “high-volume markets” where it is reducing flights by 10% before the cuts go into effect Friday, said agency administrator Bryan Bedford. The move is intended to keep the air space safe during the shutdown, the agency said. Experts predict hundreds if not thousands of flights could be canceled. The cuts could represent as many as 1,800 flights and upwards of 268,000 seats combined, according to an estimate by aviation analytics firm Cirium. “I’m n…

European shares opened lower on Thursday after a broad advance in Asia spurred by a rebound on Wall Street. Upbeat economic updates and a steady flow of quarterly reports from U.S. companies have helped counter worries over surging share prices for Big Tech companies. But that optimism failed to carry over from Asia to Europe. Germany’s DAX lost 0.2% to 24,003.24, while the CAC 40 in Paris declined 0.5% to 8,033.11. Britain’s FTSE 100 slipped 0.2% to 9,761.18. The future for the S&P 500 was virtually unchanged while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.1%. In Asia, shares bounced back from a retreat the day before. Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 jumped 1.3% to 5…

Until recently, some of the fastest-growing places in the U.S. were also among the most exposed to climate risk. But that’s starting to change—more Americans are now moving out of the areas that are most likely to flood. In the Miami area, where nearly a third of homes face flood risk, nearly 70,000 more people moved away than moved in last year, according to a new report from Redfin. In Houston, the domestic outflow was more than 30,000 people; in Brooklyn, where around a quarter of homes face flood risk, around 28,000 more people left than moved in. In Florida’s Pinellas County, where many homes were hit hard by Hurricane Helene, around 4,000 more people left for ot…

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…

Qatar Airways will sell its stake in Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airways in a share buyback valued at $896 million, the companies announced, ending the Qatari carrier’s eight-year involvement with the airline. The announcement came late Wednesday in a stock market filing by Cathay Pacific, which saw its shares gain 4.2% on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Thursday. Under the agreement, Qatar Airways will sell all of its holdings, which represent 9.57% of Cathay Pacific stock. The airline’s other major shareholders are Swire Pacific and Air China. The plan is subject to shareholder approval. “The buy-back reflects our strong confidence in the future of the Cathay Grou…

There was a moment when Snapchat looked like it was destined to be a relic in social media history, losing users and missing its own revenue forecasts. Not today. Snap, the app’s parent company, announced $1.51 billion in revenue as part of its third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, November 5. That figure was a 10% jump year-over-year (YOY) and beat Wall Street’s prediction of $1.49 billion, according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC. Snapchat beat Wall Street’s expected global daily active users (477 million versus 476 million) and global average revenue per user ($3.16 versus $3.13). Both figures were also an improvement YOY. Snap also announced a stock…

President Donald The President has warned that the United States will be rendered “defenseless” and possibly “reduced to almost Third World status” if the Supreme Court strikes down the tariffs he imposed this year on nearly every country on earth. The justices sounded skeptical during oral arguments Wednesday of his sweeping claims of authority to impose tariffs as he sees fit. The truth, though, is that The President will still have plenty of options to keep taxing imports aggressively even if the court rules against him. He can re-use tariff powers he deployed in his first term and can reach for others, including one that dates back to the Great Depression. “It’s…

Shares in language learning platform Duolingo, Inc. (Nasdaq: DUOL) are plummeting this morning. As of this writing, the stock is down a staggering 25% in premarket trading. That cliff edge comes after the company reported strong Q3 numbers yesterday. So what’s the reason for today’s fall? Here’s what you need to know. Duolingo reports a strong Q3 2025 By nearly every metric, Duolingo had a strong third quarter, which ended on September 30, 2025. Here are the key metrics the company reported for its Q3: Daily Active Users: 50.5 million (up 36% year over year) Monthly Active Users: 135.3 million (up 20% YOY) Paid Subscribers: 11.5 million (up 34% YOY)…

Over the last two years, the value of content has collapsed. Thanks to the LLM revolution, the internet is drowning in an avalanche of indistinguishable output: an endless parade of fast-food writing, recycled reports, and SEO-bait fluff optimized for algorithms instead of people. That’s why the only competitive moat left is the human story. For business leaders, this creates an urgent mandate: Storytelling is no longer a marketing tactic. It’s a strategic business imperative—the only reliable engine for changing minds and shifting behaviors. If your brand’s narrative isn’t uniquely human and demonstrably ownable, it will vanish in the churn. Here’s how to find th…

Tech is shifting faster than the models we built our impact on. And that means even thriving nonprofits face a choice: Keep optimizing what works—or rebuild for what’s coming. Back in June, our leadership team made a decision that felt both risky and obvious: Change a strategy that was still working to accommodate an AI future. We’d been writing and speaking for years about the need for the social sector to stop talking and start doing—and we realized it was time to take our own advice. For the last five years, our organization has helped nonprofits worldwide build tech solutions in partnership with leading tech companies. It worked. It made a difference. But by 2…

New York City has elected a democratic socialist as its next mayor. Across the internet, progressive internet users are hopescrolling for the first time in years and proudly declaring: “woke is back.” With his victory, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will become the city’s first Muslim mayor, the first of South Asian heritage, the first born in Africa, and the youngest in more than a century. During his victory speech, Mamdani reaffirmed his support for workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, and the rights of all vulnerable New Yorkers, including LGBTQ people. “BREAKING: WOKE IS BACK!,” one X user posted. “THERE ARE 25 GENDERS. WE’RE GOING TO TRANS THE ECONOMY. DEI F…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. I’m Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, I’m focusing on a new court filing that sheds more light on the reasons for Sam Altman’s ouster from OpenAI two years ago. I also look at Amazon’s kerfuffle with Perplexity over AI shopping agents, and at another court ruling that using copyrighted data for AI training is fair use. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastco…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Today, institutional landlords—those owning more than 1,000 homes—remain a relatively small part of the national single-family housing market. They own less than 1.0% of the total U.S. single-family housing stock and have accounted for only about 0.3% of transactions over the past three years. Yet, two decades ago, they didn’t even really exist. When Blackstone began buying single-family rentals in 2011, there wasn’t a single firm that owned at least 1,000 U.S. single-family homes. By late 2016, Blackstone’s fund, Invitation Homes—which the firm late…