What's on Your Mind?

The newest plaza in Valencia, Spain, has everything one might expect from a public space in a temperate seaside Spanish city. Its five acres contain green space, a playground, ball courts, and walking paths, and the plaza connects to a new market hall, with restaurants and bars serving a wide range of local specialties. Next to all this—and the real reason for any of it existing at all—is Roig Arena, the new multipurpose stadium built for the men’s and women’s professional basketball teams of the Valencia Basket Club. The basketball arena is hardly the second thought here, but it’s much more a piece of this broader civic space than the typical pro sports facility.…

Affordable housing has gone in search of collaborations. Across the country, developers and cities have found a solution in pairing housing with unexpected projects to save money and build more vibrant communities. A wave of libraries, fire stations, and even Costco stores have been built below or adjacent to much-needed, lower-cost apartments. Now a new development in the Southern California city of San Juan Capistrano is sharing a lot with City Hall. Salida del Sol, a $31 million, 49-unit supportive housing development by Jamboree Housing Corp., opened this past July on a 2.2-acre site downtown. At a time when federal support for homeless services is waveri…

If you’re flying later this month, you may need to temper your expectations now: The major U.S. airlines are warning that flight disruptions could persist even after the government shutdown ends. The longest government shutdown in U.S. history seemingly has an end in sight now that the Senate passed legislation Monday night to end the shutdown. But the recent flurry of canceled and delayed flights could continue, warned a trade group made up of the major U.S.-based airlines—American, Southwest, Delta, and United—as well as UPS and FedEx. “Airlines’ reduced flight schedules cannot immediately bounce back to full capacity right after the government reopens,” Airlin…

You might not have noticed if you’re the type to upgrade your smartphone frequently, but the main cameras that they use have been getting wider and wider in their field of view throughout the years. While phones are now indisputably the most popular cameras in the world, most manufacturers have settled on a type of lens that used to be considered quite exotic and challenging to use in the camera space. The main camera on the iPhone 17 Pro, for example, has the same field of view as a 24mm lens on a full-frame camera, which is the general photographic standard for measuring focal lengths. This is a perspective that few companies would have considered using on a point-a…

People often take walking for granted. We just move, one step after another, without ever thinking about what it takes to make that happen. Yet every single step is an extraordinary act of coordination, driven by precise timing between spinal cord, brain, nerves, muscles, and joints. Historically, people have used stopwatches, cameras, or trained eyes to assess walking and its deficits. However, recent technological advances such as motion capture, wearable sensors, and data science methods can record and quantify characteristics of step-by-step movement. We are researchers who study biomechanics and human performance. We and other researchers are increasingly app…

Jonathan Haidt, author of ‘The Anxious Generation,’ breaks down the psychology behind Gen Z’s social media addiction and what digital dependance actually does to a young person’s brain. View the full article

It shouldn’t be much of a surprise that an AI-powered tool called “Oz” is heading out of, or near, the Emerald City. On November 12, Microsoft and Land O’Lakes announced that the two companies have co-developed an AI-powered agricultural science tool called “Oz,” designed to help farmers and agricultural operations. Specifically, farmers are facing some very serious problems: labor shortages and lower yields associated with changing climates. Further, costs for fuel, fertilizer, equipment, and tools, not to mention international trade issues, have put agricultural operations in an even tighter vise. Oz was built to help agronomists and farmers do more with what th…

In the space of a few months, a journalistic skill that might seem straightforward to many viewers—editing tape for broadcast—has been behind a $16 million legal settlement, a network’s change in how it offers interviews on a news show, and now, the resignation of two top leaders at the BBC. The other common denominator: President Donald The President. Britain’s BBC is reeling this week following the resignations of its director-general, Tim Davie, and news chief Deborah Turness amid accusations of bias in the editing of last year’s documentary, “The President: A Second Chance.” The BBC admitted filmmakers spliced together quotes from different sections of the spe…

World Labs, the AI model developer cofounded by AI pioneer Fei-Fei Li, has released its 3D-space generating model, “Marble.” At the Marble Labs website, creators can now input text prompts, images, or videos of pieces of a real-world environment. Marble uses them to create full 3D environments, which can include interior spaces or expansive exterior ones. Marble can reconstruct, generate, and simulate 3D worlds—think of it as a type of “world model.” In an interview with Fast Company, Li describes world models as a “significant” evolution of the generative AI era. “The large world model is really a significant step towards unlocking AI’s capability,” a category she ca…

Oscar-winning actors Michael Caine and Matthew McConaughey have made deals with voice-cloning company ElevenLabs that will allow its artificial intelligence technology to replicate their voices. Caine said in a statement that ElevenLabs is “using innovation not to replace humanity, but to celebrate it.” “It’s not about replacing voices; it’s about amplifying them, opening doors for new storytellers everywhere,” said the 92-year-old British actor in a written statement. McConaughey also said he is investing in the New York-based startup and has had a relationship with it for several years. Financial terms of the deals were not disclosed. McConaughey said the de…

Artificial intelligence company Anthropic announced a $50 billion investment in computing infrastructure on Wednesday that will include new data centers in Texas and New York. Microsoft also on Wednesday announced a new data center under construction in Atlanta, Georgia, describing it as connected to another in Wisconsin to form a “massive supercomputer” running on hundreds of thousands of Nvidia chips to power AI technology. The latest deals show that the tech industry is moving forward on huge spending to build energy-hungry AI infrastructure, despite lingering financial concerns about a bubble, environmental considerations, and the political effects of fast-ris…

It’s a random Tuesday in October, and your kids are home again. A national holiday? Nope. A snow day. Not even a speck of frost on the ground. It’s Professional Development Day or Parent-Teacher Conference Half Day or one of the 15 other noninstructional days that appear in the school calendar like little landmines for anyone with a full-time job. At this point, I’ve stopped trying to keep track. Every month seems to come with a “surprise, they’re home” moment. And as a working parent, there are few phrases that strike fear into my heart quite like: “No School Today!” I love my kids, but that doesn’t mean I can drop everything every time the school district decide…

Seeing peers lose their jobs has a way of making people weird. It’s not much different from grief. When someone loses a loved one, you can almost feel the tension: people fumbling for the right words, hoping not to say something insensitive, then saying something insensitive anyway. “Everything happens for a reason.” “They’re in a better place.” That is, assuming any condolences are shared at all. Many of us have been there. You don’t want to overstep. Don’t want to make the person feel worse. I get it: Showing sympathy can feel like a minefield. The same thing happens when companies downsize their staff, only the loss isn’t life. It’s employment. When someone get…

Motivation comes and go, but consistency is what will get you the results. That’s a principle I’ve tried to live by for as long as I can remember. For the most part, it has served me pretty well. But as I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned that being consistent while being unmotivated can be energy draining. And when mental and physical energy is lacking, it can be difficult to be consistent. Earlier this year, I found myself in a bit of a motivation rut. I’d had a very busy six months of work. As a freelancer, this is something that I’m definitely grateful for and don’t take for granted. When things started to slow down for a little bit, I figured that I would finally ha…

College across the country may soon start seeing a much older demographic roaming their campuses. According to a report from the higher education publication Best Colleges, at least 84 public or nonprofit colleges have announced they would merge or close over the past five years. Almost half of those are outright closures, as small colleges struggle to keep up with rising costs amid falling enrollment. In many instances, the shuttering of a college means the mothballing of its campus. But while some campuses are being left idle with no future plans, a growing number are finding new life in the form of senior living facilities. That doesn’t mean just moving senior…

From the outside looking in, the life of a content creator is enviable. Shopping, jet-setting, star-studded events, all documented for their audience of thousands. But new research tells a different story. A study by Creators 4 Mental Health, conducted in partnership with Lupiani Insights & Strategies and sponsored by Opus, BeReal, Social Currant, Statusphere, and the nonprofit AAKOMA Project, spoke to more than 500 full- and part-time creators across North America about their work, mental health, and well-being. One in ten creators reported having suicidal thoughts tied to their work. That rate is nearly double the national average of 5.5%, according to the…

How do you explain the laws of physics to a toddler? A new children’s book, titled Simple Machines Made Simple, wants to demystify mechanical engineering for kids as young as a year old. It recently beat its Kickstarter goal by 700%—raising more than seven times its target. It will be available to ship early next year. But Simple Machines Made Simple isn’t your typical picture book. Instead of drawings, the book features working models that kids can interact with, like spinning a wheel, sliding a knob up an inclined plane, and pushing a wedge into a block that splits into two. The kids may not graduate with a physics degree, but they might come away with a curiosi…

Your pennies are now collector’s items. The last penny was minted Wednesday at the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia, spelling the end of America’s longest-running coin design. More than Andy Warhol’s Marilyn Monroe or Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, it’s sculptor and medalist Victor David Brenner’s profile of Abraham Lincoln on the humble penny that’s actually believed to be the most-reproduced piece of art in the history of the world: the U.S. Mint estimates some 300 billion pennies remain in circulation. And even though no new pennies will be minted, the coin will remain legal tender—good news for those inclined to give a penny, take a penny at their local gas station. …

For decades, Adobe’s software tools, including Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, have been the universal language of visual communication, shaping how marketers, artists, and brands build the modern creative world. As artificial intelligence transforms the nature of work and how we define productivity, the 42-year-old creative tech company is reinventing itself once again, transforming the world’s creative supply chains through its AI ecosystem. Designers and marketers globally are using Adobe Firefly for generative image creation, Substance 3D for photorealistic modeling and digital twins, Express for rapid on-brand content production, and Experience Manager for…

It’s open enrollment season again—that period between October and November when workers must reacquaint themselves with “deductibles,” “copays,” and “premiums.” Many would rather wait at the DMV, sit through a three-hour work meeting, or attempt to explain social media to tech-challeged loved ones than spend their afternoon selecting an insurance plan. That’s why some workers are farming out everything on their health insurance to-do list to AI and social media. New research from HR tech company Justworks and The Harris Poll shows we’re entering the era of “benefit burnout”: Many people are not doing their own research on what plans are best for them, and instead…

New locker rooms. Rows of seats removed. Every last Real Madrid sign hidden from sight. These are just some of the measures the National Football League took to transform one of the world’s most iconic soccer stadiums for a matchup between the Miami Dolphins and the Washington Commanders. On November 16, the two teams will compete on the field of Real Madrid’s Santiago Bernabéu, though the pitch won’t look anything like its usual self. To get the field ready, the NFL spent $2.32 million on a series of temporary renovations. The most fundamental change was to the playing surface itself. Since soccer pitches are shorter than American football fields, the playing field h…

Our culture equates busyness with importance, overcommitment with achievement, and exhaustion with value. For high-achieving professionals, this belief system isn’t just inconvenient, it’s quietly eroding energy, focus, and fulfillment. Meetings pile up, emails never end, and the pressure to “do it all” becomes a measure of worth. And yet, this version of productivity is deeply misleading. The truth is, sustainable success doesn’t come from cramming more into your day. It comes from aligning what you do with who you are, and giving yourself permission to prioritize energy, clarity, and presence over perpetual motion. Because motion for the sake of it is meaningless. …

Black, unassuming, about the size of a pack of chewing gum: On the surface, the Fire TV 4K Select stick released in mid-October looks just like any other streaming device made by Amazon. Plug it into your TV, and you’ll be greeted by Amazon’s tried-and-true living room interface, complete with icons for popular streaming apps like Netflix, Disney+ and Prime Video. And yet, the Select streaming stick is unlike any of its predecessors. That’s because the device is running Vega – a new, Linux-based operating system Amazon has quietly been building over the past couple of years as a replacement for its legacy, Android-based Fire OS. The company plans to eventually la…

When you open Microsoft Excel to review quarterly results or check Waze to optimize your route to the office, you’re tapping into technologies born not in corporate boardrooms, but in university labs. Thinking of innovation, our minds often jump to the titans of tech: Jobs, Musk, Altman, Gates, Bezos. But behind everyday tech innovations and healthcare breakthroughs are academic researchers whose work catalyzed billion-dollar industries. The unsung heroes of the lab and lecture hall have laid the groundwork for some of the most transformative technologies of our time. A few make celebrity status as Nobel prize winners, but the glory of most academics is poorly underst…

AI has a writing style, or, at least, an alleged style. Tools like ChatGPT and Claude seem to communicate with a tendency toward formalism. The chatbots are earnest, sometimes too evenhanded or overly complimentary. There’s a noticeable lack of personal flair, and no deeply held opinions. According to Grammarly, AI language tends to evoke “repetitive phrasing” and “robotic tone.” Now, there are even AI buzzwords and phrases like pivotal and delve into and underscore. It’s the verbiage of instruction booklets for middle schoolers writing their first essays. In the age of AI, these helpful crutch words are now verbata non grata. Some people are now trying to avoid usin…