What's on Your Mind?

With Black Friday just about three weeks away, retailers and shoppers have one thing on their mind—Christmas, the busiest and most profitable time of the year. And now, with Halloween behind us, Spirit Halloween has pivoted to holiday-themed Spirit Christmas, featuring festive decor, gifts, holiday apparel, and interactive displays—including nutcrackers, inflatable lawn Santas, and ugly Christmas sweaters. The retail chain, owned by Spencer Gifts, launched nearly a dozen Spirit Christmas stores throughout the Northeast in 2024. This year, Spirit Christmas is opening 30 store locations in 12 states in the Northeast and Great Lakes area, including its flagship …

On November 6, Sweetgreen announced that it was selling Spyce, its division that developed and made its Infinite Kitchen technology to automate the assembly of its bowls and salads. The acquirer is Wonder, the “restaurant and mealtime superapp,” as Fast Company dubbed it earlier this year. With that, it’s time to eulogize Sweetgreen’s star-crossed life as a tech company. No more dreams of AI, blockchain, or robots. Sweetgreen receives $100 million in cash and $86.4 million in Wonder stock, a positive return given that it acquired Spyce in 2021 for a total cost of $70 million. Wonder, which is privately held, was valued north of $7 billion in May after it raised an…

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…

The The President administration isn’t backing down from its refusal to fully fund the SNAP program – even after being ordered to by a judge on Thursday. The federal government asked a federal appeals court on Friday to block a judge’s order directing the The President administration to fully distribute November’s SNAP benefits by the end of the day. In the U.S., 42 million people – 12% of Americans – rely on food stamps to buy groceries and afford food. Nearly 40% of SNAP recipients are children and another 20% are over the age of 60. On Thursday, a federal judge in Rhode Island ordered the government to release the full amount of federal funds for food stamps se…

Technology stocks fell on Friday, amid fears of an AI bubble, a further drawn out federal government shutdown, and economic data that suggests consumer sentiment has fallen toward record-low levels. That’s in addition to economic data that showed last month’s layoffs hit their highest level for October—in 20 years. That report, from global outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, also also said hiring slowed to lowest point in 14 years. Despite strong third-quarter earnings reports, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite Index (^IXIC) was down once again, for the second consecutive day, about 1% in afternoon trading on Friday, as big Tech Stocks tumbled, clos…

Now that Halloween has come and gone, you might have wrongly assumed that candy season is over. Not if the Hershey Company anything to say about it. In fact, the sweets are just getting started. On its first-annual holiday virtual preview this week, the confectionary company revealed four exciting new products and explained how the company is stocked and ready to make the hectic holiday season even sweeter. Here’s what to know: What new items does Hershey have up its sleeve? Hershey announced four new treats that will hit shelves this holiday season: Hershey’s Kisses Snickerdoodle Cookie Candy Kit Kat Peppermint Stick Reese’s Mini Trees Hers…

Two months ago, Apple released iOS 26 for the iPhone. The new operating system includes several productivity and other enhancements, but the main feature is a new design language called Liquid Glass. The flat, minimalist look of iOS that lasted for more than a decade is gone, replaced by a transparent interface of toolbars and buttons that mimic how light bends and warps as it passes through glass. Those who appreciate the new look of iOS often praise Liquid Glass as refreshing and unique, saying it gives the iPhone’s software a sense of fluidity that other touch interfaces lack. Others argue that Liquid Glass’s transparent elements make the device harder to use, as t…

“You really have to stand up for yourself.” That’s the message Shark Tank star Barbara Corcoran sent loud and clear in a recent interview she gave LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky. The interview is full of powerful lessons from Corcoran’s life, but one story stood head and shoulders above the rest: The time Shark Tank fired her, before she taped a single episode. Corcoran said she received a call from a woman asking her to be on a new show called Shark Tank. Ecstatic, Corcoran agreed. She immediately went on a shopping spree, buying new outfits and autograph-signing materials. “I’m going to Hollywood!” she excitedly told her friends. Then, Corcoran got a dreadf…

I love FM radio. It’s okay: You can call me a Luddite. My alarm clock is the local public radio station. I love toggling between a few music stations while driving, or even while reading at home. And during a road trip, there’s nothing quite like discovering a community station with random locals curating their own playlists—it gives you a sense of where you are that no Spotify playlist can match. The problem: It’s hard to know what stations exist locally, even in your own town but particularly while on a road trip. You can explore the dial, which has a certain serendipity, but what if you just want to . . . know? And be able to tune in with or without an actu…

When OpenAI launched its text-to-video app Sora in September, there was immediate blowback. To absolutely no one’s surprise, users on the platform had a field day using popular characters in their AI-generated videos, in all sorts of—admittedly creative!—situations. (See OpenAI founder Sam Altman grilling Nintendo’s Pikachu.) Brands condemned the use of their intellectual property without permission. The Motion Picture Academy called out OpenAI for its blatant copyright violations. Soon after launch, Altman wrote a blog post addressing the issue, stating that Sora would give rightsholders “more granular control” of their IP on the app, adding that in the near future h…

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…

If you glanced at the headlines this week, you might think everything is fine. Markets are not in full panic mode, unemployment is not spiking, and earnings season is still producing plenty of upbeat charts for investor decks. Underneath that, though, there is a very different story taking shape about what it takes to keep growth going when people are tired of paying more for less. Across the economy, companies are being forced to get creative. Some are reworking how they price core products, others are quietly shrinking their physical footprint, and a few are openly trying to trade short term stock market love for longer term loyalty. Even the hottest corners of tech…

The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece titled “Why Work-Life Balance Will Keep You Mediocre.” Certainly a headline designed to draw ire from many readers, myself included. The author advocates “ruthlessly” optimizing your time, from missing important events with loved ones to declining social events. The goal? In his case, he built a company worth $20 million and set himself up with financial freedom for the rest of his life. My gut reaction was, “That’s no way to live a life.” There was a time, in my early twenties, when I poured all of my energy and time into my job. I wore the badge of long hours and unlimited availability, replying to emails long i…

When the The President administration gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement access to a massive database of information about Medicaid recipients in June 2025, privacy and medical justice advocates sounded the alarm. They warned that the move could trigger all kinds of public health and human rights harms. But most people likely shrugged and moved on with their day. Why is that? It’s not that people don’t care. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 81% of American adults said they were concerned about how companies use their data, and 71% said they were concerned about how the government uses their data. At the same time, though, 61% expressed skeptic…

Countries around the world have been discussing the need to rein in climate change for three decades, yet global greenhouse gas emissions—and global temperatures with them—keep rising. When it seems like we’re getting nowhere, it’s useful to step back and examine the progress that has been made. Let’s take a look at the United States, historically the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. Over those three decades, the U.S. population soared by 28% and the economy, as measured by gross domestic product adjusted for inflation, more than doubled. Yet U.S. emissions from many of the activities that produce greenhouse gases—transportation, industry, agriculture, …

To create Apple TV’s new branding, a team from the global agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab (MAL) gathered in a studio with a blacked-out stage, a giant glass version of the Apple TV logo, and a bevy of colorful studio lights. Using just practical effects, they created a new animated logo for the brand that will roll out at the beginning of Apple TV’s shows and films, on its app, and in marketing campaigns over the coming months. Apple TV+ becomes Apple TV Apple TV’s updated branding, which includes a fresh static logo and two animated mnemonics, comes less than a month after the company announced that it would be changing its name from “Apple TV+” to just “Apple TV.…

Neither government shutdown nor IT outage can stop the merger of Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines. On Oct. 15, Seattle-based Alaska achieved one of the first major tech milestones of the combination. All new bookings made after that day for travel on either airline took place on Alaska’s reservations system, or “passenger service system” (PSS) in airline parlance. And all existing bookings at Hawaiian after April 22, 2026 were moved over to the platform. This is what Charu Jain, senior vice president of merchandising and innovation at Alaska who is overseeing the guest-facing technology integration of Hawaiian, calls the “selling cutover.” The idea is th…

What if I told you the single most important tool for growing your business is free? It doesn’t require fancy business cards, a corner office, or the latest app that tracks every data point in real time. It’s networking. Networking fuels growth, builds relationships, and keeps your business thriving. We live in a world moving at the speed of AI, where everything is changing all at once. As we streamline every aspect of life to be faster and more efficient, it only makes sense to modernize how we network. Before you overhaul your networking style, it’s important to remember the fundamentals, then build on them with new skills. Networking is everywhere, all th…

The job market is rough right now. Mass layoffs have people desperately clinging to their current positions. The Great Flattening has more and more workers competing for a dwindling number of roles as entry-level roles dry up and AI potentially rendering entire career paths obsolete. Long-term unemployment is at a post-pandemic high, with more than one in four workers without jobs unemployed for at least half a year. Which makes it a nerve-wracking time to be moving through any sort of career upheaval. If you do find yourself unmoored in the current market, whether or not by choice, it could be a good time to recalibrate and get clear on your next steps. Th…

Young people early in their careers are understandably alarmed by reports that their jobs are most at risk from AI automation. Some are even reconsidering their career choices due to what’s been dubbed AI anxiety. But job seekers shouldn’t give up. People whose jobs are threatened by AI must look for ways to play to their strengths and their human qualities. They should focus on the many areas where humans outshine AI—things like relationship building, resourcefulness, emotional intelligence, teamwork, and leadership. For much of the labor force, of course, it won’t be possible to avoid AI completely. Many occupations will involve working with AI not just as an as…

When Amazon proposed building its Project Blue data center in Tucson, Arizona, the company faced intense pushback. Residents raised concerns about the enormous amounts of water and electricity that the data center would need, two major ways such projects impact the environment, especially in a desert city. Ultimately, Tucson’s town council rejected the proposal (though its developer hasn’t given up). But the story highlights both the growing environmental impacts of data centers, and how location matters to that impact. A study published this week in the journal Nature Sustainability makes that connection even clearer. Led by researchers at Cornell University, t…

Just when you thought you’d seen it all on Capitol Hill, reopening the federal government appears to have hit yet another roadblock: Hemp. A day after Democratic Senators reached a deal with their Republican counterparts in the Senate to end the longest government shutdown in history, a vote on the agreement was held up by a provision in the bill that would ban the unregulated sale of hemp-based or derived products. The provision relates to funding for the Department of Agriculture, and was flagged by Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, home to a burgeoning hemp industry. Paul introduced an amendment to strip the language on Monday, but the amendment failed. Subsequent…

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…

The tech industry is moving fast and breaking things again—and this time it is humanity’s shared reality and control of our likeness before and after death—thanks to artificial intelligence image-generation platforms like OpenAI’s Sora 2. The typical Sora video, made on OpenAI’s app and spread onto TikTok, Instagram, X, and Facebook, is designed to be amusing enough for you to click and share. It could be Queen Elizabeth II rapping or something more ordinary and believable. One popular Sora genre is fake doorbell camera footage capturing something slightly uncanny —say, a boa constrictor on the porch or an alligator approaching an unfazed child—and ends with a mild sh…

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…