What's on Your Mind?

Since 2019, Abercrombie & Fitch Co. has undergone a resurrection from discarded early 2000s mall brand to a sought after brand for millennials and older Gen Zs. Abercrombie reported $1.29 billion in revenue for quarter three, up 7% year-over-year. The Tuesday, November 25 earnings report is the 12th in a row with consecutive growth between quarters. The company also beat Wall Street’s predicted $1.28 billion in revenue and reached earnings per share of $2.36 earnings, rather than the estimated $2.16, according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC. Abercrombie’s shares (NYSE:ANF) closed Tuesday up more than 37% on Tuesday, though the stock is still down 39.…

The Thanksgiving travel period is in full swing. Today is the last day before Thanksgiving, which means millions of Americans will be taking to the skies to reach their holiday destinations. And myriad more will also be traveling to airports to pick up their incoming loved ones. But on one of the busiest travel days of the year, flight delays and cancellations are inevitable. Here are some tools to track delays, along with information on which airports are currently experiencing the worst delays and cancellations. FAA says this is the busiest Thanksgiving travel period in 15 years Earlier this week, Fast Company reported on the American Automobile Association (…

Shares in Europe and Asia advanced on Wednesday after benchmarks on Wall Street surged on hopes the Federal Reserve will soon opt to cut interest rates. The future for the S&P 500 gained 0.3%, while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 0.2%. In early European trading, Germany’s DAX gained 0.2% to 23,500.98, while the CAC 40 in Paris also rose 0.2%, to 9,623.22. Britain’s FTSE 100 edged 0.1% higher. In Asia, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.9% to 49,559.07 in a broad rally that encompassed major exporters and technology shares. However, shares in Kioxia dropped 14.9% on reports that Bain Capital plans to sell $2.3 billion of the computer memory maker’s shares. …

The National Park Service said Tuesday it is going to start charging the millions of international tourists who visit U.S. parks each year an extra $100 to enter some of the most popular sites, while leaving them out of fee-free days that will be reserved for American residents. The announcement declaring “America-first entry fee policies” comes as national parks deal with the strain of a major staff reduction and severe budget cuts, along with recovering from damage during the recent government shutdown and significant lost revenue due to fees not being collected during that time. The fee change will impact 11 national parks, including the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone and…

With Thanksgiving just around the corner, a time when we give thanks and practice gratitude for what we have, we turned to neuroscience to find out if doing so actually makes us happier and healthier. Here’s what we found. Is gratitude actually good for your health? “People who are grateful live longer, are happier, and also tend to hit workplace markers like [making] more money, and [getting] promoted more frequently,” Emiliana Simon-Thomas, Ph.D., science director at U.C. Berkeley’s Greater Good Science Center, tells Fast Company. “But the key is not a fake-it-till-you-make-it approach—no, it’s real gratitude, real contentment, based on an accurate assessment of …

A health care proposal circulated by the White House in recent days is running into the reality of Republican divisions on the issue — a familiar struggle for a party that has been trying to scrap or overhaul the Affordable Care Act for the past 15 years. The tentative proposal from President Donald The President would extend expiring ACA subsidies for two years while adjusting eligibility requirements for recipients. The plan has so far been met with a stony silence on Capitol Hill as Republicans debate among themselves whether to overhaul the law, tweak it or simply let the subsidies expire. It’s unclear now when the White House plan might be released, or if it will b…

Hooboy, here we go again. Chevrolet has once more rolled out a tearjerker ad for the holidays. Created by ad agency Anomaly, “Memory Lane” follows an older couple on their annual holiday drive to the family cottage in their well-loved 1987 Suburban. The trip takes them back to holiday memories and moments of years past that helped build their family. We see the kids go from babies and toddlers to bickering back-seat siblings to near-silent teens, all on the way to meeting them again as adults. For just about any parent, this is an absolute field-goal kick to the cryballs. It’s a story that is specific to this fictional group, but a sentiment that will touch …

Tucked in a two-sentence footnote in a voluminous court opinion, a federal judge recently called out immigration agents using artificial intelligence to write use-of-force reports, raising concerns that it could lead to inaccuracies and further erode public confidence in how police have handled the immigration crackdown in the Chicago area and ensuing protests. U.S. District Judge Sara Ellis wrote the footnote in a 223-page opinion issued last week, noting that the practice of using ChatGPT to write use-of-force reports undermines the agents’ credibility and “may explain the inaccuracy of these reports.” She described what she saw in at least one body camera video, writi…

At Fleece & Harmony, a woolen mill and yarn shop in bucolic Belfast, Prince Edward Island, in Canada, owner Kim Doherty used to be able to send yarn skeins to U.S. customers across the border with little fanfare. The yarn orders usually met an import tax exemption for packages valued at under $800, meaning it could be imported tariff-free and avoid the customs process. But ever since the The President administration eliminated the exemption as of Aug. 29, the cost to send yarn to U.S. customers has skyrocketed. The bill for a $21 ball of yarn now includes $12 to $15 in brokerage fees that her shipper UPS charges, plus state taxes and a 6.5% tariff, all of which almo…

Most people don’t give the display screens on their commuter trains a second thought, but for designer Emily Sneddon, they’ve proved to be a well of inspiration. Sneddon lived in San Francisco, where she worked at the design agency Collins, from 2021 until this year when she moved back to her home country of Australia. She designed Fran Sans, her first ever font, after noticing the display on San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency’s (SFMTA) recently retired Muni Metro Breda Light Rail Vehicle. Unlike New York City, which handles its public transit through a single agency, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), public transportation in San Fra…

They go by names like @The President_ARMY— or @MAGANationX, and their verified accounts proudly display portraits of President Donald The President, voter rallies, and American flags. And they’re constantly posting about U.S. politics to their followers, sounding like diehard fans of the president. But after a weekend update to the social media platform X, it’s now clear that the owners of these accounts, and many others, are located in regions such as South Asia, Africa, and Eastern Europe. Elon Musk’s X unveiled a feature Saturday that lets users see where an account is based. Online sleuths and experts quickly found that many popular accounts posting in support…

Landlords could no longer rely on rent-pricing software to quietly track each other’s moves and push rents higher using confidential data, under a settlement between RealPage Inc. and federal prosecutors to end what critics said was illegal “algorithmic collusion.” The deal announced Monday by the Department of Justice follows a yearlong federal antitrust lawsuit, launched during the Biden administration, against the Texas-based software company. RealPage would not have to pay any damages or admit any wrongdoing. The settlement must still be approved by a judge. RealPage software provides daily recommendations to help landlords and their employees nationwide price…

Ikea just launched a new collection of speakers that double as actual pieces of art. The collection, which includes three round bluetooth speakers, two lamp speakers (called the Kuglass), and one new version of Ikea’s beloved Fado lamp, was made in collaboration with the Swedish designer Tekla Evelina Severin (also known as Teklan). Severin, who is known for her work as a colorist, photographer, and designer, brings a keen eye for color and pattern to the designs, turning a product that might otherwise be an eyesore into one worthy of display. In fact, it would be difficult to even recognize the products as speakers upon first glance. Tekla Evelina Severin Thi…

Discussions around the role of work in our lives are frequently divided into two camps. “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life”, one side proclaims. The other: “A job just needs to pay the bills.” The first school of thought is an example of “intrinsic motivation”. Here, the enjoyment of work for work’s sake is motivating enough, rather than relying on external rewards like money or praise. And while it’s great to love your job, recent research suggests that it can become problematic when intrinsic motivation is regarded as morally superior to other motivations. “When a neutral preference becomes charged with moral meaning, social scientists c…

The job of a headline is to draw attention to the article beneath it. When a headline instead draws attention to itself, it feels as wrong as a carnival barker cursing out passersby. The New York Times, which remains among the world’s load-bearing newspapers, has published plenty of stories in 2025 with that rogue carnival barker vibe. “Why is someone screaming this at me?” would be a natural response to headlines like “Did Women Ruin the Workplace?” which NYT ran earlier this month, inspiring an apoplectic backlash that forced editors to change it to the only-slightly better “Did Liberal Feminism Ruin the Workplace?”. Since that controversial header is one of many qu…

A wave of vital prescription drugs is about to get a lot cheaper for people on Medicare. The The President administration announced Tuesday that it has successfully negotiated lower prices for 15 drugs, including medications used for asthma, diabetes, arthritis and multiple forms of cancer. The list includes Ozempic and Wegovy, Novo Nordisk’s drugs for Type 2 diabetes and weight management, as well as Rybelsus, Novo’s oral GLP-1 for treating diabetes. The deal for cheaper prescription drugs grew out of an initiative put in place by the Inflation Reduction Act, the signature legislative package passed in 2022 during the Biden administration. That law opened the doo…

The number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits declined last week in a sign that overall layoffs remain low, even as several high-profile companies have announced job cuts. U.S. applications for unemployment benefits in the week ending Nov. 22 dropped 6,000 from the previous week to 216,000, the Labor Department reported Wednesday. The figure is below the 230,000 forecast by economists, according to a survey by data provider FactSet. Applications for unemployment aid are seen as a proxy for layoffs and are close to a real-time indicator of the health of the job market. The job cuts announced recently by large companies such as UPS and Amazon typically …

A new study from MIT that shows that AI might be poised to replace a lot more jobs than what initial estimates might predict. According to researchers, a hidden mass of data reveals that AI is currently capable of taking over 11.7% of the labor market. The new estimate comes courtesy of a project called The Iceberg Index, which was made through a partnership between MIT and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a federally funded research center in Tennessee. According to its website, the Iceberg Index “simulates an agentic U.S.—a human-AI workforce where 151M+ human workers coordinate with thousands of AI agents.” In simpler terms, the tool is designed to simulate pr…

Let’s be honest: When we talk about workplace equity, menopause rarely makes the agenda. But it should. This life stage impacts half the workforce, often right when women are at the peak of their careers, influence, and leadership. As a CEO and advocate for women’s health, I’ve seen firsthand how menopause becomes an invisible career barrier. And now the data backs it up: Ignoring menopause in the workplace isn’t just a health oversight, it’s a systemic equity issue. According to the latest U.S. Census Bureau data, full-time, year-round working women earn only 81 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2024, a gap that’s actually widening. The year before, women e…

We’re living through a seismic workforce disruption. Business leaders are poised to have a significant impact on the way our economy is shaped over the next decade. You already see it with the big company CEOs creating a cult of celebrity far beyond anything we’ve seen historically, but this phenomenon cascades down to all leaders across companies. Today, however, your personal brand is built in authentic micro-moments—how you lead meetings, navigate change, and bring others along. What story are you telling? Earlier this month, I sat down with Marissa Andrada and Al Dea at Guild’s Opportunity Summit to discuss why personal brand building is no longer optional for leader…

Enterprises across the globe are pouring an estimated $1.5 trillion into artificial intelligence, and the results are already significant: AI has added more than $400 billion to the U.S. economy alone. Yet beneath these headline numbers lies a less celebrated truth. Most GenAI projects (95%) are failing to deliver a return on investment. This disconnect isn’t a technology problem. It’s a transformation problem. And the fix is not coming from the boardroom or the IT department. It’s coming from the cubicles, the customer service desks, and the HR teams—the employees who know firsthand where bottlenecks and opportunities exist. THE BOTTOM-UP AI MOVEMENT New data,…

Circa 1450, the creative community was jolted. The printing press had just been invented in Europe. Scribes, typically monks who had spent lifetimes perfecting the spiritual art of hand-copying manuscripts, saw their specialized skills suddenly rendered obsolete. Yet in short order, the disruptive innovation democratized knowledge, enabled the Renaissance, and created entirely new creative roles for editors, typesetters, printmakers, and illustrators. More than five centuries later, Photoshop sparked similar concerns about devaluing traditional skills and compromising image integrity. Artists worried it would cheapen the craft. Instead, it became foundational to moder…

Below, Corinne Low shares five key insights from her new book, Having It All: What Data Tells Us About Women’s Lives and Getting the Most Out of Yours. Corinne is an economist and professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Her research has been published in journals such as the American Economic Review, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, and the Journal of Political Economy. She also regularly speaks to and advises companies on their practices. What’s the big idea? Women face unequal demands at home and in the workplace, making “having it all” costly. Research shows how hidden factors shape choices and offers a way to reclaim time, ener…

With millennials and Gen Z opting for fur babies over actual babies, a new workplace benefit is starting to take over. Enter the era of pawternity leave, where pets are dictating benefits, as companies scramble to keep up with shifting priorities. The reality is: without pet perks, companies are risking losing top talent. Sixty percent of pet parents say they would quit their job if it interfered with their ability to care for their pet and almost 10% already have. With the growing number of people placing such a high value on their pets, companies are beginning to recognize pet parenthood as more than just a lifestyle choice. It’s a reflection of today’s priorities,…

A Thanksgiving tradition since 1924, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has not quite turned 100 years-old yet. How is this possible you might wonder? Because it was skipped for three years—1942, 1943, and 1944—during World War II. Nevertheless, its 99th anniversary is shaping up to be spectacular. Here’s everything you need to know about the (mostly) annual event in New York City, including how to tune in. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade by the numbers It takes many people to pull off the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. (Some even do the pulling literally.) There will be more than 5,000 volunteers working hard to make magic happen. This spectacle inclu…