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A bitcoin investor who bought a SpaceX flight for himself and three polar explorers blasted off Monday night on the first rocket ride to carry people over the North and South poles. Chun Wang, a Chinese-born entrepreneur, hurtled into orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX’s Falcon rocket steered southward over the Atlantic, putting the space tourists on a path never flown before in 64 years of human spaceflight. Wang won’t say how much he paid Elon Musk’s SpaceX for the 3 ½-day ultimate polar adventure. The first leg of their flight—from Florida to the South Pole—took barely a half-hour. From the targeted altitude of some 270 miles (440 kilometers), their full…

Hooters of America, LLC, owner of the Hooters restaurant chain, has announced that it has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The bankruptcy filing is aimed at helping the company restructure itself so it can transition from a company-owned restaurant chain to a franchisee-owned chain. Here’s what you need to know about Hooter’s bankruptcy and whether any locations will close. Hooters to transition to franchisee-owned model Most people think of Hooters as just one company, but the restaurant chain currently operates under a hybrid model. Hooters of America, LLC, owns the restaurant’s brand intellectual property and currently operates numerous Hooters lo…

You know the feeling—your calendar is packed, your inbox is overflowing, and every decision, big or small, lands on your desk. Leadership today isn’t just about managing teams and making strategic calls; it’s about navigating an endless stream of meetings, emails, and expectations. While burnout is widely recognized, most solutions focus on time management rather than cognitive bandwidth management. The real issue isn’t just being overworked—it’s being oversaturated. Leaders are drowning in information, decisions, and interruptions, leaving little room for the deep thinking required for creativity, strategic foresight, and high-quality decision-making. A study fr…

Countless hours, days—perhaps even weeks—of my life have been spent creating Sims characters, building them houses, marrying them off, and making babies. Now, there’s a new life-simulation game on the block hoping to expand beyond the American market. inZOI debuted on March 28 at $40 and quickly climbed to the top of Steam’s most wishlisted and bestseller charts. The game’s appeal lies in its hyper-detailed character customization, free expansions, and immersive, realism-focused world. Unlike The Sims, which embraces cartoonish characters and lightheartedness, inZOI opts for lifelike graphics and a slower-paced gameplay experience centered on everyday interactions. …

Over the last year, Gap has been popping up in an unexpected place for a heritage casual wear brand: the red carpet. Last July, Anne Hathaway wore a white shirt dress with matching bralette and Bulgari jewelry. In December, Demi Moore appeared in a black knit jersey dress and moto jacket. And just this past February, Timothée Chalamet showed up in a black satin workwear set. Zac Posen, Gap Inc.’s executive vice president and creative director, had designed all of them under the new label, GapStudio. And now, Gap is bringing GapStudio to the masses as it officially launches the new, higher-end Gap sub-brand, designed to elevate Gap’s perception, extend its reach to yo…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the pandemic housing boom, home flipping surged as soaring home prices and ultralow-interest rates attracted more flippers, especially newcomers, to the market. However, as the market shifted due to the rate shock of 2022, home-flipping activity has seen the biggest pullback since 2007, and many of those newcomers pulled back. In the last quarter of 2018, there were 71,358 home flips. In the last quarter of 2021, that shot up to 120,531 flips, before falling to 87,851 flips in the last quarter of 2022. In the last quarter of 2024, there were j…

Cargill Kitchen Solutions is recalling more than 212,000 pounds of Egg Beaters and Bob Evans liquid egg products because they may contain a cleaning solution with bleach, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. This recall comes at a time when egg prices have hit record highs as the country faces decreasing supplies due to an ongoing bird flu outbreak. Here’s what to know. What’s included in the liquid egg recall? The recall covers 212,268 pounds of liquid egg products, which were produced on March 12 and March 13 and distributed in eight states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas, and possibly nationwide, accor…

Ukraine’s war with Russia—sparked by Russia’s invasion in the spring of 2022—is now entering its fourth year. So too is Sine.Engineering, a company born amid the conflict. CEO Andriy Chulyk founded the company in April 2022, pivoting from running a standing-desk business in the Lviv region to supporting his country’s defense efforts through various drone technologies and components. The 150-person-company has scaled rapidly over the past three years; its parts are now used in drones made by more than 50 manufacturers worldwide. “Everyone thought something might change, that [war] would stop,” Chulyk says. “But we see clearly now that the situation is only getting har…

When meeting clients, I make one promise—to see the world as it could be. That’s not a bad message right now. It’s a pretty weird world out there. The volatile political and socio-economic landscape can make us all feel like things are going to hell. And in the slightly less real world of marketing and advertising, that’s even more the case. The challenges of any agency or client team continue to escalate. Instability abounds. Then there’s the issue of client loyalty, reduced scopes, tighter timelines, and the not-so-secret plan of AI to take everyone’s jobs. And then the cynicism comes. As we know, misery loves company, so soon—if you want to find it—it can turn…

Max just got a new logo. Again. Two years after rebranding from HBO Max to just Max with new a bright blue-and-white logo, the Warner Bros Discovery-owned streaming service is making an update to its logo. This time, it’s swapping blue for a metallic black and white logo. According to Max, the color change is part of a larger refresh. Max says the standalone logo will be in the black-and-white color scheme, but an updated color palette, chosen to allow for flexibility of the logo in app and in marketing materials, will be unveiled in the coming months. Why Max updated its logo Max includes content from HBO and other Warner Bros Discovery brands, like Adult …

In Central Texas, a bitter fight over a $1 billion water project offers a preview of the future for much of the state as decades of rapid growth push past the local limits of its most vital natural resource. On one side: Georgetown, the fastest growing city in America for three years straight, which in 2023 signed a contract with an investor-funded enterprise to quickly begin importing vast volumes of water from the Simsboro Formation of the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer, 80 miles to the east. On the other side: the cities atop the Simsboro that rely on its water. Bryan, College Station, and the Texas A&M University System, a metro area with almost 300,000 people, …

Tres Xemeneies (Three Chimneys) is a former coal-fired power plant in Sant Adrià de Besòs. Think of it as Barcelona’s own Battersea Power Station, London’s iconic power station that has been redeveloped into a technological hub (and Apple’s new London digs). Like Battersea, Barcelona’s plant is set to undergo a radical transformation into the new Catalunya Media City—a cutting-edge hub for digital arts, technology, and education. The winning design is called E la nave va, a nod to Federico Fellini’s film of the same name, which translates to “And the Ship Sails On,” a reference to how this long-dead structure that resembles a three-mast ship will keep cruising histor…

Ren Barrus was just an intern at Cotopaxi, an outdoor gear and apparel company, when he noticed piles of used backpacks and jackets sitting in boxes at the warehouse. The company was only 3 years old—still a startup—but already, customers were eagerly using its 61-year warranty. One broken zipper and the brand would send a completely new backpack, no questions asked. It wasn’t that consumers were gaming the system; they just expected durability. Two years later, by then a team lead, Barrus launched a guerrilla repair program: When customers sent in their broken gear, he’d drive it to his mom’s house in Utah where she would fix it up on her sewing machine, and ship it…

The psychological contract hasn’t just shifted around where we work. It has shifted, and continues to shift, around the entire relationship between organizations and employees. That shift in expectations feels most dramatic when we look at Gen Z, the latest entrants to the workforce. More than 40% of Gen Z employees have refused a work assignment because of ethical concerns. Nearly four in 10 have turned down a job with a company that doesn’t align with their values. In the workplace, they are driving the conversation around social justice, mental health, and work-life balance. More than 90% of workers say they’ve been influenced by Gen Z on issues of meaning at w…

Things are tough right now, with complexity and uncertainty in the world driving stress and worry. You’re probably trying to stay positive and muscle through. But there’s an important difference between keeping appropriately optimistic and acting with toxic positivity. If you’re faced with toxic positivity in yourself or others, it’s probably based on good intentions that have run amok. But it can actually create a negative spiral that can make things worse. Staying positive during trying times According to a survey from MyPerfectResume, people are reporting record levels of exhaustion, anxiety, and stress with 88% who said they were burned out. In addition, 32…