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Massachusetts’ highest court heard oral arguments Friday in the state’s lawsuit arguing that Meta designed features on Facebook and Instagram to make them addictive to young users. The lawsuit, filed in 2024 by Attorney General Andrea Campbell, alleges that Meta did this to make a profit and that its actions affected hundreds of thousands of teenagers in Massachusetts who use the social media platforms. “We are making claims based only on the tools that Meta has developed because its own research shows they encourage addiction to the platform in a variety of ways,” said State Solicitor David Kravitz, adding that the state’s claim has nothing to do the company’s al…

Planner vs. Engineer is a well-known professional rivalry in the infrastructure world. The arguments are sometimes friendly, sometimes hostile, sometimes about important issues, sometimes insignificant. I’m in a peculiar spot because of my career as a “plangineer.” My parents helped me buy a civil engineering degree, but several years into my career, I bought the certified planning certificate. I know the two camps very well. The roundabout question Roundabouts are one of the many Planner vs. Engineer debates, and it happens to be a very important issue where emotions cloud good judgment. As much as I criticize the engineering profession, they are generally correc…

The new Pentagon press corps gathered last week for their first in-person briefing. That’s since almost all credentialed reporters from traditional media companies surrendered their passes in October to protest new Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s strict media policy. Refusing to sign a 21-page Pentagon document that in effect banned journalists from trying to solicit any kind of information that was not pre-approved, the Pentagon instead issued passes to a newly credentialed corps of influencers, conspiracy theorists, and conservative commentators who happily agreed to the strict rules. The handpicked press corps were active on social media last week as they doc…

Each business has its unique challenges, but one commonality today is that AI is poised to disrupt almost every business everywhere. Organizations aren’t the only ones rapidly shifting to adopt AI—attackers are too, and they’re doing it faster. The implications of this AI arms race are alarming for legitimate businesses around the world. Security teams must rapidly evolve their cyber strategy to meet these new threats, moving away from a reactive posture that detects and then responds after an incident happens. To outpace attackers, organizations will need to be preemptive instead—deterring, neutralizing, and preventing threats before they happen. HOW AI IS CHANG…

CIOs are grappling with how to leverage AI, but most are asking the wrong question. It’s not about an “AI strategy.” It’s about a business strategy powered by AI. At Samsara, when we focused AI on clear business problems, we cut support chat volume by 59% with virtual agents, our IT help assistant auto-resolved 27% of tickets during the pilot, and engineers accepted about 40% of suggested code from AI code-assist, freeing teams to ship faster and tackle harder work. My takeaway is that if you treat AI as a separate initiative, you’ll chase tools. If you treat it as leverage on a business KPI, you’ll create impact. The VC Mindset: Investing in AI My philosop…

Across America, a new generation of farmers is reimagining what it means to work the land. They are engineers, ecologists, and entrepreneurs—people who see farming not only as a way to grow food, but as a form of innovation. In fields across the country, these farmers are harnessing soil science, biodiversity, and technology to restore what decades of extractive agriculture have depleted. Their work represents one of the most powerful opportunities of our time: The opportunity to regenerate our planet from the ground up. Yet, the odds they face are immense. Land prices have soared, access to capital is limited, and isolation comes with choosing a career path few under…

The U.S. workforce is facing a pivotal challenge: A widening skills gap that threatens economic growth and innovation. While demographic trends—like declining birth rates and a shrinking pipeline of young workers—are real, the more actionable issue is the growing mismatch between the skills employers need and those available in the labor market. According to Pearson’s recent “Lost in Transition” research, nearly 90% of U.S. employers report difficulty finding candidates with the right skills, and more than half of workers feel unprepared for the demands of the future workplace. This problem is decades in the making, and its consequences will be global. Without …

If your sofa was made between 1970 and 2014, its foam is likely loaded with flame retardants—chemicals that can escape into dust and end up in the air you breathe. A new study led by the California Department of Public Health shows the payoff of swapping it out: people who replaced their old, chemical-filled sofas or chairs with new, flame-retardant-free models saw levels of one common chemical, polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDEs), drop by half in just over a year. The chemicals became ubiquitous in upholstered furniture thanks to older regulations in California. The state’s large market meant that flame retardants were used in furniture nationwide. The tob…

From return-to-office mandates, anxiety about AI taking (or reshaping) jobs, and a highly competitive atmosphere for recent graduates and other job seekers, 2025 has been a year of change. It’s also been a big year of change for women in the workplace, with a record number exiting the workforce. And, according to a new report, women are now also less inclined to seek promotions. LeanIn.Org and McKinsey & Co. just released their 2025 Women in the Workplace report based on a survey of 124 organizations employing around 3 million people. The survey research found that while companies overwhelmingly say that diversity (67%) and inclusion (84%) are top priorities, just…

For most leaders these last five years have been ones of great volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Political dynamics, economic shifts, massive layoffs, strategy pivots, technology disruptions, and more are shaping how we lead and what we can accomplish together. Leading through uncertainty is no longer a mere possibility, it’s core to the job description. Times of uncertainty call for fast executive decision-making with limited information, “good enough” risk assessment, and repeated pivots. I know this because I led a global philanthropy network while the world shut down in 2020. During those initial months, I relied less on staff input to determine…

A majority of those expecting a holiday bonus this year are planning to check out once the check clears. According to a recent survey of 2,000 American workers by AI job application assistant JobHire AI, 59% are “maybe” or “definitely” expecting a bonus this year. Among them, 48% are already job hunting or planning to quit after their bonus is paid, and another 20% are considering leaving in the new year. The job market often sees a lot of activity following the holiday lull, as many spend the break reflecting on the previous year and setting goals for the next. This year, however, may see even more aggressive job -hopping, as many workers have become more f…

The hype train on corporate purpose keeps steaming down the tracks. I have written about it before and tried to be positive. But I feel the need to be more constructively critical. If everyone has been convinced that they need to have a corporate purpose, let’s at least have it be a useful one. I try to contribute to that goal in this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here. The hype train The articles and books on corporate purpose just keep coming. For example, in the past month alone, Harvard Business Review published four pieces on purpose (one, two, three, four). And the books keep coming, w…

For an architect whose name and work have become known all over the world by laypeople and architecture fans alike, Frank Gehry’s buildings are about as far from the mainstream as one can get. Bent, curved, and clad in shiny metal, the most famous buildings by Gehry, who died last week at 96, are also the most improbable. Coming up with the flamboyant designs for landmark buildings like the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles was only part of what made Gehry one of the most successful and celebrated architects in American history. Just as impressive are the ways Gehry helped explore and expand the architecture technologies used …

The Northern Lights, also known as aurora borealis, may be visible in more than a dozen U.S. states Tuesday, December 9, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Space Weather Prediction Center (NOAA). A full-halo coronal mass ejection (CME) is expected to reach Earth early to midday on Tuesday, potentially causing periods of “strong” G3 geomagnetic storms (on a scale of G1 to G5). The aurora borealis is the result of a geomagnetic storm that occurs when a coronal mass ejection (CME), an eruption of solar material, reaches Earth and causes swaths of purple, blue, and green in the night sky. This year’s increased solar activity (and thus, …

More and more people are turning to GoFundMe for help covering the cost of housing, food, and other basic needs. The for-profit crowdfunding platform’s annual “Year in Help” report, released Tuesday, underscored ongoing concerns around affordability. The number of fundraisers started to help cover essential expenses such as rent, utilities, and groceries jumped 20%, according to the company’s 2025 review, after already quadrupling last year. “Monthly bills” were the second fastest-growing category behind individual support for nonprofits. The number of “essentials” fundraisers has increased over the last three years in all of the company’s major English-speaking m…

Spotify has a knack for mining your listening data into something fun and shareable rather than weird and creepy for its annual “Wrapped” feature. This year, it outdid itself. The 2025 edition of Spotify Wrapped goes beyond just summarizing what you listened to with charts and infographics. This year, Spotify is also assigning each user a “Listening Age,” which is based on the release years of their favorite tracks compared to others in the same age group. The feature quickly went viral, as users recoiled at their seemingly geriatric (or juvenile) musical tastes. At the risk of reading too much into something that’s ultimately good fun, Wrapped’s expanding purview…

The Department of Transportation (DOT) has created a new $1 billion grant program to make U.S. airports more family- and health-friendly. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy launched the “Make Travel Family Friendly Again” campaign alongside Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday, December 8, at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport. “I am talking about ushering in the golden age of transportation,” Duffy said, adding they are hiring more air traffic controllers, and asking retiring air traffic controllers to stay on the job. However, the Transportation Secretary said the funding is dedicated to “making the experience better in airports and its…

Layoffs have hit American workers hard in 2025, particularly in the government and tech sectors. Already this year, well over a million jobs have been lost due to layoffs—and unfortunately, it doesn’t look like a cessation of job cuts is on the horizon. Reports say that beverage and snack giant PepsiCo is the latest major American company getting ready to announce layoffs. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On Monday, PepsiCo (Nasdaq: PEP) issued a memorandum about its intention to enhance shareholder value in 2026. In the memo, PepsiCo CEO Ramon Laguarta said that the planned initiatives were to accelerate “organic revenue growth, deliver recor…