What's on Your Mind?

In a year defined by companies pouring shocking sums of money into AI, one more deal squeaked in just before 2026. Meta just made a play on Manus, the buzzy Singapore-based company with Chinese roots that turned heads earlier this year when it showed its AI agents executing complex tasks, like hunting for real estate and sorting through resumes. The deal is sure to turn heads too. Manus and its parent company Butterfly Effect are now based in Singapore but were founded in China – a country with a fraught relationship to the U.S tech industry – and maintain operations there. Facebook’s parent company will reportedly pay more than $2 billion to acquire the startup,…

Zohran Mamdani was a trailblazing candidate whom many in his city of 8 million — some with hope, some with trepidation — expect to be a disruptive New York mayor. The democratic socialist’s plans for his first day in office on Thursday nod to his politics and priorities, without straying far from his predecessors with a sober official midnight oath-taking followed by a more celebratory ceremony in the afternoon. New York law spells out that four-year mayoral terms start on the January 1 after elections. To avoid any ambiguity about who’s in charge of America’s most populous city, it has become a tradition to hold a small midnight swearing-in. Mamdani has chose…

Auckland rang in 2026 with a downtown fireworks display launched from New Zealand’s tallest structure, Sky Tower, making it the first major city to greet the new year at a celebration dampened by rain. South Pacific countries are the first to bid farewell to 2025. Clocks strike midnight in Auckland, a population of 1.7 million, 18 hours before the famous ball drops in New York’s Times Square. The five-minute display involved 3,500 fireworks launched from various floors of the 240-meter (787-foot) Sky Tower. Smaller community events were canceled across New Zealand’s North Island on Wednesday due to forecasts of rain and possible thunderstorms. Australia plans defian…

Lorrie Faith Cranor’s latest effort to educate people about privacy is a short, colorfully illustrated book written for an audience who probably can’t read it yet. Cranor, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University and director of the Pittsburgh school’s CyLab Usable Privacy and Security Laboratory, wrote Privacy, Please! after publishing more than 200 research papers, spending a 2016–2017 stint as the Federal Trade Commission’s chief technologist, and making a quilt and dress illustrated with commonly used weak passwords. In a Zoom video call, Cranor says she got the idea for this self-published children’s book when planning for a privacy-outreach event at a loc…

I am not clairvoyant and have no crystal ball. But I’ve got some predictions for 2026. I learned about predictions from a master of the craft: Byron Wien, a market strategist who rose to Wall Street prominence in the 1990s for his annual “Ten Surprises” list. Back in the day, I spent several weeks shadowing Wien as a reporter, and the lessons have long stuck with me. Wien said that the prediction game wasn’t about being right. It was about identifying trends. He knew many of his “surprises” would never come to pass, at least not in the extreme form that he shared. But they sparked dialogue and got people to confront their assumptions. And every now and then, he’…

As today is the first Monday of 2026, Americans across the country are settling back into their everyday routines after the busy holiday season. But many are also recovering from the flu—or still suffering from it. Flu illnesses are surging across the country. According to the most recent data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), positive influenza test results reached the highest levels of the season for the week ending December 27, 2025. The CDC publishes a weekly influenza surveillance report that details positive case counts, illness activity levels by state, and breakdowns of flu types. Due to the winter holidays, the CDC’s la…

How seriously are you taking your 2026 rebrand? Do you have your 365 buttons ready? If this means nothing to you, you likely spent the holiday period at the lord intended – offline. But if spending less time on your phone isn’t one of your 2026 resolutions, let me catch you up. It started with a TikTok posted in December, all about rebranding for 2026. In the comments people shared their own strategies and self-improvement tips for the upcoming year. One comment, however, stood out from the rest. “I’m getting 365 buttons, one for each day because I want to do more stuff and I’m scared of time so I want to be more conscious of it,” a user called Tamara wrote.…

Organizations are increasingly turning to “Culture Coaches” to address workplace challenges that traditional management approaches can’t solve. These specialized professionals bring outside perspective and emotional intelligence strategies to help teams build stronger communication patterns, employee engagement, and alignment. In this article, experts share insights on how culture coaching is reshaping the way companies approach employee growth, leadership development, and organizational success. Leaders Shape the Operating System of Business Companies are hiring Culture Coaches because many leaders are finally recognizing that culture is not a perk and not a mood.…

Popular cryptocurrency XRP had a lackluster 2025, starting the year at around $2.32 per token while finishing at around the $1.84 mark. But in the past 24 hours, the price of XRP has jumped more than 11% to $2.37 per coin—a price not seen since the early part of November. So what’s driving the rise? Here are the two strongest factors. Spot ETF inflows are rising XRP is the native token of the XRP Ledger from Ripple Labs. Like some other well-known cryptocurrencies, XRP tokens are available to purchase directly or through exchange-traded funds (ETFs). Traditional retail investors tend to prefer to invest in the token through ETFs for convenience and ta…

Kim Kardashian’s apparel brand Skims is outfitting American athletes at the Olympics for the fourth time in a row, and this year’s collection is its cheekiest one yet. Skims and Team USA have established something of an annual tradition. The brand has dressed Olympic and Paralympic athletes in new loungewear-slash-underwear capsules at the Tokyo 2020, Beijing 2022, and Paris 2024 Games—and now, it’s back for Milano Cortina 2026. This year’s collection includes everything from Americana-themed panties to cozy pajama sets, tasteful sweaters, menswear, and accessories. The collection will be available to average folk starting on January 8 at Skims.com and some Skims…

A golden phone that President Donald The President‘s family business promised to release last year remains mysteriously under wraps as the technology industry serves up a glut of new gadgets at CES in Las Vegas this week. When the The President Organization launched a mobile phone service last June, it was supposed to be a stage setter for a new smartphone bathed in gold with a $500 price tag — a bargain compared to Apple’s latest iPhone models that sell for anywhere from $800 to $1,200. The newly formed The President Mobile targeted its T1 phone for an August or September release. What’s more, The President Mobile initially hailed T1 as a device that would be “pr…

We’ve grown strangely comfortable separating things that were never meant to be separated: leadership from management, vision from execution, and perhaps most damaging, culture from strategy. Inside companies, this split shows up everywhere. A CEO announces a bold future about democratizing access or building a place where people take smart risks. Then culture gets handed to HR as if it belongs on a separate track, while the business strategy unfolds on its own timeline. The result is predictable. Employees are asked to navigate the distance between what leaders say and how the organization actually works. That distance is not neutral. It creates avoidable frictio…

If you were building global teams in 2025, you wouldn’t need me to tell you it was a crazy year. We experienced economic volatility and AI disruption. Plus, tightened borders caused companies to adjust and readjust their approaches. 2026 won’t be calmer. But the elements we need to master to stay competitive are now coming into focus: Navigating mobility disruption, creating unity across increasingly distributed workforces, and building the transparent, compliant infrastructure needed to employ people anywhere. 1. Rethink mobility strategies After a decade or so of relative calm, global mobility is now being disrupted from every angle. That’s because geopolitic…

Investors are feeling less hot about the makers of cooling systems for data centers after the CEO of Nvidia Corp. stoked concerns that demand for their products could dry up. Shares of Modine Manufacturing Co. led declines in this sector, tumbling as much as 21% Tuesday before recovering some of those losses to close about 7.5% lower. Other makers of water-cooled systems and similar products—including Johnson Controls International Plc, Trane Technologies Plc, and Carrier Global Corp.—also fell as much as 6.2% on Tuesday. To blame? The next generation of Nvidia’s computer chips, announced on Monday, which won’t require the same type of cooling systems. That’s be…

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is one of the tech industry’s longest-serving chief executives, leading the chipmaker since cofounding it in 1993. Now he’s the recipient of a long-standing technology award: the IEEE Medal of Honor, established by a predecessor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1917. Huang was named the recipient of the medal (and an accompanying $2 million prize) at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 6 in recognition of his lifetime of work in accelerating computing—the technique of using specialized chips like Nvidia’s graphics processing units to speed specialized operations such as rendering images for video games, crunching …

Every January, we’re bombarded with resolutions rooted in consumption—buy this, try that, subscribe to something new. For Gen Z, this consumer-first vision of the New Year feels outdated and hollow. Instead, Gen Z is turning to peers for a community-driven “soft start” to the year ahead. Popularized on TikTok, January resets offer a modern alternative to the outdated idea of resolutions. This shift from consumer-driven goals to community-supported resets is especially visible in how Gen Z is approaching health and wellness in 2026. It’s not surprising either. Earlier in 2025, millions of young people took to social media to publicly document their quit journeys us…

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang is one of the tech industry’s longest-serving chief executives, leading the chipmaker since cofounding it in 1993. Now he’s the recipient of a long-standing technology award: the IEEE Medal of Honor, established by a predecessor of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 1917. Huang was named the recipient of the medal (and an accompanying $2 million prize) at the Consumer Electronics Show on January 6 in recognition of his lifetime of work in accelerating computing—the technique of using specialized chips like Nvidia’s graphics processing units to speed specialized operations such as rendering images for video games, crunching …

The crisp crinkle of fallen leaves beneath your feet. The swish and trickle of water moving through a stream. A breath of crisp, fresh air. Spending time in nature can be invigorating or produce feelings of peace and calm. But many professions allow little time or access to the outdoors during the workday. After a youth spent climbing trees and playing soccer, Anna Rose Smith found it difficult when her first job as a psychotherapist in Utah required working in a windowless office. So she spent her lunch breaks outside, walking to nearby fountains or gardens. She picked up flower petals or leaves from the ground and brought them back to her desk, where she wou…

Over the course of 2025, deepfakes improved dramatically. AI-generated faces, voices, and full-body performances that mimic real people increased in quality far beyond what even many experts expected would be the case just a few years ago. They were also increasingly used to deceive people. For many everyday scenarios—especially low-resolution video calls and media shared on social media platforms—their realism is now high enough to reliably fool nonexpert viewers. In practical terms, synthetic media have become indistinguishable from authentic recordings for ordinary people and, in some cases, even for institutions. And this surge is not limited to quality. The v…

For decades, design followed a singular truth. Whether it was the insistence that “form follows function” or the later pivot toward “form follows emotion,” the industry tended to adhere to a simple formula for design thinking: Find your North Star and follow. But that formula does not fit today’s reality. “Form follows X” is no longer a clean equation, because X isn’t a single variable. It’s a constellation that refuses to be reduced to one guiding idea. Modern design across brands, products, and experiences must use a multidimensional approach, speaking to function, feeling, context, narrative, culture, and experience, all at once. HUMAN EXPERIENCE DESIGN …

Whether scrambling for a last-minute gift, looking for something belated to send after the holidays, or just thinking ahead to the next birthday on your calendar, the checkout line’s gift card rack has probably crossed your mind. Coffee shops, streaming services, big box retailers. You’ve done this dance before. Grab one, stick it in a card, call it a day. It’s easy. It’s simple. It’s also, for a growing number of Americans, starting to feel stale. Nearly one in five U.S. adults now say they’d rather receive crypto than a gift card this holiday season. That’s according to a new survey from the National Cryptocurrency Association and PayPal, and it’s not a number many …

Hiring likely remained subdued last month as many companies have sought to avoid expanding their workforces, though the job gains may be enough to bring down the unemployment rate. December’s jobs report, to be released Friday, is likely to show that employers added a modest 55,000 jobs, economists forecast. That figure would be below November’s 64,000 but an improvement after the economy lost jobs in October. The unemployment rate is expected to slip to 4.5%, according to data provider FactSet, from a four-year high of 4.6% in November. The figures will be closely watched on Wall Street and in Washington because they will be the first clean readings on the labor market…

Barely 10 days into the new year, it already feels like you can’t look away from the news. In the last week alone, the U.S. military captured Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro and took over operations of the country; President The President withdrew the U.S. from dozens of international organizations, including a major climate treaty; and an ICE agent fatally shot a Minneapolis resident, sparking outrage and widespread protests. If it seems impossible to focus on work—or anything else, for that matter—amid all this troubling news, you’re not alone. Plenty of research in recent years has shown that Americans are overwhelmed by the state of politics and feel a heighte…

U.S. stocks are rising toward records Friday following a mixed report on the U.S. job market, one that may delay another cut to interest rates by the Federal Reserve but does not slam the door on it. The S&P 500 climbed 0.5% in midday trading and was on track to top its all-time high set earlier in the week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average added 237 points, or 0.5% and was also heading toward a record. The Nasdaq composite was 0.7% higher, as of 11:45 a.m. Eastern time. The gains came after the U.S. Labor Department said employers hired fewer workers in total during December than economists expected, though the unemployment rate improved and was better than e…

Less than three months ago, the world watched the The President administration reduce the White House’s historic East Wing to a pile of rubble to begin construction on a massive new ballroom. But it looks like the dust from that demolition will have barely settled before The President starts another project to turn the presidential residence into his own personal real estate development endeavor. This week, The President and the head architect behind the ballroom construction, Shalom Baranes, revealed several heretofore unknown plans for the nation’s most symbolic building. They include multiple proposals that would add considerable architectural bulk to a White House…