What's on Your Mind?

The notion of instant on-the-go translation is nothing new for most of us, thanks to the now-ubiquitous Google Translate service. But a scrappy Google competitor thinks it can do better. ➜ This month, a company called Kagi​ is officially launching its ​Kagi Translate app for both Android​ and iOS. 💡 The app mirrors most of the same features Google Translate offers, with a few interesting new touches and one key point of distinction: It is all about protecting your privacy—with no ads, no trackers, and no data being monetized or repurposed in any way. Oh—and it’s free, too. ⌚ You’ll need all of two minutes to take it out for a test-drive. Psst: If y…

Across the country, solopreneurship is taking off. People are starting their own, one-person businesses in droves. But when it comes to who is doing all of this solopreneuring (yes, it’s a word), one-woman businesses are gaining more traction. More women are starting their own businesses than ever—whether solo or with employees. According to May 2025 data from small business platform Gusto, in the last five years, there’s been a huge leap in just how many women left their jobs to start their own business. In 2019, just 29% of new businesses were started by women. By 2024, that number was 49%. Moreover, over half (52%) of solopreneurs in the U.S. are now women. S…

Look, we all know the drill by now: You type a question into the magic AI box, and the magic AI box spits out an answer that is usually pretty good, occasionally mind-blowing, and every once in a blue moon mind-blowingly bizarre. But if you’re just treating Google Gemini like a glorified search bar, you’re leaving a lot of utility on the table. It’s sort of like buying a Swiss Army knife and only ever using the toothpick. If you want to move past the beginner phase and actually make Gemini work for you, here are four tricks that might not be immediately obvious but are surprisingly handy. Stop copy-pasting your own emails If you’re trying to summarize a lon…

Fashion weeks around the world are dominated by four main shows: New York, Paris, Milan, and London. But in 2020, Copenhagen Fashion Week (CPHFW) made a bold move that helped it garner attention. It launched a framework with nearly 20 sustainability standards that fashion brands must meet to participate. The choice came at a time when fashion’s sustainability practices were under increased scrutiny. Every year the industry contributes up to 10% of global carbon emissions, pollutes billions of cubic meters of clean water, and produces metric tons of textile waste. Copenhagen’s fashion week was applauded for its forward-thinking approach. However, over the nex…

Whoopi Goldberg has been a household name since she starred in The Color Purple in 1985. Fast forward over 50 years, and she’s still as driven as ever. Goldberg, 70, cohosts daytime talk show The View. In 2024, she founded AWSN, the All Women’s Sports Network. She’s also an author, activist, mother, and grandmother. And, she’s also doing it all solo. Goldberg is happily single and has been for decades. She says that will never change. In a recent interview with Interview magazine, Goldberg opened up about her solo life, which she happens to genuinely love. So much, in fact, that she says she plans to stay single because, as she put it, “in the last 25 years, I re…

When we minimize our suffering with statements like “I shouldn’t complain—others have it much harder than me,” it can seem evolved, empathetic, even wise. In professional culture, this phrase often earns admiration. It signals gratitude, resilience, and perspective. However, beneath that polished humility lies a psychological defense mechanism that can quietly block emotional growth. That mindset reflects a subtle form of emotional bypassing, which is the tendency to sidestep uncomfortable emotions by rationalizing them away. This ends up muting, rather than healing. It may seem like a sign of maturity. However, empathy bypassing often prevents us from engaging honest…

We talk constantly about age—in politics, in leadership, in debates about retirement and the future of work. Yet we rarely stop to ask a simple question: What is age, exactly? Most of us rely on a single number, as if people were stamped with a vintage year like bottles of wine. But age is far from a fixed or universal metric. It is multidimensional, deeply unequal, and increasingly misleading when used as a shortcut for ability, potential, or readiness. As people live longer, change careers more often, and experience work in different conditions, understanding what age actually measures is becoming essential for companies trying to build fairer workplaces and adapt t…

Like fingernails, human hair is something that’s considered normal and fine when it’s attached to the body, but gross in any other context. Hair clogs our drains. Seeing a single strand on our plates is grounds for returning food at a restaurant. And after it’s cut off at salons and barbershops, it’s promptly swept up and thrown away. Hair is usually destined for the dustbin, but what if it could be reused as a raw material for design? One designer is exploring some novel uses for hair, including making a biotextile that feels like wool. Designer Laura Oliveira collected clippings at two Portugese hair salons for her master’s thesis in product and industrial desig…

To Dr. Richard Pan, a California-based pediatrician, the idea of living a long, healthy life should not be a partisan issue. Unfortunately, it’s become one: He knows that topics like vaccines, healthcare, and science at large are now extremely politicized, and that whoever has the power to shape our policies can have a big impact on the health of Americans. Pan has seen that firsthand in his time serving in California’s state assembly and then senate, where he authored landmark legislation around vaccines, health insurance, and even a law that led California to produce its own insulin—which paved the way for the state to offer the medicine for as low as $11. …

Layoffs are at an all-time high since 2009, and we’re also experiencing the lowest hiring on record in the job market. But AI spending is also reaching all-time highs—especially among Big Tech companies, who are on an extravagant spending spree. As I recently reported, Alphabet, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon are forecast to drop a staggering $650 billion on AI in 2026 alone. And while many companies are pouring a lot of that money—we’re talking hundreds of billions—into building massive data centers, hoping to establish a long-term strategic advantage in the AI-arms race, many are still hiring workers for jobs that utilize AI skills. So, what are those skills? While…

Nili Lotan’s Tribeca flagship has been a fixture in the neighborhood for 20 years. It’s an austere space that brings her aesthetic universe to life, one that blends silk slip dresses with military-inspired jackets, and crisp button-down shirts with utilitarian pants. But now, across the street, there’s a second store devoted to just one thing: denim. No knits. No tailoring. Just jeans. Denim has always been at the heart of Lotan’s collections, but Lotan has found that the careful design of the jeans—and care that went into making them—gets lost when they are folded into seasonal collections. Now, the denim store and flagship operate as a single ecosystem. Sales …

Jimmy Donaldson might have made his fortune on YouTube, but the man better known as MrBeast has plans for a much wider financial empire—and he’s well on his way to achieving it. Through Beast Industries, the $5 billion holding company for his growing corporate ecosystem, Donaldson is assembling a wide range of businesses that extend far beyond the influencer space. The latest expansion came on February 9, with the purchase of the teen-focused banking app Step. Banking isn’t the end game, either. Beyond his current holdings, Donaldson has broader ambitions that could further diversify his income streams. Here’s a look at the businesses currently under the Beast Ind…

If you live in Seattle and work at Amazon or Meta in nearby Bellevue, you probably drive to work. But by the end of next month there will be another option for commuters: the world’s first light rail line running on a floating bridge. Right now, drivers cross Lake Washington—the long lake between Seattle and eastern suburbs like Bellevue—use one of three floating bridges. Conventional bridges aren’t feasible because of the depth and width of the lake, which is why the bridges were originally built with pontoons instead. Adding a rail line to one of them meant that designers needed to innovate in multiple ways. First, since the bridge doesn’t have columns like …

The Federal Aviation Administration reopened the airspace around El Paso International Airport in Texas on Wednesday morning, just hours after it announced a 10-day closure that would have grounded all flights to and from the airport. The Federal Aviation Administration said in a social media post that it has lifted the temporary closure of the airspace over El Paso, saying there was no threat to commercial aviation and that all flights will resume. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said in a post on X that the FAA and the Defense Department “acted swiftly to address a cartel drone incursion. The threat has been neutralized and there is no danger to commercial travel …

Mark Zuckerberg’s new house in Miami Beach has sweeping waterfront views. It also sits at ground zero for climate change. Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan, are the latest in a string of billionaires and celebrities to move to Indian Creek, a private island in Miami’s Biscayne Bay. Neighbors include Jeff Bezos, who owns three homes on the island, as well as investor Carl Icahn, Ivanka The President, and Jared Kushner. Like much of Miami, the area faces mounting climate risks. “It’s very subject to flooding and rising seas,” says Stephen Leatherman, an environmental professor at Florida International University who studies the state’s islands. Miami’s sea…

This year, the number of mothers with young children exiting the U.S. labor market saw the sharpest January-to-June decline in more than four decades. That isn’t a coincidence—and it isn’t a lack of ambition. Across industries, women are reassessing how—and whether—work fits into their lives. Not because they want to step back, but because too many workplaces are still designed around outdated assumptions about who provides care and how work gets done. As leaders debate return-to-office mandates, women are quietly doing the math—and deciding whether staying is worth the cost. This isn’t a women’s issue. It’s a design failure. And it’s one leaders can choose to fix…

The legacy of Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show continues. Streams of his catalog jumped 175% in the U.S. on Monday, the day after the Super Bowl, when compared to the previous Monday, Feb. 2. That’s according to Luminate, an industry data and analytics company that provides insight into changing behaviors across music listenership. Bad Bunny received nearly 100 million streams on Monday in the U.S. — that’s 99.6 million in one day — compared to 36.2 million streams the previous Monday. That’s noteworthy, too, because Monday, Feb. 2 was the day after the 2026 Grammys, when the artist born Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio won album of the year. It marked the f…

Romance scams used to feel like a cliché. Everyone pictured an email from an overseas “prince” that was poorly written and full of typos and pleas for cash. Now, that cliché is dead. Today’s romance scams are industrial-scale operations. Attackers use artificial intelligence to clone voices, create deepfake video calls, and write scripts with large language models (LLMs). In 2024 alone, the Federal Trade Commission reported that financial losses to romance scams skyrocketed, with victims losing $1.14 billion. The real number, hidden by shame and silence, is likely triple that. Romance scams aren’t just a tragedy for the victims. A successful scam is a massive …

January filled our inboxes with productivity advice. Set stretch goals! Think bigger! Dream audaciously! What was conspicuously absent from all that exhortation was any practical guidance on how to move from grand vision to daily action without becoming paralyzed by the enormity of what we’ve committed to. And now, it’s February. Here’s a counterintuitive truth I’ve learned from decades of navigating complex creative challenges: The secret to tackling big, hairy, audacious goals (BHAG) isn’t summoning more willpower or grinding harder. It’s learning to approach complexity the way babies learn to eat solid food: one tiny, digestible bite at a time. I call it t…

For most of modern finance, one number has quietly dictated who gets ahead and who gets left out: the credit score. It was a breakthrough when it arrived in the 1950s, becoming an elegant shortcut for a complex decision. But shortcuts age. And in a world driven by data, digital behavior, and real-time signals, the score is increasingly misaligned with how people actually live and manage money. We’re now at a turning point. A foundational system, long considered untouchable, is finally being reconstructed by using AI—specifically, advanced machine learning models built for risk prediction—to extract more intelligence from existing data. These are rigorously tested, wel…

Meta announced on February 10 that it’s introducing a new AI animation feature that lets users turn their still profile photos into AI-generated looping videos. It reads like an uncanny valley version of yesteryear’s Boomerang. The option to animate appears when users click “Animate profile picture” on their Facebook avatars, and the feature gives a limited set of animation options, including party hat, confetti, wave, and heart, in which a photo’s subject makes a heart shape with their hands. Meta says there will be additional options in the future for “seasonal moments and special events.” The tech is imperfect and can only work with what it’s got. Meta says…

Russia has attempted to fully block WhatsApp in the country, the company said, the latest move in an ongoing government effort to tighten control over the internet. A WhatsApp spokesperson said late Wednesday that the Russian authorities’ action was intended to “drive users to a state-owned surveillance app,” a reference to Russia’s own state-supported MAX messaging app that’s seen by critics as a surveillance tool. “Trying to isolate over 100 million people from private and secure communication is a backwards step and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia,” the WhatsApp spokesperson said. “We continue to do everything we can to keep people connected.” Russ…

Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta’s Instagram, testified Wednesday during a landmark social media trial in Los Angeles that he disagrees with the idea that people can be clinically addicted to social media platforms. The question of addiction is a key pillar of the case, where plaintiffs seek to hold social media companies responsible for harms to children who use their platforms. Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube are the two remaining defendants in the case, which TikTok and Snap have settled. At the core of the Los Angeles case is a 20-year-old identified only by the initials “KGM,” whose lawsuit could determine how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media co…

Once the king of the chicken sandwich, Popeyes faces a lot of competition for the crown these days. Ascendant fried chicken hotspot Raising Cane’s exploded in growth last year, knocking off KFC to become the third most-popular fast food chicken chain in the U.S. behind Chick-fil-A and Popeyes. Meanwhile, upstarts like Dave’s Hot Chicken and Hangry Joe’s Hot Chicken & Wings are growing fast and eyeing a similar trajectory. Popeyes once inspired feverish hordes and all-day lines for its top-selling chicken sandwich, but it’s been a rocky ride as of late. Popeyes parent company Restaurant Brands International (RBI) just reported its quarterly earnings, and In the…

Investors in Pinterest, Inc. (NYSE: PINS) are waking up to a wall of red this morning. The stock price of the popular digital image-sharing board has fallen off a cliff after the company reported its Q4 2025 results yesterday. Here’s what you need to know. Pinterest’s Q4 2025 results From a quick glance, Pinterest’s results for its fourth quarter of fiscal 2025 didn’t look too bad. The company reported some impressive gains in a couple of key metrics. Those metrics include: Total revenue: $1.32 billion (up 14% year over year) Global Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 619 million (up 12% year over year) However, despite those gains, the company’s $1.32 billi…