What's on Your Mind?

Influencers often face more negativity than most people experience in a lifetime—and with that comes a significant mental health toll. Now, a new therapy service has been launched specifically for content creators. CreatorCare, cofounded by digital creator Shira Lazar and backed by Creators 4 Mental Health and Revive Health Therapy, aims to break down both financial and systemic barriers to mental health care. While some creators earn millions of dollars, many struggle to make ends meet. To ensure therapy is accessible to all, CreatorCare offers sliding-scale rates starting at $60, with or without insurance. Launched initially in California, with plans for nationa…

For many new mothers, one of the most mysterious and elusive parts of breastfeeding is the latch. While some babies’ mouths manage to automatically make an airtight seal around their mother’s nipple, others can have difficulties, or physical impediments, that make achieving good suction and proper nursing almost impossible. One solution care providers have offered is the nipple shield, a cuplike perforated silicone device that fits on top of a mother’s nipple and areola and improves the way babies make their latch. It’s typically a short-term method for addressing issues ranging from tongue-ties to flat nipples to engorgement. The problem with nipple shields—and even …

Researchers at Northwestern University just found a way to make a temporary pacemaker that’s controlled by light—and it’s smaller than a grain of rice. A study on the new device, published last week in the journal Nature, found that the tiny pacemaker delivered effective pacing in both animal subjects and human hearts from organ donors. The device is designed specifically for patients who need temporary pacemaking—like newborn babies with heart defects or heart surgery patients—and it’s made with materials that allow it to safely dissolve into the body once it’s no longer needed. The current standard in temporary pacemakers (called an “epicardial” pacemaker) invo…

The color of your house matters beyond aesthetics. An extensive body of research shows that painting buildings white (which reflects heat) can make them cooler, and painting them black (which absorbs heat) can make them warmer. This is the reason why most houses in Greece are white, and many houses across Scandinavia are black. But what about the rest of the world, where temperatures often shift with the seasons? Industrial designer Joe Doucet has developed what he calls a “climate-adaptive” paint that can change colors based on the temperature outside. The patent-pending formula, which is known as thermochromic paint, follows the same principle as 90s mood rings. Except …

Amid the usual barrage of new launches around this time of year from the likes of Samsung and Xiaomi, I’ve been checking out the highest-end device yet from a manufacturer many readers won’t have heard of—but it’s one that marks an unusual collaboration with another brand that might be more familiar. Infinix is a sub-brand of Chinese company Transsion, which also owns the smartphone maker Tecno. The manufacturer is particularly successful in developing smartphone markets like Africa and the Middle East; across all of its brands, Transsion accounts for about half of Africa’s smartphone market share, according to figures from Canalys last year. Infinix largely targ…

Fifty-two-year-old Dinam Bigny sank into debt and had to get a roommate this year, in part because of health insurance premiums that cost him nearly $900 per month. Next year, those monthly fees will rise by $200 — a significant enough increase that the program manager in Aldie, Virginia, has resigned himself to finding cheaper coverage. “I won’t be able to pay it, because I really drained out any savings that I have right now,” he said. “Emergency fund is still draining out — that’s the scary part.” Bigny is among the many Americans dependent on Affordable Care Act marketplace health insurance plans who are already struggling with the high cost of health care, accordi…

A privacy-centric cellphone carrier called Cape is now officially available across the United States, offering a unique set of features to protect users from surveillance and identity theft. Many cellphone users already use virtual private networks, encrypted messaging apps, and secure password managers to help keep their data safe. But those tools can’t always protect against security issues with the underlying cell network itself, and other phone companies don’t typically compete on privacy, says Cape CEO John Doyle. “Before we built Cape, there was not an obvious differentiated choice in the network space,” Doyle says. But Cape, founded in 2022, is d…

Rob Shaver is a 49-year-old retail worker who recently had a streak of running at least 1 mile every day for three years. He’s also been living with Stage 4 bone and lung cancer for more than 20 years. Shaver’s commitment to living in spite of illness is chronicled in the short film The Life We Have, which uses his life as a lens through which to examine questions at the heart of the human experience: What gives life meaning when time feels fragile? How do we keep moving forward when suffering feels endless? Though profoundly sad, the film, directed by Sam Price-Waldman, is also thoughtfully inspiring. We see Shaver on his good days, running and spending time w…

Can AI help neurodivergent adults connect with each other? That’s the bet of a new social network called Synchrony, which believes AI and a well-designed social network with the right safeguards can reduce social atomization and calm the overwhelming cacophony of socializing online. Launching February 19, the social network debuts during a moment when social media, chatbots, and doomscrolling has made digital communications a hot button topic for parents. “No other app for the neurodiverse is focusing primarily on reducing social anxiety and encouraging friendship,” says cofounder Jamie Pastrano. “I think that’s the biggest piece of it, and no other app is focusing on…

It’s 2 p.m. on a Monday, and the Starbucks on 23rd Street and Park Avenue in New York City’s Flatiron neighborhood is packed. Not that it would take much. The small shop—roughly 265 square feet of front-of-house space—is big enough for a short line to form before it would bust through the door and out onto the sidewalk. This location is the company’s very first “espresso bar” format store—a new, small-store design that will serve as the cornerstone of Starbucks’s future expansion plans. It’s also a symbol of a Starbucks in flux. Until recently, the store was for mobile orders and pickup-only; then in September, it reopened after a speedy “uplift” (Starbucks s…

The ancient world understood that leaders who act without self-knowledge create chaos. Consider that at the entrance to the Oracle of Delphi was the following inscription: “Know thyself.” Socrates further imbued meaning into this tenet by declaring that his wisdom came from knowing that he knew nothing. Later, Stoics like Marcus Aurelius argued that self-knowledge meant acknowledging what was actually within your control. The throughline across millennia is clear: cultivating inner clarity helps us navigate external uncertainty. But here’s what the ancients also understood: self-knowledge isn’t a solitary pursuit. We come to know ourselves through relationships, and w…

Researchers at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology just invented a building material that could make construction projects stronger and more sustainable—and it’s based on the skeleton of an invertebrate that lives at the bottom of the ocean. The material, recently presented in the journal Composite Structures, was developed by RMIT University engineers. It’s inspired by the skeleton of the deep-sea sponge, whose lattice-like internal structures, which have been optimized over millions of years in the ocean, allow it to thrive thousands of feet underwater. The material’s unique structural properties make it simultaneously lightweight, strong, and extra resi…

On a foggy winter day at Austin’s airport three years ago, a FedEx cargo plane nearly crashed into a Southwest Airlines jet full of passengers after both were cleared to use the same runway. At the last moment, as the FedEx plane was landing, the pilot saw the outline of the other plane’s wing and pulled up, narrowly avoiding the disaster. An air traffic controller couldn’t see that the Southwest plane was sitting on the runway because of the heavy fog. Last fall, a test flight in Kansas City recreated the incident on a Boeing 757 outfitted with new software from Honeywell that warns pilots directly when there’s a collision risk on a runway. The technology, called Sur…

It looks like a standard shipping container. But a metal box at a London factory is aimed at solving one of the shipping industry’s biggest challenges: how to cut CO2 emissions on cargo ships. The tech, from a startup called Seabound, can capture as much as 95% of the CO2 emissions from the exhaust on ship. The company is now preparing to install a set of the containers on a cargo ship in its first commercial deployment after years of development and pilot tests. “The shipping industry is one of the last hard-to-abate sectors,” says 30-year-old CEO Alisha Fredriksson, who cofounded the company in 2021 after working as a consultant and seeing the need for a new…

In recent years, Venture Capital-as-a-Service (VCaaS) has become more predominant since it offers more flexibility than the traditional VC model. It is designed perfectly for corporations, family offices, and sovereign wealth funds that want to engage in startup investment without managing a full-fledged VC team. Let’s understand the mechanics behind VCaaS and why corporations are embracing it. What is VCaaS? As an innovative, effective model, VCaaS is designed with an established VC firm which works for a corporation or institutional client to invest on its behalf. By using this model, the corporation or client benefits from startup innovation, access to deals, an…

A relatively new category of solopreneur is booming, and its ascent is challenging perceptions of what it means to be self-employed. Since 2018 demand for fractional expertise—or specialized talent that works for one or many firms on a limited or part-time basis—has tripled, according to a recent study by workforce intelligence company Revelio Labs. The most popular part-time executive position, according to the study, is CFO, which makes up 18% of fractional executive roles, followed by CMO at 14% and CEO at 10%. Revelio Labs’ chief economist Lisa Simon says the skyrocketing demand for fractional executives is largely a function of the current job market. She exp…

It’s April again, and that means hundreds of millions of Americans have been logging on to H&R Block or heading to their accountant to see how much they owe in taxes for 2025. For many who file, that dreaded number can feel like a nebulous sum. So how does the federal government use that hard-earned cash? There’s a website breaks it down for you, Spotify Wrapped-style. Tax Wrapped is the latest digital project from Riley Walz, the technologist responsible for viral websites including Find My Parking Cops, a tool to track San Francisco’s parking authorities; Looksmapping, a map that ranks restaurants based on the “hotness” of their patrons; and, most recently…

A quarter of those under 30 say they’ve used AI for companionship, according to Associated Press-NORC polling. The one thing missing? Somewhere to take your AI Valentine on a date. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, EVA AI decided to solve that problem. The app—where users can text or, more recently, video chat with AI dates—organized a pop-up social experiment at Same Same Wine Bar in Manhattan this week. Over February 11 and 12, the dimly lit space was filled with patrons seated at tables for one, their AI companions propped up on phone stands. Attendees could bring their own existing AI partners or speed date from a selection of 100 characters. “This is another …

4.5 billion years ago the Sun was formed in a swirling cloud of dust and gas called the Solar Nebula. In a paper published by Nature Astronomy journal on April 28th, a team of internationally collaborating scientists proved that another giant molecular cloud hangs only 300 light-years away—making it the closest cloud to Earth. The cloud, named Eos after the Greek goddess of dawn, is so massive that its width would measure about 40 moons side-by-side and its mass is 3,400 times that of the Sun. “This thing was pretty much in our cosmic backyard, and we’ve just missed it,” says astrophysicist and study coauthor Thomas Haworth in an interview with CNN. Why has it ta…

Norwegian skier Nikolai Schirmer on Wednesday handed the International Olympic Committee a petition signed by more than 21,000 people and professional athletes who want to stop fossil fuel companies from sponsoring winter sports. Schirmer delivered the “Ski Fossil Free” petition to the IOC’s head of sustainability, Julie Duffus, at a hotel in the Italian city of Milan two days before the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics kick off. The petition asks the IOC and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, FIS, to publish a report evaluating the appropriateness of fossil fuel marketing before next season. Schirmer, a filmmaker and two-time European Skier of the Year, spoke…

As the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday, an auction in New York will feature rare items that trace the nation’s history. The event Friday at Christie’s, dubbed “We the People: America at 250,” will bring together foundational political texts, iconic American art and rare historical artifacts. Among the highlights is a rare 1776 broadside printing of the Declaration of Independence produced in New Hampshire by printer Robert Luist Fowle, estimated at $3 million to $5 million. “It’s historically significant because you get to see what people at the time actually saw,” said Peter Klarnet, senior specialist for books, manuscripts and Americana at Chri…

Three decades before TikTok’s obsession with tinned fish brought us sea-cuterie boards, tinned fish cookbooks, and trendy brands like Fishwife and Scout, there was Bela Brand Seafood. This OG tinned fish purveyor hit grocery store shelves back in 1997 with aesthetic, design-centric packaging—and now, it’s refreshing its brand identity to remind modern audiences that it took a bet on tinned fish before it was cool. Bela (formerly known as Bela Brand Seafood) was founded by native New Englander Joshua Scherz and his mom, Florence. The brand has remained family-owned since its inception, quietly growing without any funding from outside investors. But during the pandemic, Sch…