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Denny’s is the latest restaurant chain to add a temporary egg surcharge due to the rising cost of eggs caused by a nationwide shortage and the current bird flu outbreak. Last month, Waffle House added an upcharge of 50 cents per egg. Meanwhile, many supermarket chains, including Trader Joe’s, Market Basket, and big-box retailers including Walmart, Costco, and Sam’s Club, have raised prices and limited the number of cartons shoppers can buy. “This pricing decision is market-by-market, and restaurant-by-restaurant due to the regional impacts of the egg shortage,” Denny’s told Fast Company in a statement. “We will continue to look for ways to provide options on our m…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. National home prices have risen by 2.6% year-over-year from January 2024 to January 2025, according to the Zillow Home Value Index, a slightly decelerated rate from the 4.6% year-over-year rate last spring. However, not every housing market is seeing rising home prices. Among the 300 largest metro area housing markets, 31 markets are seeing falling home prices on a year-over-year basis. While home prices continue to rise in regions with tight inventory—such as much of the Northeast, Midwest, and Southern California—some housing markets in states like…

In 2024, Amazon introduced its AI-powered HR assistant, which helps managers with performance reviews and workforce planning. Similarly, Tesla deployed AI personas to assist in real-time production monitoring and supply chain optimization. These advancements showcase how AI personas are becoming essential in business operations, streamlining processes, and enhancing decision-making. As artificial intelligence evolves, we’re witnessing two interrelated phenomena shaping our future: AI personas and agentic AI. These developments bring both opportunities and challenges. Understanding AI Personas AI personas are collections of digital elements that combine to form …

As an app designed to facilitate gay hookups, popular site Sniffies has had a limitation since it started in 2018—it was only accessible via web browser. Until Monday, when the map-based cruising site debuted its Apple-approved iOS app. Building an app that complies with Apple’s notoriously stringent content moderation—and total ban on apps that directly serve adult content—was a challenge for Sniffies, which wears its sexuality proudly. Its users, which it calls “cruisers,” do, too. Many users put nude images as their cover photos, meaning adult content is visible from the second the platform is opened in a browser. The company needed to tame the experience for…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Economic forecasting has never been an easy task, and it becomes even more challenging when confronted with unprecedented economic events like COVID-19 lockdowns and unparalleled levels of government intervention, followed by a rapid cycle of interest rate hikes. Look no further than recent mortgage rate forecasts. Last year marked the third year in a row that mortgage rates ended the year higher than forecasters expected. Will they finally get it right this year? ResiClub’s latest roundup of quarterly mortgage rate forecasts shows that most …

The relentless hype around AI makes it difficult to separate the signal from the noise. So it’s understandable if you’ve tuned out recent talk about autonomous AI agents. A word of advice: Don’t. The significance of agentic AI may actually exceed the hype. An Autonomous AI agent can interact with the environment, make decisions, take action, and learn from the process. This represents a seismic shift in the use of AI and, accordingly, presents corresponding opportunities—and risks. The P in GPT To date, generative AI tools, largely subject to human supervision, have been designed to function by being pretrained (the P in GPT) on vast amounts of data such as l…

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps. Subscribe here. Typing isn’t always the best way to get your thoughts down. Sometimes talking through an idea leads to better clarity. New AI tools can reliably transform those spoken thoughts into clean, organized text. I’ve spent months experimenting with voice AI tools—first on my phone, and now on my laptop. They’ve been helping me pull ideas from my brain onto paper. The tools below have become crucial to my workflow. Why voice AI beats traditional transcription Traditional transcription simply converts speech to text. Mod…

In mountain ranges around the world, glaciers are melting as global temperatures rise. Europe’s Alps and Pyrenees lost 40% of their glacier volume from 2000 to 2023. These and other icy regions have provided freshwater for people living downstream for centuries—almost 2 billion people rely on glaciers today. But as glaciers melt faster, they also pose potentially lethal risks. Water from the melting ice often drains into depressions once occupied by the glacier, creating large lakes. Many of these expanding lakes are held in place by precarious ice dams or rock moraines deposited by the glacier over centuries. Too much water behind these dams or a landslide into t…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Mortgage giant Rocket Companies—the parent company of Rocket Mortgage, formerly known as Quicken Loans—announced on Monday it has entered into an agreement to buy Redfin in an all-stock transaction valued at $1.75 billion equity, or $12.50 per share. If completed, the move would integrate Redfin’s real estate search platform, which attracts nearly 50 million monthly visitors, with Rocket’s mortgage services. “Redfin is known for its beautiful product but is also [a] data powerhouse in an AI-driven world—100 million properties, 50 million engaged mont…

Across the city of Chengdu, China, the quiet but remarkable buildings of Liu Jiakun has slowly pierced through the dominant stereotype of bombastic Chinese architecture. Liu, who has just been named the 2025 Pritzker Architecture Prize Laureate, has spent the past three decades carefully injecting pieces of socially conscious and transformative architecture into his hometown. Liu’s work includes subtle museums, historically informed preservation projects, and progressive urban projects that blur the edges of private space and public good. “In a world that tends to create endless dull peripheries, he has found a way to build places that are a building, infrastructure, …

Every year, Employee Appreciation Day comes and goes, prompting organizations to rush into gratitude mode—offering lunches, shoutouts, and small gifts. But if March 7 is the only time leaders express appreciation to their teams, they’re missing the mark. It’s like only telling your partner “I love you” on your anniversary. If appreciation is absent the rest of the year, the sentiment feels hollow. In fact, a once-a-year show of recognition can do more harm than good, as employees may perceive these actions as insincere. Whether in relationships or the workplace, real appreciation is built through consistent, meaningful recognition. Recognition is even more critica…

Watch any Olympic event, and you’ll notice this universal ritual: The moment an athlete completes their performance, they turn to their coach for feedback. There’s no defensiveness—just a hunger to know how to improve. They understand that even the smallest adjustment could be the difference between standing on the podium or watching from the sidelines. For athletes, feedback is not criticism. It’s a tool for enhancement. This mindset isn’t confined to sports. High performers in every field—whether that’s business, academia, or the arts—share an insatiable appetite for actionable feedback. It’s their secret weapon for continual improvement. Why feedback fuel…

Since its launch in 2018, Olipop has been a bit of a Cinderella story in the oft-unforgiving beverage game. The prebiotic, fiber-laden soda designed to be healthier than the category classics is currently thriving: It just closed a $50 million Series C and announced a $1.85 billion valuation. Last year, it surpassed $400 million in revenue. Its reps cite it as the No. 1 nonalcoholic brand in dollar and unit growth, “outpacing legacy giants like Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, and Red Bull.” It’s now sold in nearly 50,000 stores and is even outselling Coke at one major national retailer (though they won’t disclose which one, per that retailer’s regulations). Which is all to say…

As the Super Bowl clock ticked just below three minutes left in the game, Eagles wide receivers A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith picked up the giant Gatorade cooler, snuck behind head coach Nick Sirianni on the sideline, and hit him with the traditional shower celebration. It was probably one of the best ads of the Super Bowl, and it wasn’t even a commercial. And yet, it still told a story about how close the ties are between this brand and one of the most significant moments in sports. This year, Gatorade celebrates its 60th anniversary since Dr. James Cade first concocted his formula to keep the Florida Gators football team hydrated. Gatorade chief brand of…

Over the past decade, as I’ve curated this annual list of best bags, there’s been a strong focus on utility. But this year, bag designers are eager to create bags that make a statement, while also improving women’s lives with useful features. In some ways, the bag industry is coming full circle. When I first started working on this list, the bag industry was dominated by big brands like Coach and Kate Spade that were more concerned with fashion than function. But then, a new generation of direct-to-consumer brands like Dagne Dover, Cuyana, and Senreve popped up, creating bags full of features like laptop and water bottle sleeves that helped women get through busy days…

Michelle Obama and her brother, Craig Robinson, will host a new weekly podcast series starting this month featuring a special guest pulled from the world of entertainment, sports, health and business. “IMO with Michelle Obama & Craig Robinson” will address “everyday questions shaping our lives, relationships and the world around us,” according to a press release. IMO is slang for “in my opinion.” Some of the guests slated to speak to the former first lady and Robinson, the executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, include the actors Issa Rae and Keke Palmer and psychologist Dr. Orna Guralnik. Other guests include filmmakers Seth…

It’s a story that sounds almost too outrageous to be true. Deel, a $12 billion company in the HR tech space, is facing serious allegations of corporate espionage, according to a lawsuit filed by its competitor, Rippling. The lawsuit—filed earlier this month in a California court—claims Deel orchestrated a “multi-month campaign to steal a competitor’s business information with help from a corporate spy.” Rippling alleges that Deel planted an employee to infiltrate its operations, targeting customers in an effort to lure them away. According to the suit, the alleged spying lasted over four months. During that time, the employee (identified in court documents only by…

The Daytona 500 is one of the more challenging races on the NASCAR circuit. The speedway is long and narrow, forcing drivers to be more aggressive. And the weather in central Florida doesn’t always cooperate. During the 2024 event, a deluge of rain had forced a Monday conclusion. After 41 lead changes and with only eight laps to go, a crash involving half the field prompted a red flag and a 15-minute delay. At the end, another collision between leader Ross Chastain and Austin Cindric opened the door for William Byron to zip by and take the checkered flag. Byron’s win wasn’t a huge surprise—he’d notched 10 prior wins on the NASCAR circuit—but his backstory is unusual.…

Throughout Harvard Square, there are many bookshop brimming with the latest literary fiction and intellectual memoirs, patronized by scholarly types. But in January, a new bookshop popped up in the neighborhood that is nothing like the others. Lovestruck Books is a romance bookstore. It’s Instagrammable entrance is adorned with pink and purple flowers. There’s a coffee shop that transforms into a wine bar for evening events. Besides an enormous selection of romance novels, you can also purchase sex toys and tote bags emblazoned with “I read smut.” “We want to toe the lie a little bit with being provocative and edgy,” says Rachel Kanter, the store’s founder. “But the …

Few illustrations have electrified the climate movement more successfully—and globally—than Ed Hawkins’s climate stripes. Since the British climate scientist first published his graphic in 2018, the stripes have been displayed on Times Square billboards, printed on beer cans, splashed across fashion collections, and even woven on a scarf that was worn by the late Pope Francis. The graphic was enshrined as a design object in the Museum of Modern Art’s permanent collection in New York. The problem is, “warming stripes” have only ever shown part of the picture—namely, global average temperatures on the surface of the Earth. But climate change doesn’t stop at the surf…

As Los Angeles reels from deadly January wildfires that destroyed thousands of homes, California Gov. Gavin Newsom said Thursday he will order the state to advance long-delayed regulations requiring homeowners in high-risk areas to clear combustible materials around their homes. His office didn’t immediately say if the executive order will set a timeline for implementing the rule, which was passed by lawmakers in 2020 and originally set to take effect by January 1, 2023. Newsom is expected to sign it after his trip to Washington to advocate for disaster aid. The rule requires homeowners to clear materials like dead plants and wooden furniture within 5 feet (1.5 me…