What's on Your Mind?

It looks more like a racing yacht than a cargo ship. But this new 100% wind-powered vessel will soon begin bringing goods from Europe to the U.S.—and could make deliveries faster than conventional cargo ships. Vela, a French startup, pulled technology from the racing world to make the vessel run as fast as possible. It’s a trimaran, meaning it has three hulls, which helps it cut through water efficiently. The wide, stable shape allows it to carry large sails. As in racing yachts, the mast is made from carbon fiber, and the sails are made of high-performance fabric designed for strength. The ship also uses navigation tech developed for racing to help route toward ideal…

As visitors head into downtown Vancouver through the city’s False Creek Flats neighborhood, the first thing they’ll see is the Hive: a 10-story office building built out of wood and shaped like a giant honeycomb. Beneath its webbed exterior, the building is hiding a clever design system that keeps it safe from earthquakes by allowing it to wiggle, shake, and settle. The Hive, designed by the Toronto-based architecture studio Dialog, is the tallest seismic-force-resisting building made from mass timber in North America. By substituting mass timber for typical steel-and-concrete construction, the building is sequestering a total of 4,403 metric tons of CO2; equivalent …

An Olympic torch is a small, flaming time capsule. Since the start of the modern Games in 1936, the torch has been passed by thousands of runners in a relay that goes from Olympia, Greece to the host city’s stadium. It’s a feat of engineering, since it needs to be durable enough to resist wind and rain, while keeping the Olympic flame arrive. But torch designers also imbue them with symbolic meaning. The Berlin 1936 torch was engraved with the Nazi iconography of an eagle. The Sapporo 1972 torch was a thin, cylindrical combustion tube that was a marvel of Japanese engineering. The Rio 2016 torch featured rippling blue waves celebrating the country’s natural b…

We’ve all opened our mailboxes to discover an unsolicited credit card offer (or three) inside. Although there must be people out there who take advantage of these offers, most of us simply throw the unopened envelopes in the trash. Yet simply tossing these pieces of snail mail can leave you and your finances vulnerable. Here’s why, and how you can get those unsolicited offers to stop for good. Why am I getting unsolicited credit card offers? While not as incessant as all the spam emails and text messages we get every day, unsolicited credit card offers are definitely one of the annoyances of modern life. The offers are sent by credit card companies via the U.S. Pos…

Many things irk people about the way modern companies operate. Workplace communication tools and so-called enterprise social media platforms are among the low-stakes but high-impact bugbears. Reading through the latest dull update from that guy in accounts who continually spams the work comms platform, or worrying about when and how to engage with a problematic post can cause plenty of stress. Having to keep up with colleagues on a workplace communication platform annoys many. But new research suggests the much-maligned tools might actually serve a purpose—and can benefit workers and the businesses they work for. Princeton University professor Manoel Horta Ribeiro…

If you’ve bought the antihistamine medication Benadryl from Amazon in the past few years, you’ll want to make sure to carefully check its packaging to make sure it is not part of the recall that was posted by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) this month. That’s because a select Benadryl product sold on the e-commerce giant’s website has a fault that could lead to the risk of a child being poisoned. Here’s what you need to know. Benadryl Liquid Elixir sold on Amazon.com is being recalled On March 20, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission posted a recall notice on its website for Benadryl Liquid Elixir imported by Arsell Inc. of Brooklyn, N…

If you recently bought celery sticks from Walmart, you’ll want to check to make sure they are not of a certain variety. That’s because a select celery stick product is being recalled due to fears that it may be contaminated with Listeria, a potentially deadly bacterium. Here’s what you need to know. What is the reason for the recall? On April 10, Duda Farm Fresh Foods, Inc. of Oxnard, California, issued a voluntary recall for one of its products: a bag of celery sticks sold under the “Marketside” brand, according to a recall notice posted on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website. The company issued the recall because the celery sticks have the possibi…

Thousands of nurses in three hospital systems in New York City went on strike Monday after negotiations through the weekend failed to yield breakthroughs in their contract disputes. “Nurses on strike! … Fair contract now!” they shouted on a picket line outside NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital’s campus in Upper Manhattan. Others picketed at multiple hospitals in the Mount Sinai and Montefiore systems. About 15,000 nurses are involved in the strike, according to their union, the New York State Nurses Association. The hospitals remained open, hiring droves of temporary nurses to try to fill the labor gap. The strike involves private, nonprofit hospitals, not city-ru…

Online child abuse is a pernicious problem that’s rife in digital life. In 2023, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) received more than 36 million reports of suspected child sexual exploitation—and a 300% increase in reports around online enticement of youngsters, including sextortion. And a new report by social media analysts Graphika highlights how such abuse is moving into a troubling new space: utilizing AI character chatbots to interact with AI personas representing sexualized minors and other harmful activities. The firm found more than 10,000 chatbots labelled as being useful for those looking to engage in sexualized roleplay with min…

So many mourners lined up to see Pope Francis lying in state in a simple wooden coffin inside St. Peter’s Basilica that the Vatican kept the doors open all night due to higher-than-expected turnout, closing the basilica for just an hour Thursday morning for cleaning. The basilica is bathed in a hushed silence as mourners from across the globe make a slow, shuffling procession up the main aisle to pay their last respects to Francis, who died Monday after a stroke. The hours spent on line up the stately via della Conciliazione through St. Peter’s Square and through the Holy Door into the basilica has allowed mourners to find community around the Argentine pontiff’s legacy…

“I always dream of the same mall.” So begins a recent post on the popular subreddit r/The MallWorld. The subreddit was first created in 2021, and currently has 10,000 monthly visitors detailing their recurring dreams of eerie, often empty spaces. The description reads, “Have you been to one of these common dream locations?” The post continued: “It has a very vintage feel to it. It always has warm amber lighting and wooden guard rails. It has 3 main floors, and one secret lower floor. “The lower floor is usually kept pristine, a time capsule of the 90’s. The stores are closed, but the merchandise remains. It smells like my kindergarten class did..” If this…

Traveling soon? If you’re planning on flying domestically, starting February 1, which is next Sunday, you may have to pay an extra fee at airports across the U.S. if you haven’t yet gotten your TSA-approved Real ID yet, or don’t have another compliant form of ID (see list below). The policy, which the Department of Homeland Security launched in May, requires travelers to have an updated, Real ID-compliant driver’s license, or other approved form of ID, in order to pass through airport security checkpoints and board flights. If you are one of the estimated 6% of U.S, travelers that still don’t have a Real ID, or another acceptable form of documentation, you may be …

Traveling soon? If you’re planning on flying domestically, starting February 1, which is next Sunday, you may have to pay an extra fee at airports across the U.S. if you haven’t yet gotten your TSA-approved Real ID yet or don’t have another compliant form of ID (see list below). The policy, which the Department of Homeland Security launched in May, requires travelers to have an updated Real ID-compliant driver’s license or another approved form of ID in order to pass through airport security checkpoints and board flights. If you are one of the estimated 6% of U.S, travelers that still don’t have a Real ID or another acceptable form of documentation, you may be cha…

Threads is testing a simpler way for people to nudge their feed in a specific direction without digging through settings or retraining the algorithm long term. The new feature, called Dear Algo, lets users tell Threads what they want to see more or less of for a short period of time. Instead of relying only on likes, follows, and past behavior, you can now directly ask the app to adjust what shows up in your feed. It works by writing a public post that starts with “Dear Algo,” followed by your request. For instance, “Dear Algo, show me more posts about podcasts,” or “Dear Algo, show me fewer posts about spoilers for Heated Rivalry.” After you post it, Threads adju…

Meta’s Threads app is leaning into impermanence. Starting Monday, the platform is rolling out “ghost posts,” a new post format for sharing fleeting thoughts that automatically disappear after 24 hours. Think Snapchat or Instagram Stories—except, for text. Unlike regular Threads posts, replies to ghost posts go straight to the user’s messaging inbox rather than inline, and only the author will be able to see who liked or responded to them. It’s a subtle but significant shift toward private engagement within a public feed, providing a middle ground of sorts between Twitter’s public discourse model and Instagram’s close-friends Stories. Meta says the feature is a…

As we move into 2026, it’s time to examine the subtle behaviors that undermine our professional impact. As someone who works with mid- to senior-level leaders, I see and hear the ways in which communication behaviors and patterns get in their way. Small changes can create influential outcomes! Here are three critical habits to eliminate if you want to project true confidence and gravitas. Breaking these three habits isn’t about becoming someone you’re not—it’s about removing the barriers between your capabilities and how others perceive them. True executive presence combines confident delivery with substantive content, and that starts with eliminating the small be…

Imagine you’ve set the goal of running a marathon that’s 90 days away. You’ve hired a trainer who says this a less than optimal amount of time, but if you stick religiously to her fitness routine, nutrition plan, and sleep schedule, you’ll be ready come race day. Cheat in any of those three areas, she warns, and you won’t be able to run 26.2 miles on three month’s notice. Let’s assume you feel pretty good about your odds of following through in each area. You believe there’s a 70% chance you’ll stick with the fitness routine, a 70% chance you’ll stick with the nutrition plan, and a 70% chance you’ll stick with the sleep schedule. What are your odds of doing all three…

Most people still measure performance in hours. They pack their calendars as full as possible, track time down to the minute, and take pride in squeezing more into each day. However, the best performance comes from harnessing rhythm—the alignment of energy, capacity, and focus. It’s what turns effort into flow. In the industrial age, managing time made sense: productivity was tethered to factory shifts and desk schedules. But in today’s BANI—brittle, anxious, nonlinear, incomprehensible—world, hours spent no longer translate neatly into value created. The leaders who thrive now are those who sense and harness the rhythms of their team. Energy rises and falls acros…

The real AI story in most organizations isn’t about algorithms; it’s about habits. New tools arrive with impressive demonstrations and confident promises, yet the day-to-day routines that decide what gets attention, who can take a risk, and what counts as a “good job” tend to remain the same. Leaders set up special units, roll out training, or look for quick savings, only to find that the old culture quietly resets the terms. When that happens, early gains fade, adoption stalls, and cynicism grows. This article draws on our forthcoming book to look at three recurring myths that help prop up existing cultures and prevent the deep transformations that are needed to supp…

I like to say that my job as a charity auctioneer is the ultimate sales role. I stand onstage night after night encouraging people to give money, playing off the audience to push them to bid higher, in the name of charity. If there’s one thing the stage has taught me, it’s that flexibility is everything. The faster you can adapt and offer a solution, the more successful you’ll be whether you’re selling a product or an idea. Here are three of my favorite sales secrets. 1. THE POWER OF SUGGESTION One of the quickest ways to lose someone’s attention is to tell them how you think your product should work for them. If a donor has offered their mountain house as “the ult…

Here are two high-level truths essential to understanding the present and future of robotics. First, we want robots to work for us. Second, when it comes to work, humans have three historical blueprints for recruiting labor: animals, through the process of domestication; other humans, through employment, but also subjugation and outright enslavement; and machines, through the development of physical systems for performing actions. Why does this matter to understanding the present and future of robotics? While we’ve created an astonishing diversity of machines in the broadest sense, those first two blueprints for recruited labor—animals and other humans—have so far do…