What's on Your Mind?

Grammarly, the tool meant to assist with spelling, grammar, and in identifying plagiarism, is being sued for a new AI tool called “Expert Review.” The tool offers editing suggestions from established authors and writers—ostensibly not a bad idea—except that none of those people consented to being involved in the first place. The tool offers real-time writing tips from celebrities like Stephen King and Neil deGrasse Tyson, as well as journalists, like The Markup founder Julia Angwin, who filed the class action lawsuit against Grammarly’s parent company Superhuman, after she alleged the tool used her likeness without her permission: “have worked for decades honing my s…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. While active listings are rising year-over-year in most regional housing markets, a slight majority of markets are still below pre-pandemic 2019 inventory levels. Generally speaking, housing markets where inventory (i.e., active listings) has returned to pre-pandemic 2019 levels have experienced weaker home price growth (or outright declines) over the past 42 months. Conversely, housing markets where inventory remains far below pre-pandemic 2019 levels have, generally speaking, experienced more resilient home price growth over the past 42 months. …

Getting good sleep is critical. A 2018 study found that people who sleep for five to six hours are 19% less productive than people who regularly sleep for seven to eight hours per night. People who sleep for fewer than five hours are nearly 30% less productive. Sure, they’re awake longer. But they actually get less done. That’s because other research shows that only getting six hours of sleep makes any task that requires focus, deep thinking, or problem-solving a lot harder. In fact, where attention and reaction time are concerned, only sleeping six hours is like drinking a couple of beers, and only sleeping four hours is like drinking five beers. Other research s…

Coleman just invented a hard cooler that can collapse in on itself like an accordion, shrink to one-third of its full size, and slot neatly onto a storage shelf. The cooler, called the Snap ’N Go, officially launched on March 17 in three sizes, with prices ranging from $199.99 to $239.99. It’s a first of its kind in the world of food and beverage insulation: While companies like REI, Yeti, and Coleman itself have created large soft cooler bags that can be compressed for storage, no one has ever manufactured a collapsible hard-sided cooler. That’s somewhat surprising, given that hard coolers are often more durable, more insulated, and easier to clean than their soft co…

AI-generated content is making it harder to trust what we see and hear. But at the South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, a new installation is using the same tech to place people inside history’s most defining moments. “The Great Dictator,” which premiered this week in Austin, flips the script on what deepfakes have come to represent. Instead of using generative AI to create misinformation, it uses AI video and voice tools to blend participants into archival footage to experience history through their own voice and likeness. It’s the latest project from filmmaker and artist Gabo Arora, who wanted to show how emerging tech can be used for something other than profit…

Nearly every major policy paper, and the wannabe thought leaders that quote them, says that university enrollment and programming skills are the winning combination for the next Industrial Revolution. My analysis of 11 million professional programmers at Gild completely disagreed. This is not the Industrial Revolution. Don’t believe me? Try this thought experiment . . . and be honest. You are the CEO of a multinational company with 100,000 employees. Rate all of their jobs on a scale from ‘lowest’ to ‘highest’ skill. Now consider a near future in which AI and automation have disrupted the bottom 80% of those jobs by skill-level. Those 80,000 jobs are not needed anymor…

Last year, the CEO of the department store chain Kohl’s (NYSE: KSS) announced the closure of 27 locations in order to help shore up the company’s struggling finances. But in November, a new CEO took the helm, prompting many to wonder whether he would implement additional store closures. Now that CEO has made his plans clear. Here’s what you need to know. Kohl’s shut 27 stores in 2025 In January 2025, Kohl’s announced it was closing 27 underperforming locations in 15 states, as well as its San Bernardino E-commerce Fulfillment Center (EFC) in California. At the time, the company’s then CEO, Tom Kingsbury, said the closures were a “necessary” step “to suppo…

Usually, all-nighters are for college students and people worried about losing their jobs if they don’t deliver. And if there’s one thing that Ryan Coogler—writer, director, and producer of Sinners—has demonstrated over his career, it’s that he delivers. Yet on this February afternoon—a day before his blood-soaked Southern Gothic blockbuster would become the most Oscar-nominated project in cinema history—he’s sitting across from me in a knit monochrome tracksuit and thick-rimmed glasses, looking rather sleepy. “My bad, bro,” he tells me after briefly losing his train of thought in the middle of a sentence. “I just pulled an all-nighter trying to get a draft in.” …

AI poses an infuriating dilemma: On the one hand, it promises to reduce the grunt work present in every job. On the other hand, between the creation of AI slop, and employee fears around job loss, figuring out how to actually reap those benefits creates another job in and of itself. Companies are resorting to a variety of strategies to solve this problem. Amazon tracks how often employees use AI, Microsoft has an internal bootcamp where teams brainstorm how to redesign their workflows to include AI, and Boston Consulting Group has made AI use part of employee performance evaluations. Other companies are taking a different approach: paying employees to experiment…

Unlike on the popular TV series Severance, most people don’t get to disconnect from what’s happening in the rest of their lives when they arrive at work each day. While employees can take steps to manage their stress and anxiety, it’s also imperative that employers have their backs—and foster a work environment that prioritizes mental health. The constant barrage of unsettling news headlines, economic uncertainty, and concerns about job security create a heavy cognitive load for many American workers that’s only made worse by an “always-on” hustle culture, which also causes burnout. To address this systemic exhaustion, the best leaders are those who practice…

Last year, when an air quality agency in Southern California proposed a new rule to encourage consumers to buy heat pumps instead of gas heaters, the agency was flooded with 20,000 comments opposing the idea—many more than usual. “Due to the volume and nature of these submissions, South Coast AQMD had concerns about their authenticity,” says Rainbow Yeung, an agency spokesperson. The agency’s executive director got an email thanking him for his “opposition” to a rule that his own team had drafted. To check the validity of the comments, the agency reached out to a small sample of commenters—172 people—to confirm that they’d actually sent the emails. Almost no one respo…

The used-car e-commerce platform Carvana Co. (NYSE: CVNA) is planning to do something it has never done before: split its stock. If completed, the move will significantly reduce the per-share price of CVNA stock, without affecting the company’s total value. But first, it needs to be approved by shareholders. Here’s what you need to know about Carvana’s proposed stock split. What is a stock split? A stock split is a mechanism by which a company can increase or decrease the number of its shares by dividing those shares or combining them. There are two types of stock splits: a forward split and a reverse split. A forward split is the most common, and the …

I’m obsessive about my to-do lists. Everything I need to get done goes on my list so I don’t lose sight of it. But as a solo business owner, I ran into a problem: when do I have the time to actually work through my list? Anything urgent, I’d work on. Anything non-urgent, well… Stuff that keeps a business running gets perpetually pushed to “later.” However, “later” can eventually cause problems – like your website is out of date, your files are a mess, or your inbox is chaos. You can’t ignore the small, boring, non-billable tasks, or they’ll compound. Why you need a dedicated admin hour The default solopreneur mode is often reactive. You deal with admin t…

Some frustrated passengers are waiting hours in line at airports around the country, due to a stalemate over Department of Homeland Security funding, which has resulted in many TSA officers working without pay to walk off the job. At Austin-Bergstrom International Airport in Texas, lines were out the door earlier this week, according to the airport’s X account that posted this video of passengers waiting in the dark at 4:30 a.m. And it gets worse. According to the Transportation Security Administration, many airports could “literally shut down . . . particularly smaller ones,” if TSA officers continue to call out instead of coming to work, CNN reported. While TSA…

If you’ve ever cracked open an ice-cold Sprite on a hot summer day, or taken a sip of the soda fresh from a McDonald’s machine, you’ve probably experienced that eye-widening first moment that the extra-fizzy, citrusy beverage hits your tongue. That exact second is what Sprite is trying to capture with its new brand refresh, which includes the return of a beloved brand symbol, an updated logo, new visuals, and the brand’s first-ever signature sound. These updates are part of a broader campaign called “It’s That Fresh,” which Sprite says is designed to appeal to younger consumers by strengthening the brand’s presence in music, food, and sports spheres (Sprite also …

Federal regulators on Thursday approved a new higher-dose version of the blockbuster obesity drug Wegovy that may help users lose more weight and keep it off. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a 7.2-milligram dose of Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk’s semaglutide. Previously, the highest approved dose of the drug, taken as a weekly shot, was 2.4 milligrams. The new dose received accelerated review through the FDA’s ultra-fast drug review program. The approval was granted 54 days after the request for review was approved, the agency said in a statement. The new dosage will be available in April at pharmacies in the U.S., with a price to be announced t…

Shares in Super Micro Computer (Nasdaq: SMCI) are falling off a cliff this morning after news that the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) has charged the company’s cofounder and two other associates with conspiring to deliver restricted AI technology to China. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On Thursday, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York announced that it was charging three men with ties to Super Micro Computer (aka Supermicro) for export-control violations related to AI technology. The three individuals, the DOJ alleges, conspired “to divert high-performance computer servers assembled in the United States and […

“I don’t know why I’m procrastinating on this.” I hear this constantly from people who are clearly motivated, clearly capable, but stuck on one important project. It’s been on their list for weeks. They see it every day. They know it’s important. And yet, week after week goes by with no progress. Their prescribed fix? Wake up earlier. Be more disciplined. Push through. That almost never works, because the diagnosis is wrong. What’s actually happening isn’t procrastination at all. It’s cognitive overload. And treating it like procrastination is why so many smart, driven people stay stuck. In cognitive overload, your brain goes on defense When you’re …

A surge of affordable used EVs is about to hit the market—at exactly the same time as drivers are looking to avoid high gas prices. Around 300,000 EV leases are set to expire this year, driven by a leasing boom that started around three years ago, when leasing offered the widest range of models eligible for federal tax credits. A wave of hybrid leases is also expiring this year. At the same time, there are fewer used gas cars on the market than usual because of slow sales in 2023 and 2024. Used EV sales are already strong, even as the rest of the EV market is struggling. Right now, buying an electric car can be a better deal than a similar used gas vehicle. At $20…

It’s another bad day for gold and silver. Traders in precious metals are seeing both gold and silver plummet significantly as the week kicks off, with gold down nearly 7% and silver down 8% over the past 24 hours. Worse, gold has now fallen nearly 20% since its all-time high of over $5,586 in January. Silver is down even more, falling more than 44% since its all-time high earlier this year of over $121. Here’s what you need to know. The ‘safe haven’ trade is absent Silver and especially gold are generally considered “safe haven” assets—assets investors turn to when economic uncertainty abounds, and they want to park their money in a valuable that isn’t likely …

Polymarket is updating the rules of its platform to crack down on insider trading as the prediction market giant looks to curb scrutiny over market manipulation. Announced Monday, the updated rules outline three distinct categories of insider trading that will be prohibited on the platform: trading on stolen confidential information (based on confidential info that violates a preexisting obligation), trading on illegal tips (based on info that was passed down illegally), and trading by those who can influence the outcome. “Markets thrive on clarity,” Neal Kumar, chief legal officer of Polymarket, said in a press release. “These rule enhancements make our expectati…

Three years (plus) after the arrival of ChatGPT, chatbots are morphing into AI agents. As generative AI models have improved and become able to reason in real time, the major AI labs, starting with Anthropic, have begun to shift their research focus from models that compose and comprehend text to ones that reason, use tools, and work autonomously. The first kind of agent that matured to the point of having real-world impact was an agent that can write, test, and document computer code. Coding agents, powered by language models, can understand plain language, which has democratized software development and made “vibe coding” possible. Products like Lovable and Bolt al…

A giant cheesesteak running through multiple terminals at the Philadelphia airport might not solve the world’s problems, but it will make people smile. It’s National Cheesesteak Day, after all, so a little joy is necessary. In honor of this unique day, here’s some history on this lesser-known holiday. We even threw in some ideas on how to celebrate and make Rocky Balboa proud. Brief history of the Philly cheesesteak The cheesesteak is an American invention that originated in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The desire for something new struck two Italian-American brothers, Pat and Henry Olivieri, one day in 1930. The brothers ran a hot dog cart, but were craving som…

Most technology companies treat brand or product names like marketing. That’s a mistake. Names are infrastructure—not cosmetic choices or launch-day deliverables. When names are wrong, everything built on top of them pays a quiet, compounding price. We tend to think of infrastructure as physical or technical systems: roads, power grids, cloud platforms. But infrastructure is really something more precise: It’s the invisible system that enables everything else to function. When it works, no one notices. When it doesn’t, nothing scales. Language behaves the same way. Before anyone buys a new technology, it must be named. Before they adopt it, they must talk about it…

In 2015, Disney discovered a new way to cash in on nostalgia: live-action remakes of its classic animated films. That started with Cinderella, brought back to the big screen 65 years after the original movie premiered. In the decade since, Disney has released 12 more of those remakes, with the gap between the original films’ release dates and the remakes growing shorter and shorter. The next entry is a remake of 2016’s Moana coming to theaters this July, a few months shy of the original’s 10-year anniversary. Disney remakes are designed to recapture the magic of the source material, replicating iconic shots and rehashing beloved lines, scenes, and songs. But that crea…