What's on Your Mind?

After a viral disappearance and rumors of his demise, Duo the owl is alive—and he’s finally ready to speak: “I said, ‘It’s either Spanish or vanish.’” Watch the full tell-all interview and hear from the bird behind the chaos. View the full article

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…

OpenAI is working on its own X-like social media network, the Verge reported on Tuesday, citing multiple sources familiar with the matter. The project is still in early stages and there is an internal prototype focused on ChatGPT’s image generation that contains a social feed, the report said. OpenAI did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been privately asking outsiders for feedback about the project, the Verge said, adding that it was unclear whether the company plans to release the social network as a stand-alone application or integrate it into ChatGPT. —Deborah Sophia, Reuters View the full article

During his family’s annual summer vacations on North Carolina’s Outer Banks, high schooler Ajith Varikuti began to notice something concerning. Homes on the narrow line of barrier islands that Varikuti had grown up visiting from his hometown Charlotte were no longer there. “I started seeing more and more news articles about entire houses being completely destroyed. And it started clicking, because some of those houses that were being destroyed I’d seen in my previous years there,” he says. Varikuti, who was then a 9th grade student, knew there had to be a solution. So, as part of a student design competition organized by the design software company Autodesk, Varikuti …

On Thursday at 3 p.m. ET, a helicopter flew along the Manhattan skyline for less than 18 minutes before plunging into the Hudson River. The sightseeing helicopter carried a family of five from Spain. Law enforcement confirmed the identity of the passengers to ABC News as Agustin Escobar, an executive from European automation company Siemens, along with his wife, Merce Camprubi Montal, and their three children. The family, along with the pilot, all died in the crash. The helicopter was chartered by the company New York Helicopter, which posted photos of the smiling family inside the aircraft just before it took off. The chopper appeared to be a N216MH—a Bell 206L…

Just in time for the Super Bowl, PepsiCo is cutting the price of Doritos, Cheetos, Lay’s, Tostitos, and other snacks by up to 15%. The move comes after consumers complained the chips were too pricey. “Our customers . . . have been honest with us about how rising everyday costs are making their daily decisions harder. Message received,” PepsiCo said in a statement. “Lowering the suggested retail price reflects our commitment to help reduce the pressure where we can,” PepsiCo Foods U.S. CEO Rachel Ferdinando added. The new discounted prices roll out this week, ahead of this Sunday’s big game, one of the biggest days for snack purchases. PepsiCo said supermarket…

U.S. job openings fell to the lowest level in more than five years, another sign that the American labor market remains sluggish. The Labor Department reported Thursday that vacancies fell to 6.5 million in December — from 6.9 million in November and the fewest since September 2020. Layoffs rose slightly. The number of people quitting their jobs — which shows confidence in their prospects — was basically unchanged at 3.2 million. December openings came in lower than economists had forecast. The economy is in a puzzling place. Growth is strong: Gross domestic product — the nation’s output of goods and services — advanced from July through September at the faste…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. During the Pandemic Housing Boom, housing demand surged rapidly amid ultralow interest rates, stimulus, and the remote work boom. Federal Reserve researchers estimate “new construction would have had to increase by roughly 300% to absorb the pandemic-era surge in demand.” Unlike housing demand, housing stock isn’t as elastic and can’t quickly ramp up. As a result, the heightened demand drained the market of active inventory and caused home prices to overheat, with U.S. home prices in June 2022 sitting a staggering 43.2% above March 2020 levels. S…

There are few things everyone can rally behind as much as finding a lost dog. But what if that mission is actually a workaround for mass surveillance? That’s the question many people are asking following a Super Bowl commercial from Ring, Amazon’s doorbell camera and home security brand. The 30-second video shows a series of missing dog posters and claims that 10 million pets go missing every year. It pitches Ring’s Search Party feature as the solution. Launched in November, Search Party takes a photo of the pet and taps into Ring cameras across the area. They can then use AI to identify the missing pet and send an alert. The ad claims that at least one dog …

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…

A few months ago, I walked into the office of one of our customers, a publicly traded vertical software company with tens of thousands of small business customers. I expected to meet a traditional support team with rows of agents on the phones, sitting at computers triaging tickets. Instead, it looked more like a control room. There were specialists monitoring dashboards, tuning AI behavior, debugging API failures, and iterating on knowledge workflows. One team member who had started their career handling customer questions over chat and email (resetting passwords, explaining features, troubleshooting one-off issues, and escalating bugs) was now writing Python scripts…

A new Marvel movie, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, is set to arrive in July, and fans are already invested in its marketing campaign. Earlier this month, the film’s Instagram account uploaded a promo poster, and people have been reacting. On the subreddit r/marvelstudios commenters praised the poster’s minimalistic design and color scheme. (“The art for this movie has been [to] die for. Man. Whoever is doing this graphic design should be proud,” read one comment.) The retro-futuristic design features only two colors: sky blue and white. Overlapping figure fours surround white silhouettes of Mr. Fantastic, Invisible Woman, Human Torch, and the Thing standing in t…

Charging a car, or electric vehicle, typically takes about 350 kilowatts. Charging an entire ocean freighter, or electric vessel, could take 20 megawatts, roughly 57 times more power. It’s a striking difference in power and generating capacity, and illuminates the challenges and opportunities behind greening the freighters and container ships crisscrossing the earth’s oceans. Across the Atlantic, maritime green energy provider NatPower Marine is developing the infrastructure to establish the world’s first operational electrified shipping corridor between Ireland and England. This includes electric boats and chargers and the renewable energy projects—which include…

When Howard Schultz joined—and later acquired—Starbucks in the 1980s, he was deeply inspired by the communal culture of Italian coffee bars. From the beginning, Schultz envisioned Starbucks as more than a transactional stop for coffee. He wanted to build a community-centered space for people to congregate and connect. That vision helped redefine what a coffee shop could be. In recent years, however, that vision has lost momentum. Shifts in how and where people work, rising costs, and intensifying competition have challenged Starbucks’s dominance in the coffee shop landscape. In New York City, the company recently lost its position as the city’s largest coffee chain …

On Maui’s North Shore, inside an industrial building that was once a pineapple cannery, an architecture office sits across the hall from a surfboard manufacturer. When the architects first moved in, they noticed something: Every few days, the dumpsters in the back would fill up with scraps of foam from making the boards. David Sellers, one of the architects, realized that the foam could be used in a building material—insulated blocks that are typically made from a mix of concrete and new polystyrene foam. “I was just like, ‘We shouldn’t be throwing this away,’” says Sellers, principal architect at the firm, Hawaii Off Grid. “We live on an island, with limited space. S…