What's on Your Mind?

The consulting firm McKinsey and women’s nonprofit Lean In just released their annual Women in the Workplace report, which examines how gender disparities are impacting womens’ career prospects. Unfortunately, this year’s results show that companies are backsliding on their commitment to workplace equity—and one way that’s harming women is by making it more difficult for them to work remotely. This is the 11th annual Women in the Workplace report, and its results reflect a broader pattern across corporate America: a retreat from inclusive efforts amidst a The President administration that’s gone out of its way to cut back on DEI policies. Per the study, two in 10 comp…

Gen Z’s latest online fixation is the so-called ‘millennial optimism’ era. The TikTok trend sees users posting early-2000s throwback snaps set to The Middle East’s 2009 song “Blood”. Think moustache tattoos, Apple Photo Booth selfies, and owl-print tops paired with galaxy leggings. For those too young to experience it firsthand: the 2010s were a simpler, happier time. As one TikTok creator posted: “Millennial optimism era really had me thinking I could make a living as a part-time barista and live in a six-bedroom house with all my friends.” As one commenter confirmed: “Tbh this was actually possible in 2012.” In another clip, one Gen Zer wrote: “Every day I’m fa…

Want to visit the U.S.? Be prepared to cough up your social media history. The U.S. Customs and Border Protection filed a legal proposal today that will make it mandatory for many tourists to submit the last five years of their social media history as part of the application required to visit the country. The public has 60 days, until early February, to submit comments to this proposal. The social media requirement, if enacted, would apply to any visitor from the 42 different countries in the Visa Waiver Program. Rather than applying for a visa, these tourists must submit an application to the Electronic System for Travel Authorization and pay a $40 fee for visit…

Charli XCX is making a trip to the Sundance Film Festival in January. The pop singer-songwriter appears in three films premiering at the 2026 festival, including a mockumentary that she produced and stars in. Programmers on Wednesday unveiled a lineup of 90 feature films set for the festival’s last hurrah in Park City, Utah. The slate includes documentaries on basketball great Brittney Griner, Nelson Mandela, Salman Rushdie, Courtney Love, and Billie Jean King. There are starry features with the likes of Natalie Portman, Jenna Ortega, Seth Rogen, Channing Tatum, Danielle Brooks, Olivia Colman, Da’Vine Joy Randolph, Alexander Skarsgård, and Ethan Hawke. Olivia Wilde di…

Mega billionaire Elon Musk, in a friendly interview with his aide and conservative influencer Katie Miller, said his efforts leading the Department of Government Efficiency were only “somewhat successful” and he would not do it over again. The Tesla and SpaceX CEO, who also owns the social media platform X, still broadly defended President Donald The President‘s controversial pop-up agency that Musk left in the spring before it shuttered officially last month. Yet Musk bemoaned how difficult it is to remake the federal government quickly, and he acknowledged how much his businesses suffered because of his DOGE work and its lack of popularity. “We were a little bit…

The automatic door has been reinvented. The home-focused tech startup Doma just announced its first product line: a set of residential doors capable of opening and closing automatically at the sight of an approaching homeowner. Packed with sensors, motors, and facial recognition technology, Doma Intelligent Doors bring automatic functionality and programmable controls to a home’s front door—all without clunky and unsightly equipment. Doma is led by founders Jason Johnson and designer Yves Béhar, who previously founded and later sold the smart door lockcompany August Home. The two joined forces again after sharing a frustration with the state of smart home technolo…

As the year winds down to a close, with just three weeks left on the calendar, Nextdoor may be the next, last, big meme stock of 2025. Here’s why. What happened? On Wednesday, Nextdoor Holdings Inc. (NXDR) shares rose 49% in early trading, the most in over four years, according to Bloomberg. The gains come on the heels of a series of posts on X on Wednesday morning by investor Eric Jackson, founder of EMJ Capital hedge fund, who described the neighborhood-focused site as “one of the most misunderstood platforms in the market” and touted its AI potential: “Nextdoor isn’t a social network. It’s a neighborhood operating system with AI-native revenue,” as well as …

Paired with high-deductible healthcare plans, health savings accounts help ease healthcare costs. HSAs are a triple tax-advantaged vehicle in the tax code, allowing for pretax contributions, tax-free compounding, and tax-free withdrawals for qualified medical expenses. However, few owners fund their HSAs to the maximum, and even fewer invest their HSA dollars outside a savings account. Most consumers likely don’t fill their HSAs because they lack the financial means; critics note that the HDHP/HSA combination can be less beneficial for lower-income workers. But even wealthy consumers may decline to fully fund their HSAs. Many HSAs charge account-maintenance fees and e…

OpenAI said Tuesday it has picked Slack CEO Denise Dresser as its first chief of revenue, a message to wary investors that the ChatGPT maker is serious about making a profit from its artificial intelligence technology. OpenAI said Dresser will oversee global revenue strategy and “help more businesses put AI to work in their day-to-day operations.” Dresser had already spent more than a decade at Salesforce when the software pioneer announced in 2020 it was buying work-chatting service Slack for $27.7 billion. She helped integrate Slack into the software company before Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff picked her as CEO in 2023. Salesforce said in a statement that it …

Even in an age when it is rather common to invite people, including leaders, to “bring their whole self to work”, what is actually rewarded at work is being our best self, in the sense of trying to be at the best of our behaviors, and fulfill as much of our potential as we can, as often as possible. Importantly, many if not most people still compartmentalize their personal self as something separate from their work persona or professional self, even if both can co-exist as salient, albeit different, dimensions of their self-concept. Indeed, this aligns with the science of self-complexity, which basically shows that we “inhabit multiple selves”, in the sense that our i…

Rejoice, New Year’s dieters: Oreos are getting a sugar-free option. Mondelez said Tuesday that Oreo Zero Sugar and Oreo Double Stuf Zero Sugar will go on sale in the U.S. in January. They’re a permanent addition to the company’s Oreo lineup. It’s the first time Mondelez has sold sugar-free Oreos in the U.S. They’re already sold in Europe and China, the company said. Mondelez said consumers are increasingly seeking what it calls “mindful indulgence,” and the new Oreos will fill an existing gap in the market for sugar-free sandwich cookies. Others have also noted the trend toward healthier snacks. In a report earlier this year, the market research company Circana…

Cracker Barrel posted lower-than-expected sales in its fiscal first quarter and trimmed its revenue forecast for the year as it continued to feel the fallout from a botched plan to revamp its logo and restaurants. The Lebanon, Tennessee-based restaurant chain said Tuesday its revenue fell 5.7% to $797.2 million in the three months ending Oct. 31. That was lower than the $800 million Wall Street anticipated, according to analysts polled by FactSet. Cracker Barrel said its same-store restaurant sales dropped 4.7% while sales in its retail shops dropped 8.5%. Those declines were also slightly higher than analysts forecast. Cracker Barrel said it now expects total revenue …

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. When assessing home price momentum, ResiClub believes it’s important to monitor active listings and months of supply. If active listings start to rapidly increase as homes remain on the market for longer periods, it may indicate pricing softness or weakness. Conversely, a rapid decline in active listings beyond seasonality could suggest a market that is heating up. Since the national Pandemic Housing Boom fizzled out in 2022, the national power dynamic has slowly been shifting directionally from sellers to buyers. Of course, across the country that s…

Researchers on the forefront of artificial intelligence (AI) and leaders of many of the major platforms—from Jeffrey Hinton to Yoshua Bengio, Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Elon Musk—have voiced concerns that AI could lead to the destruction of humanity itself. Even the stated odds from some of these AI experts, with an end-days scenario as high as 25%, are still “wildly optimistic,” according to Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and coauthor of the recent best-selling book If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. That’s because, as he argues in the book, the track we’re on with AI is headed for disaster—unless…

The Senate is heading toward dueling partisan votes on health care this week after Republicans said Tuesday that they had united around a plan, for now, that would allow COVID-era health care subsidies to expire. Both the Republican plan, which would replace the subsidies with new savings accounts, and a Democratic bill to extend the enhanced Affordable Care Act tax credits for three years lack the bipartisan support needed for passage. Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., said Tuesday that the Democratic legislation does not include enough reforms to curb fraud or limit high-income recipients. That legislation “will fail,” Thune said. At the same time, Democratic…

Reading the news, it can feel like no one is partying anymore. People seem more excited to stay home than go out. Gen Z is drinking less than any other generation. Wellness clubs have replaced night clubs as the go-to spots to socialize. But partying is not dead — priorities have simply shifted, as highlighted in the Evite’s Pregame Report 2026 released today. The online invitations platform surveyed more than 5,000 party enthusiasts to uncover the hottest trends and the biggest pet peeves for party planning in 2026. As it turns out, partying no longer happens only at the club. It has shifted to smaller, connection-focused affairs. After birthdays and …

Consider this: You want to book a multicity, international trip with flights from New York City to London, then Paris, and then back to New York City. There are numerous variables in the mix—different airlines, various ticketing levels, and more—that make the booking more complicated than anticipated. Accordingly, you may end up booking several separate flights, with multiple tickets and confirmation codes to keep track of. If you travel a lot, that can be a lot to manage. But Navan, a corporate travel and expense platform, says it has smoothed the whole process out for booking flights. Navan—which went public less than a month and a half ago, and mainly competes…

A SpaceX initial public offering might be on the horizon. The aerospace company, run by founder and CEO Elon Musk, is reportedly planning an IPO aimed at raising over $30 billion, according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter. The IPO could be as soon as mid- to late-2026 or 2027. In its recent 2026 US Venture Capital Outlook, PitchBook pointed to the rise in space-focused stock listings, citing favorable policies. Fast Company has reached out to SpaceX for comment and will update this post if we hear back. Reaching the $30 billion threshold would make SpaceX the largest IPO in history—and give it a reported $1.5 trillion valuatio…

It’s a common experience: you search for white bean soup recipes one time on Instagram, and you are bombarded with white bean soup content on the app for seemingly all eternity. Instagram wants to fix that. Starting today, the company’s three billion users can have more control over their algorithm via a “Tune Your Algorithm” feature. It’s not quite Bluesky, or the Instagram of yore that only displayed content from accounts users followed, but it does let users select or unsubscribe from different topics. The new feature, which leverages AI, lets users pick topics they want to see more or less of on their explore page. Users will first be able to see a list of su…

It’s a common experience: you search for white bean soup recipes one time on Instagram, and you are bombarded with white bean soup content on the app for seemingly all eternity. Instagram wants to fix that. Starting today, the company’s three billion users can have more control over their algorithm via a “Your Algorithm” feature. It’s not quite Bluesky, or the Instagram of yore that only displayed content from accounts users followed, but it does let users select or unsubscribe from different topics. The new feature, which leverages AI, lets users pick topics they want to see more or less of on their explore page. Users will first be able to see a list of suggest…

The economy has had a volatile year marked by ongoing headwinds and uncertainties. Persistent inflation, unpredictability around tariffs, and a stock market that many fear is in the midst of an AI-fueled bubble are among the factors impacting consumers’ spending power. But there is one event today that will hopefully deliver some much-needed certainty to the economy and broader markets: the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut announcement. Here’s what you need to know about a possible Fed rate cut today. What is the Fed rate cut announcement? The Federal Reserve is America’s central bank. One of its main responsibilities is setting the country’s interest rates.…

Once upon a time, San Francisco was a manufacturing town. For decades, the Union Iron Works built ships—such as the U.S. Navy’s U.S.S. Oregon (1893) and U.S.S. Wisconsin (1898)—in its plant on Pier 70 in the neighborhood now known as Dogpatch. In recent years, that sprawling, long-abandoned complex has been rehabbed and filled with office space, housing, retail, and art studios. Among its tenants are startup accelerator Y Combinator and HR platform Gusto, neither of which has much in common with the Union Iron Works. And then there’s Astranis. The company is returning Pier 70 to its roots by applying human labor to turn raw materials into finished products. The produc…

The front of the Wheaties box has served as a hall of fame for some of the greatest athletes of all time, from baseball star Lou Gehrig to boxer Muhammid Ali, basketball legend Michael Jordan, and seven-time Olympic gold medalist Simone Biles. Now, a fresh face is gracing the box’s hallowed orange frame: Marty Mauser, the fictional ping-pong player played by Timothée Chalamet in A24’s upcoming film Marty Supreme. Instagram The cereal box comes just weeks after A24 released a now-viral 18-minute long parody of a marketing meeting to promote the movie (which releases on Christmas). In that video, Chalamet joins a Zoom call full of supposed marketing executives and pr…

AI is part and parcel of many corporate design processes these days, including one company making a product many creatives are familiar with: Dropbox. Its VP of design and research, Shannon Butler, is optimistic about the tech’s integrations into her teams’ work—as long as designers are pragmatic in its integrations. Butler leads a design team that she feels has a bigger impact than filing deliverables on deadline: redefining work through the intersection of creativity, collaboration, and AI. A veteran of Google, YouTube, Airbnb, and LinkedIn, Shannon has spent two decades shaping products that influence how billions connect and create. Shannon Butler In her in…

We were promised empathy in a box: a tireless digital companion that listens without judgment, available 24/7, and never sends a bill. The idea of AI as a psychologist or therapist has surged alongside mental health demand, with apps, chatbots, and “empathetic AI” platforms now claiming to offer everything from stress counseling to trauma recovery. It’s an appealing story. But it’s also a deeply dangerous one. Recent experiments with “AI therapists” reveal what happens when algorithms learn to mimic empathy but not understand it. The consequences range from the absurd to the tragic, and they tell us something profound about the difference between feeling heard and…