What's on Your Mind?

Thanks to social media, a new legion of fans are discovering something new to love at Buc-ee’s: The OverBite. Though it’s been on the shelves at Buc-ee’s for several years, the hockey puck-shaped, chocolate covered candy bar has become a bit of a viral sensation more recently. Available in five different flavors, these quarter-pound treats feature a thick layer of either milk or dark chocolate and fillings like peanut butter, caramel, and cookies and cream. It seems Rich O’Toole, a Texas-based singer and songwriter, may get credit for kicking into overdrive the latest frenzy over the OverBite. In a post on X that’s amassed more than 8 million views since Monday,…

After-work drinks are a nice way to bond with colleagues in your 20s and 30s. But, as people get older, different circumstances can necessitate more planning, and new avenues for making friends at work. Take Olga Valadon, 54, whose last corporate role was as chief of staff at Deloitte. “Both I and the people I became friends with faced different pressures, whether from work or family commitments,” says Valadon. “We were running around all day chasing our tail to fulfill these needs, often leaving too little time or energy for anything that was just for us.” It’s no surprise that, as people age, family obligations become a significant barrier to making friends. Bi…

JetBlue replies to customers on social media every day, from assuaging their customer service woes to thanking them for choosing their flights. But one seemingly innocuous JetBlue response may have set a class action lawsuit in motion, after customers became convinced that the airline implicated itself in using surveillance pricing. A social media frenzy JetBlue first drew suspicions of surveillance pricing with an April 18 reply on X to a user complaining about the airline’s prices. “A $230 increase on a ticket after one day is crazy,” they wrote. “I’m just trying to make it to a funeral.” JetBlue replied, recommending that the user “try clearing your cache an…

Lowe’s Home Improvement is facing pressure to cut ties with Flock Safety, the surveillance company that makes cameras, drones, and automated license plate readers (ALPRs). The pressure comes amid reports that Flock data has been used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and even aided in an investigation of a woman who had an abortion, driving fears about a mass surveillance state. In August, 404 Media reported that Flock cameras stationed outside of Lowe’s and The Home Depot “are being fed into a massive surveillance system that law enforcement can access.” The story cited records obtained by EFF. In an April 1 letter addressed to CEO Marvin Ellison…

Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to select employees, it announced in a memo on Thursday, CNBC reported. The move is a first for the company, as the tech industry at large faces shifts in the era of artificial intelligence. The program will be available to U.S. workers at the senior director level and below whose employment years and age add up to at least 70. Employees with sales incentive plans are ineligible. Those who qualify and their managers will receive more information on May 7, according to the memo. The plan is expected to take effect in the fourth quarter of Microsoft’s fiscal year 2026, which ends June 30. About 7% of the U.S. workforce is expe…

OpenAI on Thursday released its most capable AI system, GPT-5.5, which the company says will enable a more powerful Codex coding agent. OpenAI is quick to say, however, that GPT-5.5 will power the widening set of general digital work tasks that Codex is capable of. The system is significantly better than previous releases at helping with scientific work, including creative aspects of generating new hypotheses and testing them. The system represents an improvement in autonomous or agentic capability. GPT-5.56 “represents a step toward AI systems that can complete complex, multi-step tasks on a computer without human guidance,” OpenAI says in a blog post. GPT-5.5, …

Beast Industries, the $5 billion media conglomerate founded by YouTube star MrBeast, is being sued by a former employee who says she was sexually harassed, discriminated against as a woman, and fired shortly after returning from maternity leave. The company refutes her claims, saying it has evidence, including Slack and WhatsApp messages, company documents, and witness testimony, that contradict the lawsuit’s allegations. The federal lawsuit, filed on Tuesday in the Eastern District Court of North Carolina, paints a picture of Beast Industries as a boy’s club in which women were excluded from male-dominated meetings, demeaned in front of colleagues, and told to “…

Meta announced to employees on Thursday that the company is laying off around 10% of the company on May 20—about 8,000 employees out of its workforce of more than 78,000 will be impacted, Bloomberg first reported. The company will also close 6,000 open roles it planned to fill, according to a memo that was sent to staffers today from Meta’s chief people officer, Janella Gale. In the memo, obtained by Business Insider, Gale attributed the cuts to Meta’s “continued effort to run the company more efficiently and to allow us to offset the other investments we’re making.” The memo did not specify what those “other investments” are, but it’s public knowledge that …

Modern brides need something old, new, borrowed, and blue. But if they’re influencers, add a sponsor to the list, too. Paid sponsored content is commonplace for anyone who scrolls through an influencer’s social media, where you might encounter anything from a lavish vacation to new products to try. But a recent viral discussion on social media has users questioning if the practice has gone too far. “Just saw someone posting their wedding on IG,” a user posted to X, alongside a screenshot of an Instagram quote from content creator Jaz Smith. “The 1st slide was them and the second slide was a photo of CAPITAL ONE CAFE. “I can’t make this shit up. WHEW, is no…

From software engineers to non-technical staff, Google has urged its employees to fully embrace AI. And it seems like the push to use the tech has resulted in a major productivity leap. In a Wednesday blog post, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that three-quarters of the company’s new code is AI-generated. “We’ve been using AI to generate code internally at Google for a while,” Pichai said. “Today, 75% of all new code at Google is now AI-generated and approved by engineers, up from 50% last fall.” “We’re now shifting to truly agentic workflows,” the tech giant CEO continued in the blog post. “Our engineers are orchestrating fully autonomous digital task forces, f…

NASA this week released a stunning video of “Earthset,” the humbling moment when the Artemis II crew (now back at home) caught a view of Earth setting behind the lunar surface. From the window of the crew’s capsule, the recording captured the cusp of our bright and blue planet slowly disappearing behind the moon. The camera lens is of high-enough quality that the imaging picked up the wisps of weather systems traveling over our oceans and, in the foreground, the much darker lunar surface, peppered with crevices and craters. “Dude,” exhales an overcome astronaut on the recording’s audio. “No way.” This was all filmed on an iPhone 17 Pro Max and was shot by Reid W…

The software company Palantir has waded into online fashion discourse after its head of strategic engagement, Eliano A. Younes, posted pictures of a “lightweight Palantir chore coat” to X. the lightweight Palantir chore coat [04.30.2026 • 0930 AM EST] pic.twitter.com/9K5fmu3bSs — Eliano A Younes (@eliano) April 21, 2026 In his post, Younes detailed the make of the coat (100% cotton, designed and made in America, “relaxed fit”), adding that it goes on sale April 30. The perplexing framing has caught people’s attention: Is this internal merch for a controversial tech company, or a drop from a streetwear brand? Increasingly, those worlds are getting uncomforta…

Over the past year, a quiet shift has been unfolding across the internet. A growing wave of AI-generated news and content sites has flooded search results. Many of them are technically accurate, cleanly written, and structurally sound, yet they feel strangely interchangeable. A recent analysis by NewsGuard identified more than 1,000 AI-driven content farms producing articles at scale, often without original reporting, perspective, or voice. The information is there. But something essential is missing. It is not accuracy or clarity; it is a point of view. That absence points to a deeper question: If everyone is using the same models, trained on the same data, to generate i…

Last August, as the internet piled on Cracker Barrel over its new “modern” logo, something even stranger was unfolding at Steak ’n Shake. For one week, the chain’s X account didn’t try to sell a single burger. Instead, it attacked Cracker Barrel’s “destruction of shareholder value,” alongside other financial grievances. It sold $20 red MAGA-style hats bearing the words “Fire Cracker Barrel CEO,” and drew attention to a billboard near Cracker Barrel’s Nashville headquarters that Steak ’n Shake had secured, repeating the line. Days later, Cracker Barrel admitted defeat. The logo reverted. The internet moved on. Steak ’n Shake did not. The account remained fixate…

For publishers, one of the observations that’s often cited about AI search is that the people who click through are more intentional than those who come from traditional search. In other words, sure, AI might be nuking your referral traffic, but at least the people coming from there are more likely to engage, and potentially become loyal readers. And that’s true—the stats show it. But it’s an oversimplification of a more interesting reality. It turns out that the audience in AI search isn’t just a blob of traffic that you need to work extra hard to get the attention of. People who ask AI portals for information about something can have wildly different intentions…

Earlier in my life, I worked for a global company. I passed my manager in the hallway, and wanted to ask her a question. She was stressed and answered before I had even completed the question. I tried again. She did it again. On the third attempt, I looked at her and said, “Can you please be quiet until I have finished my question?” She stopped. I finished. She answered and then rushed away. Five minutes later, I did the exact same thing to one of my own people. That moment has stayed with me for decades. It wasn’t the most dramatic experience of my life, but it was one that made me embarrassed. I’d like to think that I’ve learned something since then. But it’…

The modern email inbox can be disorganized and unwieldy. Important emails get lost under spam and receipts, and the search function doesn’t always work like you hoped it would. Many of us gave up on inbox zero long ago. If that sounds like you, this new smart email client might be exactly what you’re looking for. Extra is an email inbox app designed by Build Forever, a software company founded by a trio of former Pinterest employees. The app intriguingly reimagines the entire user experience of the inbox from one of stacked, accumulating, text-only subject lines to an image-rich interface that surfaces the most important emails for you using AI. Build Forever …

A few years ago, employees at the Chinese tech giant ByteDance, the company behind TikTok, received an unusual internal reminder: colleagues should avoid using “您” (nín), the formal and respectful version of the Chinese word “you.” Instead, employees were encouraged to address everyone using “你” (nǐ), the informal form, regardless of rank. For many younger staff members, the change felt natural. ByteDance had deliberately built a fast-moving start-up culture that emphasized equality, speed, and open communication. But for others, particularly those accustomed to more traditional professional environments, the change felt almost radical. After all, in Chinese c…

I’m addicted to the curtain. That moment when you walk through a dark hall, push through two layers of dark drapes, and whatever you see next—no matter what it is—is a bit of a thrill. It’s one of my favorite motifs of Milan Design Week, when half a million people from around the globe for a citywide celebration of all things design. The hook is Salone de Mobile, the world’s largest furniture trade show. Its 3/4-mile-long fairgrounds feature 1,900 exhibitors from 32 countries. (The fairgrounds are so expansive they actually sit outside Milan in a city called Rho.) But many visitors never make it there, instead exploring Milan’s design districts that are f…

There is an “unprecedented degree of change in the business environment,” as one CEO in the latest Fortune/Deloitte CEO survey put it. If you’re struggling to scale your company, you’re not alone. Growth is harder and fatigue is everywhere. This volatile environment makes focus all the more important. I have worked with over a hundred VC or Private Equity backed startups through scaleups, and there are consistent barriers that every CEO and C-Suite, no matter your industry or business model, must overcome in order to grow successfully. As my old boss at Cisco, John Chambers, used to say “Concentrate on what you can control, not on what you can’t.” As a leader, here ar…

Note: This article discusses sensitive topics like suicide and self-harm. If you or someone you know is in danger, please call the national suicide and crisis lifeline at 988. LLM-powered chatbots have brought humans and technology closer together than ever before–but at what cost? Many people have begun turning to LLMs for advice, seeking guidance on anything from fitness plans to interpersonal relationships. But for society’s most vulnerable minds (e.g., adolescents, the elderly, and those with mental health conditions), this intimacy presents a hidden danger. These tools can descend into something darker: enablers for suicide and self-harm (SSH). Chatbots have …

NASA is looking not to the stars but back to our planet for inspiration. In honor of Earth Day, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center shared an interactive digital tool turns satellite images of the planet’s landscapes into a typeface. “The planet can spell your name—literally,” the Kennedy Space Center’s X post says. Using a feature called “Your Name in Landsat,” users can type in whichever word they choose into the generator’s textbox. The site will then generate the phrase using landscapes from Earth, like rivers, lakes, farmland, and more. When hovering over each “letter,” users can learn more about where the landscape is located and even its coordinates. NAS…