What's on Your Mind?

Last June, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky took on a second job. Microsoft, the social network for business professionals’ owner since 2016, expanded his responsibilities to include Microsoft 365—the suite still better known by its former name, Microsoft Office—and its Copilot AI assistant. The role charges him with making AI useful in a productivity context, a goal that’s still very much a work in progress. But Roslansky also remains in charge of LinkedIn, a place whose entire reason for being springs from the network effect of its billion-plus members. Their unique connections, learnings, and willingness to help other people can’t be fed into an LLM and reprocessed into the…

As 2026 takes shape, the most successful leaders will adopt new tools with responsibility and vision while keeping the human side of shopping alive. These 10 tech trends in retail tech and AI are evolving, transforming how brands design, distribute, and deliver experiences. These are not distant forecasts, but happening in real time across retailers, marketplaces, and consumer ecosystems. 1. Predictive intent engines Reactive personalization is being replaced by predictive intent engines. Instead of waiting for a customer to browse, AI anticipates the customer’s next wants based on contextual data like weather, life events, and even local cultural moments. For …

Some of my best ideas come to me when I’m exercising. At least I think they’re some of my best ideas; by the time I actually get a chance to write them down, I’ve often forgotten them. While you could argue that something I was unable to remember for an hour or so can’t be that great, still: we’ve all had things we wanted to remember, but couldn’t. So what can you do if you need to remember something important? Most memory-improvement techniques—like mnemonics, chunking, and building memory palaces—involve a fair amount of effort. But these simple strategies to improve your short-term memory and recall require almost no effort—and very little time. 1. Say…

Online betting is more accessible than ever, with 14% of U.S. adults saying they bet on professional or college sports online either frequently or occasionally, according to a February poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It’s also in the news, with a growing list of sports betting scandals making headlines. Public health advocates and personal finance advisers say it’s important to know the risks if you’re going to gamble online. “Gambling and ‘responsibly’ seem to be oxymoronic, because if you’re gambling it’s all about risk,” said Caleb Silver, editor in chief of personal finance site Investopedia. “But people still do it. Online gamb…

Forty-three days later, the U.S. government shutdown has come to an end. While it wreaked havoc on government services, flights, and paychecks for federal workers, stock market appears to have come through it unscathed. In fact, by some measures, it improved. The Dow Jones Industrial Average reached 46,441.10 on the first day of the shutdown. Since October 1, it has grown over 4%, reaching over 48,000 for the first time on Wednesday, November 12. While the record number came as the shutdown’s end became a sure thing, the Dow had continued to rise throughout the period. The S&P 500 also followed a mostly upward trajectory throughout the shutdown. It …

Flight reductions at 40 major U.S. airports will remain at 6% instead of rising to 10% by the end of the week because more air traffic controllers are coming to work, officials said Wednesday. The announcement was made as Congress took steps to end the longest government shutdown in history. Not long after, President Donald The President signed a government funding bill to end the closure. The flight cuts were implemented last week as more air traffic controllers were calling out of work, citing stress and the need to take on second jobs — leaving more control towers and facilities short-staffed. Air traffic controllers missed two paychecks during the impasse. The Depa…

All last week, OpenAI watchers reported seeing strange things. References to GPT-5.1 kept showing up in OpenAI’s codebase, and a “cloaked” model codenamed Polaris Alpha and widely believed to have come from OpenAI randomly appeared in OpenRouter, a platform that AI nerds use to test new systems. Today, we learned what was going on. OpenAI announced the release of its brand new 5.1 model, an updated and revamped version of the GPT-5 model the company debuted in August. As a former OpenAI Beta tester–and someone who burns through millions of GPT-5 tokens every month–here’s what you need to know about GPT-5.1. A smarter, friendlier robot In their relea…

Visitors to dozens of Starbucks stores across more than 40 cities may be greeted with picket lines today as Starbucks baristas go on strike. And it’s a strike that couldn’t come at a worse time for Starbucks, as today is the company’s annual Red Cup Day, which kicks off the Seattle coffee giant’s holiday sales season. Here’s what to know: What’s happened? Today, unionized Starbucks baristas went on strike at more than 65 Starbucks locations across 42 cities. The baristas are members of the Starbucks Workers Union (SBWU), a collective that says it includes over 12,000 Starbucks workers across 550 unionized stores. The union says it has been in stalled negoti…

President Donald The President signed a government funding bill Wednesday night, ending a record 43-day shutdown that caused financial stress for federal workers who went without paychecks, stranded scores of travelers at airports and generated long lines at some food banks. The shutdown magnified partisan divisions in Washington as The President took unprecedented unilateral actions — including canceling projects and trying to fire federal workers — to pressure Democrats into relenting on their demands. The Republican president blamed the situation on Democrats and suggested voters shouldn’t reward the party during next year’s midterm elections. “So I just want to tel…

OpenAI watchers have spotted something curious over the last week. References to GPT-5.1 keep showing up in OpenAI’s codebase, and a “cloaked” model codenamed Polaris Alpha and widely believed to have come from OpenAI randomly appeared in OpenRouter, a platform that AI nerds use to test new systems. Nothing is official yet. But all of this suggests that OpenAI is quietly preparing to release a new version of their GPT-5 model. Industry sources point to a potential release date as early as November 24. If GPT-5.1 is for real, what new capabilities will the model have? As a former OpenAI Beta tester—and someone who burns through millions of GPT-5 token…

We’re in an age where AI-fueled rapid prototyping and sleek direct-to-consumer startups seem to capture all the attention. But some of the most profound design disruptions didn’t start in a founder’s garage or in the algorithms of artificial intelligence; they were born in the aisles of mainstream consumer stores like Target. In the late 1990s, my company, Michael Graves Design changed the conversation around design with a teakettle that was joyful, affordable, and elegant. It didn’t just sit on a stove, it stood for a new idea: Good design was not a luxury, but a right. Target’s Design for All programs went on to define America’s expectation that great design should be a…

Culture does not scale linearly with revenue or headcount —it requires intentionality the faster you grow. When I joined DPR Construction in the early 1990s, we were a small startup with a shared vision. Today, we have over 13,000 employees worldwide. Along the way, we’ve learned that sustaining culture through growth isn’t automatic—it takes clarity, intention, and continual reinforcement. With growth, we faced a familiar challenge many companies do: How could we preserve the cultural core we started with as a smaller company as we grew to an organization of thousands of people spread across the globe? Company culture is often described as intangible; however, li…

If talent is the oxygen of a company, succession planning is the life-support system. Yet too many organizations treat it like an org chart exercise, waiting until someone resigns or retires before scrambling to find a replacement. When a leader walks out, the ripple effects are immediate: strategy stalls, teams lose momentum, and culture wobbles overnight. The bigger problem? Most companies aren’t ready when it happens. According to DDI’s 2025 HR Insights Report, only 20% of CHROs say they have leaders prepared to step into critical roles, and just 49% of those roles could be filled internally today. That means most organizations are closer to a leadership cr…

One X user named Julia recently shared screenshots of an email exchange with her boyfriend in which she was, in her own words, “colleague-zoned.” In the now-viral post, which has over 15.4 million views at the time of writing, Julia penned in the caption: “Sent a document to my boyfriend’s work email so he could print it for me and got colleague-zoned.” Julia had emailed her boyfriend a document to print, ending her note with, “I love you! Please print this for me! Thanks,” and a red heart emoji. To which he formally responded: “Julia, thanks for reaching out. I have received your document and printed it on 8″ x 11″ paper. Will deliver to you later this evening to…

It’s a random Tuesday in October, and your kids are home again. A national holiday? Nope. A snow day. Not even a speck of frost on the ground. It’s Professional Development Day or Parent-Teacher Conference Half Day or one of the 15 other noninstructional days that appear in the school calendar like little landmines for anyone with a full-time job. At this point, I’ve stopped trying to keep track. Every month seems to come with a “surprise, they’re home” moment. And as a working parent, there are few phrases that strike fear into my heart quite like: “No School Today!” I love my kids, but that doesn’t mean I can drop everything every time the school district decide…

Seeing peers lose their jobs has a way of making people weird. It’s not much different from grief. When someone loses a loved one, you can almost feel the tension: people fumbling for the right words, hoping not to say something insensitive, then saying something insensitive anyway. “Everything happens for a reason.” “They’re in a better place.” That is, assuming any condolences are shared at all. Many of us have been there. You don’t want to overstep. Don’t want to make the person feel worse. I get it: Showing sympathy can feel like a minefield. The same thing happens when companies downsize their staff, only the loss isn’t life. It’s employment. When someone get…

If you’re in the business of publishing content on the internet, it’s been difficult to know how to deal with AI. Obviously, you can’t ignore it; large language models (LLMs) and AI search engines are here, and they ingest your content and summarize it for their users, killing valuable traffic to your site. Plenty of data supports this. Creating a content strategy that accounts for this changing reality is complex to begin with. You need to decide what content to expose to AI systems, what to block from them, and how both of those activities can serve your business. That would be hard even if there were clear rules that everyone’s operating under. But that is far …

As I write this my 6-and-a-half-month-old daughter is sitting on my lap in my home office, where she spends an hour or two each day. Despite all the toys I’ve laid out for her, the thing she typically reaches for is my keyboard, occasionally leading to the odd typo. I’ve been a freelance journalist for about 12 years, but never has this work-from-home, choose-your-own schedule arrangement been so valuable. Last year I was able to be with my wife at almost every doctor’s appointment, ultrasound, and blood test before we became parents in April. Since our daughter was born, I have enjoyed the flexibility not only to make it to every pediatrician appointment and give…

Discovering that a colleague with the same job title is earning more than you is never fun, though it is quite common. According to a global survey of 1,850 workers by résumé building platform Kickresume, 56% have discovered that someone with the same job at their company is earning more than them, and another 24% have their suspicions. “People are much less willing to discuss their salaries than we thought they would be—there’s still quite a stigma around it,” says Kickresume’s head of content Martin Poduska, who helped conduct the study. “The weirdest thing is that we didn’t identify a good reason for it.” Poduska explains that compensation is far from a pre…

Jack Schlossberg announced he’s running for Congress. And instead of using his last name in his campaign logo, the 32-year-old—born John Bouvier Kennedy Schlossberg—is using the nickname he shares with his famous grandfather, John F. Kennedy. Schlossberg’s “Jack for New York” logo underlines the “New” in the city’s name in red as if to emphasize a new generation. A red “12” appears in small print at the top right of “New York” to indicate he’s running to represent Manhattan’s 12th District in the U.S. House. Schlossberg tagged designer and Only NY cofounder Micah Belamarich in a social media post showing the logo. Belamarich did not respond to a request for commen…

From the outside looking in, the life of a content creator is enviable. Shopping, jet-setting, star-studded events, all documented for their audience of thousands. But new research tells a different story. A study by Creators 4 Mental Health, conducted in partnership with Lupiani Insights & Strategies and sponsored by Opus, BeReal, Social Currant, Statusphere, and the nonprofit AAKOMA Project, spoke to more than 500 full- and part-time creators across North America about their work, mental health, and well-being. One in ten creators reported having suicidal thoughts tied to their work. That rate is nearly double the national average of 5.5%, according to the…

How do you explain the laws of physics to a toddler? A new children’s book, titled Simple Machines Made Simple, wants to demystify mechanical engineering for kids as young as a year old. It recently beat its Kickstarter goal by 700%—raising more than seven times its target. It will be available to ship early next year. But Simple Machines Made Simple isn’t your typical picture book. Instead of drawings, the book features working models that kids can interact with, like spinning a wheel, sliding a knob up an inclined plane, and pushing a wedge into a block that splits into two. The kids may not graduate with a physics degree, but they might come away with a curiosi…