What's on Your Mind?

U.S. consumers were much less confident in the economy in November in the aftermath of the government shutdown, weak hiring, and stubborn inflation. The Conference Board said Tuesday that its consumer confidence index dropped to 88.7 in November from an upwardly revised October reading of 95.5, the lowest reading since April, when President Donald The President announced sweeping tariffs that caused the stock market to plunge. The figures suggest that Americans are increasingly wary of high costs and sluggish job gains, with perceptions of the labor market worsening, the survey found. Declining confidence could pose political problems for The President and Republi…

The The President administration is hunting for ways to block the ability of states to regulate artificial intelligence. In response, dozens of state attorneys general have now sent a letter pressing Congressional leadership not to approve language that would preempt their governments’ freedom to propose their own legislation on the technology. “Broad preemption of state protections is particularly ill-advised because constantly evolving emerging technologies, like AI, require agile regulatory responses that can protect our citizens,” they write in a Tuesday memo. “This regulatory innovation is best left to the 50 states so we can all learn from what works and what do…

In a packed room at a library in downtown Boston, Rep. Ayanna Pressley posed a blunt question: Why are Black women, who have some of the highest labor force participation rates in the country, now seeing their unemployment rise faster than most other groups? The replies Monday from policymakers, academics, business owners, and community organizers laid out how economic headwinds facing Black women may indicate a troubling shift for the economy at large. The unemployment rate for Black women increased from 6.7% to 7.5% between August and September this year, the most recent month for available data because of the federal government shutdown. That compares with …

Boeing and NASA have agreed to keep astronauts off the company’s next Starliner flight and instead perform a trial run with cargo to prove its safety. Monday’s announcement comes eight months after the first and only Starliner crew returned to Earth aboard SpaceX after a prolonged mission. Although NASA test pilots Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams managed to dock Starliner to the International Space Station in 2024, the capsule had so many problems that NASA ordered it to come back empty, leaving the astronauts stuck there for more than nine months. Engineers have since been poring over the thruster and other issues that plagued the Starliner capsule. Its next carg…

Just days before Thanksgiving, as Americans shop at supermarkets nationwide for their holiday meals, Ambriola Company, which makes some Boar’s Head products, has issued a recall for select pecorino romano cheese products due to possible contamination from listeria. Supreme Service Solutions LLC, also known as Supreme Deli, is assisting in the Class I recall. There have been no illnesses or consumer complaints reported to date for items purchased from Supreme. What is listeria, and what are the symptoms? Listeria monocytogenes is a type of disease-causing bacteria that is generally transmitted when food is harvested, processed, prepared, packed, transported, or…

In recent weeks, OpenAI has faced seven lawsuits alleging that ChatGPT contributed to suicides or mental health breakdowns. In a recent conversation at the Innovation@Brown Showcase, Brown University’s Ellie Pavlick, director of a new institute dedicated to exploring AI and mental health, and Soraya Darabi of VC firm TMV, an early investor in mental health AI startups, discussed the controversial relationship between AI and mental health. Pavlick and Darabi weigh the pros and cons of applying AI to emotional well-being, from chatbot therapy to AI friends and romantic partners. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former ed…

If you’ve chosen a target asset allocation—the mix of stocks, bonds, and cash in your portfolio— you’re probably ahead of many investors. But unless you’re investing in a set-and-forget investment option like a target-date fund, your portfolio’s asset mix will shift as the market fluctuates. In a bull market you might get more equity exposure than you planned, or the reverse if the market declines. Rebalancing involves selling assets that have appreciated the most and using the proceeds to shore up assets that have lagged. This brings your portfolio’s asset mix back into balance and enforces the discipline of selling high/buying low. Rebalancing doesn’t necessarily im…

The The President administration left nursing off a list of “professional” degrees in a move that could directly limit how future nurses will finance their education. Removing the profession from the list will have a major impact, after the passing of President The President’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which introduced a cap on borrowing. As of July 1, 2026, students who are not enrolled in professional degree programs will be subject to a borrowing cap of $20,500 per year and a lifetime cap of $100,000. However, professional degrees offer higher loan options, with the ability to borrow $50,000 per year and a $200,000 lifetime cap. ‘A backhanded slap’…

The line between human and machine authorship is blurring, particularly as it’s become increasingly difficult to tell whether something was written by a person or AI. Now, in what may seem like a tipping point, the digital marketing firm Graphite recently published a study showing that more than 50% of articles on the web are being generated by artificial intelligence. As a scholar who explores how AI is built, how people are using it in their everyday lives, and how it’s affecting culture, I’ve thought a lot about what this technology can do and where it falls short. If you’re more likely to read something written by AI than by a human on the internet, is it …

When a company with tens of thousands of software engineers found that uptake of a new AI-powered tool was lagging well below 50%, they wanted to know why. It turned out that the problem wasn’t the technology itself. What was holding the company back was a mindset that saw AI use as akin to cheating. Those who used the tool were perceived as less skilled than their colleagues, even when their work output was identical. Not surprisingly, most of the engineers chose not to risk their reputations and carried on working in the traditional way. These kinds of self-defeating attitudes aren’t limited to one company—they are endemic across the business world. Organizations ar…

Design flaws caused a Tesla Model 3 to suddenly accelerate out of control before it crashed into a utility pole and burst into flames, killing a woman and severely injuring her husband, a lawsuit filed in federal court alleges. Another defect with the door handle design thwarted bystanders who were trying to rescue the driver, Jeff Dennis, and his wife, Wendy, from the car, according to the lawsuit filed Friday in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. Wendy Dennis died in the Jan. 7, 2023, crash in Tacoma, Washington. Jeff Dennis suffered severe leg burns and other injuries, according to the lawsuit. Messages left Monday with plaintiffs’ attorneys…

President Donald The President is directing the federal government to combine efforts with tech companies and universities to convert government data into scientific discoveries, acting on his push to make artificial intelligence the engine of the nation’s economic future. The President unveiled the “Genesis Mission” as part of an executive order he signed Monday that directs the Department of Energy and national labs to build a digital platform to concentrate the nation’s scientific data in one place. It solicits private sector and university partners to use their AI capability to help the government solve engineering, energy and national security problems, including s…

I keep coming up against a logical fallacy in strategy that I feel compelled to address. The logic holds that when a company has a shareholder-unfriendly component of its portfolio—e.g. the business in question is cyclical, or it is low-growth or low margin—the company should diversify to make that business less-shareholder unfriendly. I take on the fallacy in this Playing to Win/Practitioner Insights (PTW/PI) piece entitled Diversification Can’t Disappear a Strategy Problem: It Just Creates a Different Problem. And as always, you can find all the previous PTW/PI here. The argument The usual motivator of this argument is cyclicality: We have a cyclical business, an…

You might think of Walmart as America’s quintessential big box store—the place you can get everything from Hanes T-shirts to large screen TVs to cleats for your kid’s soccer uniform. But Walmart isn’t defying shaky consumer confidence because of the breadth of its offerings, which impressively stretches to 120,000 products at most stores. Customers aren’t flocking into stores to buy made-in-America T-shirts, as I wrote about in May, thanks to a novel partnership with American Giant. Or because it is adding more high-end products (at lower prices than you’d find anywhere else), as I covered in October in this profile of its chief merchant Latriece Watkins. Nor is …

A copy of the first Superman issue, unearthed by three brothers cleaning out their late mother’s attic, netted $9.12 million this month at a Texas auction house which says it is the most expensive comic book ever sold. The brothers discovered the comic book in a cardboard box beneath layers of brittle newspapers, dust and cobwebs in their deceased mother’s San Francisco home last year, alongside a handful of other rare comics that she and her sibling had collected on the cusp of World War II. She had told her children she had a valuable comic book collection hidden away, but they had never seen it until they put her house up for sale and decided to comb through her belo…

Apple said on Monday it is cutting jobs across its sales teams to strengthen its customer engagement efforts, noting that only a small number of roles will be impacted by the layoffs. An Apple spokesperson told Reuters that the company is continuing to hire and the affected employees can apply for new roles. The impacted employees include account managers serving major businesses, schools and government agencies, according to Bloomberg News, which had reported the news earlier in the day. Staff who operate Apple’s briefing centers for institutional meetings and product demonstrations for prospective customers were also affected, Bloomberg said. One of the …

Only a week after experiencing a dreaded “death cross,” and subsequently seeing its value fall to less than $81,000, Bitcoin is showing some signs of recovering. On Monday, BTC’s price topped $89,000, and as of early Tuesday, are hovering around $87,500. To be clear, the slump is far from over—the coin saw its price top $124,000 just last month—and no one can predict what will happen next, but it’s a clear upswing in momentum. All told, when Bitcoin bottomed out at $81,000, it had fallen around 35% off its high. There were several reasons for the selloff, including outflows from large institutional investors and broader economic uncertainty, among other thin…

European and Asian shares mostly gained on Tuesday after U.S. stocks rallied on hopes the Federal Reserve will cut interest rates soon. The futures for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average slipped 0.1%. Germany’s DAX edged 0.1% lower to 23,216.76 and the CAC 40 in Paris added 0.1% to 7,965.77. Britain’s FTSE 100 likewise gained 0.1%, to 9,542.55. In Asian trading, Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 picked up 0.1% to 48,659.52 as a plunge in technology giant SoftBank’s shares weighed on the market. It fell 10.3% on concerns that returns from its heavy investments in OpenAI may be threatened by the next generation Gemini artificial intelligence model that Google launched…

Shares in Alphabet Inc (Nasdaq: GOOG), the company better known as Google, are rising again in premarket trading today. The stock is currently up by more than 4% following yesterday’s rise of 6.2%. If those gains hold, Google could be set to become the world’s next company with a $4 trillion market cap today. Here’s what you need to know. Why are GOOG shares rising? Shares in Alphabet have had a stellar run as of late. Yesterday, they rose more than 6.2%. Over the past five days, they have been up more than 11.5%. Over the past month, they have jumped more than 22%. And over the past six months, they have been up more than 87%. And that’s before…

After entrepreneur Brynn Putnam sold her smart fitness company, Mirror, to Lululemon for $500 million in 2020, she was looking for her next big idea. It was the middle of the pandemic, and Putnam was living with five kids ranging in age from 2 to 21. She says she often found herself dreaming of an activity that would get her whole family to sit down and connect with each other. Brynn Putnam “When we played games, we were either playing board games like Candyland, so that the littlest ones could participate, or we would try to play video games, but the teenagers who’ve logged a lot of hours on sort of modern controllers would always smoke us,” Putnam says. “There wa…

In his new book Ding Dong: How Ring Went from Shark Tank Reject to Everyone’s Front Door, Ring founder Jamie Siminoff pulls back the curtain on the chaotic, often absurd reality of building one of the most recognizable consumer tech brands of the last decade. The following excerpt captures one of the book’s most pivotal moments: the high-stakes, borderline-reckless gamble to secure the name “Ring.com,” a decision that nearly emptied the company’s bank account, tested the patience of his investors, and set the stage for a brand that would soon reshape home security. eBay.com. Half.com. Cars.com. Shop.com. Toys.com. And yes, Nest.com. So many great four-letter domain na…

Chris was frustrated. He’d used Artificial Intelligence (AI) extensively in college. Now at his first job, he saw very few of his colleagues ever experimenting with it. At first, Chris tried bringing up AI conversationally. He mentioned creating a meal schedule, as well as planning a cool weekend trip itinerary. But when he suggested to his manager how they might want to incorporate AI into their workflow, he felt rebuffed. Chris isn’t alone. As the first group of highly experienced AI users is starting work, they have experience with AI. However, they lack the credibility and subject matter expertise to transform workflows. Championing change management initiativ…

Media personalities and online influencers who sow social division for a living, blame the rise of assassination culture on Antifa and MAGA. Meanwhile, tech CEOs gin up fears of an AI apocalypse. But they’re both smokescreens hiding a bigger problem. Algorithms decide what we see, and in trying to win their approval, we’re changing how we behave. Increasingly, that behavior is violent. The radicalization of young men on social networks isn’t new. But modern algorithms are accelerating it. Before Facebook and Twitter (X) switched from displaying the latest post from one of your friends at the top of your feed with crazy, outrageous posts from people you don’t know…

When I launched my first business in my twenties, I thought success meant doing everything alone. I believed that if I worked hard enough, read every business book, and put in the hours, I’d eventually figure it all out. What I quickly realized, however, is that you don’t find the most valuable growth strategy in your balance sheet. You find it in your network. As the founder of Boston Business Women, I’ve watched thousands of women start and scale companies over the last decade. In 2024, women started 49% of all new businesses in the U.S., up from just 29% five years earlier. And while that growth is impressive, the gap between potential and access still looms large.…

You’re probably winding down from work and getting ready for a few days at home with your family. But anybody with caregiving responsibility knows that the Thanksgiving and Christmas breaks will not be relaxing. Since the United States does not have a federal policy that gives workers paid time off after giving birth, having a medical procedure, or to care for a loved one, many will cram this labor into their precious holiday time. Many of us have a colleague who will come back to work exhausted after spending time with a dying parent, having taken advantage of the time off from work to figure out hospice and funeral arrangements. Or one who will be caring for a sibl…