What's on Your Mind?

Leaving your corporate job for a solopreneur path is a bold move—and it can feel terrifying. But as long as you’re prepared, it can be a smart move, especially in the current rocky job market. I worked at one corporate job for 15 years. Then I pivoted to a new career in marketing. Eighteen months later, I was working for myself as a full-time freelance writer. Within two months of going solo, I had replaced my salary at a marketing agency, but I’d also taken a lot of baby steps in advance of making the switch. You can make the transition to solopreneurship easier if you build a safety net before you walk out the corporate door. Here’s how. Calculate how much…

In a new legal filing, Meta is being accused of shutting down internal research that showed people who stopped using Facebook experienced less depression, anxiety, and loneliness. The allegations come as part of a lawsuit filed by several U.S. school districts against Meta, Snap, TikTok, and other social media companies. The brief, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California but is not yet public, reportedly claims the study, called Project Mercury, was initiated in 2019 and was meant to explore the impact of apps on polarization, news-consumption habits, “well-being, and daily social interactions.” Plaintiffs in the suit say…

You can’t help but feel uneasy when looking at market concentration. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla now make up more than a third of the S&P 500, more than twice the level seen before the dot-com bust. AI-related capital spending has outpaced the U.S. consumer as the main driver of gross domestic product growth. OpenAI alone plans trillions in data-center investments while exiting 2025 with about $20 billion in annualized revenue. Of course, there are physical limitations to how fast we can build. Data centers require enormous energy, land, and skilled labor—more than trade schools produce today—a concern raised in the The President ad…

The phrase quiet quitting has been cast as a generational rebellion, a disengagement crisis, and a leadership failure, all rolled into one. The narrative suggests that half of your workforce has decided to coast, collecting a paycheck while doing the bare minimum. According to new global research from Culture Amp, which analyzed the experience of 3.3 million employees worldwide, fewer than 2% fit into the definition of quiet quitting—that is, employees who lack motivation to go above and beyond but still plan to stay with their company. That finding challenges the viral narrative, suggesting that what’s happening inside organizations is more nuanced than a mass wi…

When work was drying up for freelance writer Megan Carnegie, she found herself compulsively hopping between apps and social media. “LinkedIn, WhatsApp, emails—and it was just terrible for my focus,” she says. “I was anxious about getting work.” On a whim, Carnegie (who’s also contributed to Fast Company) popped into a store selling secondhand computer equipment and bought an old Nokia burner phone. During the workday, she would use the burner for calls, and in the evening, switch back to her smartphone. With no access to apps and one fewer way to access the internet, her urgency and anxiety dissolved. “I just loved the quiet,” she says. The effects of social media…

Below, Ben Rein shares five key insights from his new book, Why Brains Need Friends: The Neuroscience of Social Connection. Ben is an award-winning neuroscientist who has spent a decade studying the biology of social interaction. He is the chief science officer of the Mind Science Foundation, an adjunct lecturer at Stanford University, and a clinical assistant professor at SUNY Buffalo. He also teaches neuroscience to an audience of more than 1 million social media followers. What’s the big idea? Loneliness is a problem. Many of us feel this, and all of us are seeing it affect society. But why is isolation so harmful? Why are virtual interactions a poor substit…

Today’s job market is more ruthless than ever, leaving many desperately clinging to their roles amid mass layoffs and side-eyeing the competition. In such environments, a rival colleague or workplace nemesis may make themselves known. Watching a smug colleague get called out for a mistake in a meeting or blundering a promotion is often deeply satisfying (even if we may not admit it). Many know the German name for this impulse, schadenfreude: pleasure derived by another’s misfortune. But another, more work-related term that has emerged recently is fail watching: a coping strategy born from today’s challenging job market as a way to make us feel better about our o…

Lately, at every networking event or leadership roundtable, I’m hearing the same things on repeat. CEOs are focused on growth in an uncertain context. HR leaders are worried about retention and employee burnout. Managers are trying to figure out how to build connection in hybrid workplaces that feel more transactional by the day. Everyone is chasing new strategies for engagement, inclusion, and belonging—yet most are overlooking one of the simplest, most powerful tools we all have: mentorship. In an age where technology evolves faster than people can keep up, mentorship is the real accelerator. It’s how knowledge sticks, how culture travels, and how innovation spr…

The Bezos vs. Musk battle for satellite internet service is heating up In what’s rapidly becoming the new space race: Amazon will start testing its high-speed internet service that it’s building out to compete with SpaceX’s Starlink service. With a broader rollout planned for next year, Amazon announced on Monday some updates to its Leo network—including a new program that will see select businesses taking part in an “enterprise preview” of the forthcoming service. In turn, Amazon can collect feedback to tailor services for specific industries. “Amazon Leo represents a massive opportunity for businesses operating in challenging environments,” Chris Weber, vic…

The average U.S. employee clocks nearly 21 full business days working from their phone each year. That’s according to new research from Adobe Acrobat, who surveyed over 1,000 full-time employees on their habits and opinions around work phone etiquette. As worklife boundaries continue to blur, the work doesn’t stop when you step out of the office’s four walls. For many employees, they now carry it with them in their pocket, checking emails first thing from bed, or making calls on the go between meetings. In the early days of the iPhone, the “sent from my . . .” signature conveyed status. Back in 2013, The Atlantic referred to it as a “humble brag.” More than a de…

President Donald The President said he has accepted an invitation from Chinese leader Xi Jinping to visit Beijing in April and that he reciprocated by inviting Xi for a state visit to the U.S. later next year. The President made the announcement a few hours after he spoke with Xi on the phone on Monday morning, in which he said the two men discussed issues including Ukraine, fentanyl, and soybeans. The phone call came nearly one month after the two men met in person in the South Korean city of Busan. “Our relationship with China is extremely strong!” The President said. Beijing, which announced the phone call first, said nothing about the state visits but said…

Two things that made massive cultural splashes this year — Labubu and “KPop Demon Hunters” — will fill the sky and streets of New York when the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade kicks off this year. Conan Gray and Lainey Wilson will bring the tunes. The Nov. 27 parade begins rain or shine on Manhattan’s Upper West Side and ends at Macy’s Herald Square flagship store on 34th Street, which serves as a stage and backdrop for performances. It will feature 34 balloons, four mini-balloons, 28 floats, 33 clown groups and 11 marching bands — all leading the way for Santa Claus. Here’s key things to know about the parade and how to watch it. What time does the Macy’s Than…

Kohl’s announced on Monday that interim CEO Michael Bender will become the ailing retailer’s permanent new CEO—making him the third chief executive to head the company in about three years. The news comes a day before the Wisconsin-based department store releases its third-quarter earnings report, on November 25 at 9:00 a.m. “Over the past several months as interim CEO, Michael has proven to be an exceptional leader for Kohl’s–progressively improving results, driving short and long-term strategy, and positively impacting cultural change,” board chair John Schlifske said in a statement. Bender has served as interim CEO for the last six and a half months. Shar…

Anthropic launched its newest model, Claude Opus 4.5, putting the company back atop the benchmark rankings for AI software coding. Opus 4.5 scores over 80% on the widely-used SWE-bench, which tests models for software engineering skill. Google’s impressive Gemini 3 Pro, launched last week, briefly held the top score with 76.2%. Anthropic’s Claude product lead Scott White tells Fast Company that the model has also scored higher than any human on the engineering take-home assignment the company gives to engineering job candidates. Of course Opus 4.5 does a lot more than coding. Anthropic says Opus 4.5 is also the “best model in the world” for powering AI agents and…

It’s official: DOGE, the The President administration’s “Department of Government Efficiency,” has met an early end. Even before The President took office, DOGE was conceived of as an outside advisory board that would recommend government reforms and find $500 billion in annual spending to cut. The day after The President was inaugurated, the department was officially founded, with Elon Musk—CEO of Tesla and the world’s richest man—at its helm. Within the first 100 days of The President’s second term, DOGE played a central role in cutting hundreds of thousands of jobs, nixing funds to foreign food aid and medical research, overhauling longtime government cy…

The U.S. stock market is rising again on Monday, ahead of a week with shortened trading because of the Thanksgiving holiday. The S&P 500 climbed 1.4% and added to its jump from Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 221 points, or 0.5%, as of 12:30 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 2.4% higher. Stocks got a lift from rising hopes that the Federal Reserve will cut its main interest rate again at its next meeting in December, a move that could boost the economy and investment prices. The market also benefited from strength for stocks caught up in the artificial-intelligence frenzy. Alphabet, which has been getting praise for its newest…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. A modest rise in negative equity is emerging across parts of the U.S. housing market, but the overall picture remains far more stable than anything resembling the Global Financial Crisis. Having negative equity—commonly known as being “underwater”—means a homeowner owes more on their mortgage than the home’s current market value. According to ICE Mortgage Technology, just 1.0% of U.S. mortgages were underwater in April 2025. By October 2025, that share rose to 1.6%. That’s an uptick, but still extremely low by historical standards. For comparison, du…

This year’s U.N. climate conference in Brazil had many unique aspects that could have been part of a historic outcome. COP30, as it’s called, was hosted in Belem, a city on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, a crucial regulator of climate and home to many Indigenous peoples who are both hit hard by climate change and are part of the solution. It had the heft of Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, an influential and charismatic leader on the international stage known for his ability to bring people together. And encouraged by Lula’s rousing speeches in the summit’s beginning days, more than 80 nations called for a detailed road map for the world to sharply r…

Christmas went on the auction block this week in Pennsylvania farm country, and there was no shortage of bidders. About 50,000 Christmas trees and enough wreaths, crafts and other seasonal items to fill an airplane hangar were bought and sold by lots and on consignment at the annual two-day event put on at the Buffalo Valley Produce Auction in Mifflinburg. Buyers from across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic were there to supply garden stores, corner lots and other retail outlets for the coming rush of customers eager to bring home a tree — most commonly a Fraser fir — or to deck the halls with miles of greenery. Bundled-up buyers were out in chilly temperatures to hear a…

Universal Pictures’ two-part Wicked gamble continues to defy gravity at the box office. Just a year after part one brought droves of audiences to movie theaters around the country, even more people bought opening weekend tickets to see the epic conclusion, Wicked: For Good. According to studio estimates on Sunday, Wicked: For Good earned $150 million from North American theaters in its first days in theaters and $226 million globally. Not only is it the biggest opening ever for a Broadway musical adaptation, unseating the record set by the first film’s $112 million launch, it’s also the second biggest debut of the year behind A Minecraft Movie’s $162 million. “The…

Novo Nordisk’s closely-watched Alzheimer’s trials of an older oral version of its semaglutide drug failed to help slow the progression of the brain-wasting disease, the firm said on Monday, a blow to the obesity drug giant that sent its shares sliding. The trials, which Novo had previously called a “lottery ticket” to underline its highly uncertain outcome, were testing whether the medicine could slow cognitive decline in patients. The setback scuppers hopes for Novo that Alzheimer’s could open a major new market for GLP-1 medicines such as semaglutide, as it faces rising competition to its blockbuster drugs in its core treatment areas of obesity and diabetes. …

Old Brick Farm, where Larry Doll raises chickens, turkeys and ducks, was fortunate this Thanksgiving season. Doll’s small farm west of Detroit had no cases of bird flu, despite an ongoing outbreak that killed more than 2 million U.S. turkeys in the last three months alone. He also avoided another disease, avian metapneumovirus, which causes turkeys to lay fewer eggs. “I try to keep the operation as clean as possible, and not bringing other animals in from other farms helps mitigate that risk as well,” said Doll, whose farm has been in his family for five generations. But Doll still saw the impact as those diseases shrank the U.S. turkey flock to a 40-year low this year…

The Thanksgiving holiday is nearly upon us, which means tens of millions of Americans will be traveling nationwide this week to visit their loved ones and celebrate around the dinner table with them on Thursday. The majority of that travel both to and from Turkey Day destinations is expected to kick off tomorrow, Tuesday, November 25, and run through Monday, December 1, which are the dates the American Automobile Association (AAA) defines as the 2025 Thanksgiving holiday period. It’s the busiest travel period for Americans, even beating out holidays like the Fourth of July and Christmas. While several million Americans are expected to make their Thanksgiving…

Another home furnishings retail chain has sought Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as it deals with higher costs, reduced sales, a downturn in the housing market, and President The President’s tariffs. American Signature Inc (ASI), parent company of American Signature Furniture and Value City Furniture, said Sunday that it has secured $50 million in debt financing as it seeks a buyer in an auction process. Here’s what to know. What is ASI and why is it bankrupt? Founded it 1948 and based in Columbus, Ohio, American Signature Inc is the parent company of two home furnishings retail chains: American Signature Furniture and Value City Furniture. Combined, the…

World shares and U.S. futures were mixed on Monday after Wall Street was buoyed by revived hopes for an interest rate cut by the Federal Reserve. The future for the S&P 500 was up 0.2% while that for the Dow Jones Industrial Average was nearly unchanged. Germany’s DAX gained 0.5% to 23,201.85, while the CAC 40 edged less than 0.1% lower to 7,978.77. Britain’s FTSE 100 inched up 0.1% to 9,547.77. Markets in Japan were closed for a holiday. Hong Kong’s benchmark, the Hang Seng, rose 2% to 25,716.50. It got a boost from a 4.7% gain for e-commerce giant Alibaba, which has reported strong demand for its updated Qwen AI app. Alibaba is due to report earnings on Tuesday.…