What's on Your Mind?

Ear-splitting ads on Netflix and Hulu are no more—at least if you live in California. California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill on Monday that requires streaming services to prevent commercials from cranking the volume when they think the viewer might have popped into the next room for a snack. Unlike many pieces of legislation, California SB 576 is short and sweet. Starting next July, any streamer that serves video to California residents “shall not transmit the audio of commercial advertisements louder than the video content the advertisements accompany.” The bill cites a federal version of the law designed for traditional broadcast TV, extending the rules to …

Camping. Why anyone would put themselves through an odyssey of gross insects and pooping in holes is beyond me, but you do you, Steve. I’ll do me. However, if I were forced to go sleep in the woods, I would like to use this new camping mattress by Chinese sleep startup Mazzu created in collaboration with London-based design studio Layer. It looks like the closest thing to a Four Seasons bed this side of the Rio Grande. Or any río (just don’t get me close to a river). The Mazzu Camping Mattress isn’t your typical inflatable pad that promises comfort on-the-go but delivers back pain for a week. It’s built around 72 precision-engineered elastic spring units—pre-c…

Taylor Swift sold 2.7 million copies of her new album The Life of a Showgirl on its release day Friday, and luckily for Swifties buying up multiple copies to help their idol on the chart, they didn’t have to pay any tariffs on their purchases. U.S. consumers now face a 18.6% overall average effective tariff rate, according to Yale’s Budget Lab, and one music professor estimated that if tariffs were applied to physical music, they could have hiked the price of a vinyl record to as much as $40 to $50 a pop. They’re not, though, thanks some recently relevant Reagan-era legislation. Instead, Swift fans have to cough up $35 for the Target-exclusive “Summertime Spritz …

There’s a common story in the marketing and advertising industry, with many variations. Whenever a member of that industry is at a party or on a plane, inevitably someone will ask what they do for a living. And as soon as they say advertising, that person immediately begins to tell them how good they’d be at working in advertising, how they should make this or that ad campaign better, or why that ad they saw during an NFL game is terrible. This probably doesn’t happen to engineers and doctors. The discipline of advertising, and the process behind it has always been up for debate and question. Well, starting on September 30th, NBC’s new show On Brand with Jimmy Fallon …

Amazon is rolling out kiosks that let patients get their prescriptions while they are still at the doctor’s office. Starting in December 2025, the tech behemoth will be stepping up its efforts to become a bigger presence in the pharmaceutical market by launching in-office pharmaceutical kiosks stocked with medicine. The kiosks will initially be launched at certain One Medical locations (which Amazon acquired in 2023 for $3.9 billion), including in Downtown Los Angeles, West Los Angeles, Beverly Hills, Long Beach, and West Hollywood. The company claims that the kiosks will help combat pharmacy deserts across the U.S., and help patients who don’t or can’t fil…

Kentucky’s attorney general claimed Tuesday that the online gaming platform Roblox has become a “playground for predators” as he announced a lawsuit accusing the company of lax child safety measures. The Kentucky suit, filed by his office Monday in a state court, is the latest action alleging that the wildly popular site isn’t doing enough to protect children on its gaming services. To bolster safeguards for children and teenagers flocking to the site, the company needs to install effective age verifications and content filters, Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman said. Added parental notifications also are needed, he said. Courtney Norris, a Kentucky mother of t…

Thirty paintings created by the bushy-haired, soft-spoken Bob Ross will soon be up for auction to defray the costs of programming for public television stations suffering from cuts in federal funding. Ross, a public television stalwart in the 1980s and ’90s, “dedicated his life to making art accessible to everyone,” said Joan Kowalski, president of Bob Ross Inc. “This auction ensures his legacy continues to support the very medium that brought his joy and creativity into American homes for decades.” Bonhams in Los Angeles will auction three of Ross’ paintings on Nov. 11. Other auctions will follow in London, New York, Boston and online. All profits are pledged to statio…

Gold has been having a very good year. That sentiment couldn’t have been clearer on Tuesday, October 7, as the precious metal hit a new milestone: $4,000 an ounce. As of early Wednesday, gold was up over 53% year to date. That’s significantly higher than the growth seen by major stock indexes over the same period The Dow Jones Industrial Average is up 9.93% this year, the S&P 500 is up 14.42%, and the Nasdaq Composite is up 18.19% as of the market close on Tuesday. As a so-called safe-haven asset, gold has benefited from a few things this year, including a weakened dollar and an unpredictable economy. The latter has been especially true since the…

As the end of 2025 approaches, a viral TikTok trend is helping people achieve their wellness goals: “The Great Lock In” encourages participants to finish the year strong by fully focusing on their life goals from Sept. 1 through Dec. 31. Many people focus on exercise or eating healthier. But the trend can also help you achieve your financial goals. There are no set rules for “The Great Lock In.” The phrase “lock in” is popular on social media and it means to focus intensely on a task. “Something I like about this particular trend is that it’s like New Year’s resolutions’ little sister,” said Lindsay Bryan-Podvin, financial therapist and founder of Mind Money Balance, a…

In my old banking job, where I worked for 12 years, I found myself frustrated with the slow pace of the work, the layers of red tape and approvals to get anything done. After all, banking was a highly regulated industry, and while there were many rules to follow, they were just simply being a good bank by following them. I felt tired, drained, and lacked energy—similar symptoms to burnout. While the organization was frequently voted a “best place to work,” I couldn’t figure out why my “great job” felt so bad. I wasn’t overworking or spending endless evenings logging in, so the typical paths to burnout didn’t make sense. What I was actually experiencing was rust out. …

Libbie Bischoff didn’t set out to reinvent the signature. Really, she was just flipping through a vintage knitting magazine from the 1950s. The Minneapolis-based type designer collects the mags, partly because her grandmother taught her to knit, and partly because she finds incredible typography hidden within their pages. It was in one of these magazines that she found the casual, flowing script that would become one of Docusign’s new signature styles. Together with Lynne Yun—a New York-based type designer, calligrapher, and founder of the studio Space Type—Bischoff is responsible for the first major update to the platform’s signature options in more than 20 year…

Move over quiet quitting, bare minimum Mondays, and career cushioning. A new workplace behavior is on the rise: the self-aware underperformer. Contrary to hustle culture, these workers are knowingly underperforming and not doing anything about it. It used to be the delusional underperformer—the employee who thought they were doing a great job—that gave HR headaches. The self-aware underperformer, on the other hand, is aware that they’re underperforming and not taking any actions to rectify it. As leaders, this isn’t something you can afford to ignore. After all, underperformance doesn’t just materialize. The culture has been brewing and cultivating on our watch. U…

Today’s labor market may be stagnating, but it’s also uncertain. Candidates aren’t behaving as many leaders would expect. The dynamic is trending towards an employer’s market. As a result, employers expect that candidates will increase their job searches, accept lower pay increases, and accept new roles more eagerly. But in reality, job searching has actually declined, pay expectations remain high, and candidates are reluctant to move. And this has resulted in a critical talent supply shortage. According to research from Gartner, 29% of candidates spent more than five hours per week on active job searches in the second quarter of 2025. That’s down from 49% in the firs…

For many stars, writing a children’s book is a fun side project they do to capitalize on their fame. Kate McKinnon—a Saturday Night Live alum who has starred in recent movies like Barbie and The Roses—is certainly famous. But the truth is that she had dreamed of writing a novel for middle schoolers since her mid-twenties, years before she even auditioned for SNL. As a child, McKinnon had loved books about slightly oddball characters, like those found in Roald Dahl books. Her favorite heroine was Pippi Longstocking, whom she played in a kindergarten performance. She loved the character so much that she would show up at school for years in a full-on Pippi costume, compl…

The The President administration is spending more than half a billion dollars to help prop up the dying coal industry. It’s also weakening pollution regulations and opening up more federal land to coal mining. All of this isn’t likely to save the industry—and also isn’t likely to do much to meet the surging demand for power from data centers for AI. Coal power is expensive, and that isn’t going to change Aging coal power plants are now so expensive to run that hundreds have retired over the last decade, including around 100 that retired or made plans to retire during The President’s first term. Offering relatively small subsidies isn’t likely to change the long…

Artificial intelligence is changing everything: how we work, build, create, and grow. It’s unlocking opportunities daily. At Grove Collaborative, we’ve seen it firsthand. AI helps us move faster, make smarter decisions, and, most importantly, serve our customers better. But here’s the part not enough people are talking about: the environmental cost. AI is resource-intensive, especially when rolled out at scale. It uses a ton of electricity and water, drives new forms of e-waste, and complicates carbon accounting. For mission-driven companies—especially those built on sustainability—that creates a real tension. We want to innovate. But we also want to protect the p…

Bernie Sanders says in a new ChatGPT-assisted report released Monday that AI and automation could eliminate nearly 100 million jobs over the next decade. Titled “Big Tech Oligarchs’ War Against Workers: AI and Automation Could Destroy Nearly 100 Million U.S Jobs in a Decade,” the report estimates that AI will automate away the jobs of 89% of fast food and counter workers, 64% of accountants, and 47% of truck drivers. “The artificial intelligence and robotics being developed by . . . today will allow corporate America to wipe out tens of millions of decent-paying jobs, cut labor costs and boost profits,” Sanders, an Independent from Vermont and ranking member of …

The New York Stock Exchange’s (NYSE) parent company Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) said on Tuesday it will invest up to $2 billion into the crypto-based betting platform Polymarket. The move marries the more traditional, regulated NYSE with the riskier prediction markets, and is generally seen as a move by the iconic, 233-year-old exchange to keep up with its competitors by capitalizing on the growing popularity of betting on all kinds of things. “Our partnership with ICE marks a major step in bringing prediction markets into the financial mainstream,” Shayne Coplan, CEO of Polymarket, told Fast Company. “Together, we’re expanding how individuals and institutio…

Tesla rolled out “affordable” versions of its best-selling Model Y SUV and its Model 3 sedan, but the starting prices of $39,990 and $36,990 struck some as too high to attract a new class of buyers to the electric vehicle brand. Tesla’s stock fell 4% and Tesla bull Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush, said he was disappointed that the cars were only about $5,000 cheaper than the next trims of the models. The new versions, called Standard, cost more than what the previous models started at, including a $7,500 tax credit that expired at the end of September. The much-awaited unveiling is crucial for Tesla as it pushes to reverse falling sales and waning market shar…

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a public health alert on Monday for FreshRealm’s ready-to-eat meals— shipped directly to consumers by HelloFresh—due to possible contamination from listeria. HelloFresh is a German-based meal-kit company operating in the United States and globally in Europe, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. FreshRealm notified FSIS that the spinach used in the products tested positive for listeria bacteria. So far, no illnesses have been reported. However, FSIS said it expected additional products will be affected, and asked consumers to check this public health alert frequently as the age…

When most people hear the word luxury, they think of exclusivity: high-end materials, bespoke finishes, and designs tailored for the few. But a quiet revolution is underway. The true measure of luxury today is accessibility: designing environments that are beautiful, functional, safe, and empowering for every body. Nowhere is this more urgent, or more overlooked, than in the bathroom. According to the CDC, the bathroom is the most dangerous room in the house. There are 234,000 annual bathroom-related injuries in the U.S, with 81% caused by falls. For older adults, those falls can trigger a cascade of consequences: loss of independence, costly healthcare expenses, and …

Last week, I walked into a meeting where AI notetakers outnumbered humans three to one. The irony wasn’t lost on me—I built one of them. As CEO of Fireflies, I’ve helped put AI in millions of meetings. And I believe AI should be in every meeting—because knowledge shouldn’t vanish the moment we hang up. But having the right privacy controls to protect sensitive moments is key to using an AI notetaker. THE PRIVACY-FIRST DECISION FRAMEWORK Before your next meeting, ask yourself three questions: Who controls the data? Every meeting should be captured, but not every recording needs to be shared. Use private meeting settings, control access permissions, and set …

Below, Nick Foster shares five key insights from his new book, Could Should Might Don’t: How We Think About the Future. Nick has spent the last 25 years working within companies at the very forefront of emerging technology, from Apple and Sony to Nokia and Dyson. Most recently, he was head of design at Google X. He has established himself as a leading figure in the field of Futures Design. In 2021, he was awarded the title Royal Designer for Industry, the highest accolade for a British designer. What’s the big idea? We need to have a conversation about the future, but not the kind you’d expect. Humans have already talked at length about what the future may or m…

AI fluency is quickly becoming the new leadership divide: Some executives are already embedding it into strategy, while others are still asking what it means. The gap is widening—and it’s shaping who gets hired to lead. That’s why AI fluency is becoming a top priority in leadership searches. Not deep technical mastery, but a practical understanding of how these tools work and where they apply. Companies want leaders who aren’t just talking about transformation but are actively engaged in it. People who’ve run pilots, evaluated risks, collaborated with product and tech, or led adoption efforts in their function. They don’t need to be engineers. But they do need to …

One thing I genuinely love about my job is mentoring young professionals who are just getting started in their careers. Gaining a foothold in the tech industry is tough, especially in the AI age. And today’s new generation of employees are asking compelling questions: How do I focus in complex environments? How do I create a competitive advantage? What happens if I fail? I recently found myself asking similar questions—about my golf game—to one of the world’s top golfers, Padraig Harrington. It was humbling to be on the other side of the fence, getting insights from a global legend that not only improved my swing, but helped me better coach the next generation of tech…