What's on Your Mind?

Scott Adams, the creator of the uber-popular and satirical comic strip Dilbert, has died. He passed away on January 13, after announcing his diagnosis of metastatic prostate cancer last spring. He was 68. On Tuesday morning, the cartoonist’s former wife, Shelly Miles, shared the news of his death during a livestream on X. Miles read from a statement that Adams had prepared himself for the occasion. “I had an amazing life,” the statement said. “I gave it everything I had. If you got any benefits from my work, I’m asking you to pay it forward as best you can. That is the legacy I want. Be useful. And please know I loved you all to the very end.” Dilbert was fi…

If you’re sick of paying for subscription services, Tesla has some bad news for you. The EV maker announced Wednesday that going forward, its Full Self-Driving (Supervised) software will only be available as a monthly subscription – not a one-time payment. Tesla CEO Elon Musk broke the news on X, the social media platform he owns, noting that the shift will happen on February 14. “FSD will only be available as a monthly subscription thereafter,” Musk wrote, offering no details about how that change would affect the software’s pricing. While the price of access to Full Self-Driving (FSD) mode has fluctuated over time, the current one-time purchase price for the sof…

“I see a bunch of Americans drinking hot water with lemon and honey, eating congee, drinking hot pot, drinking more soup, eating Chinese vegetables,” one Chinese creator, Emma Peng, recently shared in a TikTok, currently with over 3 million views. “I just want to say that my culture can be your culture. You’re doing really good hydrating yourself. I’m proud of you.” The “becoming Chinese” trend is currently everywhere on the app, and while the name might give pause, it’s mostly about adopting lifestyle habits rooted in traditional Chinese medicine. In the past month or so, Chinese creators have gone viral for espousing the benefits of common Chinese cultural prac…

Apple was the last champion of the “pay once, own forever” crowd, a safe harbor for some of the creatives fleeing Adobe’s monthly ransom. Now it has introduced Creator Studio, its own subscription-based offering that bundles together tools including Final Cut Pro, Logic Pro, Pixelmator Pro, Motion, Compressor, and MainStage (as well as newly AI-infused productivity apps like Pages and Numbers). There are already two major creative suits out there: Adobe Creative Cloud and Canva. The former is clearly oriented to the high end, enterprise, and prosumer spaces with heavyweight apps like Photoshop, Premiere, and Illustrator. The latter focuses on individual, small compani…

The most dangerous people in a company are stressed leaders. I say that with full self-awareness. I’ve worked for a few and came uncomfortably close to becoming one myself. I’ve always had an impulsive temperament. On good days, it made me decisive. On bad days, reactive. Add long hours and the pressure of scaling a startup, and my emotional state began to spill onto the team. Focusing on mental health, rest, and mindfulness fundamentally changed how I build my company and how I see my role today. I’m still a CEO, but I’ve also become something else—the “chief energy officer.” What follows is everything I wish I’d known earlier about leading with emoti…

Ikea’s new store is in the metaverse. The company announced Wednesday it’s piloting a limited-edition pop-up in Roblox’s “Welcome to Bloxburg” game offering players Ikea products they can use to decorate virtual homes. This is the first time that the Swedish furniture retailer has entered gaming in a meaningful way, since an earlier Roblox game in 2024, according to the company. It comes after noticing for years how young adults and teens were building and designing homes in games and wondering why Ikea wasn’t a part of it. “Ikea wanted to better understand how Gen Z and Gen Alpha think about furnishing and self-expression, recognizing the need to meet them on…

The State Department says it will suspend the processing of immigrant visas for citizens of 75 countries whose nationals are deemed likely to require public assistance while living in the United States. The State Department, led by Secretary Marco Rubio, said Wednesday it had instructed consular officers to halt immigrant visa applications from the countries affected in accordance with a broader order issued in November that tightened rules around potential immigrants who might become “public charges” in the U.S. The suspension will not apply to applicants seeking non-immigrant, or temporary tourist or business visas. “The The President administration is bringing …

After two years of declines, United States greenhouse gas emissions increased in 2025—a change driven by increased electricity use, due in part to data centers and cryptocurrency mining, as well as cold winter temperatures that meant homes required more heating. Emissions increased 2.4% in 2025, according to preliminary data from the research firm Rhodium Group. That’s higher than the country’s GDP growth, which increased by a projected 1.9%. That the country’s emissions grew more than its GDP is notable: Climate experts have long noted that it’s both possible and necessary to reduce emissions while still growing the economy. And for the past few years, the U.S. h…

“Never skip leg day” sounds like something a swole gym bro with killer quads might harp on about. But doctors also sing the praises of lunges and split bench squats, and not for the reason you might think. In a recent article for Vogue, California-based physician Dr. Chris Renna said: “Stronger leg muscles are linked to better cognitive function in aging mainly through their effects on blood flow, metabolic health, brain structure, and physical/social activity patterns.” Muscle mass starts to decline at age 30. As the largest muscle group in the body, maintaining muscle strength in the thighs and glutes is especially important for healthy aging—and apparently, bra…

If you’d like to do a thorough review of your portfolio and plan, here are the key steps to take. I recommend doing them over a series of sessions, not all at once. Step 1: Gather your documentation This could be your current investment statements, plus Social Security and pension. Pro tip: Set up a My Social Security account to get an overview of your benefits and earnings history. Step 2: Ask and answer: How am I doing? To find out if you’re on track to reach your financial goals, review your current portfolio balance, combined with your savings rate. Tally your contributions across all accounts. A decent baseline savings rate is 15%, but higher-income fol…

Heinz’s newest product isn’t a ketchup, or a mayo, or some Frankenstein combination of the two. It’s a box—and it’s solving a problem that’s plagued lovers of french fries for decades. The patent-pending “Heinz Dipper,” unveiled on January 13, is an innovation the company is describing as a “first-of-its-kind fry box.” At first glance, it looks like a classic french fry box that you’d get at any run-of-the-mill fast-food joint, but a closer examination reveals a pullout compartment (shaped like Heinz’s keystone logo) that can hold two packets of whatever condiment you prefer. The Heinz Dipper is debuting at more than 33 restaurant and sports stadium partners arou…

A proposed billionaires’ tax in California has ignited a political uproar in Silicon Valley, with tech titans threatening to leave the state while Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom maneuvers to defeat a levy that he fears will lead to an exodus of wealth. A technology mecca, California has more billionaires than any other state — a few hundred, by some estimates. Nearly half its personal income tax revenue, a financial backbone in the nearly $350 billion budget, comes from the top 1% of earners. A large health care union is attempting to place a proposal before voters in November that would impose a one-time 5% tax on the assets of billionaires — including stocks, art, busin…

On the surface, Apple’s announcement on Tuesday of a subscription service called Apple Creator Studio does not demand a whole lot of explanation or analysis. The Mac/iPad/iPhone offering, which bundles the Final Cut Pro video editor, Logic Pro audio editor, Pixelmator Pro image editor, and other apps for making and manipulating media for $13 a month or $129 a year, is exactly the sort of thing you’d expect the company to get around to introducing. After all, its strategy of expanding the portion of its revenue that comes from services has already resulted in offerings such as Apple TV, Apple Music, Apple Arcade, and Apple News+. It would have been weird if Apple hadn’t p…

In a parking lot in Detroit next to the Henry Ford Museum, three streetlights now double as EV chargers. The site is one of the first installations of the Voltpost Air, a device that taps into existing infrastructure to quickly add charging capability at the side of the road or in parking lots. The approach is simpler than adding stand-alone EV chargers: Installation takes just a few hours. “We don’t have to do costly utility upgrades to the grid in order to this,” says Jeff Prosserman, cofounder and CEO of Voltpost. “We’re just finding pockets where power already exists and then making it work.” That’s possible partly because the chargers are Level 2, mea…

For as long as people have been using AI to churn out text, other people have been coming up with “tells” that something was written by AI. Sometimes it’s punctuation that comes under suspicion. (The em dash is generally considered the shadiest.) Other times it’s words that robot writers seem to love and overuse. But what if the biggest giveaway that a text was written by AI isn’t a word, phrase, or punctuation mark, but a particular sentence structure instead? Why is it so hard to make AI writing sound human? The idea that certain rhythms of sentences might be a sign of AI writing first came to my attention through my work as a professional word nerd. Recen…

The first major retail bankruptcy of 2026 has arrived. Today, Saks Global Enterprises, owner of Saks Fifth Avenue and other luxury retail brands, has filed to seek Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. The news shows that not even companies aimed at high-end consumers are immune to economic downturns. Here’s what you need to know. What’s happened? On Wednesday, January 14, Saks Global announced that it is seeking Chapter 11 protection in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Texas. At the same time, the luxury retail brand announced that it has also secured $1.75 billion in financing commitments. Much of this money will be used by Saks Global …

When the FIFA World Cup 2026 arrives in the United States this June, it will signal more than soccer’s return to its fastest-growing commercial market. The tournament will span three countries—the United States, Mexico, and Canada—for the first time, becoming the largest World Cup ever staged. The scale, however, is also forcing a technological reset. As modern global sporting events grow in scale, expectations have evolved alongside them. Audiences now look for more immersive broadcasts and real-time data, broadcasters face rising reliability demands, and governing bodies continue to push for greater transparency and precision. Together, these pressures are starting …

Neko Health is taking its body-scanning technology to America. The Swedish diagnostic health clinic, cofounded by Hjalmar Nilsonne and Daniel Ek (also the cofounder and CEO of Spotify), said on Wednesday that it will launch a location in New York City, its first in the United States, in the spring of this year. The three-year-old startup, which offers comprehensive body scans to monitor risk factors for a range of health conditions from pre-diabetes to cancer, already has a presence in London, Manchester, and Stockholm. “For the first time, technology is enabling a fundamentally new healthcare experience centered on prevention,” Nilsonne, who is the company’s …

Andy Sauer is no stranger to making waves in the beverage business. As the CEO of Garage Beer, he defied the odds by turning a small craft brewery into a national name, despite competing in an industry dominated by legacy players. Now he’s looking to shake things up in another popular beverage category: the soda aisle. Sauer’s latest venture is a product called Roxberry, which he’s dubbing the “first modern kids’ soda.” The brand launched earlier this month at more than 2,200 Walmart stores, 450 Krogers, Meijer and Harris Teeter locations nationwide, and a handful of independent grocers. This “soda” is unlike the sugary drinks most consumers remember from childhood: I…