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Water scarcity is often viewed as an issue for the arid American West, but the U.S. Northeast’s experience in 2024 shows how severe droughts can occur in just about any part of the country. Cities in the Northeast experienced record-breaking drought conditions in the second half of 2024 after a hot, dry summer in many areas. Wildfires broke out in several states that rarely see them. By December, much of the region was experiencing moderate to severe drought. Residents in New York City and Boston were asked to reduce their water use, while Philadelphia faced risk to its water supply due to saltwater coming up the Delaware River. Before the drought, many people…

Loneliness is no longer just an emotion—it’s a growing public health crisis in the U.S. A 2024 Harvard study found that 21% of U.S. adults regularly experience loneliness, while the American Psychological Association reports that nearly half of young workers feel isolated at work. Capitalizing on the recent tech boom, AI-powered digital companions and digital twin avatars are rapidly emerging as alternatives to human relationships. These AI bots offer a constant sense of connection without judgment and can be hyper-personalized to match user preferences. Platforms including Oh, Replika (whose tagline is “the AI companion who cares”), and Eden AI chat by EVA AI lea…

For the first time in over two decades, Capri Sun is expanding its single serving offerings with a colorful new bottle—but don’t worry, the iconic pouch is here to stay. Capri Sun’s new bottles are hitting shelves nationwide today at Kroger, Circle K, some Walmart locations, and regional convenience stores like Meijer and Hy-vee. They come in the brand’s three most popular flavors: Fruit Punch, Pacific Cooler, and Strawberry Kiwi. According to the company, each bottle contains about double the liquid contents of a traditional pouch, at 12 fluid ounces. However, for those interested in a smaller serving size and that classic form factor, Capri Sun pouches aren’t actual…

YouTube isn’t just a website anymore. And computers and smartphones aren’t even the primary ways that people watch YouTube content, either. YouTube CEO Neal Mohan, in his annual letter to the YouTube community yesterday, wrote, “TV has surpassed mobile and is now the primary device for YouTube viewing in the U.S.” At the same time, he said, creators “have moved from filming grainy videos of themselves on desktop computers to building studios and producing popular talk shows and feature-length films.” Ahead of posting his letter, Mohan spoke with Fast Company about how YouTube—which is celebrating its 20th year—is responding to changing viewer habits and givin…

From streamlining administrative tasks to enhancing brainstorming sessions, AI is becoming an essential workplace companion. Yet, despite its transformative promise, its integration isn’t as simple as flipping a switch. We recently conducted research at Lucid Software to uncover AI usage in the workplace. We found that more than a third of workers globally are already using AI for fundamental tasks like generating ideas (39%), creating content (37%), communicating summaries (33%), and finding documentation (31%). When thinking about how we’ve adopted the technology into our products, our decade-long investment in intelligence has been key to building an AI-ready platf…

Starbucks is brewing up something new in Texas—and this time, it’s not just what’s in the cup. Next week, the coffee giant will open its first-ever 3D-printed store, a drive-thru-only location in Brownsville that looks more like the future of construction than your average café. Built with layers of concrete piped out by a giant robotic printer, the 1,400-square-foot structure is part of the company’s ongoing effort to modernize operations and trim costs. But does a 3D-printed café actually save money—or is this just a buzzworthy experiment? Is 3D-printing more cost-effective? Peri-3D, a German company, used a giant 3D printer to pump out layers of concrete mi…

Shares in Super Micro Computer, Inc. (Nasdaq: SMCI) are down around 4% in premarket trading this morning as of the time of this writing after surging over 17% yesterday on optimism about the company’s Q2 2025 earnings, which will be announced after the close of market today. But while investors are no doubt interested in learning how the storage and server solutions company performed in its most recent quarter, they are also eagerly awaiting news from the company on the filing status of its much-delayed Form 10-K with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Unless that form is filed within the next two weeks, Super Micro Computer (aka Supermicro) is at ris…

Serena Williams is joining the ownership group of the WNBA’s first Canadian franchise, the Toronto Tempo, the team announced Monday. She will partner with Larry Tanenbaum, Chairman of Kilmer Sports Ventures for the Tempo, who will begin play in the 2026 season. “I am thrilled to announce my ownership role in the first Canadian WNBA team, the Toronto Tempo,” said Williams. “This moment is not just about basketball; it is about showcasing the true value and potential of female athletes — I have always said that women’s sports are an incredible investment opportunity. I am excited to partner with Larry and all of Canada in creating this new WNBA franchise and legacy.…

Apple is launching its first major holistic health study in five years to determine how Apple products, including iPhones, Apple Watches, and AirPods, can “play a role in advancing and improving physical health, mental health, and overall well-being.” It may be Apple’s most ambitious study yet. Starting Tuesday, Apple customers in the United States can opt in to participate in the Apple Health Study by downloading Apple’s Research app, version 6.0 (more on that below). The sweeping study, a collaboration with Brigham and Women’s Hospital—a preeminent research hospital in Boston, affiliated with Harvard Medical School—takes a complete approach to understanding how…

Shares in Hims & Hers Health, Inc. (NYSE: HIMS) are skyrocketing in early-morning trading today after the telehealth company announced a new partnership with the Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk. That partnership will see Hims & Hers offer Novo Nordisk’s weight-loss drug Wegovy through its platform. Here’s what you need to know. Hims & Hers will offer weight-loss drug Wegovy Hims & Hers Health announced today that it has entered into “a long-term collaboration” with Danish drugmaker Novo Nordisk to offer its popular weight-loss drug Wegovy to its users through the Hims & Hers platform. The news sent HIMS shares soaring in early-morn…

In an unpredictable labor market, where job gains in January fell below expectations and the future remains uncertain, one thing is clear: Employers can’t afford to rest on their laurels. While the economy has remained relatively strong, shifts in the job market have been historically inevitable, and companies must constantly evaluate their operations to ensure they’re attracting and retaining the best talent. One area that employers should pay close attention to: employee benefits. Surprisingly, small businesses—often perceived as lacking the resources to offer substantial perks—are quietly leading the charge in providing the kinds of benefits that employees value mo…

Despite growing up with a financial planner for a father, the idea of investing intimidated me well into my adulthood. From my point of view, investing seemed like a mysterious process. Not only was this magical money-making exercise conducted in an arcane language (what exactly is a NASDAQ, and why does it sound like something you treat with a special cream?), but it also required my dad to keep the TV in his office tuned to the world’s most mind-numbing broadcast, even though cartoons were just a channel away. It’s no wonder I grew up thinking that investing was boring and impossible to understand. And investment ambivalence is pretty common. A recent NerdWallet fin…

The National Weather Service has issued a winter storm watch from Tuesday morning until Wednesday morning, as back-to-back winter storms are predicted to affect much of the nation this week. A total of three winter storms will bring snow, ice, and rain to more than 40 states, with 29 million Americans facing a winter alert in the Central Plains, the Midwest, the Ohio Valley, and the Mid-Atlantic regions. Winter Storm Harlow is expected to bring ice and snow Tuesday morning into Wednesday to the Ohio Valley, spreading east to the Mid-Atlantic, according to the Weather Channel. This first storm will start in the Central Plains and bring rain and ice to Oklahoma …

A year before Elon Musk helped start OpenAI in San Francisco, philanthropist and Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen already had established his own nonprofit artificial intelligence research laboratory in Seattle. Their mission was to advance AI for humanity’s benefit. More than a decade later, the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, or Ai2, isn’t nearly as well-known as the ChatGPT maker but is still pursuing the “high-impact” AI sought by Allen, who died in 2018. One of its latest AI models, Tulu 3 405B, rivals OpenAI and China’s DeepSeek on several benchmarks. But unlike OpenAI, it says it’s developing AI systems that are “truly open” for others to build upon. …

Parents across the U.S. should soon be able to determine how much lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury are in the food they feed their babies, thanks to a California law, the first of its kind, that took effect this year. As of January 1, 2025, every company that sells baby food products in California is required to test for these four heavy metals every month. That comes five years after a congressional report warned about the presence of dangerously high levels of lead and other heavy metals in baby food. Every baby food product packaged in jars, pouches, tubs, and boxes sold in California must carry a QR code on its label that consumers can scan to check the mos…

Decades of research show the benefits of women in leadership are invaluable. Females embody a more transformational leadership style fostering mission-driven cultures. Female presence also improves team dynamics, with better collaboration and collective intelligence; the greater the ratio of women, the greater equality is seen in conversations, thus capitalizing on the team’s full knowledge and skillsets. All this translates into measurable results: meta-analyses link female leadership with improved sales, and their representation on the board of directors is also directly associated with financial performance. The largest study of women in corporate America marked i…

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. National home prices are rising 2.6% on a year-over-year basis. While some markets in the Gulf and Mountain West regions are seeing mild home price declines, there’s another cohort concentrated in the Northeast, Midwest, and West Coast that are seeing gains well above the national aggregate. Among the 200 largest metro area housing markets, the chart below highlights the 30 markets with the largest home price increases between December 2023 and December 2024, according to ResiClub’s analysis of the latest Zillow Home Value Index data published in Jan…

In 2017, Uber’s executive team reached a critical turning point. The world saw headlines about leadership changes, valuation drops, and cultural upheavals. Beneath the noise, however, lay a deeper issue. It wasn’t rogue culture or aggressive expansion. It was misalignment at the very top. An all-too-familiar scenario had taken root: Executives were operating in silos. They weren’t facing challenges to key decisions, and they overlooked red flags. The result? A $20 billion valuation adjustment and a leadership overhaul that forced Uber to rethink how alignment works at the highest levels. And that’s where the real story begins. Instead of crumbling, Uber recali…

Amid a month of skyrocketing stock prices and unprecedented social media buzz, Hims & Hers is expanding its territory into at-home blood testing and diagnostics. Hims has acquired at-home lab testing facility Trybe Labs, the telehealth company said Wednesday. Using at-home blood draws, Hims will now offer over 70 at-home diagnostics tests, ranging from heart health to certain cancer detection tests. All these can be arranged through the app, without a doctor’s visit. “At-home lab testing is one more exciting step towards elevating the personal, comprehensive care customers in this country should expect,” Dr. Patrick Carroll, Hims & Hers chief medical o…

St. Patrick’s Day usually conjures images of partying, Catholicism, Irish nationalism and, perhaps most famously, the color green: green clothes, green shamrocks, green beer and green rivers. So my students are often surprised when I tell them that St. Patrick’s Day was once a solemn feast day when you’d be far more likely to see the color blue. In fact, there’s even a color known as St. Patrick’s blue. ‘True blue’ Historians don’t know much about St. Patrick. But they believe he was born in the fifth century as Maewyn Succat. He wasn’t Irish; rather he was born in Wales, the son of a Roman-British official. He was, however, captured by Irish pirates and en…

If you’ve skimmed your feeds today, there’s a good chance you’ve seen many headlines exclaiming that around two million donuts have been recalled due to possible listeria contamination. However, these headlines are a bit misleading as the recall happened over a month ago. Confused? Here’s what to know about the listeria donut recall, whether your morning donut is safe to eat, and why you’re just hearing about the recall now. What’s happened? Over the past day, the internet has been flooded with articles about a massive donut recall, with two million of the tasty treats affected. However, though this recall is widely being reported on now—the second week in Febr…

Dutch Bros Inc. shares surged more than 27% in premarket trading Thursday after the coffee chain posted better-than-expected fourth-quarter results and announced plans to expand mobile ordering and food offerings. Revenue rose 34.9% to $342.8 million, surpassing Wall Street estimates. Same-store sales grew 6.9%, and adjusted earnings per share reached 7 cents, both exceeding expectations. The company forecasts 2024 sales between $1.555 billion and $1.575 billion, exceeding analyst projections. “Our efforts to develop our foundational transaction drivers—innovation, paid media, and our Dutch Rewards loyalty program—are working,” CEO Christine Barone said in a …

Design is in a time of transition. Whether it’s the influx of generative AI tools, Gen Z shaking off their post-COVID haze to drive new aesthetics, the practice of graphic design adding clarity to tight elections and challenging our meat consumption, or even the sudden viability of technologies ranging from environmentally friendly A/C to exoskeletons that are turning sci-fi dreams into practical realities, design is in a position to face an uncertain world of scarcity with an unprecedented abundance of innovation. Our honorees for the most innovative companies in design for 2025 span the gamut of product, architecture, and UX. But they are all united in pushing the consu…

Last Energy, a nuclear upstart backed by an Elon Musk-linked venture capital fund, says it plans to construct 30 microreactors on a site in Texas to supply electricity to data centers across the state. The initiative, which it says could provide about 600 megawatts of electricity, would be the company’s largest project to date and help it develop a commercial pipeline in the U.S. Set on a 200-acre site Last Energy has obtained in Haskell County, in northwest Texas, the project still faces likely years of regulatory and public scrutiny. The Washington, D.C.-based company hasn’t yet disclosed customers or the details of its financing, or announced a timeline for the ef…

In the span of three plays in the second quarter of the most-watched event on television, Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes was sacked multiple times before launching the football soaring through midair—only for it to be intercepted and returned for a touchdown by his opponent, the Philadelphia Eagles. And as that series of unfortunate events unfolded for the Chiefs at Super Bowl LIX, it seemed America rejoiced. As one X user wrote before the big game: “The amount of people I know who will be rooting for the Eagles simply because they don’t want the Chiefs to win is a beautiful thing. Hate conquers all.” Hate conquering all certainly seemed to be the …