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On November 26, a water leak at Paris’ Louvre Museum damaged between 300 and 400 historical books in the Egyptology and scientific documentation section. Then, on December 8, workers at the museum voted to initiate a strike over poor working conditions. And that’s only a drop in the bucket compared to the Louvre’s overall woes so far this year. For years, the Louvre has been struggling with a combination of old, weathered infrastructure and increased foot traffic brought about by mass tourism. But in 2025, the museum has been hit by the full consequences of operating out of a relatively un-updated building to house some of the world’s most influential (and valuabl…

Letterboxd, the movie tracking app and social media platform for cinephiles, first announced its new online film rental platform earlier this year at Cannes Film Festival. Now, more details about the launch date and titles have been revealed. The Video Store will officially launch on Wednesday, December 10, and will feature nine films across two curated shelves, which includes titles from nine countries. Here’s some of what film fans can expect: Think a Todd Haynes deep cut, to a restored version of a Filipino classic, and more, including Chile and Indonesia’s submissions for the upcoming 98th Academy Awards, a hit from the 2025 South by Southwest (SXSW) festival, a…

IBM announced on Monday it is acquiring Confluent for $11 billion, sending shares of the data streaming platform up about 29% in morning trading. By midday trading, at the time of this writing, Confluent (CFLT) stock was holding steady, up 29%. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) stock was up about 1.5%. Confluent provides a leading open-source enterprise data streaming platform that connects, processes, and governs reusable and reliable data and events in real time, foundational for the deployment of AI. The deal is an example of how IBM is actively engaging in the increasingly competitive, high-stakes AI arms race that’s now dominating technolo…

The robots won’t be replacing us, but we will increasingly be working side-by-side with artificial intelligence tools that can then learn from our human expertise. That’s one conclusion of researchers and engineers who are applying AI to the physical world in transformative ways, from autonomous vehicles to microscopes for detecting malaria to the design of wholly new materials. And there’s a balance to be struck between automation and human expertise, according to K.T. Ramesh, the Alonzo G. Decker Jr. professor of science of and engineering at Johns Hopkins University and a senior advisor to the university’s president for AI. “We can develop autonomous resea…

Mixed nuts are a common staple in many houses around the Christmas holidays. Their saltiness is a nice contrast to all the sweet festive treats that our kitchens fill up with at this time of year. But now the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has warned that two mixed nut products have the potential to make you very sick. Here’s what you need to know. FDA announced mixed nuts recall On December 5, the Food and Drug Administration posted a notice announcing the recall of two mixed nuts products. The nuts were sold under the Wegmans brand. Wegmans is a popular chain of grocery stores in the eastern United States. The nuts were manufactured by Mellace Family…

Five years ago, an algorithm decided whether your résumé ever reached a recruiter. Now, it might be the one asking you the questions. It can feel unsettling to imagine a machine assessing not just what you say, but how you say it: tone, cadence, word choice, even microexpressions. These patterns feed models that generate a “fit” score, determining whether you ever reach a human being. Agentic AI allows what appears to be a genuine two-way conversation, simulating a first-round interview more realistically than the one-way video prompts of the past. Companies are drawn to it for clear reasons: speed, consistency, and scale. But that efficiency comes with trade…

Netflix has announced that it intends to buy legendary Hollywood studio Warner Bros. in a deal valued at approximately $82.7 billion. The deal, which must be approved by regulators, will further consolidate the entertainment industry and give Netflix ownership of some of the most iconic films and television franchises ever, not to mention HBO. Here’s what you need to know: What’s happened? Today, Netflix and Warner Bros announced a deal in which Netflix will purchase the legendary Hollywood studio, along with its HBO Max and HBO divisions, for a total enterprise value of approximately $82.7 billion (which Netflix says has an equity value of $72.0 billion)…

The Phoenix Mercury rebranded for the first time in team history, and the new look is part of a wider trend across the WNBA as teams modernize their logos for a growing league. The new Mercury logo shows an “M” that’s a simplified version of the letter taken from the team’s old script wordmark. The bottom of the “M” is angled up at 19.97 degrees as a nod to the team’s 1997 founding as one of the league’s eight original franchises, and it’s set on a circle with a crescent shadow that represents the planet Mercury. The modernized logo was designed in-house. The rebrand comes at an inflection point for the team, which lost star player Diana Taurasi to retirement in F…

Authenticity is currency. You can spend it recklessly and go broke, or invest it strategically and build wealth. Most leaders are choosing bankruptcy without even realizing it. Right now, workplaces are debating authenticity. Some call “bring your whole self to work” a dangerous myth that punishes marginalized employees. Others claim it’s the secret to engagement and retention. Both are right—and both are missing something. Unfiltered authenticity without skill can be destructive. And yes, marginalized employees pay a higher price when they try to be authentic in systems that weren’t built for them. But your team already knows when you’re faking it. Th…

As Sir Isaac Newton discovered, the core scientific law of gravity is that what goes up must come down. The principle applies in many areas, which is why markets are jittery about the near-unchecked, three-year growth of stock prices fueled by the strength of the generative-AI revolution. The market is on a tear, with a large gap growing even wider between public market valuations and the significantly higher private-market valuations of AI-exposed companies. The top five tech companies in the U.S. are, collectively, valued at more than the combined size of the Euro Stoxx 50, the U.K., India, Japan, and Canada—and account for around 16% of the entire global public equ…

In 1983, Howard Schultz was an employee of Starbucks, a small chain of coffee stores that mainly sold beans (and no drinks), when he was sent to Milan for a trade show. As Schultz observed Italians visiting their local cafés, he loved what he saw, describing it as a “sense of community, a real sense of connection between the barista and the customer.” A few years later, after Schultz convinced Starbucks’s owners to sell him the company, the new owner attempted to build that same type of connection here in the U.S. To do so, Schultz knew he had to take care of his people. He called them “partners,” not employees, a symbol of a more collaborative working relationshi…

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is warning people to stop using certain types of glucose monitor sensors after the company that makes them, Abbott Diabetes Care, said the devices were linked to seven deaths and more than 700 injuries. Certain FreeStyle Libre 3 and FreeStyle Libre 3 Plus sensors may provide incorrect low glucose readings, FDA officials said this week. Such readings over an extended period may lead people with diabetes to make bad treatment decisions, such as consuming too many carbohydrates or skipping or delaying doses of insulin. “These decisions may pose serious health risks, including potential injury or death,” the FDA said in the alert. The …

Scented candle lovers, the day you have waited for all year is finally here. Today marks the kick-off of the annual Candle Day sales event from Bath & Body Works, during which the retailer’s pricey scented wax pillars will go for just a third of their regular cost. Here’s what you need to know about Candle Day 2025. What is Candle Day 2025? Candle Day is Bath & Body Works’ annual candle sale bonanza. Throughout the year, many of the company’s three-wick candles go for $29.95 each, but during Candle Day, many of those candles can be had for prices as low as $9.95. Due to the massive savings, Candle Day is a sales event that candle lovers across…

The District of Columbia, Maryland, and Virgina (DMV) region is emerging as a national test case for the future of office space. As cities across the country grapple with persistent office vacancies, D.C. is taking a bold approach: Instead of focusing solely on residential conversions, it is pioneering a broader strategy to convert offices to…anything. While the concept of office conversions isn’t new, most efforts have been centered on residential use. D.C.’s strategy breaks that mold. In January 2025, the city launched the Central Washington Activation Projects Temporary Tax Abatement, better known as the Office to Anything program. This policy targets build…

Internet infrastructure company Cloudflare on Friday said it was investigating an outage that took place in the morning that brought down several global websites including LinkedIn, Zoom and others, the second such crash to affect the company in less than three weeks. Cloudflare said the issue had been resolved, and that it was was “investigating issues with Cloudflare Dashboard and related APIs,” or application programming interface that allow software systems to communicate with each other. The company said the outage was not due to an attack. A change to how its firewall handles requests “caused Cloudflare’s network to be unavailable for several minutes this morning,…

Being tired is practically a personality trait in corporate America — especially in 2025. Everybody is exhausted, it seems. Folks are doing fiftyleven jobs. You’re always juggling tasks, always late for the next meeting because the last one ran long. But when you’re one of the few Black employees at the gig, there’s a subconscious fear of looking like you’re in over your head, especially with the looming fear of layoffs. So you push through, even when you’re running on fumes. You go harder, telling yourself you’ll rest once you get through the busy patch. But that’s a lie. The job is a perpetual busy patch. For months, I kept telling myself I was just tired. Regular tire…

Every year, open enrollment forces Americans to confront a familiar dilemma: Pay more for coverage that delivers less, or gamble on going without it. This year, that choice has become even starker. Employers are shifting more costs to workers, marketplace premiums are poised to rise, fewer prescription drugs are covered by insurance, and 3.8 million people could lose insurance annually if Affordable Care Act subsidies aren’t extended. Together, these developments represent a structural break in the U.S. healthcare system. It’s a perfect storm that will price many Americans out of health insurance altogether—many involuntarily, but some voluntarily. Fed up with s…

The year is quickly coming to an end, and that means tech platforms are tripping over themselves to roll out their year-end recaps—all hoping to capture the virality that Spotify’s Wrapped year-in-review recap commands each year. Already in December, we’ve seen Spotify Wrapped, Apple Music Replay, Amazon Music Delivered, and YouTube Recap, with more, like the popular Snapchat Recap, set to debut in the coming weeks. One of those debuts has occurred today, as well. Popular chat platform Discord has now released its personalized Wrapped-like recap: Discord Checkpoint. Here’s what to know about it and how to view yours. Discord announced Discord Checkpoint 2025 Di…