What's on Your Mind?

Much of healthcare still operates like a series of snapshots. For most routine care, you go in once a year for a physical. Maybe you get a few labs drawn. If something looks off, you might get a follow-up or a prescription. But within the constraints of a short visit and limited longitudinal data, care often ends with broad guidance like “eat better” or “check back next year.” Meanwhile, your health is changing every day. Metabolic function, inflammation, aging, and chronic disease don’t switch on overnight. They unfold gradually over time, shaped by lifestyle factors including sleep, nutrition, movement, stress, as well as genetics and environment. But unless…

When most founders begin their journey, they focus on a good product and the right market. But what happens when your customers don’t yet know they have a problem? What happens when there’s no market, even when you know you have a solution people need? It’s rare to find success stories of simultaneous company and market building because it’s not a challenge that every organization faces. But if you’re innovating within your industry, it’s a problem you should expect and prepare for because it means having to operate in two realities—the internal reality where you know the challenges in your industry and how you’re going to solve them, and the external reality where no…

Starbucks competitor Dutch Bros saw its stock price rise in premarket trading on Friday after the coffee chain posted double-digit revenue growth in its most recent quarter. However, shares were flat as of late morning, with the stock (NYSE: BROS) hovering at just over $50 a share. Perhaps even more important for the stock—and for those investors who are long on it—is the coffee chain’s announcement that it is on track to nearly double its store footprint by 2029. Here’s what you need to know. Dutch Bros has a record Q4 2025 Dutch Bros was founded in 1992, but it’s only in recent years that the coffee chain started to become a household name, thanks to its ev…

Could a film industry entirely crafted from AI ever exist? Social media is abuzz with movie scenes made with Seedance 2.0, the latest tech in AI video generation, including everything from a fight scene between Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise to an alternate ending for The Lord of the Rings. The tech’s proponents predict AI is the future of movies—but an actual brain behind Hollywood hits, Ben Affleck, is trending for his counterargument: AI may be a powerful tool, but it’s nothing without human creativity. Affleck recently shared his take on AI-generated writing in an appearance on a podcast. As an Oscar-winning screenwriter himself for Good Will Hunting (not to mention…

A quarter of those under 30 say they’ve used AI for companionship, according to Associated Press-NORC polling. The one thing missing? Somewhere to take your AI Valentine on a date. Ahead of Valentine’s Day, EVA AI decided to solve that problem. The app—where users can text or, more recently, video chat with AI dates—organized a pop-up social experiment at Same Same Wine Bar in Manhattan this week. Over February 11 and 12, the dimly lit space was filled with patrons seated at tables for one, their AI companions propped up on phone stands. Attendees could bring their own existing AI partners or speed date from a selection of 100 characters. “This is another …

After 25 years of obsessing over Mars, Elon Musk announced that SpaceX has shifted focus from invading the Red Planet to invading the Moon. He claims he will build a self-sustainable lunar metropolis in less than a decade—a sharp contrast to his proposed Mars colony, which he says would now take at least 20 years. Both timelines are as fictional as Star Trek, but at least now his plan makes sense. It is a jarring plot twist from January 2025, when Musk dismissed the Moon as a “distraction.” Now, he says, the satellite is the “overriding priority” to secure civilization. Musk argues a lunar base is necessary because a “natural or man-made catastrophe” on Earth could c…

Think about how many emails you receive each day. Then how many of those include the phrase “please find attached” in the body. One X user has made a plea to retire the phrase, a relic leftover from a time when business communication relied on typewritten letters posted in envelopes, which actually included attached documents to be found. The post quickly went viral, gaining nearly 15 million views since it was posted earlier this week. While the user doesn’t elaborate why exactly they personally take issue with the phrase, or what to say instead, the post had the desired effect, with many weighing in with their own takes on modern email etiquette. Some agr…

For most of modern finance, one number has quietly dictated who gets ahead and who gets left out: the credit score. It was a breakthrough when it arrived in the 1950s, becoming an elegant shortcut for a complex decision. But shortcuts age. And in a world driven by data, digital behavior, and real-time signals, the score is increasingly misaligned with how people actually live and manage money. We’re now at a turning point. A foundational system, long considered untouchable, is finally being reconstructed by using AI—specifically, advanced machine learning models built for risk prediction—to extract more intelligence from existing data. These are rigorously tested, wel…

Perusing the grocery aisle in the Westside Market on 23rd Street in Manhattan, you might not even notice the screens. They look just like paper price labels and, alongside a bar code, use a handwriting-style font we’ve come to associate with a certain merchant folksiness. They’re not particularly bright or showy. The only clues that they’re not ordinary sticky shelf labels are a barely distinguishable light bulb and, on some, a small QR code. These are electronic shelf labels, chip-enabled screens that some stores are now using to display product prices. Unlike their paper predecessors, the prices aren’t printed in ink but rendered in pixels, and they can change insta…

Meta announced on February 10 that it’s introducing a new AI animation feature that lets users turn their still profile photos into AI-generated looping videos. It reads like an uncanny valley version of yesteryear’s Boomerang. The option to animate appears when users click “Animate profile picture” on their Facebook avatars, and the feature gives a limited set of animation options, including party hat, confetti, wave, and heart, in which a photo’s subject makes a heart shape with their hands. Meta says there will be additional options in the future for “seasonal moments and special events.” The tech is imperfect and can only work with what it’s got. Meta says…

James Van Der Beek was one of the biggest stars of the late 1990s and early 2000s. His family still couldn’t afford the cost of cancer. The actor, 48, best known for his portrayal of Dawson Leery in the ’90s hit Dawson’s Creek, died Wednesday. Van Der Beek’s passing comes a little more than a year after he announced on social media that he was battling colorectal cancer, which he was diagnosed with in 2023. And while the actor and father’s untimely death is undeniably tragic, there’s another heartbreaking piece of the story to be told. His family was desperately struggling to afford the cost of his cancer treatment. Despite Van Der Beek’s successful career, w…

Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. Is ‘AI slop’ code here to stay? A few months ago I wrote about the dark side of vibe coding tools: they often generate code that introduces bugs or security vulnerabilities that surface later. They can solve an immediate problem while making a codebase harder to maintain over time. It’s true that more developers are using AI coding assistants, and using them more frequently and for more tasks. But many seem to be weighing the time saved today against the cleanup they may face tomor…

Russia has attempted to fully block WhatsApp in the country, the company said, the latest move in an ongoing government effort to tighten control over the internet. A WhatsApp spokesperson said late Wednesday that the Russian authorities’ action was intended to “drive users to a state-owned surveillance app,” a reference to Russia’s own state-supported MAX messaging app that’s seen by critics as a surveillance tool. “Trying to isolate over 100 million people from private and secure communication is a backwards step and can only lead to less safety for people in Russia,” the WhatsApp spokesperson said. “We continue to do everything we can to keep people connected.” Russ…

Daniel Kokotajlo predicted the end of the world would happen in April 2027. In “AI 2027” — a document outlining the impending impacts of AI, published in April 2025 — the former OpenAI employee and several peers announced that by April 2027, unchecked AI development would lead to superintelligence and consequently destroy humanity. The authors, however are going back on their predictions. Now, Kokotajlo forecasts superintelligence will land in 2034, but he doesn’t know if and when AI will destroy humanity. In “AI 2027,” Kokotajlo argued that superintelligence will emerge through “fully autonomous coding,” enabling AI systems to drive their own development. The r…

Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes fell sharply in January as higher home prices and possibly harsh winter weather kept many prospective homebuyers on the sidelines despite easing mortgage rates. Existing home sales sank 8.4% last month from December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 3.91 million units, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday. That’s the biggest monthly decline in nearly four years and the slowest annualized sales pace in more than two years. Sales fell 4.4% compared with January last year. The latest sales figure fell short of the 4.105 million pace economists were expecting, according to FactSet. “The decrease in sales …

Stellantis, the maker of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram, issued a “do not drive” warning for certain late-model vehicles, telling drivers not to use their vehicles until defective air bags are replaced, according to a notice from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). This stop-drive directive was issued for 225,000 U.S. vehicles from 2003 to 2016 that contain the “defective, deadly” Takata airbag inflators, and is part of a larger, ongoing recall. More than 67 million Takata air bags have been recalled in tens of millions of vehicles across U.S. “Over time, the chemical propellant inside certain Takata inflators can degrade, particularly in hot a…

In late 2025, Interpol coordinated a global operation across 134 nations, seizing roughly 30,000 live animals, confiscating illegal plant and timber products, and identifying about 1,100 suspected wildlife traffickers for national police to investigate. Wildlife trafficking is one of the most lucrative illicit industries worldwide. It nets between US$7 billion and $23 billion per year, according to the Global Environment Facility, a group of nearly 200 nations as well as businesses and nonprofits that fund environmental improvement and protection projects. People buy and sell a wide range of items, including live animals, plant powders and oils, ivory carvings, an…

Adam Mosseri, the head of Meta’s Instagram, testified Wednesday during a landmark social media trial in Los Angeles that he disagrees with the idea that people can be clinically addicted to social media platforms. The question of addiction is a key pillar of the case, where plaintiffs seek to hold social media companies responsible for harms to children who use their platforms. Meta Platforms and Google’s YouTube are the two remaining defendants in the case, which TikTok and Snap have settled. At the core of the Los Angeles case is a 20-year-old identified only by the initials “KGM,” whose lawsuit could determine how thousands of similar lawsuits against social media co…