What's on Your Mind?

It’s shaping up to be a busy year for initial public offerings from some of the most closely watched companies. Rumors have been floating around for a while now that SpaceX, Elon Musk’s space company, and Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup behind Claude, could make their market debuts in the summer and by the end of 2026, respectively. And now, a report says that OpenAI—Anthropic’s main competitor, and the owner of ChatGPT—could go public before the end of the year, too. Here’s what you need to know about OpenAI’s rumored IPO plans. OpenAI may go public in 2026 A report from the Wall Street Journal yesterday has investors buzzing: ChatGPT owner…

Relationships can feel like both a blessing and the bane of your existence, a source of joy and a source of frustration or resentment. At some point, each of us is faced with a clingy child, a dramatic friend, a partner who recoils at the first hint of intimacy, a volatile parent, or a controlling boss — in short, a difficult relationship. As a psychology professor and relationship scientist, I’ve spent countless hours observing human interactions, in the lab and in the real world, trying to understand what makes relationships work – and what makes them feel utterly intractable. Recently, I teamed up with psychologist Rachel Samson, who helps individuals, couples …

In the 1950s, the Air Force designed cockpits for the average pilot by measuring thousands of pilots and calculating the average for 10 key physical dimensions—height, arm length, torso size, etc. They assumed most pilots would be close to average in most dimensions. When researchers actually checked, they found that out of 4,063 pilots, exactly zero were average on all 10 dimensions. Not a single pilot fit the average they’d designed for. Even when they reduced it to just three dimensions, fewer than 5% of pilots were average on all three. By designing for the average, the Air Force created a cockpit that fit virtually no one well, and that had serious consequences f…

If you enter a query into Quili.AI on January 31, your question won’t be answered by a large language model, but instead by residents from the Chilean community of Quilicura. The project aims to replace artificial intelligence with “analog intelligence,” to both highlight the environmental impact of AI, and to get people thinking consciously about their AI use. “We’re inviting people to have a day without AI,” Lorena Antiman from Corporación NGEN, an environmental organization focused in part on protecting Quilicura’s wetlands, says while speaking through a translator. Corporación NGEN spearheaded the project. Instead of going through a data center, each pr…

What many applicants may not realize is that, nowadays, the first hurdle in applying for a job is dealing with AI. Candidates now often must clear an artificial intelligence system that screens their résumés that quietly determines who advances, and whose application is filed away in a drawer or spam folder, never to see the light of day. Now, a new lawsuit filed on Tuesday is the first in the U.S. to accuse an AI hiring company of violating the Fair Credit Reporting Act. Eightfold AI, a venture capital-backed artificial intelligence hiring platform, is being sued by two workers in California for allegedly compiling reports used to screen job applicants without their…

If you’ve received any text messages from California-based healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente, you could be eligible for cash under the terms of a new settlement. The Kaiser Foundation Health Plan agreed to pay $10.5 million to settle a class action suit filed in August 2025. That suit alleged that the healthcare company sent marketing texts to people who had already replied “stop” to opt out of receiving them. That practice could run afoul of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), a law protecting consumers from aggressive telemarketing and robocalls, and the Florida Telephone Solicitation Act. Jonathan Fried, the plaintiff who brought the suit, lived in …

The Farmers’ Almanac isn’t going out of business after all, but it is leaving Maine for the bright lights of New York City and a new owner. Beloved by farmers and gardeners, the almanac was first printed in 1818 and — like the arguably more famous Old Farmer’s Almanac — relies on a secret formula of sunspots, planetary positions, and lunar cycles to generate long-range weather forecasts. It’s been acquired by Unofficial Networks, a digital publisher focused on skiing and outdoor recreation. That means the almanac will keep operating despite announcing in November that its 208-year run was coming to an end. A new Farmers’ Almanac website will be “a living, brea…

Record cold temperatures are once again expected to hit a swath of the country this weekend—even plunging Florida into its coldest stretch of the last 15 years, potentially bringing snow to areas of the state that haven’t seen it in four decades. This arctic blast is actually a sign of climate change, and how more extreme weather happens in an increasingly warming world, despite erroneous claims by the president and others. There’s a difference between weather and climate Ahead of the winter storm that brought intense snow, ice, and freezing temperatures to about two-thirds of the United States earlier this month, President The President took to Truth Social …

The feeling of “languishing” is likely relatable for many workers—even if they don’t quite have that exact language for it. And new research shows it’s not many workers who feel this way. It’s most. “What gets a little confused in people’s minds is that they assume languishing is almost like distress and mental illness,” says Oscar Ybarra, business professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “But it’s more like: I’m just kind of stuck. I’m not really engaged. I don’t know where I’m going.” Ybarra wanted to capture the malaise that employees often experience in the workplace, which doesn’t always rise to the level of mental illness. When he first pol…

Rarely have I more appreciated the chasm between me and Silicon Valley than I have while using OpenClaw. This new AI program, which previously went by Moltbot and before that Clawdbot, has achieved virality over the past week for its ability to control your digital life via text message. It’s an unashamedly geeky tool at the moment, but those who’ve been using it have hailed it as the future of digital assistants. There’s just one problem: OpenClaw is exorbitantly expensive to use. Okay, maybe not for the AI boosters who think nothing of dropping $200 per month on ChatGPT Pro or Claude Max. But definitely for me as someone who balks at even a $20 per month AI subs…

For many people, the word sabbatical conjures a very specific image: a long break from work, perhaps time spent on a beautiful beach, maybe a few weeks of rest before returning “recharged.” It’s often perceived as indulgent, impractical, or reserved for academics and executives with generous benefits. That image misses the point. A sabbatical isn’t a more extended vacation. It isn’t an escape from responsibility. And paradoxically, it isn’t even primarily about rest. When well executed, a sabbatical is a deliberate interruption that creates the conditions for identity discovery, integration, and renewal. When done poorly, it can leave people just as disoriented as whe…

More than 11.5 million fans signed up for presale tickets to Harry Styles’s upcoming Madison Square Garden residency for the Together, Together tour. But when tickets went on sale January 26, amid the excitement, many fans were left frustrated by lengthy virtual queue waits. For those who made it through, the relief proved fleeting when they encountered ticket prices exceeding $1,000. Many turned to social media to direct their ire at both Ticketmaster and Styles himself. “$1000 for lower bowl at msg is genuinely the most insulting thing ive ever seen. that’s one months rent,” one person posted on X. “Its getting to the point where I feel like im being f…

Listen, I don’t know about you, but I’m generally not so big on listening. I tend to be more of a “words in front of my eyes” kind of guy when it comes to taking in information (which, as I’ve come to learn, also means I’m “an old person” by modern-day standards—hey, I’m okay with that). Sometimes, though, there’s something to be said for sitting back and enjoying an aural experience—or, as the cool kids call it these days, a podcast. Whether you’re seeking out important info or just casually checking out a conversation about tech, comedy, or whatever floats your dinghy, oceans of options are out there that exist only in the form of audio. But what happens when yo…

Though I long resisted the label, I have been a solopreneur ever since I started working as a freelance writer in 2010. As the owner, manager, and only employee, all decisions about my solo freelancing business are up to me—which continues to feel simultaneously invigorating and terrifying. But not all daunting solopreneurship decisions are the same. While taking creative risks and pitching big names continue to cause some minor fingernail-chewing even after all these years, investing in my business is the leading cause of second-guessing (and third-guessing, fourth-guessing) my own abilities as an entrepreneur. Many other solopreneurs share my lack of confidence …

In my suburban Boston Ulta, I’m sitting with my hand in a little box. I’ve been promised that in roughly 30 minutes I’ll have nails that are shaped, buffed, and painted—not by a human, but by an AI-powered robot. It feels like an episode of The Jetsons come to life, but the truth is that the AI boom has officially entered the physical world. Most of us interact with artificial intelligence through screens—Gemini drafts our emails, ChatGPT summarizes our docs—but behind the scenes, engineers are racing to give AI hands and feet. Robots already pack boxes in warehouses and make guacamole in fast-food kitchens. Soon, they will be washing dishes, taking care of pets, and …

The University of California Irvine’s new healthcare campus has a long list of innovative features, from its combined inpatient-outpatient surgical suite to its outdoor chemotherapy infusion terrace to an entire floor dedicated to staff only. The one thing it doesn’t have is a gas line. The multi-building healthcare campus with 144 hospital beds officially opened in December as one of a very few major hospitals around the world that runs entirely on electricity. CO Architects, which designed the all-electric hospital alongside design-build partner Hensel Phelps, claims it’s the only hospital larger than 500,000 square feet to pull this off. “Healthcare is just…

For business partners Victoria Jackson and Jennifer Rudolph Walsh, their lives are intermingled with work. As cofounders of 15-month-old bookstore Godmothers in Summerland, California, the pair have built a space that they both longed for: a bookstore perched on a magical slice of Santa Barbara County, outfitted with cozy nooks to read and gather, a cafe, and an events space for author events and workshops. Since its September 2024 opening the space has become a beacon of community, creativity and conversation––what Walsh calls “a beautiful creative cathedral” for everyone from that mom in carpool to Oprah Winfrey. “Godmothers is a great representation of coming up w…

It’s been more than half a century since astronauts last stepped onto the moon. Now, NASA’s Artemis II will return four humans to its vicinity in a 10-day lunar loop that lifts off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center as early as February 8. An Orion spacecraft will carry NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, as well as Canadian Space Agency astronaut Jeremy Hansen, some 230,000 miles to the far side of the moon—farther from Earth than anyone has traveled. Using a free-return trajectory enabled by lunar gravity, they will slingshot back to Earth for a splashdown off the coast of San Diego. NASA’s Artemis program, along with private and international partner…