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We may earn a commission from links on this page. Fitness trackers and smartwatches want to live on your wrist 24/7, the better to track your workouts, sleep, and (allegedly) everyday stress. But after wearing a tight silicone band every minute of the day, you may find your skin starts to get red or itchy after a while. Here are some tips on how to reduce the chances of irritation, and what you can do if you already have a rash. Wear your watch loosely when you're not working outMost makers of smartwatches and fitness trackers say that you should wear them loosely for daily wear. Fitbit, for example, writes that you should wear the band “loosely enough that it can move back and forth on your wrist” and instructs you to “Lower the band on your wrist and loosen it after exercise.” This loose fit allows air to contact your skin as the watch moves around during the day. This way, no part of your skin gets moisture or sweat trapped against it. Garmin and Apple (to name a few) all say basically the same thing. During exercise, you’ll want to wear the watch snugly, on the arm side of your wrist bone (so it’s at least an inch or two away from your actual wrist joint). This lets you get a nice, snug contact between the heart rate sensor and your skin. But once the workout is over, loosen the watch back to a more comfortable position. A good rule of thumb is that when you’re not working out, the watch should be able to move back and forth on your wrist. But during a workout, if you try to slide the watch, your skin should move with it. Keep the watch band clean and dryIrritation can happen when sweat, moisture, or other substances (like, say, soap) get trapped against your skin. An easy way to avoid this is to take the watch off and rinse it when you’re in the shower. If not in the shower, then try to find some other time during the day—maybe while you’re washing your hands—to take the watch off and make sure the band and the sensor area are both clean. Check the care instructions that came with your device; you may be advised to not use soap. But keeping the band clean is only half the job. We also want to avoid trapping moisture under the band, even clean water. Before putting your watch back on, make sure it's thoroughly dry. If the band is made of a fabric material, consider getting a spare band so you can swap in a clean, dry band while you wait for the one you just washed to dry. Consider a different material for the watch bandWaterproof materials like silicone tend to be the worst culprits for irritation, probably because of the way they can trap sweat and moisture against the skin. If this is an ongoing issue for you, consider a fabric watch band that breathes a little better. For example, here’s a five-pack of elastic bands that fit 18-millimeter Garmins. Whatever your device, there are probably a ton of third-party bands out there in a variety of materials. Give your skin a break if it’s already irritatedIf you’ve already gotten a rash on your skin, the most important thing is to stop wearing the watch while you wait for it to heal. If you take a break from your watch at the first sign of irritation, it will probably clear up quickly. The simplest way to do this without disturbing your routine is just to swap it to your other wrist temporarily. It’s also OK to simply not wear the watch for a while! The one time I had some redness and itching from a Garmin strap, I immediately washed the watch and then, once it was dry, put it back on my other wrist. Yes, it feels weird to have your watch on the “wrong” wrist, but you need to give your skin a chance to heal. I have sensitive skin but as long as I'm good about washing and drying the band, and wearing it loosely when I'm not exercising, my skin stays happy. View the full article

Early this year, the glitz and glamour of Hollywood awards season kicked off with the Critics Choice Awards, and soon everything will culminate with the Academy Awards on March 15. With the Oscars just two weeks away—and the rest of awards season nearly behind us—it’s the perfect time to overanalyze what movie will emerge victorious on the big night. All this overthinking could even help you win your office competition (or make some money on Polymarket or Kalshi). Here’s everything you need to know to make an informed Oscar prediction ballot: How Oscar nominations are chosen The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the organization behind the Oscars, is made up of around 11,000 entertainment industry professionals broken down into 19 different branches, such as actors, directors, cinematographers, and editors. Studios, distributors, or even filmmakers themselves officially submit their projects to be considered for nomination. The acting, directing, and best picture categories are secretive. For these major categories, voters can back up to five performances on a preferential ballot. Oscar nomination voting began on January 12 and lasted five days. This year’s nominations were announced on Thursday, January 22, 2026. Who was nominated for an Oscar? Ryan Coogler’s Sinners made Academy Award history by scoring 16 nods, making it the most nominated film of all time. The previous title holders, All About Eve (1950), Titanic (1997), and La La Land (2016), each had 14 in a three way tie. Paul Thomas Anderson’s One Battle After Another received 13 nominations, including Best Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay. Frankenstein, Marty Supreme, and Sentimental Value all got nine nominations. For a full list of nominees, visit the Academy website. Timothée Chalamet’s Best Actor nomination for his work in Marty Supreme made him the youngest actor since Marlon Brando to be nominated three times in the elite category. Weapons isn’t Amy Madigan’s first Best Supporting Actress nomination. That came in 1986 for her work in Twice in a Lifetime. Forty years later, she holds the title for the longest time period between nominations. “I’ve been doing this a long-ass time,” she quipped in her Actor Awards acceptance speech, as reported by USA Today. Notably, Wicked: For Good received no Oscar love. Neither did the less commercial flick The Testament of Ann Lee. Many critics also believe that Jafar Panahi and Guillermo del Toro should have been included in the Best Director category. Some also believe that Paul Mescal’s portrayal of William Shakespeare in Hamnet should have been nominated. Best Actor prediction Going into last week’s SAG-AFTRA Actor Awards, Timothée Chalamet felt like a safe bet to take home the prize, especially since he had already won the Critics Choice Award and Golden Globe for his work in Marty Supreme. Let’s also not forget that he took home last year’s award for his work in A Complete Unknown. Even presenter Viola Davis was surprised to read Michael B. Jordan’s name instead. With this development, it feels like a tight race between Jordan and Chalamet for the Best Actor Oscar. Jordan, however, has momentum and age on his side, as historically the Academy Awards honors older actors. The Secret Agent’s Wagner Moura did his best to charm voters, but it does not seem like that will be enough for an upset. Best Actress prediction This is the one category that seems locked in. Jessie Buckley has already taken home the Golden Globe, the Critics Choice Award, the BAFTA, and the Actor Award for her work in Hamnet. Rose Byrne is her only serious threat, but her loss at the Actor Awards appears to signal Buckley’s almost certain victory. For further perspective, both Polymarket and Kalshi give Buckley a 95% chance of winning. Best Picture prediction The biggest award of the night is expected to be a race between the two most nominated flicks, Sinners and One Battle After Another. Both the PGA and the DGA gave this honor to Battle, which historically predicts where the Academy Award will go. But there is precedence for another avenue to victory. In 2020, Parasite took home the Oscar without the other guild awards after winning best ensemble at the SAG Awards. Sinners already accomplished that step, so time will tell if this means Oscar gold is imminent. Polymarket has a clear favorite, giving Battle a 81% chance and Sinners a mere 14%. Kalshi also favors Battle at 80% versus Sinners at 16%. The Academy concludes voting on March 5. The 98th Academy Awards ceremony is set to take place at Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre on March 15. View the full article

The U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran add yet more question marks around a U.S. economy already buffeted by on-and-off tariffs, weak hiring, and lingering inflationary pressures. The war has already raised oil prices and could lift prices at the pump as early as this week, but the ultimate impact on the economy and inflation will depend on the length and severity of the conflict, economists say. Should it wind down in a week or two, its economic effects would be minor and short-lived. Yet a longer war that pushed oil past $100 a barrel for an extended period would worsen inflation, at least temporarily, while slowing growth and intensifying Americans’ unhappiness with the cost of essentials. After nearly five years of rising prices, concerns around affordability have undercut President Donald The President’s support in polls and bolstered Democrats in recent elections. For now, the price of a barrel of benchmark U.S. crude rose 6.3% Monday to settle at $71.23. Brent crude, the international standard, climbed 6.7% to $77.74 per barrel. An increase at that level, even if sustained, would barely lift inflation, economists said. “While cost-conscious Americans who are dealing with an affordability crisis will not take this increase lightly, such an increase will not materially affect economic growth,” Joe Brusuelas, an economist at RSM, a consulting firm, said. Stock prices rebounded to show a small gain Monday after initially falling sharply, a sign of optimism that the war will be short-lived. But a longer-lasting conflict, particularly one that closed down the Strait of Hormuz at the edge of the Persian Gulf, through which roughly 25% of the world’s oil passes, could push oil past that $100 a barrel mark. Gas prices in the U.S. could then reach $3.50 a gallon, up from just under $3 on average nationwide on Monday. Such price jumps would accelerate inflation in the U.S. and slow growth, economists said. “Markets are right now really under-pricing the tail risk of a sustained engagement and an operation that does not wrap up quickly, restore travel through the Strait of Hormuz and get everything back to de-escalation and normal in a timely manner,” said Alex Jacquez, chief of policy and advocacy at the Groundwork Collaborative and an economic adviser to the Biden White House. Here are some ways the war could affect the economy. Inflation has lingered even as gas prices have fallen While some measures of inflation have cooled in recent months, the Federal Reserve’s preferred measure has been stuck at about 3% for roughly a year. That is above the central bank’s 2% target, and has occurred even as gas prices fell steadily in 2025. Should gas prices rise significantly, air fares could also rise as airlines face bigger fuel costs. Shipping would also become more expensive, which could add to grocery prices. Natural gas prices also jumped Monday, as roughly 20% of the world’s gas travels through the Strait of Hormuz and a liquid natural gas plant was shut down in Qatar. That could raise heating prices in the U.S. Natural gas has already gotten 10% more expensive in the past year, thanks in part to spiking energy usage by data centers powering AI. Still, economists noted that the U.S. economy is not as oil-dependent as it has been in the past, with most Americans now working in services, rather than manufacturing. And other factors may help keep oil price increases relatively limited. Rory Johnston, founder of Commodity Context, an oil analytics firm, pointed out that oil inventories were quite high before the conflict, which helped keep prices in check. That’s in sharp contrast to the winter of 2022, he said, when post-COVID supply chain problems had already pushed up oil costs even before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a much bigger spike. Monday’s increase “is a very minor spike relative to” what happened after Russia’s invasion, Johnston said. Businesses may pull back amid uncertainty If the Iran war drags on for months, it could also torpedo business confidence, which could lead companies to invest and hire less, said Kathy Bostjancic, chief economist at Nationwide Financial. “When there is an injection of new uncertainty into the business environment … that’s a hit to confidence,” she said. The result could be similar to the impact of The President’s tariffs, which did not raise prices as much as many economists feared, but did appear to weigh on job gains. Hiring in 2025 was the weakest, outside of a recession, since 2002. Consumers sour further on economy Even without a big inflation spike, a major risk for The President is that Americans sour on his economic leadership. According to surveys, Americans already have a gloomy outlook on the economy, largely because of the lingering effects of the price spikes of the past five years. The President’s attempts to portray the U.S. as in a “golden age” have had little impact on those attitudes. A protracted conflict in Iran that raised gas prices would likely make it worse, Jacquez said. “People generally don’t think that President The President is focused on the things that they are focused on,” Jacquez added, “and what they want him to be focused on is the price of groceries. What they think he’s focused on are things like tariffs and foreign policy.” —Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer View the full article

Much like anyone facing a sudden loss, SEOs and marketers are currently cycling through the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Our goal here is to help you process the change. We want to help you…Read more ›View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Bass-heavy headphones tend to divide people. Some want a balanced mix. Others want to feel the kick drum in their jaw. The Skullcandy Crusher Evo Wireless sit firmly in the second camp, though you can rein them in if you want. Right now they’re $99.99 on Amazon, down from $209.99. (The lowest recorded price was $97.99.) Skullcandy Crusher Evo Wireless Bluetooth Headphones $99.99 at Amazon $209.99 Save $110.00 Get Deal Get Deal $99.99 at Amazon $209.99 Save $110.00 The memory foam ear cups are thick and comfortable for long sessions, and the headphones fold flat for easier storage. But the defining feature here is the haptic bass slider. Alongside the standard dual 40mm drivers, Skullcandy adds bass drivers that physically vibrate with low frequencies. Slide it down, and you get a strong but manageable low end. Push it up, and the headphones start to rumble against your ears. Action movies feel heavier. EDM drops hit harder. Podcasts, on the other hand, can sound overblown if you forget to dial it back. Even at the lowest setting, these lean bass-forward. The mids stay clear enough for vocals, so pop and hip-hop tracks don’t collapse into mud, but the soundstage feels closed-in compared to more neutral audiophile options. Through the Skullcandy app, you get three EQ presets and a Personal Sound feature that tailors audio to your hearing profile. That said, there is no full graphic EQ, and there’s no active noise cancellation. They also do not support advanced codecs or multipoint pairing. As for its battery life, Skullcandy rates it at up to 40 hours per charge. At $99.99, these wireless over-ear headphones make sense for someone who wants adjustable, chest-thumping bass and long battery life without paying flagship prices. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods 4 Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $119.00 (List Price $179.00) Samsung Galaxy S26, Unlocked Android Smartphone + $100 Gift Card, 512GB, Powerful Processor, Galaxy AI, Immersive Viewing, Durable Battery, 2026, Black — $899.99 (List Price $1,199.99) Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro AI Noise Cancelling 2.0 Wireless Earbuds (Black) + $30 Amazon Gift Card — $249.99 (List Price $279.99) Google Pixel 10a 128GB 6.3" Unlocked Smartphone + $100 Gift Card — $499.00 (List Price $599.00) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $329.00 (List Price $349.00) Apple Watch Series 11 [GPS 46mm] Smartwatch with Jet Black Aluminum Case with Black Sport Band - M/L. Sleep Score, Fitness Tracker, Health Monitoring, Always-On Display, Water Resistant — $329.00 (List Price $429.00) Amazon Fire TV Soundbar — $99.99 (List Price $119.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

For more than a decade, the dominant model was simple — identify a keyword, write an article, publish, promote, rank, capture traffic, convert a fraction of visitors, and repeat. But that model is breaking. Content marketing is collapsing and rebuilding simultaneously. AI systems now answer informational queries directly inside search results. Large language models (LLMs) synthesize known information instantly. Information production is accelerating faster than distribution capacity. Public feeds are already saturated. The cost of producing content has fallen to nearly zero, while the cost of being seen has never been higher. That changes everything. Here’s a system for content marketing in a world where being found is increasingly unlikely. The decline of informational SEO Informational SEO used to be treated as a growth opportunity. Publish enough articles targeting informational queries, and traffic would compound. But traffic was always a proxy metric. It felt productive because dashboards moved. In reality, most content was never read deeply, rarely linked to, and often indistinguishable from competitors. Page 1 often contained 10 variations of the same article, each rewritten with minor differences. Now, AI answers absorb demand directly. Users receive summaries without clicking. The known information layer of the web is becoming commoditized. If your strategy relies on answering known informational questions, you’re competing with a machine trained on the entire web. Informational SEO is over as a strategy. Search content will still matter, but its role shifts. It becomes closer to customer service and sales enablement. It exists to support conversion once intent is clear. It doesn’t build fame. Content marketing, properly understood, must do something else entirely. Dig deeper: The dark SEO funnel: Why traffic no longer proves SEO success Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with All content marketing is advertising Growth hackers came in and took over SEO. Driven by the desire to show impressive charts to the board, they turned SEO from a practical channel into a landfill of skyscrapered, informational content that did little for real growth. So, we need a reset. There are only two reasons to create content: You’re in the publishing business. You’re marketing a business. If you’re in the second category, your content is advertising. That doesn’t mean banner ads. It means its job is to build mental availability. As advertising science has repeatedly shown, brands grow by increasing the likelihood of being thought of in buying situations and making themselves easy to purchase from. The advertising analytics company System1 describes the three drivers of profit growth from advertising as fame, feeling, and fluency. Fame means broad awareness. Feeling means positive emotional association. Fluency means easy recognition and processing. If your content doesn’t contribute to those outcomes, it’s activity and not helping your growth. SEO teams optimized for clicks, but clicks aren’t the objective. Being remembered is. In an AI era, this distinction becomes decisive. Dig deeper: Fame engineering: The key to generative engine optimization From pull to push content Historically, content marketing relied heavily on pull: Someone searched, you ranked, and you pulled them from Google to your website. That channel is narrowing. As AI summaries answer queries directly, the ability to pull strangers through informational search decreases. Pull remains critical for transactional queries and high-intent keywords, but the gravitational pull of informational content is weakening. Push becomes more important. You have to push your content to people, distributing it intentionally through media, partnerships, events, advertising, communities, and networks rather than waiting to be discovered. It must be placed directly in front of people. The paradox is this: We once believed gatekeeping had disappeared. Social media and Google created the illusion of fair and direct access. Now, gatekeepers are back — algorithms, publishers, influencers, media outlets, and even AI systems themselves. When channels are flooded, selection mechanisms tighten. Dig deeper: Why your content strategy needs to move beyond SEO to drive demand The scarcity of being found Kevin Kelly wrote in his book “The Inevitable” that work has no value unless it’s seen. An unfound masterpiece, after all, is worthless. As tools improve and creation becomes frictionless, the number of works competing for attention expands exponentially, with each new work adding value while increasing noise. Kelly’s point was that in a world of infinite choice, filtering becomes the dominant force. Recommendation systems, algorithms, media editors, and social networks become the arbiters of visibility. When there are millions of books, songs, apps, videos, and articles, abundance concentrates attention, creating a structural shift. When production is scarce, quality alone can surface work. When production is abundant, discoverability depends on networks, signals, and amplification. The value is migrating from creation to curation and distribution. In practical terms, every additional AI-generated article makes it harder for any single article to be noticed. The supply curve has shifted outward dramatically. Demand hasn’t. Human attention remains finite. As supply approaches infinity and attention remains fixed, the probability of being found declines. Being found is now an economic problem of scarcity rather than a technical exercise in optimization. When production is abundant, attention is scarce. When attention is scarce, distinctiveness and distribution become currency. Dig deeper: Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Powerful messaging in an age of abundance This is where Rory Sutherland’s concept of powerful messaging becomes essential for us. In his book, “Alchemy,” he argues that rational behavior conveys limited meaning. When everything is optimized, efficient, and frictionless, nothing signals importance. Powerful messages must contain elements of absurdity, illogicality, costliness, inefficiency, scarcity, difficulty, or extravagance — qualities that serve as signals. They tell the market that something matters. Consider a wedding invitation. The rational option is an email — instant, free, and efficient. Yet most couples choose heavy paper, embossed type, textured envelopes, even wax seals. The cost and inefficiency are the point. They signal commitment and create emotional weight. The medium amplifies the meaning. The same logic applies to marketing. When everyone can publish a competent article in seconds, competence carries no signal. A 1,000-word blog post answering a known question communicates efficiency, not importance. Scarcity and effort change perception. MrBeast built early fame by counting to extreme numbers on camera. The act was irrational. It was inefficient and difficult. That difficulty was the hook. It signaled commitment and created memorability. The content spread not because it was informational, but because it was remarkable. In an AI-saturated environment, rational content becomes invisible. If 10,000 companies publish summaries of the same topic, none stand out. But if one brand commissions original research, prints a limited run of a physical report, hosts a live event around the findings, and strategically distributes it, the signal is different. The effort itself becomes part of the message. Scarcity also changes economics. Sherwin Rosen’s work on the economics of superstars demonstrated that small differences in recognition can lead to disproportionate returns because markets reward the most recognized participants disproportionately. Moving from being chosen 1% of the time to 2% can double outcomes because fame compounds. In crowded markets, the most recognized option captures an outsized share and reinforces its own dominance. This is why being found is fundamentally different now. In the past, discoverability was a function of production and optimization. Today, it hinges on distinctiveness and signal strength. When production approaches zero cost, attention becomes the only scarce resource, which means you should be aiming for fame rather than optimization. Dig deeper: Revisiting ‘useful content’ in the age of AI-dominated search Fame as a strategic objective Paul Feldwick, in “Why Does The Pedlar Sing?” argues that fame is built through four components: The offer must be interesting and appealing. It must reach large audiences. It must be distinctive and memorable. The public and media must engage voluntarily. These four elements provide a practical framework for content marketing in an AI era. Here’s how that works in practice. Create something interesting You must create new information, not restate existing information. That could mean: Proprietary data studies. Original research. Indexes updated annually. Experiments conducted publicly. Tools that solve real problems. Physical artifacts with limited distribution. Events that convene a specific community. Consider the origins of the Michelin Guide. A tire company created a restaurant guide that became a cultural authority. Awards ceremonies, industry rankings, annual reports, and indexes all function as content marketing. These are fame engines. The key is the perception of effort and distinctiveness. A limited-edition printed book sent to 100 target prospects can carry more weight than 1,000 blog posts. Costliness signals meaning. Reach mass or concentrated influence Interest without distribution is invisible. Distribution options include: Media coverage. Partnerships. Paid advertising. Events. Webinars. Physical mail. Community amplification. If you lack a budget, focus on the smallest viable market. Concentrate on a defined audience and saturate it. Many iconic technology companies began by dominating narrow communities before expanding outward. Public relations and content marketing converge here. Earned media multiplies reach. Paid media accelerates it. Community activation sustains it. If your content is never placed intentionally in front of people, it can’t build fame. Be distinctive and memorable SEO content historically failed on distinctiveness. Ten articles answering the same question looked interchangeable. But in an AI era, repetition disappears into the model. Distinctiveness can come from: A recurring annual report with a recognizable format. A proprietary scoring system. A unique visual identity. A specific tone. A tool that becomes habitual. An award or certification owned by your brand. Memorability drives mental availability. Fluency increases recall. When someone recognizes your brand instantly, you reduce cognitive effort. Repetition of distinctive assets compounds over time. You have to continually go to market with distinctive, memorable content. If you don’t do this, you will fade in memory and distinctiveness. Enable voluntary engagement You can’t force people to share, but you can design for shareability. Content spreads when it carries social currency, enhances the sharer’s identity, rewards participation, and makes access feel exclusive. Referral loops, limited access programs, community recognition, and public acknowledgment can all increase spread. The key is that the message must move freely between humans. It must be portable, discussable, and referencable. Memetics matters. If it can’t be passed along, it can’t compound. Dig deeper: The authority era: How AI is reshaping what ranks in search Operationalizing fame in search marketing If content must be designed for distinctiveness, distribution, and voluntary engagement, search leaders need a different playbook. Here’s a five-step framework. Step 1: Separate infrastructure from fame Maintain search infrastructure for high-intent queries, optimize product pages, support conversion, and provide clear answers where necessary. But stop confusing informational volume with brand growth. Audit your content portfolio. Identify what builds mental availability and what merely fills space to reduce waste. Step 2: Invest in originality Allocate budget to proprietary research, data collection, and creative initiatives. If everyone can generate competent summaries, originality becomes leverage. This may require shifting the budget from content volume to creative depth. Step 3: Design for distribution first Before creating content, define distribution. Who needs to see this? How will it reach them? Which gatekeepers matter? What media outlets might care? Reverse engineer reach. Step 4: Build distinctive assets Create repeatable formats that become associated with your brand. An annual index. A recurring event. A recognizable report structure. A named methodology. Consistency builds fluency. Step 5: Measure fame Track: Brand search volume. Direct traffic growth. Share of voice in media. Unaided awareness, where possible. Traffic alone is insufficient. If content doesn’t increase the probability that someone thinks of you in a buying moment, it’s not performing its primary job. Dig deeper: Why creator-led content marketing is the new standard in search See the complete picture of your search visibility. Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform. Start Free Trial Get started with The return of creativity We’re entering a period where automation handles the average, freeing humans to focus on the exceptional. The future of content marketing isn’t high-volume AI-generated articles. It’s the creation of new information, new experiences, new events, and new signals that machines can’t fabricate credibly. It requires a partnership with PR, a strategic use of physical and digital channels, disciplined distribution, and a commitment to fame. Budgets will need to shift from volume production to creative impact. In a world where information is infinite and attention is finite, the brands that win will be those that understand that being found is more valuable than being published. Content marketing in the AI era isn’t about producing more. It’s about becoming known. View the full article

When I hosted a client dinner honoring my good friends Jules Kroll and his extraordinary wife Lynn, I did not expect to get one of the best bits of life advice I’d ever heard. Jules and Lynn met in college about 65 years ago and raised four wonderful children together. Toward the end of dinner someone asked, “How do you raise good kids?” Lynn, an amazing force of nature, answered swiftly: “You need to raise the children you have—not the ones you would have liked to have.” I was stunned by the clarity and simplicity of what she said and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it. LEARN THE HARD WAY AS A PARENT My father died when I was five. My family situation was complicated and for as long as I can remember, I dreamed of building the perfect family. I’m not ashamed to admit that I picked out my children’s names when I was in middle school and had a very detailed picture of the way their lives would unfold: their education, sports they’d play, and how they’d spend family time. This fantasy—my plan—was so clear. All I had to do as a parent was to guide them and inspire them, to fill them with my ideas and mold them into this perfect vision. And then life happened. I could choose their names, but it turns out my children came up with their unique aspirations and expectations, experienced hopes and challenges, and made their own plans. They taught me that I could not have gotten it more wrong: My pre-fatherhood understanding of parenting was totally upside down. What my children needed—what they still need—is to find their own way based on their quirks, desires, interests, passions, and needs. And my job was and will always be to see precisely who they are, to meet them exactly where they are, and to love them unconditionally. Beyond keeping our children safe, parenthood is about supporting them on their own path as they make their mistakes, push through struggles, and grow into who they are supposed to be. And by the way, their ideas and paths are wonderful in more ways than I could have ever envisioned. THE LEADERSHIP LESSON HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT Lynn’s advice turned out to be more than great parenting advice: It is also savvy management advice. “Love the company you have, not the one you would have loved to have” really speaks to entrepreneurs and CEOs, as well. Like a child, your company is not a straightforward implementation of your plans. You need to observe how it evolves and support it on its journey. In the words of Rumi: “As you start to walk on the way, the way appears.” When a founder starts a company, everything is possible (just as a baby represents limitless potential). And then you start getting to know the actual company you are running. Sometimes it is palatable to investors as is, most of the time it is not (or at least not yet). Within the first couple of years, you get to know the real market, your customers, and how to differentiate with tougher than anticipated competition. You establish a team, inspire the company culture, and demonstrate leadership. If anyone expects their team to be perfect as envisioned, they are doomed to fail. You must see your company for what it really is, what your team members need from you, and what’s possible. Provide the vision, passion, and empower others to make your company the very best version of itself. REALIZE THE COMPANY THAT YOU HAVE Four years after launching Capitolis, we achieved the holy grail of marketing: a feature article in The Wall Street Journal. It felt so good to be recognized and that recognition was a dream come true for me. And then, it almost destroyed the company! The piece was misunderstood and misconstrued by many. What we do is sufficiently complex and nuanced that communications needed to be much more careful despite my dream feature. Since and because of that near debacle, our choices have been about “what is the right marketing approach for this particular company?” or “what is the right sales approach for Capitolis as it exists right now?” The same principle goes with the people we hire, the investors and partners we seek, and every aspect of how we are building the company. I am running a fintech company, a space that I love, one that matters and has been so good to me for the past 25 years. And my role and passion is to love, lead, and support this particular company and team to be the best version of ourselves. I find myself quoting Lynn at least once a week to people: to parents and friends, to colleagues and other entrepreneurs, and to CEOs (and very recently over lunch to her son, my friend Jeremy). Her call to face reality, and show up with humility, dedication, strength, courage, and love, to work with the actual human or company you are dealing with, is something that serves all of us and the people around us. Capitolis is a very successful company with tremendous growth opportunities and a bright future. We are a unicorn, and I believe we will grow many times over from here only if I raise the company I have, as Lynn beautifully advised. Gil Mandelzis is founder and CEO of Capitolis. View the full article

Working in tech, I learned that technology alone doesn’t spark transformation. The people do. And people approach new technologies in wildly different ways. To be successful, companies need to adapt to that line of thinking, just like companies expect their teammates to adapt to transformative technologies, like AI. 3 TYPES OF AI ADOPTERS When we rolled out a custom-built company GPT to our 14,000 teammates several years ago, we saw three clear groups emerge. First, there was the “jump-in-with-both-feet” crowd. These are the early adopters who treat anything new like a shiny toy. Next were the skeptics who wondered how much of an impact AI would have on their daily work lives. And finally, there was a big group that genuinely wanted to learn but didn’t know where to start. This was brand new for them; there was no roadmap, no “user manual” they could reference. If that sounds familiar, you’re not alone. Almost every client I’ve spoken with since has described the exact same pattern inside their own walls. If AI is going to become a core skill like using Excel or email, we have to help everyone build their AI literacy. And the best way to get thousands of people to actually use something new? Gamify it. GAMIFICATION: MAKE AI LITERACY FUN There’s a mountain of research, like this 2023 study, showing that people learn better when they’re having fun. But there’s also a simpler truth here. People are competitive. Some compete cooperatively, in a “let’s all get better together” way, while others just want to win. We built our Insight AI Flight Academy platform to tap into both instincts. The AI Flight Academy guides every teammate through levels of AI literacy, with a fun flight theme, skilling them up from a humble gate agent to flight crew, then up to first officer, captain, and finally sky maverick. Each level has its own requirements, like some company-mandated trainings and learning modules, in-person AI sessions, company podcast episodes, themed challenges—all while teammates keep up with an increasing number of required average monthly prompts. They’re not just checking boxes and watching videos. This combination of sessions, skills challenges, and real use case requirements helps ensure teammates put the skills they learn to use immediately in ways that will actually impact the work they’re doing. They exit AI Flight Academy training sessions and use what they learned, pulling together comprehensive research on a sales target or analyzing a few different proposals to pull out key points from each. Those are just a few examples, but everyone has to play. And everyone can track their progress and everyone else’s progress. Achievements using AI get celebrated, helping to get the competitive juices flowing in individual departments. This way, the entire company moves forward together. UNEXPECTED INNOVATORS With more of our employees getting comfortable using AI, we’re beginning to see innovations come out of teams that aren’t traditionally treated as innovation hubs, like finance, logistics, partner management, and sales teams. These teams weren’t just using AI to summarize emails; they were generating genuinely creative ideas. And once people built that experimentation mental muscle, the ideas came fast and furious. Some were brilliant but not yet feasible. Many required data and systems to catch up before they could work at scale. But the sheer volume of creative ideas has proven that a great deal is possible when you democratize access and literacy. WHAT THIS MEANS FOR THE FUTURE OF WORK Gamifying AI isn’t a silly gimmick. It’s a practical, human-centered strategy for driving AI adoption at scale. It gives people permission to explore, permission to be wrong, and permission to grow. And the result is a workforce that’s empowered by AI, not frightened by it. So, the new challenge? Assessing the zillions of AI ideas generated and prioritizing to meet our business needs: What’s good, what’s feasible, and what can scale. We built a platform and methodology to validate ideas, put them in the context of business outcomes, and then prioritize them. Like with AI Flight Academy, we were our own test subjects first, and our conclusion was that there’s nothing to be scared of if you’re pulling together in the right direction, toward AI innovation. From the get-go, AI amounted to a new superpower for our teammates. Training them to use this new tool called for out-of-the-box thinking. With AI Flight Academy, we adapted by empowering them to get comfortable, experiment, and come up with new use cases. It’s become about more than just gamified training. We’re validating the business value of what they are thinking up as they become more proficient with AI, which has also validated the training itself as invaluable. Across an evolving IT landscape—and workforce—gamification proved to be the right play. Juan Orlandini is CTO of Insight Enterprises. View the full article

Up to a hundred thousands websites affected by WordPress calendar plugin vulnerability. The post WordPress Calendar Plugin Vulnerability Affects Up To 100k Sites appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Target Corporation on Tuesday reported its all-important fourth-quarter results, which run from the key holiday shopping season in November through January. Unfortunately for the company, its results were, at best, a mixed bag. Yet despite the underwhelming earnings report, shares in the company are currently rising. Here’s what you need to know. Target’s Q4 2025 at a glance Before the opening bell this morning, Target reported its fourth-quarter earnings, which ended on January 31. Out of all the earnings periods Target reports over the year, Q4 is the most important because it covers the holiday shopping season when consumers are traditionally most willing to spend on non-discretionary items—a category that is Target’s bread and butter. Here are the most salient metrics for the quarter: Net sales: $30.45 billion Net earnings: $1.04 billion Adjusted earnings-per-share (EPS): $2.44 The good news for the company is that its adjusted EPS of $2.44 was much better than most analysts were expecting. As CNBC notes, an LSEG survey found that most analysts were expecting an adjusted EPS of $2.16. However, though the company beat on adjusted EPS, its net sales and net earnings both did not meet analyst expectations, and came in lower in Q4 2025 than the same quarter a year earlier. Analysts had expected net sales of $30.48 billion for the quarter. Target came close at $30.44 billion—but even that was down 1.5% from the $30.90 billion the company brought in the same quarter a year earlier. The company’s net earnings of $1.04 billion were also down 5.2% from the same quarter a year earlier. Target’s problems are political and economic Announcing its Q4 2025 results, Target’s new CEO, Michael Fiddelke, who has only been in the role since last month, said that the company was focused on its “next chapter of growth, rooted in strengthening our merchandising authority, delivering an elevated and differentiated shopping experience, advancing our use of technology, and continuing to serve and invest in our team and communities.” However, one of the largest challenges that Target is up against is blowback from its community of shoppers. Last summer, Target faced heavy criticism from many of its shoppers for rolling back its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in the wake of President The President’s second inauguration. More recently, as noted by CNBC, The President’s immigration crackdown has been causing headaches for Target’s new leadership. As noted by the Associated Press, the company’s customers have been vocal in their desire for the company to take a public stand against The President’s policies, particularly after the deaths of ICE protesters in Target’s hometown of Minneapolis. Of course, Target’s stagnating sales over the past few years aren’t limited to political problems. It also continues to face economic ones. The biggest problem for Target is that a majority of the goods it sells are discretionary items, and consumers have been cutting back on those for years as costs continue to rise due to inflation and The President’s tariffs. To make matters worse, many customers have complained for years that Target’s stores were becoming messier and less visually appealing, leading them to shop there less frequently or seek out alternative retailers. Last month, Target announced corporate layoffs as part of its plan to reinvest in the in-store experience. Why is Target stock up despite lackluster sales? Despite Target’s lackluster quarter, shares in the company are currently rising in premarket trading. As of this writing, Target stock (NYSE: TGT) is currently up about 3.7% to $117.45. Factors for this rise could include things like relief from investors that the company at least met analysts’ net sales expectations. Target also announced that it expects modest next sales growth of about 2% for 2026. Given that the company has faced declining or stagnating sales for almost four years, investors are likely to reward the company for any expectation of reversing that trend, no matter how small. Despite Target’s ongoing challenges, the company’s shares have performed decently year-to-date. As of yesterday’s market close, TGT shares were up nearly 16% since the start of the year. Over the past six months, the company’s share price has risen more than 22%. Yet over the past 12 months, TGT shares had declined nearly 9% as of yesterday’s close. View the full article

New AI browsers from OpenAI and Perplexity aren't about to replace Chrome any time soon. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take notice. The post Why Atlas & Comet Are Unlikely To Win The AI Browser War appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. A lot of TVs are still perfectly fine screens. They’re just stuck with slow menus or outdated apps. The Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Select is an easy fix for that, and right now it’s $19.99, down from $39.99, its lowest price yet, according to price trackers. It streams in 4K with HDR10+ support, so compatible TVs get brighter highlights and better contrast. That said, it skips Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos, so this is not the model for someone building a high-end home theater setup. But for most living rooms and bedrooms, the picture quality looks more than good enough. It also works fine on 1080p or even 720p TVs, so you don’t need a brand-new screen to make use of it. If you are still deciding, our writer Emily Long breaks down what to consider when choosing a streaming stick. Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K Select $19.99 at Amazon $39.99 Save $20.00 Get Deal Get Deal $19.99 at Amazon $39.99 Save $20.00 As for the Select’s performance, apps open quickly, and scrolling through menus doesn’t feel sluggish. You get all the major services in one place, from Netflix and Disney+ to Prime Video and Apple TV+, plus a large catalog of free ad-supported content. The remote is simple and practical with dedicated buttons for popular apps, a volume rocker, and a microphone button for Alexa+ (it lacks the hands-free Alexa). For gamers, an Xbox Game Pass Ultimate subscription paired with a compatible controller lets you stream select Xbox titles straight to your TV, no console required. On the downside, this streaming device runs on Wi-Fi 5 rather than Wi-Fi 6, so it won’t fully benefit from the faster speeds and improved performance of newer routers in crowded networks. Storage is 8GB, which is typical for Fire TV sticks, but it can fill up fast if you download many apps. Also, app installations are limited to the Amazon Appstore since sideloading is blocked. To make the most of that storage, it helps to start with the essentials—here are nine worthwhile Fire TV Stick apps to try. Our Best Editor-Vetted Tech Deals Right Now Apple AirPods 4 Active Noise Cancelling Wireless Earbuds — $119.00 (List Price $179.00) Samsung Galaxy S26, Unlocked Android Smartphone + $100 Gift Card, 512GB, Powerful Processor, Galaxy AI, Immersive Viewing, Durable Battery, 2026, Black — $899.99 (List Price $1,199.99) Samsung Galaxy Buds 4 Pro AI Noise Cancelling 2.0 Wireless Earbuds (Black) + $30 Amazon Gift Card — $249.99 (List Price $279.99) Google Pixel 10a 128GB 6.3" Unlocked Smartphone + $100 Gift Card — $499.00 (List Price $599.00) Apple iPad 11" 128GB A16 WiFi Tablet (Blue, 2025) — $329.00 (List Price $349.00) Apple Watch Series 11 [GPS 46mm] Smartwatch with Jet Black Aluminum Case with Black Sport Band - M/L. Sleep Score, Fitness Tracker, Health Monitoring, Always-On Display, Water Resistant — $329.00 (List Price $429.00) Amazon Fire TV Soundbar — $99.99 (List Price $119.99) Deals are selected by our commerce team View the full article

A quick guide to official economic forecasts presented by UK chancellor Rachel Reeves on Tuesday View the full article

In 2023, as Texas lawmakers debated Senate Bill 13—a controversial bill aimed at restricting certain books in public school libraries and expanding parental oversight—Steve Wandler was among the dozen-plus parents, educators, and advocates who testified before the legislature. Wandler wasn’t just another concerned citizen. He was a Canadian entrepreneur who had relocated to Texas the year before to found Bookmarked, a fledgling startup that promises to help school districts manage their library collections and give parents greater visibility into what their children are reading. The legislation addressed the very issue Wandler believed his company could help solve. The bill, authored by Republican state Senator Angela Paxton, would require districts to pull books featuring content deemed by local school boards to be “profane,” “indecent,” or “sexually explicit,” and expanded parents’ rights to monitor their children’s borrowing histories and restrict what their children could check out. It was part of a broader political push that also included HB 900, which required book vendors to rate school library materials for sexual content (though a federal appeals court later blocked enforcement of the rating mandate as unconstitutionally broad). Wandler spoke in support of SB 13, telling lawmakers it “empowers parental access” and “mandates accountability with the school districts.” His investment in the bill’s passage wasn’t merely rhetorical: Public records show Bookmarked spent at least $80,000 lobbying in favor of the measure, and later hired the powerful Texas lobbying firm Moak Casey to help promote its cause. Still, critics saw SB 13 differently, with free-speech advocates warning the new system amounts to codified censorship. Tasslyn Magnusson, a senior advisor with the Freedom to Read Program at PEN America, says that tools aggregating and circulating lists of challenged titles can reshape library collections in subtle but consequential ways. “When you start flagging books as somehow bad or under issue in other districts and other states, you’re undermining your local community control of what a school should have available for its students,” she tells Fast Company. Texas lawmakers ultimately moved forward anyway. Within months of SB 13’s June 2025 passage, Bookmarked, then without any district clients, began marketing its software as a tool designed to help districts navigate the law’s new requirements, according to brochure materials provided to Fast Company. The platform promised to highlight potentially problematic titles for school boards, streamline review processes, and give parents direct access to their children’s reading histories by integrating with library systems (that checkout data is stored on Amazon Web Services). In an interview with Fast Company, Wandler describes the product as decision support rather than a censorship engine: “We’re just showing you what we find on the internet. We’re not telling you what to do.” In doing so, the Dallas-based upstart quickly became a key player in a new and deeply contested corner of the edtech market, providing its software to more than 150 districts across Texas, according to Wandler—though that footprint is more complicated than it may appear, spanning a mix of paid contracts and free pilot programs. (Wandler says a soon-to-be-released updated version of Bookmarked would standardize pricing at $3 per student.) Bookmarked was initially backed by angel investors and remains angel funded, according to Wandler, who says the company is now seeking additional capital after gaining traction in Texas. He describes the company’s tech as a practical solution, one that helps districts maneuver an increasingly complex legal environment while connecting families more directly to their children’s reading. He acknowledges the fears over a system that might accelerate book removals, but insists his company has been a neutral player. “We try to be Switzerland,” he says. “And it’s hard to be Switzerland.” ‘The process is almost unattainable’ In marketing materials issued in June 2025 and shared with Fast Company, Bookmarked presents itself as a shield against risk. OnShelf, its AI-powered platform that tracks school library catalogs and calls out books that could draw complaints under the new laws, would help districts “navigate SB 13 with confidence and clarity,” Bookmarked promised. In practice, OnShelf works by ingesting a school district’s library catalog and comparing it against a growing database of titles that have been challenged or restricted elsewhere. According to internal company documents viewed by Fast Company, its AI engine “scans and collects” online data daily—including news reports, advocacy lists, and district records—to track books that have been banned or challenged across the U.S. and generate a list of “potential flags.” OnShelf also, per internal documents, supplies librarians with weekly automated emails “summarizing the ‘health’ of their collection based on any new nationwide challenge trends.” The company’s early development was closely tied to a Texas public-school superintendent. Jason Cochran, now head of Krum Independent School District (ISD) in North Texas, says he approached Wandler with the original idea and helped shape an early version of the product. Cochran today retains a small ownership stake (less than 1%, he says) and serves informally as an advisor. His district uses the software free of charge, an arrangement he says he requested in part to avoid conflicts tied to his ownership stake. (Some have questioned whether Cochran’s dual role as a district leader and a financial stakeholder in a vendor serving schools presents a conflict of interest.) Cochran says the tool has helped his district spot challenged books and ensure “there wasn’t anything on the radar that was going to cause conflict.” Bookmarked arrived at a moment of profound uncertainty. Across the United States, efforts to challenge and remove books from schools had surged dramatically. In 2024, the American Library Association recorded 821 censorship attempts targeting 2,452 unique titles, reflecting a shift toward organized bulk challenges wherein efforts to remove large numbers of books rely in part on prepared lists from conservative advocates. (By comparison, the annual average from 2001 to 2020 was just 273 titles.) Among the books banned by districts in Texas so far: Safe Sex 101: An Overview for Teens, Between the World and Me, Gender Queer, and The Perks of Being a Wallflower. As the San Antonio Express-News reports, Bookmarked has already had sweeping real-world effects in Texas districts. About an hour south of Austin, in New Braunfels ISD, administrators used the software to identify more than 450 library books that might violate SB 13—prompting the district to close its library for two weeks while officials reviewed titles ranging from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest to The Handmaid’s Tale. Similarly, in the West Texas city of Abilene, the platform sounded the alarm on more than 300 books for review during an early pilot program, according to reporting by the literary news website Book Riot. In Abilene, the relationship reportedly soured quickly. Lyndsey Williamson, Abilene’s executive director of secondary education, wrote in a September email that the company “made promises they couldn’t keep,” per the Express-News. (Abilene ISD did not respond to Fast Company’s request for comment.) Separately, one parent who lives in a district that uses the software tells Fast Company they had a hard time actually removing their child from the system entirely, claiming that doing so required multiple emails and signed release forms. ‘There was no way to keep up with that information’ Of course, not every district has had that experience. In Canyon ISD, a roughly 11,500-student system in the Texas Panhandle, administrators describe the software as a useful compliance tool. To Lisa Hill, the district’s director of instruction, the appeal was straightforward: As book challenges accelerated nationally, districts lacked a centralized way to track them. “There was no way to keep up with that information on a broad scale,” she says. Hill says the platform supplements rather than replaces librarians’ expertise and aligns with the state’s emphasis on parental oversight. “All librarians have a master’s degree in library science,” she says, but no one can realistically read every title that enters a collection. The system, in her view, adds visibility for overtaxed district employees. But that additional visibility, skeptics argue, can quickly turn into pressure. Perhaps most concerning is the dragnet effect: the risk that the software floods districts with questionable warnings, forcing educators to sort through lists that may be incomplete or misleading. That dynamic, says Anne Russey, a Texas parent and cofounder of the advocacy group Texas Freedom to Read Project, can cause librarians to act quickly rather than carefully—especially when administrations are already overwhelmed (and perhaps extra cautious on account of the recently passed SB 412, which essentially nixed longstanding legal protections for educators for providing materials deemed harmful to minors). “Maintaining a library is a normal part of library science that these certified professional librarians have all learned how to do,” she says. Leila Green Little, a Texas parent and lead plaintiff in a recent federal lawsuit over library censorship, is more blunt in her assessment: “Bookmarked is a solution to a problem that does not exist,” she says. Wandler, for his part, doesn’t entirely dispute the criticism. He acknowledges that the data his platform draws from is imperfect at best. Books get marked as banned or challenged even when districts ultimately keep them on shelves, producing alerts that don’t always tell the full story. But the platform, he insists, is only surfacing information. “We just show you [that] To Kill a Mockingbird has 20 flags on it. Do with it what you please,” he says. The 1960 novel has been challenged in districts across the U.S. over its use of racial slurs and depictions of racism, a deeply ironic twist given that the book is widely regarded as a critique of racism itself. Wandler is also candid about the stumbles along the way: “We’ve made a ton of mistakes,” he says, ”as startups do.” That’s why, he adds, Bookmarked is currently rebuilding the product from the ground up. The new version, now being piloted and slated for a broader April rollout, shifts focus from simply surfacing “book intelligence” to better helping districts navigate the byzantine approval workflow SB 13 requires (think elements like teacher book submissions and committee review). “Nobody built a product to be able to manage the process that this law has created,” Wandler says. “The process is almost unattainable, like it’s impossible for them to be able to do the work that the law does.” View the full article

Page Builder by SiteOrigin WordPress vulnerability rated 8.8/10 affects up to 500,000 websites. The post Page Builder by SiteOrigin WordPress Vulnerability Affects Up To 500k Sites appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

What do conversion rate optimization (CRO) and findability look like for an AI agent versus a human, and how different do your strategies really need to be? More and more marketers are embracing the agentic web, and discovery increasingly happens through AI-powered experiences. That raises a fair question: what does CRO and findability look like for an AI agent compared with a human? Several considerations matter, but the core takeaway is clear: serving people supports AI findability. AI systems are designed to surface useful, grounded information for people. Technical mechanics still matter, but you don’t need entirely different strategies to be findable or to improve CRO for AI versus humans. What CRO looks like beyond the website If a consumer does business directly through an agent or an AI assistant, your business needs to make the right information available in a way that can be understood and used. Your products or services need to be represented through clean, well-structured data, with information formatted in ways that downstream systems can process reliably. As more people explore doing business with AI assistants, part of the work involves making sure your products and services can connect cleanly. Standards, such as Model Context Protocol (MCP), can help by enabling agents to interact with shared sources of information. In many cases, a human may still decide to engage directly on a brand’s site. In that context, content and formatting choices matter. Whether you focus on paid media or organic, ensuring your humans can take desired actions — and will want to — is important. Dig deeper: Are we ready for the agentic web? Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with Optimization 1: How much text is on the page? Old‑school SEO encouraged the idea that more keywords and larger walls of text would perform better. That approach no longer holds. Wayfair does a great job using accessible fonts, a call to action when the user shifts to a transactional mindset, and easy-to-understand language. Both humans and AI systems tend to work better with clearly structured, modular content. Large blocks of uninterrupted text can be harder for people to scan and understand. Clear sections, spacing, layout, and visual hierarchy help users quickly understand what they can do and how to accomplish the goal that brought them to the page. There’s no fixed minimum or maximum amount of text that works best. You should use the amount of content needed to clearly explain what you offer, why it’s useful, and what sets it apart. A technical topic will need more text, broken into smaller paragraphs. There are great calls to action as well. A technical topic will need more text, broken into smaller paragraphs. There are great calls to action as well. Visual components can be helpful when paired with useful alt text. Lead gen forms should be easy for humans to complete and regularly audited for spam or friction. Content that’s hard for people to use is also harder for automated systems to interpret as helpful or relevant. Dig deeper: Lead gen PPC: How to optimize for conversions and drive results Optimization 2: How are you communicating with your humans? One of the best ways to communicate clearly to systems is to communicate clearly to people. Lean into what makes you an expert, but avoid unnecessary jargon or overly complex language. Descriptions should stay specific, accurate, and on-brand. A simple gut check: if a 10-year-old couldn’t broadly understand what you do, why it matters, and how to engage with you, you’re probably making things harder than necessary. Even though AI systems are sophisticated, clarity still matters because the goal is ultimately to support a human outcome. If you’re unsure, try putting your positioning copy into an AI assistant and asking it to critique its clarity. Ask for simplification and clearer explanations, not for new claims or embellishment. Visual components matter here as well. Comparison tables can help when they genuinely support understanding, but they can hurt when they’re used as a gimmick rather than a guide. Accessibility principles matter, too. Color contrast, readable font sizes, and restrained font choices reduce the risk that someone can’t process your site. IAMS has a thoughtful quiz to find the right dog breed and offers additional close matches. High-contrast color, easy-to-understand buttons, and high-quality photos help. Images should be easy to understand and clearly connected to the surrounding text. Alt text helps people using assistive technologies and reinforces the relationship between visuals and written content. Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. Optimization 3: The call to action A user comes to your site to do something. They might want to buy, request a quote, or speak with your team. That action should be clear. When the intended action is unclear, it becomes harder for both people and automated systems to understand what your site enables. Tarte Cosmetics does a great job of leaning into CRO principles, including inclusivity, accessibility, and social proof. Shopping experiences tend to surface in conversations with shopping intent because assistants are trying to complete the task they were given. If it’s unclear how to add an item to a cart or complete a purchase, you make it harder for a human to do business with you. You also make it harder for systems to understand that you’re a transactional site rather than a catalog of items without a clear path forward. Lead generation requires similar clarity. If the goal is to talk to your team, include a phone number that can be clicked to call. You might also include a form that submits directly into your lead system or a flow that opens an email client. Forcing users through multiple form pages often frustrates people and adds unnecessary complexity to the experience. Dig deeper: 6 SEO tests to help improve traffic, engagement, and conversions Optimization 4: The technical fixes I cover technical considerations last for a reason. The most important work you can do is support the humans you serve. Technical improvements help, but they rarely succeed on their own. Tips from the Microsoft AI guidebook. (Disclosure: I’m the Ads Liaison at Microsoft Advertising.) Excessive imagery, low contrast between text and background, or unstable layouts can create challenges. Make sure your site renders consistently and meaningfully. Large layout shifts after load, measured in cumulative layout shift (CLS), can frustrate users. Pages overloaded with ads or pop-ups can distract from the reason someone arrived in the first place and may introduce trust concerns. Security matters as well. Malware warnings, broken rendering, or incomplete page loads can raise red flags for both users and automated systems. Tools like IndexNow can help notify search systems of content changes more quickly. Microsoft Clarity is a free tool that shows how users behave on your site, surfacing friction you might otherwise miss. This includes Brand Agents that help your humans have more meaningful chatbot experiences. One useful check is to review how your site appears when used as input for ad platforms or auto-generated creative tools, such as Performance Max campaigns or audience ads. These can provide a helpful lens into how platforms interpret your content. When the resulting positioning and creative align with what you intend, you’re usually doing a good job serving both crawlers and people. When they don’t, it’s often a signal to revisit clarity, structure, or user flow. Dig deeper: CRO for PPC: Key areas to optimize beyond landing pages See the complete picture of your search visibility. Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform. Start Free Trial Get started with What does CRO for AI and for humans look like? Humans and AI systems need many of the same things when it comes to CRO: Information should be clear and accurate. It should be easy to do the thing the user came to do. The site should avoid deceptive or manipulative patterns. The experience should build trust rather than undermine it. Remember these CRO fundamentals that carry over: Humans and AI benefit from the same clarity-first approach to CRO. Information should be specific, grounded, and easy to understand. Actions should be obvious and easy to complete. Technical choices should support, not undermine, the experience. When those fundamentals are in place, you’re supporting both human outcomes and AI-driven discovery. View the full article

Gold-medal moments for American athletes abounded at the 2026 Winter Olympics. Among a slew of highlights, Alysa Liu brought the U.S. Olympic gold in singles figure skating for the first time since 2002, Breezy Johnson and Mikaela Shiffrin topped the podium in Alpine skiing. The Paralympics, which start March 6, will likely see more medals for women athletes, and many of them will be celebrating in Las Vegas this summer. But data from ticket exchange and resale site StubHub shows that the U.S. women’s hockey team’s triumph over Canada for gold in Milan will have a lasting effect on attendance at Professional Women’s Hockey League games. The company’s internal data shows a 38% year-over-year increase in demand for tickets to Professional Women’s Hockey League games for the first eight weeks of 2026, buoyed by an overnight spike following the U.S. women’s team winning gold. Demand for PWHL tickets is up nearly 60% compared to pre-Olympic levels. Strong demand for women’s sports is why StubHub is launching HerSportsHub, a centralized site for buying tickets to women’s sporting events via the platform. “When people get inspired by a big moment — whether it’s the Olympics or a breakout season — they don’t just watch,” Jill Gonzalez, StubHub’s head of consumer, product and technology communications, told Fast Company in a statement. “They want to be there and StubHub’s role is to make it as easy as possible to get in.” It’s not just hockey. Fans will have easy access to resale tickets for the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA), National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL), National Collegiate Athletics Association (NCAA) Women’s Basketball, and more. The launch leaves plenty of time for hockey fans to get to a PWHL game before the season ends in April, and comes just in time for March Madness (women’s games start March 18), the NWSL season starting on March 13, and the WNBA season tip-off on May 8. All those sports gained new fans after the 2024 Paris Olympics. In 2024, StubHub says, demand for WNBA tickets surged 360% over 2023, and 150% for the NWSL over 2023. “Women’s sports are a fixture, and more fans are showing up every day,” Gonzalez told Fast Company. “HerSportsHub is a dedicated space to find the games they care about most and turn that excitement into a live experience.” View the full article

Inside a new HP laptop, the copper in its heat sink comes straight from old HP devices—making the company the first to reuse its own recycled metal in a closed loop. In partnership with HP, the Australia-based startup Mint Innovation took in circuit boards from thousands of old HP computers and servers, and then recycled them to supply pure refined copper back to the company. The process is designed to be more sustainable than traditional smelting. Instead of melting down metals in a furnace—an energy-intensive, polluting process—the startup uses a mix of chemicals and biology to recover valuable materials. “What HP is effectively doing is mining e-waste of their own appliances,” says Mint president Matt Bedingfield. “They’re taking responsibility for their full supply chain to turn it into the next generation of devices.” Old circuit boards are shredded and run through a series of tanks containing custom biological materials that pull out metals like gold and copper. The “biosorption” process works like a magnet, using electrons to attract specific elements. When gold is dissolved, for example, and electrons are stripped from its surface, it’s drawn to biological matter with extra electrons. Gold “is the economic enabler” for the process, Bedingfield says: “If you don’t recover the gold, you don’t make any profit. So after the gold, then we go and we recover the copper, then the silver, the tin, and the palladium.” Copper is particularly important at the moment. “In the U.S. right now, we’re about a million tons short on copper,” he says. “Copper is required for every single bit of the energy transition. It’s required for the data centers that we’re building. So that gap is only going to grow. The HPs and Apples and other OEMs in other industries, they’re all looking for copper to begin with. And then they’re looking for sustainable copper.” For HP, it’s part of a bigger push to help build new circular supply chains for the electronics industry. The quality of the recycled material is identical to new copper, the company says. Mint recycles in batches, so it’s possible to directly trace that a recycled material came specifically from a particular manufacturer’s products; in a furnace, that’s impossible to track. The company has orders from HP to continue recycling additional batches of products, Bedingfield says. In its first project, HP used the recycled copper in heat sinks because it knew it had enough supply to outfit the HP EliteBook X G2 Series and HP EliteBoard G1a Next Gen AI PC. Future work could involve additional materials like gold. Scaling it won’t be simple: HP ships about 57 million laptops a year—second only to Lenovo, per Gartner—and brand-specific e-waste isn’t predictable. But the company is exploring how it can grow. Mint currently works in an industrial-scale prototype facility in Australia, but is currently starting to build up a sample line in Texas. It’s aiming to secure long-term investment to build out a full new plant in Texas that could open next year. The recycling facilities have a small footprint. “They’re designed in a way where we can go to the scrap,” says Bedingfield. “We’re able to go into cities and drop plants, so you’re not moving the material all around the world as is done today.” View the full article

Google AI Mode doesn't always pass referrer data from the links on the sidebar. This is supposedly being looked at by the Google Search team and hopefully will be fixed soon, if not, already.View the full article

Google seems to be rolling out colorful sections in the knowledge panels. Sometimes you will see gray, sometimes blue, sometimes orange and sometimes green and maybe more. We saw this on mobile over a decade ago, so this does seem new, especially on desktop.View the full article

Roger Bennett is the witty and charismatic co-host of the popular “Men in Blazers” soccer media network. Born in Liverpool, England, he moved to the United States and has since helped popularize the sport in this country through podcasts, television shows, and books, including his best-selling memoir Reborn in the USA. His new book, WE ARE THE WORLD (CUP), is a personal history of what he calls “the world’s greatest sporting event.” In the following excerpt, he chronicles his experience of the 1994 World Cup, the last event held in the U.S prior to this summer’s tournament. 1994 was also the year Bennett moved to the U.S. The 1994 World Cup brought football to the United States of America. And also me. Straight after university, I moved to Chicago, finally completing a three-generational odyssey. According to our family myth, my “great-grandfather the butcher” had originally intended to move to Chicago, the great “Hog Capital of the World,” when he boarded a boat in Odessa and headed for the promised land at the turn of the twentieth century. When that boat docked to refuel in Liverpool, he, and several hundred of the other, clearly lower IQ travelers, saw the three tall buildings on the Merseyside skyline, believed they were in New York City and disembarked. Eighty years and two generations later, I completed my family’s journey. When the plane landed at O’Hare Airport, I felt the urge to mark the weight of the moment and dropped to my knees dramatically on the tarmac, a move I had seen Pope John Paul II execute many times upon arrival in a foreign land. I was momentarily overcome by a surge of adrenaline but, unsure what to do next, quickly became self-conscious as the other passengers pushed their way impatiently around me with their carry-ons. I peeled myself up and tried to play it cool as I joined them on the shuttle bus, attempting to ignore the fact I now had acquired a sticky oil stain on the left knee of my jeans that I could never quite remove. It is one thing to land at an airport as a tourist ready to tear up the city for a time-bound period. It is an entirely different feeling to arrive in a place with no return ticket, and the hope and fear that accompanies any leap into the unknown. I was a twenty-two-year-old quasi-man landing with big dreams in the American Midwest. An area I was largely unfamiliar with and in which I lacked any kind of support network of family or friends. The only things I had brought with me were a law degree I had miraculously managed to secure, a vague grasp on rudimentary life skills, an enormous ’fro, and little in the way of financial resources. My father had been unimpressed by the woeful lack of direction I had demonstrated after graduation and became irritated at my vague talk of signing up to be an air steward or doing a postgraduate degree in peace studies. Late one night after I had come back inebriated from the local pub in Liverpool, he informed me that he was cutting me off. “A man can think and think in life, Roger,” he said with equal measures of exasperation and contempt, “but sometimes he simply has to learn to do.” That decision forced my hand and spurred me into “doing.” Picking up my life and heading to Chicago, then overstaying my tourist visa was the sum total of my plan. Under the table and off the books Upon arrival, I looked at a map of the city, saw there was a neighborhood in the far northside named Rogers Park, and, based solely on its name echoing my own, elected to set up shop there. My immediate challenge was to make some money. Lacking a work visa, I hustled like Tony Montana in the early scenes of Scarface, throwing myself into any opportunity that would pay me illegally under the table and off the books. For the first year, I made just enough to live, as a truly clueless yet enthusiastic baker on the early morning shift in a local French pâtisserie and a well-meaning but utterly bewildered waiter at a soul food restaurant at night. In between, I picked up shifts restocking books in a local library, which really meant me sleeping in the stacks. I cobbled together just enough to rent my small, totally empty apartment. If I scrounged food from the restaurant, I could occasionally put my surplus tip money toward treating myself to a $4 bottle of Kentucky Gentleman bourbon whiskey. The soul food restaurant—Orly’s in Hyde Park on the South Side of the city—provided an eye-opening initial glimpse of America. The cooks were all elderly African American South Siders, the busboys young Latinos from the West Side, the barman and manager were a pair of white suburban bros who ruled the place and largely spent their nights crassly hitting on the other servers who, besides me, were all attractive young female students at the University of Chicago. I bonded most of all with the kindly Mexican busboys, who loved to talk football while poking fun at my long, curly hair and round spectacles, alternating between two nicknames they quickly coined for me: “lady” and “Juan Lennon.” Two of the dishwashers were a pair of brothers from Mexico, and they took time to show me how to game the system and set up the basics any illegal alien needs to survive: a black market Social Security number, healthcare, and a bank account; teaching me how to furnish an empty apartment for free by scavenging for couches, desks, and kitchen tables dumped in alleyways across the city on the last day of any month, aka moving day. Arby’s, Michael Jordan, and Lake Shore Drive The extent to which I missed my family back in Liverpool surprised me. This was before AOL became omnipresent and when long-distance phone calls were still prohibitively expensive, so we corresponded like Victorians, by letter. I would stay late at night, alone, in the library’s office, typing out long letters to my parents with just my pointer fingers, determined to convey the minutiae of my work and the details of America that exhilarated me. The celestial taste of Arby’s; the intensity of the bruising NBA playoff series between the Michael Jordan–less Chicago Bulls and the boastful New York Knicks of Patrick Ewing, which felt like a high-stakes collision in which the future of good and evil were at stake; the thrill of driving down Lake Shore Drive in a cab at night, and speeding past illuminated skyscraper after skyscraper, an experience which made me feel like I was living on the set of a sci-fi movie. The mundanity of the letters they mailed back to me in return, 90 percent of which revolved around complaints about the perpetually damp, rainy weather, reinforced my confidence that the journey I was on was the right one. The only thing I truly and achingly missed was football. Soccer. As thrilling as it was for me to be able to immerse myself in the new American sporting traditions of Bears, Blackhawks, White Sox, and Notre Dame gamedays, English football was my foundational text. It was how I understood and made sense of the world. My ballast in life’s stormy sea. I was well aware that the sport had outsider status in the United States. Yet, I was still shocked by just how hard it was to follow in my new home. This game that thrilled the rest of the world, had stopped wars, and spurred revolutions barely made a dent on the American sporting subconscious. In a national survey of favorite spectator sports released shortly after my arrival, it ranked 67th. Tractor-pulling was 66th. ‘Holding a major skiing competition in an African country’ To be clear, Americans were not just apathetic toward the game I loved. They seemed to take a perverse delight in actively and openly despising it in the 1990s. Most nations would have announced a national holiday if FIFA awarded them the hosting rights to the tournament. Yet, when the United States was given the honors, their decision was received with a general tenor of bewilderment. On the floor of Congress, Representative Jack Kemp, a former professional quarterback, felt the need to defend his nation’s honor by saying, “I think it is important for all those young men out there who someday hope to play real football, where you throw it and kick it and run with it and put it in your hands, that a distinction should be made that football is democratic capitalism whereas soccer is a European socialist sport.” One journalist compared the honor of hosting the biggest sports event in the world to “holding a major skiing competition in an African country.” A sense of contempt reinforced by rumors that began to abound that FIFA were attempting to “Americanize” the sport by splitting the game into four quarters rather than two halves to increase the amount of advertising they could jam into the broadcast. I was baffled by the lack of noise around the whole affair. The World Cup was something I had always counted down to, with a sense of joyous anticipation, but that sense began to be replaced by a gnawing feeling of unease that the Americans were going to blow this—to transform the most celebrated event in the world into the equivalent of a Weird Al cover song. The tournament draw, which took place in December 1993, live from Caesars Palace on the Las Vegas Strip, dialed my sense of disquiet up to eleven. The football world had never seen the likes of a veritable night of a thousand stars including Barry Manilow, Julio Iglesias, and Faye Dunaway. Few seemed to know what they were doing there. ESPN’s host, that veritable broadcasting legend Bob Ley, declared the spectacle to be akin to “Salvador Dalí producing a state lottery.” Fittingly for such a surreal occasion, it was Robin Williams who stole the spotlight. First, the comedian described the draw bracket as “the world’s biggest Keno game,” then proceeded to refer repeatedly to FIFA’s General Secretary, Sepp Blatter, as “Sepp Bladder” even after the Swiss administrator testily corrected him, insisting, “This is not a comedy!” Beneath the pizzazz, the significance for the future of the sport could not have been higher. US midfield star Tab Ramos was one of the pitifully few American players who had managed to find a pathway to play club football in Europe, and he worried aloud, “I think this will be the last chance, the last go-round for soccer to make it big here.” If those were the stakes, it did not seem to be going very well. New York Times columnist George Vecsey noted: “The United States was chosen, by the way, because of all the money to be made here, not because of our soccer prowess. Our country has been rented as a giant stadium and hotel and television studio for the next thirty-one days.” Panic truly kicked in when a national poll undertaken three weeks before the tournament’s kickoff discovered that 71 percent of Americans were still not aware it was about to be played in their country. The prospect of empty stadiums felt very real. In the weeks running up to the kickoff, a late flurry of marketing materials featuring images of Reggie Jackson and Michael Jordan pretending to juggle the football were unfurled in a last-ditch effort to create excitement. That did not exactly inspire confidence, as if athletes from other sports were needed to give heartland Americans permission to watch the foreigners’ game. An unshakable terror that no one would show up The moment of truth came June 17, 1994, when the opening match was held, by chance, at Soldier Field in my adopted hometown of Chicago. The night before the tournament began, my mood ricocheted between the dizzying sense of childish anticipation I always experienced on World Cup eve, and an unshakable terror that America was throwing a party for the sport I loved, and that no one would turn up. In my destitute state, there was no chance I could afford a ticket for the opener, which featured reigning World Cup champions Germany against Bolivia, yet I felt a need—more than that, a responsibility—to travel down to the stadium to pay witness to the scene. Partially to respect the moment and come as close to this tournament in the flesh as I had ever been. But mostly to help fill in as an extra, and create the sense of a crowd, hoping to build the fiction of America caring in the worst-case scenario, as so many doomsayers were saying, that the venue was deserted. I need not have worried. With a searing sense of relief, I found Soldier Field to be as overwhelmed as if the Bears were playing the Packers. Yes, it felt like half of Baden-Württemberg had traveled to cheer on Germany, and every Bolivian in the vicinity of Chicago had massed by Lake Michigan. But there were also thousands of families, congregating around the ticket gates, with the kind of crackling sense of anticipation emitted when entering the circus. In truth, this was unlike any football crowd I had experienced before. There was little noise. No audible chanting. Few team colors. Yet I soaked in the scene with relief and wonder. America had turned up. The fact that many of those in attendance seemed to know little about what was about to happen felt like nitpicking. This emotion was reinforced by a big-screen television near the gate broadcasting a short video in which iconic baseball manager Tommy Lasorda of the Los Angeles Dodgers declared his unshakable belief that even if the country had no idea what the World Cup was, America would win it. Ticketless, I raced home on the L to catch the razzamatazz-filled opening ceremony on my television, which, like the rest of my furniture, had been rescued from the alleyway behind my apartment. I had jerry-rigged an antenna out of a clothes hanger, so the picture was scratchy, but visible enough to witness the spectacle that managed to blend a message of American good intentions, celebrity pageantry, and gesturing at heartfelt passion for soccer. A nearly sold-out crowd, including President Clinton, was privy to a ceremony that began with emcee hometown hero Oprah Winfrey screaming, “Let’s celebrate!” before tripping off the stage and seemingly maiming herself just seconds after welcoming a worldwide television audience of a billion. That slapstick opening set a tone the rest of the celebrity guests then strove to one-up. Singer Jon Secada suffered a dislocated shoulder when a trapdoor from which he was meant to emerge onto the stage misbehaved, forcing him to sing with just his head and shoulders protruding from a hole in the floor. Richard Marx, a Chicago native with a spectacular mullett, sang the national anthem. Diana Ross added to the surreal display by prancing around and lip-syncing, “I’m Coming Out,” a performance capped by her slicing a penalty quite wide of a goal from less than five yards out. Nonetheless, the crossbar still split into two, as if she had shot with accuracy and potency. A clumsy piece of footballing choreography gone wrong amidst glamor and glitz, which felt like a cruel metaphor for all that was to come. The psychedelic out-of-place, out-of-body celebrity moment was echoed, and eclipsed, later that night, by the breaking news of O.J. Simpson’s infamous white Bronco chase. An earth-shattering celebrity cultural moment, which even preempted the NBA final and easily overshadowed the day’s football, the personal highlight of which came just a minute into the opener when the ball flew into the stands, and the game was held up while the fan who caught it was ordered to throw it back, after being told this was not Wrigley Field and you were not allowed to keep that ball as a memento. A Peroni- and Guinness-fueled epic gang rumble It took twenty-four hours before the fuse was truly lit on the World Cup, driving it straight to the front of America’s sporting cortex. A game billed as “the Showdown in the Swamp” pitched Italy against Ireland in the crackling heat of Giants Stadium in New Jersey. A confluence of time and context. Thirty-two million Americans claim Irish descent, roughly half have Italian roots, and the greater New York area had largely been built by their ancestors and thus overflows with both hyphenated identities. This game felt like the type of Peroni- and Guinness-fueled epic gang rumble Scorsese would have directed in one of his early movies. A fight for pride born of echoed pasts taking place in the swamplands near the Hudson. The Italian team had long been a traditional footballing superpower. Handsome, slick-haired footballers like the iconic Roberto Baggio and Paolo Maldini played for the biggest clubs in the world. Ireland was a mob of scrappy, bar-brawling upstarts in comparison. A Dirty Dozen–esque mob—many of whom were English-born but had chosen to represent Ireland because of their own familial lineage. They were managed by a charismatic, beer-drinking, straight-talking former English World Cup winner, Jack Charlton, who was so beloved, he achieved honorary Irishman status and was christened “St. Jack.” The English National Team had yet again failed to qualify, so a lot of English fans spent the early days of the tournament desperately trying to discover secret Irish roots of their own. I watched this game in a packed bar in Rogers Park, stuffed with Irish Americans and a ton of non-Irish Americans who just felt a vicarious kinship courtesy of their Notre Dame fandom. As I entered, a large old man dressed as a leprechaun kissed me on the top of my head while screaming to no one in particular, “Our boys are on the craic with it!” As Jameson-inflected as these words smelled, they turned out to be prophetic. My leprechaun friend may have passed out before kickoff, but had he been conscious, he would have loved what he saw. The fearless Irish snatched the lead with a euphoric strike from midfielder Ray Houghton, a Glasgow-born son of an Irishman, who audaciously clipped the ball past the despairing fingers of the Italian goalkeeper. The collective defensive intensity Charlton had instilled did the rest, as a green-and-white-cloaked Giants Stadium rocked to the sound of bagpipes and the thump of bodhráns as a chant of “You’ll never beat the Irish!” resounded. The final scoreline, chaotic energy of the occasion, and medical miracle that 75,000 Irish fans somehow survived nasty cases of sunburn drove the event into the hearts of the American viewing public. This tournament had kicked off for real. Maradona the villain This being a World Cup, Diego Maradona of course grabbed center stage. The golden street urchin had been the hero of the 1986 win. He played the role of villain in this one. Having worn out his welcome in Italian football, “El Pibe de Oro” fled Europe with his career imploding and personal life in meltdown. A fifteen-month ban earned in 1991 for testing positive for cocaine was the least of his problems. Maradona had been charged with smuggling $840,000 worth of blow into Rome’s Fiumicino Airport in 1990, and his reputation was further pockmarked by rumors of paternity suits, tax charges, and intimate connections to Naples’s Camorra crime family. A beleaguered, overweight Maradona returned home to Buenos Aires in search of sanctuary. As he arrived, the notion the player was physically or mentally ready to lead the national team to the 1994 World Cup appeared as believable as a storyline from a Philip K. Dick fantasy. Yet, the star resurfaced sensationally on the eve of the tournament, having somehow shed twenty-six pounds in a month. His message was one of redemption. “I am tired of all those who said I was fat and no longer the great Maradona,” he proclaimed. “They will see the real Diego at the World Cup.” The icon did not know how true those words would prove to be. Aged thirty-three, the little warhorse prepared to drag his tattered body into battle one more time. His fourth World Cup would begin against Greece at Foxboro Stadium in Foxborough, Massachusetts. A light aircraft buzzed above the field pulling a banner that proclaimed “Maradona–Prima Dona” ahead of the game, and the star lived up to his billing. In the 60th minute of the 4–0 victory, Diego received the ball in the box, jinked to his left, and rifled the ball into the top corner, then celebrated the achievement in hopped-up style, charging a sideline television camera and flashing his maniacal mug toward it. Tight-lipped after the game, Maradona would only declare, “I’m letting my actions speak for themselves.” Four days later, the player was selected for random drug testing after a 2–1 win against Nigeria. FIFA quickly announced the Argentine had tested positive for five variants of ephedrine. The Guardian would later note the way Maradona had celebrated his goal against Greece was as conclusive as any drug test: “Broadcast around the world, his contorted features made him look like a lunatic, flying on a cocktail of adrenalin and every recreational drug known to man.” Faced with the disgrace of being expelled from the tournament, Maradona first sought pity from Argentinian television. “They killed me,” he said. “They have retired me from soccer. I don’t think I want another revenge, my soul is broken.” He then proceeded to appeal to his nation’s easily fired-up paranoia, adamantly declaring, “They didn’t beat us on the pitch. We were beaten off the pitch and that is what hurts my soul.” As his team moved on to meet Bulgaria in the Cotton Bowl, Maradona loyalists in the Argentine media seized on Dallas’s reputation as the cradle of conspiracy theories. “In this city, where thirty years before Kennedy was assassinated, the theories surrounding footballer Maradona will now be explained. Was he ‘randomly’ selected for a drug test?” they asked. Not embarrassing themselves FIFA dispatched Sepp Blatter to smother any doubts. “The king is dead, we play on,” he declared. A shattered Argentinian squad mustered the requisite sound bites about “winning it for Diego.” But leaderless and disoriented, they proceeded to wilt against Bulgaria and were finally sent home by Gheorghe Hagi, Ilie Dumitrescu, and the elegant Romanians in the Round of 16. Even Maradona’s fall from grace could not dampen the American energy now building up around the tournament. The stadiums were packed, never more than when the US team first strolled onto the field in Detroit’s Pontiac Silverdome. I knew so little about the team. Few Americans did to be honest. Hosting duties meant their qualification had been automatic, a mixed blessing as a woefully inexperienced squad faced four long years in which it had been deprived of the one thing that could battle-harden the players: competitive matches that mattered. This challenge was reinforced by the reality that only a handful of American soccer players had found professional opportunities in Europe. American soccer players had as much credibility in the eyes of European scouts as aspirational English quarterbacks would have received in the NFL. A couple of players including the cocky gunslinger John Harkes and physically gifted striker Eric Wynalda had gained the attention of minor clubs in England, Spain, and Germany. The rest were left struggling to make a living playing indoors or on a local team, which provided the salary equivalent of an internship. The personal stakes could not have been higher for these men. The focus was on not embarrassing themselves. They were not just playing for their nation; they were fighting for the very future of their sport. Desperate to avoid the humiliation of becoming the first home team in history unable to emerge from the World Cup’s opening round, the United States Soccer Federation had undertaken a bold experiment, establishing a residential training center for its team to live together, essentially living off a tiny stipend and their enormous shared dreams, for eighteen months in Mission Viejo, California. Crap the bed, and the profile of soccer in the United States would never recover. The mission was simple. They had to get out of the group stages. Their draw had been tough. In the opening round, they would face a robust Switzerland, dark horse Romania, and sandwiched in between, the truly fearsome Colombians, who had just whipped Argentina 5–0 in qualifying and whom Pelé himself had picked to win the entire tournament. First up were the Swiss, who had drawn and beaten Italy in qualifying. I watched from the futon on the floor of my boxy Rogers Park apartment, nervously adjusting the wire hanger to try and coax a clearer signal. The blurry images on my television made it look like the US team were swaggering onto the field wearing a faux stonewashed denim jersey. Then the commentator mentioned that the US team were indeed wearing faux stonewashed denim jerseys and that was the very second I fell in love with this team of goatee- and mullet-sporting risk-takers, dreamers, and pioneers. Sweatbox conditions Tellingly, kickoff was slated for 11:30 a.m. so that broadcasters ABC did not have to cut into their coverage of the US Open, an event they deemed to be far more important. At that time, Midwest temperatures topped 106 degrees, and so this, the World Cup’s first-ever indoor game, was played in sweatbox conditions. I felt enormous empathy for the players as I could not afford air-conditioning in my Chicago apartment and was sweating up a storm myself as I watched in just my underpants and T-shirt. The Swiss looked like they were poised to melt. In contrast, the American players looked utterly amped. So few of them had ever played before a truly large crowd—never mind one that was 100 percent pro-American. As the cameraman panned their eyes during the national anthem, they looked like a group of men who knew this was their time to show the world that American football was about something more than a bold choice in football jersey design. That carried through once the opening whistle blew. The Americans were not the most sophisticated in tactic or touch. But what they clearly lacked as footballers, they compensated for with collective fitness, ferocity of tackle, and an unshakable team spirit embodied by the sheer number of high fives they doled out to each other in-game. Rock ’n’ roll hustle, idiosyncratic style, and can-do spirit wrapped in frosted denim A beanpole ginger center back, Alexi Lalas, caught my eye. A gangly mix of lanky leg and flowing red hair. He looked less like a footballer and more like a guy who worked behind the counter at a record store in some suburban Detroit mall, turning kids on to Van Halen’s latest album one sale at a time. But on the field, in the global spotlight that day, Lalas appeared as if he embodied America itself. All rock ’n’ roll hustle, idiosyncratic style, and can-do spirit wrapped in frosted denim. As if David Lee Roth had taken the World Cup stage. Both shirt and athlete unlike anything I had seen play football before. When Switzerland opened the scoring off a free kick, it fleetingly felt like the sum of the American players’ fears was about to become real. But just five minutes later, the US won a free kick of their own, 28 yards out. Up stepped Eric Wynalda, the maverick, hotheaded striker who looked like an extra ripped from a beach scene in Baywatch. Wynalda composed himself, then swung his foot to strike as casually as if he were on the Californian fields in which he had mastered the game as a kid in Orange County. That ball seemed to be in the air forever, silencing the stadium as it flew, spinning away from the goal-keeper’s panicked dive straight into the corner, greeted with a crescendo of noise like that experienced by a diver breaking the waterline and resurfacing. Wynalda was as shocked as anyone watching at home. The goal was a relief. It not only enabled the US to hold on for a draw and a point, but it also validated the sense that their quest to qualify was in the realms of the possible. The fearsome Colombians awaited four days later in the Rose Bowl, Pasadena, California. Again, I watched alone in my apartment, cowering as the South Americans in their ecstatic yellow attempted to blow their opponents away from the opening kickoff, attacking with hunger and intensity. It felt like a borderline miracle when the game was still scoreless five minutes in. The Colombians hit the post, and American defender Fernando Clavijo scooped the ball off the line in a way which defied science. But football—especially World Cup football, with its international squads who are essentially as practiced as All-Star teams—is a game of moments. And in the 35th minute, the United States forayed upfield. John Harkes, the cocksure son of Kearny, New Jersey, who had played in England for four years and had instantly adopted a fake Cockney accent, whipped in a cross. Colombian defender Andrés Escobar, a fine man widely known as “The Gentleman of Football,” made the unfortunate decision to stretch out a leg and block it, but he only succeeded in redirecting the ball past his own flat-footed goalkeeper into his own net. Escobar’s own goal is what is remembered from the game. Ten days later, he would return home and was shot to death while leaving a Medellín nightclub in the early morning hours. The assassin fired half a dozen times, yelling “Goal!” after every shot. But in the moment, when that ball bobbled off his foot into the back of the net, the American players felt only ecstasy. Even though I was watching alone in my apartment, I was moved to shake up a bottle of Budweiser and spray it around the room, creating a beer puddle that sat in the middle of the floor long after the tournament was a memory. I was to housekeeping what Diego Maradona was to legal weight loss. ‘Miracle on Grass’ Emboldened, the United States conjured a second goal right after halftime, a stunning moment of real counterattacking football, finished off by the speed freak Earnie Stewart, a Dutch-born dual-national with an American serviceman father. The celebrations were an astonishing moment for the team. You could tell by their rapturous reactions; this was a group of men proving themselves to themselves with the world watching. Now they knew, as American footballers, they could face a big team in a big game and win. To me it all felt transcendent. An epiphany akin to witnessing a baby being born, only with 90,000 people in the delivery room. At the final whistle, the Americans soaked in their moment, walking around the Rose Bowl—the historic American sporting shrine—shirts off, American flags draped round their shoulders, with the delirious crowd bellowing, “USA! USA! USA!” After all their work and sacrifice, these men had just shown that American footballers could belong in the game with the rest of the world. The next day, headline writers gave the performance the ultimate sports accolade, hailing the victory as a “Miracle on Grass!” Miracle or not, the third game did not go as planned. A 1–0 loss to the canny Romanians. The United States finished third in their group with four points, scraping into the knock-out stages by virtue of being one of four third-placed teams who advanced into the sixteen-team second round. Next, they would face Brazil, the fiercest of opponents and number 1 team in the world. The match was to be played in Stanford, California, on July Fourth to boot. Could they do it? I watched the players’ interviews, and it was clear by listening that having qualified from the group and achieved their goal—avoiding humiliation—all the pressure was off. Anything felt possible. Once again, I watched the game alone in my apartment. I did not have a lot of money and, in reality, I did not have a lot of friends. In truth, I felt immensely lonely, but I loved this team of try-hards. I connected with them. When I watched them, they seemed to embody a sense of hope that I needed in my own life at the time. If a group of footballing duffers in stone-wash shirts could take on the powerful Brazilians in the World Cup and win, I too might find my way to glory. Or at least a television without a coat hanger for an antenna. A moral victory However, there was no way to mask the gulf in class between these two teams. It was evident the moment they walked side by side onto the pitch. Brazil’s deadly striking duo Romário and Bebeto, feared around the world, took the field alongside Cobi Jones, a twenty-four-year-old legal student from California. This Brazil team were different from past iterations. The battering they had received from the European teams over the past decade had forced them to add defensive steel to their offensive flamboyance. Their jerseys were still the traditional golden yellow, but this was a pragmatic, functional, almost soulless squad who advanced on the strength of their physicality, which peaked on the stroke of halftime. American midfielder Tab Ramos attempted to nutmeg his opponent, Leonardo, who retorted by headhunting, with cruel, blunt application of his elbow to Ramos’s skull. A shocking moment of violence that earned the Brazilian a red card and left the American in agony on the ground, knocking him out of the game with a fractured skull. Theoretically, the Americans now had a one-man advantage, but you could not tell from the way they responded. Their players’ focus was utterly broken by that moment of savagery, which had knocked out their creative heartbeat. The Brazilians became relentless. In the bright sunlight that would melt lesser men, they glimmered like a shoal of fighting fish sensing the weakness of their prey. The Brazilian goal, when it came in the 74th minute, was almost a relief. A precise Bebeto shot driven low, callously and cruelly through the desperate legs of Alexi Lalas and past a despairing goalkeeper into the corner of the net. Despite the loss, the US mood at the final whistle was far from despondent. Even in defeat, this young, raw team of American nobodies had earned a moral victory. They had not soiled themselves with the nation watching. Television ratings were high. The US boys had proven they could go toe-to-toe with the world’s best by harnessing a collective spirit, exiting with millions of T-shirts and celebratory tchotchkes sold, and the feeling of a match lit and something powerful loosened deep in the nation’s consciousness. Sitting in my shit Chicago apartment, I thought of all the American icons that had drawn me to the United States in the first place, patriots who glowed with bold self-confidence. Ferris Bueller, the Super Bowl–winning Chicago Bears, the Beastie Boys. This American football team now fit in that pantheon. They were the rare US sporting entity who were scrappy underdogs. A gaggle who acted as if they willed themselves to believe something, it was no fantasy. Brazil’s spiritless football became a symbol of the entire tournament. Below the celebrity glitz and American naivete, the play was mediocre, and the games pockmarked by overzealous refereeing that broke up play. Fittingly, the final was one of the most soul-crushing the tournament has ever witnessed. I had not wanted to watch alone and went out solo to take it in, draining a generous stranger’s pitchers of beer, at a packed Hyde Park bar, Jimmy’s Woodlawn Tap. The energy, which was at Mardi Gras levels at kickoff, soon burned off as the Brazilians’ cocked fist was negated by Italy’s smothering play. As the two teams conspired to provide every soccer cynic’s worst nightmare—the first goalless final, 120 minutes of dreary soccer followed by penalties—the bar became quieter and emptier. I could almost imagine the teeth-gnashing of every investor who had just stepped up to own a team in the soon-to-be-launched American club league: Major League Soccer. ‘Divine ponytail’ One of the reasons I love football is that even in the dullest of spectacles, a moment of human revelation can occur on an almost biblical scale. Italy had been carried to the final by the wizardry of one man: Roberto Baggio, an almost mystical figure, known for his signature “Divine ponytail” (Il Divin Codino), his conversion to Buddhism, and the way he seemed to float just above play, beyond the grasp of the mere mortals with whom he was sharing the field. Baggio’s five goals in the tournament had propelled his team to the final. In the fifth and final round of penalties, with Brazil leading 3–2 and Italy needing to score to keep hope alive, it was Baggio who stepped to the spot. It had been his tournament. Now, the hopes of all Italy rested on his shoulders. With just the goalkeeper to beat from a mere 12 yards, he proceeded to sky the ball 3 feet over the crossbar. At the pub I was in, it felt like we had just witnessed a human tragedy. Screams accompanied the replays of the ball soaring into the Pasadena sky, as Baggio, that quasi-holy man, doubled over in astonished agony, hands on knees in private mourning. A hallowed figure who so often appeared to rise above the limits of what was humanly possible, frozen in a moment of mortality. It was fitting that two diabolical penalties bookended the tournament. Diana Ross’s showbiz miss opened it, and Baggio’s elegiac catastrophe brought it to an emotional close and handed Brazil a fourth World Cup win, at last. Their first in twenty-four long years. Many Americans had their lives changed by the tournament. European teams deigned to welcome a handful into their teams, most noticeably Alexi Lalas, who played fleetingly in Italy, a cameo in which his greatest achievement may have happened off the field when he was invited to strum his guitar as a support act on a leg of a Hootie & the Blowfish tour. Most of the players were reduced to jester-like side-hustles with Tony Meola accepting a chance to try out as a kicker for the New York Jets, which reeked of a PR stunt, as did his being attacked by “soccer-playing pitbulls” on Jay Leno. In the end, the legacy of this World Cup was mixed. Records had been broken in terms of attendance, but those who expected American fans’ sporting appetites to be transformed instantly and forever by the tournament would be disappointed. The spike in interest in football soon burned off as if the World Cup had been a giant circus, which momentarily thrilled before leaving town. A year later, when my beloved club team Everton reached the semifinal of a major tournament, I was unable to find a single cable channel that could summon a broadcast, despite a frantic search of Chicagoland sports bars. Utterly defeated, I ended up calling my father in Liverpool and persuaded him to hold his telephone against the radio so I could hear the local broadcast and follow the action. A long-distance connection that was worth every cent, even though the bill was so eye-bulgingly expensive, it took me seven months to pay off in installments. Each time I chipped away at my football-induced telecom debt, I felt a numbing angst as if the World Cup in America had never happened. ‘The long cut’ Deprived of my football fix, my American life continued to progress, relying on hustle, grind, and the kindness of strangers. Professionally, I astonished myself by finding utility in the law degree I had somehow earned. I gained work as a welfare rights advocate. This was the height of the Clinton Welfare debate in which the safety net had been shredded. Working with a nonprofit who agreed to apply for a visa for me, I trained homeless men to talk to the media, telling the story of their descent into the streets and highlighting the vast number of hidden challenges that existed between them and job security. The homeless guys I worked with were sweet and earnest. They lived on the streets south of the city in the area around Robert Taylor Homes. A vast, bleak public housing project that consisted of dozens of identical, hulking buildings spread out in a line for two miles. Having grown up in Liverpool, I thought I was used to grim neighborhoods awash with hopelessness. The Robert Taylor Homes were another level altogether. This was a heart-wrenching island of abject poverty. The work was fulfilling and soul-destroying in equal measure. Lacking football in my life, I threw myself into the Chicago music scene for solace. Uncle Tupelo’s album Anodyne had just been released. I saved up enough to watch the band play gigs at the legendary Lounge Ax. Their track “The Long Cut” was my anthem, and I listened to its message of struggle and eventual promise on repeat on my Discman: Come on let’s take the long cut I think that’s what we need If you wanna take the long cut We’ll get there eventually. The lead singer, Jeff Tweedy, was singing about his fraught relationships with his bandmates, but the lyrics always held a double meaning for me, reflecting the journey I hoped soccer had just begun in my chosen home. Excerpted from the book WE ARE THE WORLD (CUP) by Roger Bennett. Copyright © 2026 by In Loving Memory of the Recent Past 2 Inc. From Dey Street Books, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted by permission. View the full article

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