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Kevin Warsh floated plenty of ideas for how he would run the Federal Reserve during his campaign for the job as chair. For Wall Street, few are as cryptic — or potentially consequential — as his call for a new accord with the Treasury Department. View the full article

Tim Allan resigns as Mandelson scandal intensifiesView the full article

A few leftover donuts may not seem like a major problem, but for a fast-food operation with nearly 100 stores, unnecessary waste can add up to serious costs. To better predict donut demand, a Knoxville, Tennessee–based Dunkin’ franchisee, Bluemont Group, has rolled out an AI system called Do’Cast designed to cut waste while keeping popular flavors in stock. Developed in partnership with restaurant AI company PreciTaste, the system uses in-store cameras to track inventory in real time and forecast demand for each type of donut. Those predictions factor in recent sales, weather, seasonal patterns, holidays, days of the week, and major local events such as college football games. So far, the companies say, Do’Cast has reduced donut and Munchkin donut hole waste by up to 25%, lowering costs while ensuring top-selling treats stay available. “Adjusting the product mix based on what the cameras are monitoring, I think that’s one of the sweet spots for this technology,” says Moritz Illi, PreciTaste’s head of product development and lead on the Do’Cast project. Bluemont operates about 99 Dunkin’ locations across multiple states, with donuts delivered to individual stores daily from a central bakery. Any unsold donuts are tossed at the end of the day, and before rolling out Do’Cast about seven months ago, the company saw an average of just under $100 per waste at each store per day, says Margo Hughes, Bluemont’s director of business services. That adds up to more than $3 million in discarded donuts each year, Hughes says. “Even to cut that in half is one-and-a-half-million dollars in savings,” she says. “That’s a big deal.” The system combines predictive modeling with image recognition, since workers in busy stores do not log each individual donut that goes out the door, particularly when customers order complex assortments. Hughes says she had read about other AI systems capable of identifying baked goods, including one used in Japan that can distinguish among hundreds of pastry varieties, and realized a similar approach could be trained to tell the difference between an Old Fashioned and a Chocolate Creme. PreciTaste, which got its start in Germany developing AI-powered oven technology that can automatically recognize different items and cook them on the correct settings, already had experience classifying baked goods. “They had rolls, and breads, and croissants, and whatever, and these are all brown,” says Hughes. “So, I thought, surely if they can identify breads, they can identify donuts.” The system now captures images of the donut display case several times a day so it can understand how store inventory shifts during the day and also records a definitive count of waste at the end of the day, as excess items are tossed in the trash. Having excess donuts is a waste of money, but running out of popular varieties—especially early in the day—is also a problem, and even being down to just one of a particular category isn’t ideal, since many customers are reluctant to buy the last donut, Hughes says. “This is where the cameras are so important to assess availability throughout the day that we react quickly to non-performant algorithms based on the product mix,” Illi says. The AI still isn’t perfect—humans at PreciTaste still supervise and validate the counts, Illi says, and store managers can communicate with the company to override the AI’s donut orders and suggest factors the system may be overlooking. It’s also still learning from new data about how different factors impact sales. Recent snowstorms led to drastically decreased demand, for instance, and changes in Dunkin’ product lineups can mean new varieties of donuts the system is unfamiliar with, so human managers may give better sales estimates for them at first. PreciTaste, which offers ingredient prep planning for a variety of restaurant types, holds weekly calls with Bluemont to discuss how the system is performing and how it can best be tweaked. The companies also hope to incorporate other factors that can help with production planning, like understanding which donuts can serve as substitutes for each other. “If you want chocolate, you’re not going to buy strawberries,” Hughes says. Hughes compares the process training the puppy she got around the time Bluemont rolled out the PreciTaste technology: “I know that in the long run, all the training and all the investment and all of the time is going to be worth it,” she says, “because we’re going to be best friends for life.” View the full article

It has been two weeks since Winter Storm Fern swept through the United States, and many cities are still busy digging themselves out of waist-high snow mountains. A brand-new building in Antarctica—where temperatures average 14 degrees Fahrenheit along the coast—might offer some useful insights for a more efficient approach. Perched on the southern edge of Adelaide, an island on the Antarctica Peninsula, the Discovery Building spans two stories and nearly 50,000 square feet. It is clad in highly insulated metal composite panels and topped with a mono-pitch roof that slopes in just one direction, so snow slides right off instead of piling up. Most notably: it sports an innovative feature called a wind deflector, which protrudes on the leeward edge of the building (the one sheltered from the prevailing wind) and prevents snow from piling up right next to the building. So far, the system has most commonly been used above doors to clear snow that would otherwise fall adjacent to the building, but the architects say it’s never been used at this scale before. The feature could change the way we design buildings for harsh climates. Design for extreme conditions The Discovery Building is located within Rothera Research Station—a center for marine and atmospheric studies and the UK’s largest research facility in Antarctica. (The station is famously served by one of the most advanced, icebreaking polar research vessels in the world, the RRS Sir David Attenborough, which itself carries the autonomous underwater vehicle Boaty McBoatface, of internet fame.) For years, the research station was spread across nine separate buildings, meaning researchers often had to navigate between them in blizzard conditions. Now, all functions are consolidated under one (very unique) roof, in a building that acts as the station’s nerve center. The Discovery Building was designed by British firm Hugh Broughton Architects, which, over the past decade, has a gained a reputation for designing buildings that exist in extreme conditions. In 2013, the firm completed Halley VI, a raised building that sits on a floating ice shelf. Mounted on hydraulic legs with retractable skis, the station was specifically designed to be relocated if the ice shelf showed signs of breaking off, which it did in 2017. The entire base was successfully moved 14 miles inland. Wiki Commons Halley VI, which went on to earn over a dozen awards, led to several commissions in other extreme, isolated environments, including a health center in the world’s most remote island, Tristan de Cunha, and Juan Carlos 1, a radial modular research base also on the Antarctic Peninsula. The firm is also currently designing a new building for the Australian Antarctic Division at Davis Station in East Antarctica. What keeps bringing Broughton back to such punishing conditions? “The briefs are interesting and challenging,” he says of the requirements and constraints such projects often demand. Over the years, Broughton has gained an understanding of the challenges that come with harsh climate of the Antarctic, but every site, he says, continues to bring with it its own set of complications and peculiarities, whether those are topographical, climate-related, or simply differences in the way the building is used. “I must admit, when we first started on Halley VI, I thought ‘is there any chance for a cookie cutter approach here?’ But there most definitely isn’t,” Broughton says. “Every site has its own idiosyncratic, environmental, but also cultural and social challenges.” The wind as a resource In the case of the Discovery Building at Rothera, which took six years to build due to the limited construction season (October-March), wind was one of the primary challenges. Lifting the building on stilts, like the architects did at Halley VI, would have helped the wind blow underneath the building and chase the snow away from it. But the building’s requirements—which called for workshops and science offices, a heating and power plant, a health facility, and stations that could serve as a launchpad for expeditions in the field—made it too heavy to be lifted. The need for constant vehicle access to stage expeditions also meant the building had to sit on the ground. The architects had to find another way to prevent snow from building up. To understand snow behavior in those particular windy conditions, Broughton’s team worked with Canadian engineering agency RWDI, which conducted detailed wind and snow modeling studies. It was RWDI that introduced Broughton to wind deflectors, which look a bit like angled metal fins and function like aerofoils in Formula One cars, redirecting airflow to work with the building rather than against it. By channeling wind down the facade and along the ground, the deflector transforms what would normally be a liability into an asset that actively clears snow. This means the building remains accessible, but also that snow doesn’t pile up right up against the facade, which could lead to damage. In a climate where blizzards can last for days, a wind deflector reduces the amount of effort needed to clear the snow, as well as the fuel required to power the snow plows. “There’s both a resource and a carbon cost,” says Broughton. Lessons from Antarctica There are currently 70 permanent research stations dotted around Antarctica, representing 29 countries from every continent on Earth. Many of these stations were built in the late 1950s, after the explosion of polar research that took place during the International Geophysical Year—an 18-month global scientific collaboration that involved more than 60 countries conducting coordinated research on Earth. After an initial renovation period in the ’80s, many of these buildings have been reaching the end of their lifespan. This, combined with an increased emphasis on climate change research, is leading to what Broughton calls a construction boom on the Antarctic Peninsula. “There’s also a geopolitical aspect to it,” he says. “Everybody wants to have a presence.” Antarctica is not under the sovereignty of any single country and is regarded as the “international continent.” Over the past few decades, scientists have become better at understanding how wind blows and snow drifts around a building, and as a result, Broughton’s team has become better at responding to these challenges. He thinks these lessons can carry over to the urbanized world. As climate change reinforces the strength and frequency of extreme weather events—like Fern in the U.S., and Storm Goretti in Europe—cities are scrambling to mobilize resources and clear snow. (New York City, for example, converted garbage trucks into snowplows.) Broughton believes that buildings where winters are harsh and winds are strong could benefit from relatively low-cost systems like wind deflectors, but he says there are other lessons architects can borrow from Antarctica. These include a focus on thermal efficiency by favoring air-tight envelopes instead of relying on heating, as well as efficient planning that means you’re achieving more with less built space. “There is a whole raft of principles that are applied to these buildings by absolute necessity that could be applied more by choice in a more temperate environment,” he says. View the full article

The monthly principal and interest payment needed to purchase the average-priced home dropped 7%, or $164, year over year to $2,091, according to ICE. View the full article

The lawsuit, which doesn't target UWM, accuses the REIT's CEO and board of directors of suspicious stock sales around the December announcement. View the full article

State regulators and attorneys general could be picking up the gauntlet on anti-kickback provision enforcement, especially in the mid-Atlantic states. View the full article

Last fall, I filmed a course for MasterClass. It’s mainly based on my book Slow Productivity, but there’s some Deep Work in there too. It’s called: ​“Rebuild Your Focus & Reclaim Your Time.”​ The course launched last week, so you should definitely ​check it out​. It gets to the core of a lot of the topics we tackle in this newsletter about the intersection of technology and productivity, and it’s an incredibly polished final product. It’s actually this latter point that I want to talk a little bit more about today, as it sparks an interesting question about the future of online media more generally… One of the most striking things about working with MasterClass is its production values. I’ve been a guest on many major video podcasts (from ​Mel Robbins​ to ​Andrew Huberman​ to ​Rich Roll​). These shows look good. They all have reasonable sets with diffused lights and three-camera setups. MasterClass, however, operates at another level. They use high-end TV-quality production crews. There’s a director, a cinematographer, and multiple camera operators distinct from the focus pullers, all of whom work with gaffers and grips, supported by production assistants. My make-up artist had recently worked on Sinners. In my career as a writer, I’ve been on TV before as a guest on morning shows and cable news programs, but this was as close as I’ll ever come to starring in a dramatic series or independent film. For me, this experience implied an important reality about the current state of visual media: there remains a non-trivial quality gap between independent video (e.g., as produced for YouTube) and legacy video (e.g., as produced for streaming platforms or linear television). This gap matters. Because these two categories still look different, we treat them distinctly. We’re willing to pay for access to content on Netflix, but we relegate the next rung down on the quality ladder to ad-supported general-use platforms like YouTube. But here’s what’s interesting about the near future: that difference is diminishing. MasterClass, for example, is not funded by a streaming service or television studio; however, they achieve streaming/TV-level production values. Other independent video producers are also closing this gap. This raises a key question: What will happen to video content as the difference between independent and legacy production value vanishes? We can see a glimpse of this future in a project that fascinates me: ​Dropout TV​ – also stylized online as :Dropout – which can best be described as a comedy streaming service. It costs $6.99 a month, which gains you access to a slate of original unscripted shows all filmed at a quality level indistinguishable from what you would find on, say, Netflix programs like Is it Cake? or Nailed It!. Except, they’re not Netflix. Dropout TV doesn’t have multi-billion dollar production budgets or massive venture capital backing. It grew out of the early 2000s website ​CollegeHumor.com​. With the rise of YouTube, CollegeHumor turned more attention to producing content for the platform. But they were frustrated by a model that required them to live or die by a third-party algorithm and the whims of advertisers, so they eventually launched their own subscription app. Today, Dropout boasts over a million subscribers. I refer to this type of niche subscription service, defined by a combination of legacy-quality programming and a focused audience, as a micro-streamer. Keep an eye on this market segment. As it becomes easier to produce high-end video, more independent creators will leave the mass-aggregation platforms like YouTube and offer up targeted competition to the major streaming players. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll even have a Deep Life TV app next to Disney+ on your smart TV. Until then, however, you can get your fill of movie-quality Cal content ​over at MasterClass​. The post What I Learned from MasterClass appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

Last fall, I filmed a course for MasterClass. It’s mainly based on my book Slow Productivity, but there’s some Deep Work in there too. It’s called: ​“Rebuild Your Focus & Reclaim Your Time.”​ The course launched last week, so you should definitely ​check it out​. It gets to the core of a lot of the topics we tackle in this newsletter about the intersection of technology and productivity, and it’s an incredibly polished final product. It’s actually this latter point that I want to talk a little bit more about today, as it sparks an interesting question about the future of online media more generally… One of the most striking things about working with MasterClass is its production values. I’ve been a guest on many major video podcasts (from ​Mel Robbins​ to ​Andrew Huberman​ to ​Rich Roll​). These shows look good. They all have reasonable sets with diffused lights and three-camera setups. MasterClass, however, operates at another level. They use high-end TV-quality production crews. There’s a director, a cinematographer, and multiple camera operators distinct from the focus pullers, all of whom work with gaffers and grips, supported by production assistants. My make-up artist had recently worked on Sinners. In my career as a writer, I’ve been on TV before as a guest on morning shows and cable news programs, but this was as close as I’ll ever come to starring in a dramatic series or independent film. For me, this experience implied an important reality about the current state of visual media: there remains a non-trivial quality gap between independent video (e.g., as produced for YouTube) and legacy video (e.g., as produced for streaming platforms or linear television). This gap matters. Because these two categories still look different, we treat them distinctly. We’re willing to pay for access to content on Netflix, but we relegate the next rung down on the quality ladder to ad-supported general-use platforms like YouTube. But here’s what’s interesting about the near future: that difference is diminishing. MasterClass, for example, is not funded by a streaming service or television studio; however, they achieve streaming/TV-level production values. Other independent video producers are also closing this gap. This raises a key question: What will happen to video content as the difference between independent and legacy production value vanishes? We can see a glimpse of this future in a project that fascinates me: ​Dropout TV​ – also stylized online as :Dropout – which can best be described as a comedy streaming service. It costs $6.99 a month, which gains you access to a slate of original unscripted shows all filmed at a quality level indistinguishable from what you would find on, say, Netflix programs like Is it Cake? or Nailed It!. Except, they’re not Netflix. Dropout TV doesn’t have multi-billion dollar production budgets or massive venture capital backing. It grew out of the early 2000s website ​CollegeHumor.com​. With the rise of YouTube, CollegeHumor turned more attention to producing content for the platform. But they were frustrated by a model that required them to live or die by a third-party algorithm and the whims of advertisers, so they eventually launched their own subscription app. Today, Dropout boasts over a million subscribers. I refer to this type of niche subscription service, defined by a combination of legacy-quality programming and a focused audience, as a micro-streamer. Keep an eye on this market segment. As it becomes easier to produce high-end video, more independent creators will leave the mass-aggregation platforms like YouTube and offer up targeted competition to the major streaming players. Who knows, maybe one day you’ll even have a Deep Life TV app next to Disney+ on your smart TV. Until then, however, you can get your fill of movie-quality Cal content ​over at MasterClass​. The post What I Learned from MasterClass appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

Fashion weeks around the world are dominated by four main shows: New York, Paris, Milan, and London. But in 2020, Copenhagen Fashion Week (CPHFW) made a bold move that helped it garner attention. It launched a framework with nearly 20 sustainability standards that fashion brands must meet to participate. The choice came at a time when fashion’s sustainability practices were under increased scrutiny. Every year the industry contributes up to 10% of global carbon emissions, pollutes billions of cubic meters of clean water, and produces metric tons of textile waste. Copenhagen’s fashion week was applauded for its forward-thinking approach. However, over the next few years, that facade started to crack. Brands that had helped establish Copenhagen as an up-and-coming fashion mecca departed for bigger fashion weeks (see Ganni and Cecilie Bahnsen). And its sustainability claims came under fire. This year marks the 20th year of CPHFW, and with the anniversary, the city and its fashion scene are ready to double down on the idea that Copenhagen is one of the best cities for sustainable, emerging fashion. The sustainability debacle Danish anti-greenwashing specialist Tanja Gotthardsen and the Danish Consumer Council (Forbrugerrådet Tænk), as well as consultancy firm Continual, brought a complaint to Danish Consumer Ombudsman (that overlooks marketing and consumer protection laws) against CPHFW and some of its participants for greenwashing. It alleged the days-long Danish fashion event made misleading claims about its sustainability requirements, and the brand Baum und Pferdgarten admitted to failing to meet its pledge against polyester. While there could have been severe ramifications from the complaint, the Ombudsman ultimately dismissed it since CPHFW is not directly consumer facing and instead gave something of a warning to strengthen its oversight. “The dialogue with the Ombudsman was constructive and valuable, and it has allowed us to stay focused on further developing the Sustainability Requirements as a strong screening and development tool for the fashion industry,” Cecilie Thorsmark, Copenhagen Fashion Week’s CEO, tells Fast Company. As a result, the Fall/Winter 2026 season saw two new minimum standards “focusing on circular design principles and responsible purchasing practices, and overall, the bar has been raised across the existing Minimum Standards taking many of them from a commitment level to an actual implementation level.” It maintained its “green” reputation within the industry, too. It’s important to acknowledge that the most sustainable choice would be to not make new clothes, but that’s not realistic. CPHFW’s framework aims to tame the beast, encouraging upcycled materials, decreasing virgin plastic-based fiber use, and having transparent supply chains that aren’t fueled by exploited labor. For many designers gunning to show at CPHFW, this culture determines how they design, and they often work to incorporate framework tenets into their brand from day one. “It was very important for us that we had a thoughtful production from the beginning,” OpéraSport co-founder Awa Malina Stelter says. The contemporary womenswear brand, which she created in 2019 with Stephanie Gundelach, met the framework and survived the screening by CPHFW partner Rambøll on the first try. The impact of the sustainability-aware culture is also evident for Forza Collective’s Kristoffer Kongshaug. Four years ago when he started the brand, the founder and creative director says, “It was a given that if you were to start a brand, it had to be sustainable. You’re not doing it right if you leave that out of the conversation. Secondly, I wanted to be a part of the [CPHFW] calendar.” Exits and homecoming This go-round, some homegrown talent made a return. For the Fall/Winter 2026 show season, CPHFW debuted a “homecoming slot,” specifically targeting Nordic talents that left CPHFW to calendars in other cities. Brands returning to the event act as proofpoints that CPHFW can indeed help launch an emerging brand, and it remains a valuable place to keep growing. Oslo-born ready-to-wear label Holzweiler led in the inaugural spot, after a few year’s hiatus away from Copenhagen while showing at London Fashion Week. Andreas Holzweiler, co-founder of the label, says the team worked closely with Thorsmark for the return. “There was a shared understanding that returning should feel meaningful, not symbolic,” he says. “Leaving Copenhagen wasn’t about stepping away from the platform itself, but about following a natural progression at the time. London offered a different scale and challenged us in new ways,” Holzweiler tells Fast Company. “What brought us back was clarity. After taking time to strengthen the brand internally, Copenhagen feels aligned again with where we are today.” Its scale, he adds, feels best right now for the brand to cut through. Thorsmark doesn’t take brands leaving the schedule as an insult. “[It] underlines that we have built a platform that allows these brands to grow and thrive, which we are incredibly proud of, as well as being proud of these brilliant brands themselves,” she says. For other brands that have left the schedule and not returned to it, some have found ways to still have a CPHFW presence. Ganni, for example, put on an event with Disney. Leaving the schedule is often a business question and more about getting in front of the right people to sell the pieces and create culture. Staying or returning to CPHFW signals the right people are more consistently showing up in the Scandi city. More than a launchpad CPHFW is becoming a platform for emerging brands to start—and stay. It’s always been where you can “go and see the cool kids,” Forza Commercial Strategy Head Ariana Milton says. This is aided by the fact that the org is dedicated to emerging talent through programs like its Newtalent directive, which launched in 2022 and provides three seasons of support, including money, mentorship, and more. Its “One to Watch” label also helps the industry know who to keep an eye on. This all helps brands find their footing, and then what? Historically, they leave. “Five to ten years back in Copenhagen, it had always been like that the brands that grew big enough to leave would eventually do it,” Kongshaug explains. “[But] if we keep up the pace and the level of fashion that comes out of the city right now, there would probably not be any reason to leave because the right people are here. The exposure is here. Today, honestly, the platform is here.” For young brands like Nicklas Skovgaard’s eponymous line, founded in 2020, Copenhagen is home. It’s where he feels most creative and where he wants to stay. Plus, it seems to be working for the balance sheet. His womenswear label is already in several stockists across Europe, Asia, and the U.S. Another way it’s supporting its designers and new talents is by working more closely with the Copenhagen International Fashion Fair (CIFF), which takes place at the same time bi-annually and has expanded over recent years. To CIFF Director Sofie Dolva, the two group’s fates are intertwined. For both to succeed, and help boost Nordic fashion brands, it’s important they keep working together. The key is “to be close and to coordinate also with the schedule across so you get the right mix,” according to Dolva, who’s been at her post since 2022. “Both for us and Copenhagen Fashion Week, it is really important to support the new talents. Without the new talents and new brands showing some innovativeness, it gets boring. Our industry needs excitement and newness.” The Fall/Winter 2026 season was an example of how that can be done. Not only did the two orgs host events together and sync on timing so that buyers and press were in town for both, but many CPHFW designers, including those in the Newtalent program, had booths at CIFF. Two on-calendar labels, Forza Collective and Fine Chaos, even had their runway shows at the fair’s massive location just outside Copenhagen’s center. CIFF also plans to increase its partnerships with retailers, which could have a positive ripple effect on designers looking for wholesale partners. This season, it debuted a partnership with Milan’s 10 Corso Como, hosting a mini version of the conceptual store at the trade fair. Dolva says she wants to “go from a transactional relationship to a more partnership level [with retailers] because if we don’t work together, we will not win together.” For a homecoming Holzweiler, it’s about what you can get in the Danish city that the others, like Paris and London, can’t offer. “Copenhagen operates at a different scale,” he says. “It allows for more focus and continuity around the collections, which can be valuable depending on where you are as a brand. Both [larger and more intimate] contexts matter—they just create different conditions.” View the full article

When viewers tune in to the 2026 Winter Olympics, they will see pristine, white slopes, groomed tracks, and athletes racing over snow-covered landscapes, thanks in part to a storm that blanketed the mountain venues of the Italian Alps with fresh powder just in time. But at lower elevations, where cross-country and other events are held, athletes and organizers have been contending with rain; thin, sometimes slushy snow; and icy, machine-made surfaces. “Most of our races are on machine-made snow,” 2026 U.S. Olympic team cross-country skier Rosie Brennan told us ahead of the Games. “TV production is great at making it look like we are in wintry, snowy places, but this year has been particularly bad.” As scientists who study mountain snow, water resources, and the human impact of warming winters, we see winter’s changes through data: rising temperatures, shrinking snowpack, shorter snow seasons. Olympic athletes experience changing winter conditions personally, in ways the public and scientists rarely do. Lack of snowfall and more frequent rain affect when and where they can train, how they train and how dangerous the terrain can become. We talked with Brennan and cross-country skiers Ben Ogden and Jack Young as they were preparing for the 2026 Winter Games. Their experiences reflect what many athletes describe: a sport increasingly defined not by the variability of natural winter but by the reliability of industrialized snowmaking. What the cameras don’t show Snowmaking technology makes it possible to create halfpipes for freestyle snowboarding and skiing competitions. It also allows for races when natural snow is scarce—the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing relied entirely on machine-made snow for many races. However, machine-made snow creates a very different surface than natural snow, changing the race. In clouds, each unique snowflake shape is determined by the temperature and humidity. Once formed, the iconic star shape begins to slowly erode as its crystals become rounded spheres. In this way, natural snow provides a variety of textures and depths: soft powder after a storm, firm or brittle snow in cold weather, and slushy, wet snow during rain or melt events. Machine-made snow varies less in texture or quality. It begins and ends its life as an ice pellet surrounded by a thin film of liquid water. That makes it slower to change, easier to shape, and, once frozen, it hardens in place. “They’re faster, icier, and carry more risk” When artificial snow is being made, the sound is piercing—a high-pitched hiss roars from the pressurized nozzles of snow guns. These guns spew water mixed with compressed air, and it freezes upon contact with the cold air outside, creating small, dense ice particles. The drops sting exposed skin, as one of us, Agnes Macy, knows well as a former competitive skier. Snow machines then push out artificial snow onto the racecourse. Often, the trails are the only ribbons of snow in sight—a white strip surrounded by brown mud and dead grass. “Courses built for natural snow feel completely different when covered in man-made snow,” Brennan, 37, said. “They’re faster, icier, and carry more risk than anyone might imagine for cross-country skiing.” There’s nothing quite like skiing on fresh snow. After a storm brings a blanket of light, fluffy powder, it can almost feel as though you’re floating. The snow is forgiving. On artificial snow, skiers carry more speed into downhill runs. Downhill racers may relish the speed, but cross-country skis don’t have metal edges like downhill skis do, so step-turning or skidding around fast, icy corners can make an athlete feel out of control. It “requires a different style of skiing, skill sets and strengths than I grew up learning,” Brennan said. How athletes adapt, with help from science Athletes must adjust their technique and prepare their skis differently, depending on the snow conditions. At elite levels, this is science. Snow crystal morphology, temperature, ski base material and structure, ski stiffness, skier technique, and environmental conditions all interact to determine an athlete’s speed. Before cross-country, or Nordic, races, ski technicians compare multiple ski pairs prepared with different base surfaces and waxes. They evaluate how quickly each ski glides and how long it maintains that glide—traits that depend on the friction between the ski and the snow. Compared to natural snow, machine-made snow generally provides a more durable and longer-lasting surface. In cross-country racing, that allows for more efficient and stronger pushes without skis or poles sinking deep into snow. Additionally, improvements in the machines used to groom snow now provide harder and more homogeneous surfaces that permit faster skiing. While fast skiing is the goal, ski crashes are also the most common cause of injury in the Winter Olympics. With machine-made snow, ski jump competitors and anyone who falls is also landing on a harder surface, which can increase the risk of injury. Why winters are changing Weather can always deal surprises, but long-term climate trends are shifting what can be expected of a typical winter. In the Alps, air temperature has increased by about 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit since the late 1800s, before rising fossil fuel use began increasing the levels of greenhouse gases trapping heat in the atmosphere. Globally, 2025 was the third-warmest year on record, following 2024 and 2023. For mountain regions, these warmer conditions have consequences. Snow melts earlier and more frequently in midwinter, especially during warm spells that used to be rare. Midwinter snowmelt events are occurring more often at higher elevations and earlier in the season across many mountain ranges of western North America. At the same time, the snow line—the elevation where precipitation shifts from snow to rain—is moving upslope. Warming in high mountain environments is also causing the threshold where rain turns to snow to rise by tens of meters per decade in some regions. This means storms that once blanketed entire valleys in snow now may deliver snow only to upper slopes, with rain falling below. Together, these changes mean that many winter storms produce less snow, over less area, and for shorter durations than they did a generation ago. Training venues The changing winter landscape has also transformed how athletes train. Traditional training venues, such as glaciers once used for summer skiing, have become unreliable. In August 2025, the Hintertux Glacier—the only year-round training center operating in Austria—announced its first temporary closure. “It’s been increasingly hard to make plans for locations to train between races,” Brennan said. “Snow reliability isn’t great in many places. We often rely on going to higher elevations for a better chance of snow.” Higher-elevation training can help, but it concentrates athletes in fewer places, reduces access for younger skiers due to the remoteness and raises costs for national teams. Some of these glaciers—like Canada’s Haig Glacier or Alaska’s Eagle Glacier—are accessible only by helicopter. When skiers can’t get to snow, dryland training on rollerskis is one of the only options. Winter athletes see the climate changing Because winter is their workplace, athletes often notice subtle changes before those changes show up in long-term statistics. Even athletes in their early twenties, like Young, said they have noticed the rapid expansion of snowmaking infrastructure at many racing venues in recent years. Snowmaking requires large amounts of energy and water. It is also a clear sign that organizers see winters becoming less dependable. Athletes also witness how communities are affected when poor snow conditions mean fewer visitors. “In the Alps, when conditions are bad, it is obvious how much it affects the communities,” Ogden, 25, said. “Their tourism-based livelihoods are so often negatively affected, and their quality of life changes.” Many winter athletes are speaking publicly about their concerns. Groups such as Protect Our Winters, founded by professional snowboarder Jeremy Jones, work to advance policies that protect outdoor places for future generations. A wintry look, but an uncertain future For athletes at the 2026 Olympics, the variability within the Olympic region—snow at higher elevations, rain at lower ones—reflects a broader truth: The stability of winter is diminishing. Athletes know this better than anyone. They race in it. They train in it. They depend on it. The Winter Games will go on this year. The snow will look good on television. But at the same time, winter is changing. Keith Musselman is an assistant professor in geography, mountain hydrology, and climate change at the University of Colorado Boulder. Agnes Macy is a graduate student in geography at the University of Colorado Boulder. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

Time could be up for TikTok’s metronomic For You feed, which pushes videos to users with clock-like accuracy. The endless scroll that defines the TikTok experience has been flagged as part of a broader set of features that make the app addictive by design, according to the European Commission. The regulator has issued a preliminary decision under the Digital Services Act, a sweeping piece of tech regulation, arguing that TikTok has not done enough to mitigate the risk of user addiction tied to those features. European regulators have asked TikTok to tweak the offending system, along with others, to make the app less addictive or face fines of up to 6% of parent company ByteDance’s total annual turnover, reportedly forecast at $186 billion in 2025. Under the terms of the Digital Services Act, TikTok has the right to respond to the European Commission’s preliminary decision and to contest it. A TikTok spokesperson tells Fast Company that the company “will take whatever steps are necessary to challenge these findings through every means available to us.” If TikTok does push back and the two sides remain at odds, the result could be a prolonged standoff. “I am fearing that this will become a game of cat and mouse, but we will see I am interested and watching and grabbing the popcorn,” says Carolina Are, a social media researcher at the London School of Economics. Still, some observers believe there is a real chance TikTok ultimately bends to the EU’s demands. “This is the future of enforcement action in the EU,” says Lilian Edwards, director of Pangloss Consulting and a law professor at Newcastle University. Edwards notes that EU legislation such as the Digital Markets Act, the Digital Services Act, and the AI Act is not designed primarily to generate fines that “companies can shrug off.” Instead, the goal is to force “actual design changes to become less addictive and less toxic especially to children,” she says. She also points out that “companies have made changes for EU markets in the past though never at such fundamental design levels.” There is precedent for TikTok accommodating political pressure to alter how its app operates, including in the very recent past. In the United States, TikTok moved toward partial U.S. ownership to satisfy a law enforced by the The President administration, a reminder that compromise for continued operation is already part of the company’s playbook. “What we saw with TikTok and the United States deal, recently, is that the app will change to continue operations,” says Jess Maddox, a social media expert at the University of Georgia. “This EU ruling is not an exception, so this could mark the end of the endless scroll, at least for minors. I could see TikTok then going the way of YouTube, with YouTube Kids, or even teen accounts with Instagram.” Such changes could also extend to region-specific versions of the app, depending on where users live. Tama Leaver, a professor of social media at Curtin University in Australia, argues that this has already happened to some degree under the U.S. compromise deal. That alone would represent a significant shift. But the ripple effects could go further if TikTok concedes ground under the Digital Services Act. “It’s an interesting moment for the architecture, considering that every other platform has to [potentially] redesign and tweak as well,” says Leaver. If TikTok’s endless scrolling feed is deemed addictive by law, other platforms could soon face similar scrutiny. That prospect marks a turning point, says social media analyst Matt Navarra. “If this holds, infinite scroll, auto-play, frictionless feeds could become legally risky for the platforms, and not just ethically dubious,” he says. “I think the EU’s […] pretty much saying, ‘If your design patterns override self-regulation in young users, we’re going to consider that systemic harm.’” The consequences could extend far beyond TikTok alone. They could end up reshaping social media norms entirely. “And I think,” Navarra adds, “that’s quite a bold and some might argue long overdue statement.” View the full article

MacKenzie Scott helped build one of the most recognizable companies in modern history—all while writing her first novel. As Amazon scaled from a fledging startup to a global force, Scott was simultaneously cultivating a literary life. Long before Amazon, Scott launched her literary career. While studying creative writing at Princeton University, Scott landed herself a highly coveted spot as one of Toni Morrison’s advisees, a relationship that would shape her literary pursuits. “This writer that I admired so much also turned out to be such a gifted and devoted teacher,” Scott said at the dedication for Princeton’s Morrison Hall. “She has given me a real example of a life of passionate devotion to more than one calling.” For some time, those callings competed. In Amazon’s early years, Scott’s writing necessarily receded as she supported the company’s founding and expansion. But by 1996, she stepped into a less involved role, carving out space for her literary ambitions and for her family. She consequently forged a slow, deliberate writing life. And after a decade of work—balanced alongside raising her children and supporting Amazon’s growth—Scott published her debut novel, The Testing of Luther Albright. Morrison continued to mentor her through the process, offering advice and encouragement. “Your hand is sure, your technical ability sophisticated,” Morrison said, according to Howard University. “Don’t worry about overdoing it at this point. It is so much easier to cut back than to write up.” Morrison’s mentorship proved pivotal, as Scott went on to win the American Book Award for her novel, cementing her literary career. Morrison, however, was not the only writer to leave a lasting imprint. In her Giving Pledge letter years later, Scott returned to The Writing Life by Annie Dillard, a slim meditation on the discipline and solitude of writing with no promise of success. Scott rediscovered the book on a shelf of college-era favorites, its pages underlined and started. One passage, in particular, stuck with her. For Scott, the advice was no longer just about writing. It became a framework for philanthropy. “I have no doubt that tremendous value comes when people act quickly on the impulse to give,” she wrote in her pledge letter. The same philosophy that propelled Scott’s literary success also undergirds her philanthropic pursuits, treating wealth not as something to preserve, but as something meant to be spent with intention. —By Leila Sheridan This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister site, Inc.com. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy. View the full article

When Obvious Ventures launched 12 years ago with a focus on “world positive” companies, the idea was a contrarian bet: that startups tackling climate, health, and economic resilience could deliver big returns, not just feel-good impact. Founded by Twitter cofounder Ev Williams and others, the firm backed companies like Beyond Meat, the AI drug discovery company Recursion Pharmaceuticals, and Diamond Foundry, which makes sustainable lab-grown diamonds. By 2020, other VC firms had gotten into the climate investing space, and overall investment in climate tech surged. Now, as the The President administration rolls out anti-climate policy and some investors retreat, Obvious is leaning in. Fresh off closing its fifth fund—at the precise figure of $360,360,360—the firm remains bullish. We talked to managing director Andrew Beebe about how Obvious has grown—and the current state of climate investing in the age of The President. ‘World positive’ investing went mainstream In the beginning, Obvious’s approach was unusual. “We started with this basic idea that the biggest companies of our time are going to be those that solve the world’s biggest problems,” Beebe says. Some people misunderstood it as “impact investing” that would only have concessionary returns. But Obvious was thinking differently: the thesis was that solving global challenges could drive financial success. Over time, as Obvious Ventures had early successes with companies like Beyond Meat, a growing number of investors moved in the same direction. (Beyond Meat has since struggled, but had the best-performing IPO in the U.S. in 2019.) “Twelve years forward, we’ve had many venture firms copy, or let’s say lift, some of our language,” Beebe says. “But we appreciate that. We definitely consider imitation a sincere form of flattery. And because of that, but also because of the successes of these early companies, it’s been easier to explain what ‘world positive’ means. That’s important with limited partners. But it’s also really important with founders, so that we are not just getting, you know, sort of a yoga mat cleaning service or something, but instead getting these extraordinary ideas like radically reducing the cost of geothermal energy or AI for drug discovery. The big change is that I think more people can more easily digest what we do and why we do it. And the movement of world positive companies is stronger than ever.” Smart climate investors aren’t pulling back As the federal government pivoted on climate policy—pulling back billions of dollars in funding for clean energy projects, tax credits for EVs and other incentives, and pouring more support into the fossil fuel industry—climate investing dropped. But the fundamentals haven’t changed, and Beebe says that climate investing still makes sense. “Venture firms outlast presidential cycles by definition,” he says. “And in this case, easily, because we only have two more years. But more importantly, with regard to climate, I love climate investing because it’s the macro of all macros. Unfortunately, we can very predictably see where things are going. And that’s just not always true. In health care, it’s hard to predict where things are going. But climate, the problem literally gets worse by the day, even if the government chooses to ignore it—oftentimes, because they choose to ignore it. And yet there are a lot of investors in the US who say, ‘Well, the government support’s gone. And look, people aren’t buying EVs anymore. So, let’s move on.’ And I love that. Those tourists should go home. And, I guess, go back to enterprise SaaS or whatever. Meanwhile, both on the founder side and on the investor side, the people who really understand the science and really understand the macro are not going anywhere.” As climate investing grew over the past several years, Obvious Ventures had focused more of its last fund in other areas like health and robotics. Climate “got really frothy and overpriced,” he says. But it’s a better investment now. “It’s only over the last year, and this year, where I’m much more comfortable going really hard into climate.” The One Big Beautiful Big Act slashed support for a wide swath of climate startups. Still, Beebe argues that some of what was in the original Inflation Reduction Act wasn’t necessary. “I was very supportive of the climate bill as an American, as an Earthling,” he says. “But from an investment standpoint, there was too much hype because of it, and it threw a lot of money at things that I did not think were going to work. We sort of stepped back and we only had one company out of maybe 25 that was really impacted by all of that being yanked. Now, because of that, a lot of those things that I didn’t think deserved investment are not going to get more investment. I would say an example of that is direct air capture—a lot of people are really into it as an investment category, I just don’t believe it. So, I think a lot of those things are going to die on the vine.” He believes that other technology, from tech to help the electric grid to electric aviation, can grow now. “All of these things are not getting as much attention and are better priced, but are awesome, better solutions than what’s out there today,” he says. “It’s hard to say we’re doubling down on climate because we’ve always been in it, but, for sure, I am more bullish on the investment landscape and climate that I’ve been in probably five years.” There’s still room for optimism on climate In its latest annual report, Obvious includes some predictions from Beebe on what could come in the next decade—like the idea that we’ll have energy that’s too cheap to meter, and we’ll stop selling gas-powered cars. Despite the headwinds, Beebe is optimistic. “I love that Gates quote that we overestimate what we can do in two years and underestimate what we can do in 10,” he says. “Decade-long predictions I find pretty easy, but the near term is a different bucket. You know, I’m a professional optimist, I’m a venture capitalist, we have to do that. But I do think that graded on a curve, I’m much more optimistic than a lot of folks out there.” Even with the “unfortunate rhetoric” from the federal government, he says, states, utility companies, and startups are still moving forward with solutions. American car companies risk falling behind on EVs, but globally, they’re still booming. “The rest of the world has also figured out that solar plus storage, wind plus storage, is much cheaper than natural gas,” he says. “Most U.S. utilities have figured that out, too. Unfortunately, there are some people in the administration who I actually think know that as well, but have decided to just take a very head in the sand approach. That won’t last. This is going to be our biggest solar year of installations yet, and I think we’ll probably see something of the same size next year. It’ll dip without changes after that. But I think we’ll see some changes. I’m pretty optimistic.” View the full article

The Washington Post's controversial strategy begins with a foundation, then adjusts based on what works. The post 7 Insights From Washington Post’s Strategy To Win Back Traffic appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

They were only ever superficially interested in policies that convinced voters, rather than in governing seriously View the full article

Informing people about political deepfakes through text-based information and interactive games both improve people’s ability to spot AI-generated video and audio that falsely depict politicians, according to a study my colleagues and I conducted. Although researchers have focused primarily on advancing technologies for detecting deepfakes, there is also a need for approaches that address the potential audiences for political deepfakes. Deepfakes are becoming increasingly difficult to identify, verify, and combat as artificial intelligence technology improves. Is it possible to inoculate the public to detect deepfakes, thereby increasing their awareness before exposure? My recent research with fellow media studies researchers Sang Jung Kim and Alex Scott at the Visual Media Lab at the University of Iowa has found that inoculation messages can help people recognize deepfakes and even make people more willing to debunk them. Inoculation theory proposes that psychological inoculation—analogous to getting a medical vaccination—can immunize people against persuasive attacks. The idea is that by explaining to people how deepfakes work, they become primed to recognize them when they encounter them. In our experiment, we exposed one-third of participants to passive inoculation: traditional text-based warning messages about the threat and the characteristics of deepfakes. We exposed another third to active inoculation: an interactive game that challenged participants to identify deepfakes. The remaining third were given no inoculation. Participants were then randomly shown either a deepfake video featuring Joe Biden making pro-abortion rights statements or a deepfake video featuring Donald The President making anti-abortion rights statements. We found that both types of inoculation were effective in reducing the credibility participants gave to the deepfakes, while also increasing people’s awareness and intention to learn more about them. Why it matters Deepfakes are a serious threat to democracy because they use AI to create very realistic fake audio and video. These deepfakes can make politicians appear to say things they never actually said, which can damage public trust and cause people to believe false information. For example, some voters in New Hampshire received a phone call that sounded like Joe Biden, telling them not to vote in the state’s primary election. This deepfake video of President Donald The President, from a dataset of deepfake videos collected by the MIT Media Lab, was used in this study about helping people spot such AI-generated fakes. Because AI technology is becoming more common, it is especially important to find ways to reduce the harmful effects of deepfakes. Recent research shows that labeling deepfakes with fact-checking statements is often not very effective, especially in political contexts. People tend to accept or reject fact-checks based on their existing political beliefs. In addition, false information often spreads faster than accurate information, making fact-checking too slow to fully stop the impact of false information. As a result, researchers are increasingly calling for new ways to prepare people to resist misinformation in advance. Our research contributes to developing more effective strategies to help people resist AI-generated misinformation. What other research is being done Most research on inoculation against misinformation relies on passive media literacy approaches that mainly provide text-based messages. However, more recent studies show that active inoculation can be more effective. For example, online games that involve active participation have been shown to help people resist violent extremist messages. In addition, most previous research has focused on protecting people from text-based misinformation. Our study instead examines inoculation against multimodal misinformation, such as deepfakes that combine video, audio and images. Although we expected active inoculation to work better for this type of misinformation, our findings show that both passive and active inoculation can help people cope with the threat of deepfakes. What’s next Our research shows that inoculation messages can help people recognize and resist deepfakes, but it is still unclear whether these effects last over time. In future studies, we plan to examine the long-term effect of inoculation messages. We also aim to explore whether inoculation works in other areas beyond politics, including health. For example, how would people respond if a deepfake showed a fake doctor spreading health misinformation? Would earlier inoculation messages help people question and resist such content? The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. Bingbing Zhang is an assistant professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of Iowa. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

Investors fearful of political turmoil following a period of relative calm in UK marketsView the full article

Below, Kate Murphy shares five key insights from her new book, Why We Click: The Emerging Science of Interpersonal Synchrony. Murphy is a journalist whose work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Economist, and Texas Monthly, among other publications. What’s the big idea? Humans are instinctively wired to sync with one another, and this invisible alignment of bodies, brains, and emotions shapes attraction, trust, and belonging. It can deepen connection and fuel cooperation, but it also makes feelings and behaviors contagious, giving each of us more influence over others than we realize. Listen to the audio version of this Book Bite—read by Murphy herself—below, or in the Next Big Idea app. 1. Human beings have an instinct to sync. Bring two or more people together and they will immediately begin to synchronize or fall into rhythm with one another. Not only do we tend to subconsciously mimic one another’s movements, postures, facial expressions, and gestures, but recent breakthroughs in technology have revealed we also sync up our heart rates, blood pressure, brain waves, pupil dilation, and hormonal activity. This phenomenon is known as interpersonal synchrony, and it is possibly the most consequential social dynamic most people have never heard of. Interpersonal synchrony is significant because, by subconsciously mimicking even the subtlest twitches of expression and biological rhythms of other people, we can channel their thoughts and feelings. When we reflexively smile upon observing someone else’s joy, we feel their happiness. When we flinch at the sight of someone being hit, we intuit their pain. Syncing with their racing heart gives us a read on their anxiety. Moreover, the synchronization of brain waves during conversations or during shared experiences aligns beliefs and attitudes. You and the other person, at that moment, are of like minds. The result is that emotions, moods, attitudes, and subsequent behaviors can be as contagious as any disease and can have just as profound an influence on our health and well-being. 2. Sustained synchrony signals attraction and attachment. Scientists have conducted numerous speed-dating and speed-networking experiments since the early 2000s to find out why some people immediately click while others rub each other the wrong way. Researchers discovered that couples who reported a feeling of connection and wanted to see each other again were literally on the same wavelength. Their bodily movements and internal rhythms were coordinated, and the wavelike neural firing patterns in their brains coupled, or coincided—often in less than 30 seconds. Moreover, the synchrony occurred even when the other person violated previously expressed parameters of what an ideal partner should be or look like, such as must share the same faith, have a good income, be college-educated, or tall, or blonde, or whatever. This might explain the growing dissatisfaction and widespread deletions of dating apps. Someone can check all the boxes of what you or a dating app’s algorithm thinks is a perfect match, and yet, when you meet that person face-to-face, all you can think about is what you’d rather be binge-watching on Netflix. Conversely, you can be instantly drawn to someone you meet in person whose online dating profile might have made you immediately swipe left. Syncing is a multisensory phenomenon and, as a result, you can’t experience it online in its truest, most exquisite form. 3. Synchronized activity promotes bonding. Not only do you sync with people you like, but you also tend to like people with whom you are in sync. When people do the same thing at the same time, such as marching, dancing, singing, rowing, and even finger tapping, it tends to build feelings of rapport and trust. They disclose more personal information and are more cooperative, kind, and helpful. Even infants strapped into face-forward carriers and bounced in time to music were significantly more likely to favor experimenters who were likewise bouncing in time, compared to experimenters who bounced out of sync or did not move at all. People engaged in synchronized activities also report feeling a sense of transcendence or oneness with those around them. Think of soldiers marching, religious congregants singing and reciting prayers, protesters chanting, and any kind of dancing. Aristotle was probably onto something when he lectured his students, the Peripatetics, while walking the grounds of the Lyceum. Apple cofounder Steve Jobs was likewise known for inviting people he wished to influence to take long walks with him. 4. The downside of interpersonal synchrony. Our instinct to sync can make us susceptible to getting mired in other people’s psychosocial muck. There is something called the “bad apple effect,” where one person’s negative or erratic energy can infect an entire group. This is especially true in work situations where you can’t necessarily choose the people with whom you interact. It’s not like speed dating, where you can do a quick sample sync and move on if you don’t like what you feel. An emergency room nurse told me that the difficulty of her job has less to do with the number of patients who arrive or the severity of their injuries than with who else is on her shift. “There are definitely people who, when you walk in, you see them and you’re like, ‘This will be a good day no matter what gets thrown down,’” she told me. “And there are other days when you walk in and you’re like, ‘Okay, this is going to be a struggle.’” We’ve probably all had the experience where one person coming into or leaving a group totally transformed the vibe for better or worse. At scale, interpersonal synchrony can tip into social contagion, which is responsible for the best and worst aspects of humanity—from functioning governments, coordinated market economies, cohesive cultures, and scientific advancement to wars, riots, persecutions, and mass hysteria. This is not to say humans are indistinct from schools of fish or murmurations of starlings. On the contrary, individuals potentially have as much power to influence as be influenced. Various techniques can help you recognize and encourage interpersonal synchrony when it’s beneficial, and disengage and reclaim yourself when it is not. A big part is noticing your feelings and questioning where they come from. Are you feeling anxious about something happening to you directly or are you upset because of something someone else is feeling or doing on- or offline? Awareness is key to breaking free of synchronies that are not working for you. 5. Be what you want replicated. Synchronized phenomena occur throughout the natural and life sciences, but research has only recently revealed the extent to which human beings synchronize and its significance. Synchrony between humans is nothing short of a superpower. Compared to other species, we are not particularly imposing, and our senses are pretty feeble. While capable of astounding feats of cognition and imagination, our brains are nevertheless limited and subject to all kinds of processing errors. But thanks to interpersonal synchrony, we can marshal and coordinate our bodies and brains to communicate, innovate, create, and succeed in ways far exceeding what we could accomplish alone. We are all tuning forks roaming the planet, picking up vibes, and finding resonance with those we encounter. It’s a truth known on some level since antiquity. Plato wrote that we are all born seeking to reunite with our missing other half, but what we are really seeking are those whose internal rhythms harmonize with our own—the people with whom we effortlessly click. And certainly, turns of phrase like being in sync, ;in tune, in step, and on the same wavelength have been part of our vernacular long before recent advances in technology revealed that they were true. Interpersonal synchrony, above all, reminds us that we are not unto ourselves in this world. We internalize one another, even those we may not know well or know at all. We can literally warm people’s hearts and get on their nerves. And we carry others’ vibes and rhythms around with us like catchy tunes that, once heard, continue to play in our heads. The instinct to sync confers a responsibility to try to be what you want replicated. Your thoughts, feelings, demeanor, and behavior do not begin, nor end, with you. Enjoy our full library of Book Bites—read by the authors!—in the Next Big Idea app. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission. View the full article

Billionaire media tycoon and pro-democracy campaigner faced up to life imprisonment on national security chargesView the full article

There is a type of business story that has become nearly cliché: A legacy brand is facing stagnating growth. Loyal customers are aging out, and new customers aren’t taking their place. So the brand reinvents itself to pull in a younger segment of the market, often by borrowing ideas from cooler competitors to seem more “on-trend.” But instead of younger and cooler, the rebrand comes off as insincere, stilted, or cringey. Worse, the brand’s older, core customers, who liked the brand as it was, are irritated by the changes. Instead of spurring new growth, the effort drives off some of the existing customers, leaving the brand worse off than when it started. This is the recent story of The Bachelor television franchise. After a two-year hiatus, ABC’s dating show returned this summer, having made changes that were designed to appeal to a younger audience. The updated Bachelor in Paradise cribbed from Love Island, its primary rival in the competitive-dating-in-bathing-suits genre, and a show beloved by the younger audiences The Bachelor wanted to attract. The changes included an aggressive, quick-cut editing style and the introduction of a cash prize for the winners. Younger consumers weren’t drawn to the new format, but previously loyal fans panned the changes in online forums, suggesting the show should have included a seizure warning. Both the ratings and viewership numbers for this season hit historic lows. Cracker Barrel’s recent woes also fit this pattern. Its “traditionalist” segment of 65-plus diners was dwindling, leading the brand to try attracting new, younger customers by updating the interiors and changing the logo. It is not clear that the changes brought in those younger diners in significant numbers. But the changes did produce an exhaustively dissected backlash from its loyal customer base, for whom, it turned out, nostalgia was a significant part of the Cracker Barrel appeal. Meanwhile, JCP’s major reinvention more than a decade ago was also driven, in part, by trying to attract younger customers with its elimination of deep discounts in favor of everyday low pricing. But the move was far more successful in driving away its older loyalists, who loved hunting for those deals. Lands’ End tried to lure in younger customers when it introduced a high-fashion line and edgier branding. Instead, they went from profits of $9M to losses of nearly $8M within a year. The desire to attract younger customers made sense for all these brands. But they each fell into the same trap: They assumed they could make changes to their offerings and branding to attract new customers without having to worry about how their current customers might react to those changes. The stewards of these brands forgot that different people want different things from the brands that serve them. While there are times when young and old consumers both want the same things from their brands, the fact is, younger customers and older customers also frequently want different things. Changing a brand to make it more appealing to younger customers may (or may not) draw in those younger customers—but it may also accidentally displease the older customers who like the brand just the way it is. In our book, The Growth Dilemma, Managing Your Brand When Different Customers Want Different Things (Harvard Business Review Press, 2025), we identify a few key strategies brands can use to manage the risk of conflict between customer segments as they grow. Here are three: 1. Create different spaces for different audiences One strategy involves carving out separate spaces within a brand—either conceptual or physical—for different customer segments. For example, many brands use multiple social media handles to communicate to different segments. Timberland has different Instagram channels for its blue-collar worker segment and its fashion segment. Starbucks has different store formats catering to those who value Starbucks as a place to get a quick and convenient coffee on-the-go (kiosk and drive-through locations), and those who value Starbucks as a place to work and socialize (its “third place” lounge locations). Some brands diffuse potential conflict between customers by creating separate “gated communities” within the brand that cater to different customer segments. Historically, Nike was great at creating sport-specific communities that were each distinct within the Nike brand. Nike basketball customers had different products, apps, advertising, and experiences than Nike runners, tennis players, or sneakerheads. Some brands create a hierarchy among their customer base, allowing a status separation among customers. This is a common path for many fashion brands that serve segments with different price sensitivities and design demands. For example, Armani serves different segments under the Giorgio Armani, Emporio Armani, and Armani Exchange sub-brands. Credit card and financial services brands often create a hierarchy of customers based on net worth and spend to tailor products and services. Escalating levels of service and benefits allow a company like American Express to simultaneously serve mass markets and elite customers without causing tension between groups with very different expectations. 2. Focus on one audience Sometimes two segments are so divergent in their preferences or identities that they simply cannot be served well under the same brand. In these cases, brands may opt to “fire” a customer segment—as Burberry did in the early 2000s after it inadvertently became popular among soccer hooligans, by discontinuing products popular among “chavs” and reducing the prominence of its iconic check pattern. In other cases, they may develop a new brand to serve a new segment. Toyota is able to successfully serve a diverse set of customers under a single brand. But management wisely realized that there were limits to how far they could stretch the Toyota brand and so introduced Lexus to serve a set of customers with a fundamentally different set of preferences. Especially in the cases of ideological conflict between customer segments (e.g., Bud Light’s attempts to be an apparent ally of the transgender community), the gulfs between customer groups may simply be too vast to span with a single brand. Some segments are best served by different brands. 3. Find common ground Perhaps the best strategy for brands looking to grow into younger segments is in looking for convergence in values and preferences across segments before the brand starts making changes. Instead of reorienting the brand to appeal to the new, hoped-for customers, brands should first look for the Venn diagram intersection among 1) preferences of existing customers, 2) preferences of the new customers, and 3) the brand’s image and history. Growth strategies that don’t satisfy all three criteria tend to fail. Consider the remarkable recent resurgence of another legacy TV franchise. Despite being around for 20 years, Dancing with the Stars has been growing in recent seasons, and attracting younger viewers in the process. DWTS didn’t pull this off by fundamentally changing what its longtime fans love about the show, but instead by innovating in areas around its successful formula. These tangential improvements have increased the draw for new, younger fans without stepping on the toes of loyalists. For its “stars,” DWTS has been increasingly turning to celebrities relevant to younger audiences, including recent Olympians, TikTok influencers, and reality TV stars. It has also created additional, meme-worthy social media content, including footage of the dancers training or goofing around backstage. This content serves as a supplemental draw to younger segments, without messing with the on-stage magic that loyal watchers love. Just like the relationships in Bachelor in Paradise, the relationships among customer segments can be nuanced and difficult to manage. Unlike the relationships in Bachelor in Paradise, the goal is not maximum drama. Knowing the rules of customer relationship management can allow brands to attract customers across generations without experiencing the backlash. View the full article

Across the country, solopreneurship is taking off. People are starting their own, one-person businesses in droves. But when it comes to who is doing all of this solopreneuring (yes, it’s a word), one-woman businesses are gaining more traction. More women are starting their own businesses than ever—whether solo or with employees. According to May 2025 data from small business platform Gusto, in the last five years, there’s been a huge leap in just how many women left their jobs to start their own business. In 2019, just 29% of new businesses were started by women. By 2024, that number was 49%. Moreover, over half (52%) of solopreneurs in the U.S. are now women. So, why are women so interested in steering their own ships? According to the May 2025 Gusto report, women crave a sense of autonomy. Almost three-quarters of women who started businesses in 2024 said they did so to have control over their own schedules. Likewise, 71% said they wanted to be their own boss. Meanwhile, men were more likely to cite earning more money as an incentive than women, with 35% pointing to increasing their income as a driving force compared to 29% of women. Female solopreneurs aren’t uninterested in money, but they do seem to deeply value making their own decisions at work. That’s true for Ana Beig, a mix-media artist and retreat host based in Austin, Texas. She tells Fast Company that autonomy isn’t just important. It’s “a condition for doing meaningful work.” For starters, she says that’s because her environment is deeply impactful when it comes to how she’s able to show up to create every day. She adds that while financial incentives do matter, they are far from what drives her to stay committed to her solo work. “I was drawn to solopreneurship because it lets me integrate work with life rather than constantly negotiating between the two. I can choose how I structure my time, how I engage emotionally, and what kinds of relationships I build through my work,” she explains. For Gigi Robison, a solopreneur with a chronic illness, who helps creators and thought leaders build brands, and was recently named one of Gen Z’s leading voices in the creator economy, becoming a solopreneur was all about having autonomy. She says having control over her work schedule enables to put her energy exactly where she needs to and to structure her day in a way that works for her life. It also enables her to redefine “success beyond someone else’s version of productivity.” Before she started her own ventures, she says she didn’t feel as if her time was nearly as well-spent. “In a traditional job, I often felt like I was spending more time proving my value than actually creating value,” she explains. “In solopreneurship, I get to focus on outcomes, impact, and building something that lasts.” There are plenty of good reasons why so many people are starting their own businesses—and doing it solo. But for women, who may be more heavily impacted by power dynamics at work, running your own operation may be a reprieve from office dynamics. According to one recent study from the University of Georgia, even women who were leaders felt constrained by gender dynamics at work. That means that women—even those who successfully climbed the corporate ladder—may still not feel a sense of autonomy. For women—who earn less on the dollar than men, are promoted less often than men, and, according to new research, less interested in promotions—solopreneurship may offer a way to build a future without having to deal with the thorny gender dynamics of corporate life. For women solopreneurs, freedom is the real draw. And it’s one that’s catching on. View the full article

Look, we all know the drill by now: You type a question into the magic AI box, and the magic AI box spits out an answer that is usually pretty good, occasionally mind-blowing, and every once in a blue moon mind-blowingly bizarre. But if you’re just treating Google Gemini like a glorified search bar, you’re leaving a lot of utility on the table. It’s sort of like buying a Swiss Army knife and only ever using the toothpick. If you want to move past the beginner phase and actually make Gemini work for you, here are four tricks that might not be immediately obvious but are surprisingly handy. Stop copy-pasting your own emails If you’re trying to summarize a long email thread or find a specific document to pull data from, your first instinct is probably to open a new tab, find the email, copy the text, go back to Gemini, paste it in, and then ask your question. No need: Gemini has “Extensions” built right in. If you want to know when your flight is or summarize a Doc, just type @ in the prompt box. You’ll see a menu pop up for Google Docs, Gmail, Drive, Maps, and other Google services. Select one, and say something like, “@Gmail find the email from Bob about the Q3 budget and summarize the main points.” It goes and finds the info, saving you from tab fatigue. If you need to turn on these extensions, here’s how. The “trust but verify” button Use AI long enough and you’ll eventually come across “hallucinations,” which is a polite way of saying the AI just made something up because it sounded good. If you’re using Gemini for important research, make sure to use the “Double-check response” feature, which can be found by clicking the three-dot icon at the bottom of a response. When you click it, Google runs a search to see if there’s content on the web to substantiate what the AI just told you. A green highlight means Google found a search result that supports the statement, while an orange highlight means Google either found content that might contradict it, or it couldn’t find a match. It’s not foolproof, but it’s a helpful extra step to take in order to make sure Google’s info isn’t too far off base. Tables and spreadsheets We’re used to chatbots just . . . chatting. But if you’re trying to make a decision, like comparing three different project management tools or deciding among five hotels for that Nashville trip, paragraphs of text are actually pretty annoying to parse. You can force Gemini to make information more digestible by telling it, for example: “Output this as a table comparing [Option A] and [Option B] based on price, reviews, and features.” It’ll organize the messy data into a clean grid. And if you’re feeling especially ambitious, you’ll notice an “Export to Sheets” icon underneath the table. One click creates a brand-new Google Sheet with all that data populated, formatted, and saved to your Google Drive. It turns cumbersome manual data entry into a single button press. Audio uploads Most people know Gemini can read text and look at pictures. But it also has ears. If you have a recording of a chaotic 45-minute meeting, a rambling lecture, or an interview you recorded on your phone, don’t waste your time listening to it at 2x speed. You can upload audio files directly into the prompt bar. Just click the plus (+) icon, select Upload files, and drop in your audio clip. Then ask for what you need: “Summarize this meeting and extract the three action items assigned to me” or “Find the timestamp where they discuss the Q3 budget,” for example. It doesn’t just transcribe; Gemini “listens” to the context and turns an hour of audio into a 30-second read. View the full article

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. My boss assigns work by pulling names out of a hat I work on a team of about 10 people. At our weekly meetings, my manager tries to assign out any new tasks. Team members usually volunteer for tasks related to their ongoing work. But when no one volunteers to take on a task, he pulls names out of a hat to see who gets assigned. These tasks aren’t always quick things; they can take a lot of time. This frustrates me so much. To me, it’s dismissive of the other work we have and just bad management. The team doesn’t really push back on it, but I’m wondering if I should. When no one volunteers to take on an assignment, I try to explain my concerns and why I can’t take it on. But then no one else chimes in, and he just goes on to draw a name at random. What do you think? And if this isn’t going to change, how do I not let this bother me? Yeah, managing by hat — as opposed to managing by, you know, looking at people’s workloads and strengths and weaknesses — is absurd. Not only does it mean that your boss is completely forfeiting the opportunity to assign projects where they make the most sense, but he’s also signaling to your team that he sees you as interchangeable, doesn’t care about distributing work equitably, and doesn’t care enough about any of it to put actual thought into it. As for how to stop it from bothering you … look at the actual impact. If it’s not resulting in significant workload inequities, then just write this off to a crappy manager and roll your eyes at it internally. But if the hat distributes work in a way that doesn’t make sense, you should feel free to speak up — as in, “My plate is really full with X and Y this week; do you want me to push those back to make room for Z or should it be assigned to someone else?” 2. Has everyone stopped responding to emails? Have people just … stopped responding to emails? Okay, maybe not everyone, and maybe not literally. But I feel like over the last year to 18 months, it’s extremely frequent that I have to send second or even third follow-up notes to get a response, mostly to external contacts (as in, not my coworkers.). And when people do reply, it seems to be increasingly common for them to wait a week or more. This has been my experience in communications with both junior-level and senior-level staff. My role, and my workplace, are corporate in nature. It’s not a sales role, so my emails are not sales-related. For the record, I’m a VP-level employee myself, so I wouldn’t chalk this up to more senior people ignoring me. Is this something you’ve noticed? Something your readers have noticed? And if so, what gives? I haven’t noticed much of it, but it could certainly be happening. If it is, my hunch is that it’s field-specific — and in particular, if you frequently deal with people in fields affected by layoffs, you might be emailing overworked people who can’t be as responsive as they used to be. I don’t think there’s a culture-wide shift happening where people in general no longer feel the need to be responsive to work emails, but I do think there are lots of things happening in the world that could be making it harder to respond as quickly. 3. Can I file for workers’ comp for an injury I got walking my dog while working from home? I’m a remote employee, and my job requires four in-office visits per year to HQ. They cover travel and expenses while I’m there. Following my Q3 visit, I got home from the airport, ready to get back to work. (We’re supposed to work on travel days if we can.) However, my dog, who had been home alone while my husband was at work, needed to go out. While walking her, I tripped and broke my wrist. I ended up spending the afternoon in the ER rather than working. My husband suggested I file a workers’ comp claim because I had traveled for work and was supposed to be “on duty.” To be fair, my travel exhaustion did play a role in the fall, but it didn’t seem to be workers’ comp worthy. How does workers’ comp work for remote workers? What would qualify as an “on the job injury” when “the job” is at your house? Good try, husband. But no. Remote work is covered under workers’ comp if the injury occurs while your’e completing a work task during work hours. In most cases, the remote employee has the burden of proof and needs to demonstrate that they were acting in the interest of their employer at the time of the injury. Walking your dog is not going to qualify. 4. Does my boss want a written record of a mistake to justify firing me? I have been in my current role for about 18 months and have nearly eight years of experience in the industry and 15 years in my field. My role is fairly specialized and requires project management, QA/QC, and hard and fast deadlines. My company provides services to other companies, and when they need a service, they issue a request for information or bids. Recently, a client asked us to provide a statement as a supplementary response to something we bid on. This statement was to cover a requirement that was requested in the initial ask, but had been overlooked by not only myself, but a large group of people. After discussing this with my manager and ensuring them I will be more vigilant and adopt a better system for compliance, my grandboss wants a written explanation as to why the mistake happened. This is not the first time my grandboss has requested a written statement, and this is the first time I made a mistake like this. Is this normal or is my grandboss compiling information to justify letting me go? I feel it’s not normal to have to provide a written statement when mistakes happen as we are all human and I already discussed the issue in detail with my direct manager. I really like this company but I’m getting toxic vibes. I don’t see any reason to assume your grandboss is complying information to justify letting you go. It’s possible, but I wouldn’t jump to that without way more signs of it. Rather, it sounds like she just wants something in writing about how the mistake happened. Maybe that’s because she needs to cover her ass with her own boss, or maybe she thinks putting it in writing will make you and your boss take it more seriously, or maybe she functions better when she has stuff written down so she can consult it if it ever comes up in the future, or who knows what. I don’t think it’s particularly toxic on its own. 5. One accepted(ish) offer, two more interview processes After being laid off three months ago, I received an offer from Company A, which I accepted via email last Sunday. The offer is a strong one, albeit in an industry I’m not particularly passionate about and for a role I can do well but I’m not super excited about. My tentative start date is in about a week. On Monday, Company B reached out to schedule an interview. On Wednesday, Company C reached out for an interview. Both Companies B and C are in industries I’m much more interested in, for roles I’m excited about, and I have personal connections to both, which I think may give me a strong chance of being a finalist in both interview processes — though I’m aware nothing is guaranteed! The interviews with B and C are the results of networking I did early on in my job search, but results have just come about in the past week. On Friday, the hiring manager at Company A sent an email that indicated he somehow did not receive the signed offer letter I sent on Sunday. I double checked: I did send the signed offer letter, but because there were two email chains going with the hiring manager on both of them, I think he somehow missed it. I’d like to see the interview processes through with Companies B and C, but without compromising the offer from Company A. Do I: 1) Start working with Company A in about a week, and then resign if I receive a better offer. 2) Ask A if I can postpone my start date. (I anticipate the processes with B and C will take at least another month, and that seems like an unreasonable amount of time to ask for.) 3) Decline the offer from A. If I don’t receive offers from B and C, I could reach out to A and let them know circumstances have changed, and find out if there is still opportunity for me to join their company. 4) Some other option(s) I’m not seeing? In the current job market, it seems risky not to accept Company A’s offer. I have some temporary work in the meantime, but the sooner I have full-time work, the better it will be for my financial situation. The salaries at A and B are comparable; C’s is higher. All three offer strong benefits packages. If you don’t get B or C, would you regret having turned down A? If so, accept A with the existing start date. If you get offered one of the others and accept it, you can explain it fell in your lap and you can’t pass it up. It will burn the bridge with A, but it’s worth doing if you strongly prefer B or C. The post boss assigns work by pulling names out of a hat, has everyone stopped emailing, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article

Regulator seeks to tackle ‘drastic under-reporting’ of market liquidityView the full article