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The failure of business to join universities in the fight for academic research is short-sighted as well as cowardlyView the full article

Barbara Bouza went from architecture to Imagineering and back again. A trained architect who spent nearly 19 years working on building projects for the world’s largest architecture and design firm, Gensler, Bouza made an unconventional career pivot in 2020 when she became president of Walt Disney Imagineering, the famed division of the Disney corporation focused on theme parks, experiences, and future technologies. After four years of navigating pandemic closures, updating theme parks around the world, and debuting new cruise ships, she’s now coming back to her roots in architecture and taking on a new role as executive director of market strategies and growth at the architecture and engineering firm CannonDesign. With this unique background, she has some ideas about how the architecture industry can broaden its approach by creating multifunctional spaces where people can live, work, and play. Her time at Imagineering has shown her that designing places for people requires thinking about the wide range of different users of a space—whether within the confines of a theme park or in more of a real-world setting like a workplace or an educational facility. But a theme park is also a real place. Going from working on architecture projects for Gensler to theme park projects for Disney was less of a jump than most people would think, Bouza says. “You go out to a job site at a park for an attraction, and it’s very similar. Similar consultants, similar contractors, but not so much steel that is straight. It is all over the place because we’re turning people upside down. But they’re the same ideas around safety and quality,” she adds. “The process is very similar, but with a lot more disciplines integrated.” The approach, though, is much different than the way a traditional architecture firm works. Within Imagineering, Bouza says there were between 100 and 120 different disciplines that might get involved in any given project. She sees the opportunity for an architecture firm like CannonDesign to include more types of expertise on its projects. Hiring Bouza is part of the firm’s strategic long-term vision to diversify the services it offers clients, beyond the few years it takes to design and build a building. “The silo-ization in the profession is a missed opportunity to really address some big problems with our clients,” says Brad Lukanic, CannonDesign’s CEO. He says Bouza will help the firm figure out what new design services it can offer, and help clients to “articulate a very cohesive vision for things that really aren’t known yet because technologies are evolving, and experiences are evolving.” There is some precedent for Bouza’s career shift. In 2023, Bob Weis, Bouza’s predecessor at Imagineering, made a similar jump to architecture, joining Gensler as its global immersive experience design leader. Bouza’s new role won’t be about bringing Imagineering into architecture, but rather exploring the ways that architecture and design services should be changing to meet new client demands. She says that requires thinking more expansively about how a place can serve people and create a venue for new ideas. “Being at Disney was like getting a PhD in this idea that there are other aspects of what we call the built environment,” she says. Pulling on her Imagineering experience of developing a new cruise ship, Wish, and launching World of Frozen at Hong Kong Disneyland, Bouza says she learned a lot about designing for the varied experiences of every participant in a space, from the families on vacation to the performers roaming the theme park to the maintenance crews working behind the scenes. She also embraces the immersive nature of the Disney approach and sees ways that architecture projects can do more to engage their users beyond the basics of the design brief. “[Imagineering] is so story driven. And that’s one area that I really want to see more in architecture,” she says. “I think the storytelling out there can be very strong. I think the execution of the work is strong. But I think where we really need to look is the science behind it, because guest behavior, consumer behavior, is really evolving.” After years building very different kinds of projects, Bouza says she’s happy to be back in the architecture world. “It’s like riding a bike,” she says. View the full article

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In the days before a recent ballot referendum in Seattle that would determine the future of social housing in the city, large tech companies spent big. Amazon and Microsoft, both of which are headquartered in the Seattle metropolitan area, each donated $100,000, and opponents of a tax to fund social housing spent a combined $780,000 in the lead-up to the February 11 vote. Despite this, the vote on a corporate tax to fund the city’s social housing authority won, with 63% of voters supporting it. In 2023, voters had already resoundingly approved the social housing authority, agreeing that a new entity would be created to acquire and construct mixed-income housing and keep it permanently affordable and under the city’s ownership. But this February, voters were asked to return to the polls to determine how to fund the authority—or whether it would be funded at all. The first question on the ballot asked if voters approved of funding the new authority using payroll taxes. Next, voters had to choose whether they wanted a new 5% payroll tax on individual compensation above $1,000,000, paid by companies, or to use an existing payroll tax that mostly funds affordable housing. The new tax could bring in $52 million of funding each year for social housing. The second option would appropriate $10 million a year for five years that had already been set aside. The city’s big tech companies had no interest in paying a new tax. In addition to contributions from Amazon and Microsoft, Seattle’s Chamber of Commerce donated $40,000 and T-Mobile donated $20,000 to derail an additional tax on companies. But according to Tiffani McCoy of House Our Neighbors, a Seattle nonprofit that has been one of the lead supporters of the social housing authority, the influx of spending actually hurt Big Tech’s case. “Frankly, Amazon donating was a godsend for us,” McCoy says. “We capitalized on the fact that Amazon and Microsoft were dumping in $100,000, and we made clear to voters that these corporations don’t want you to have social housing.” McCoy says the campaign to fund the social housing authority with a corporate tax sent mailers, paid for digital advertising, and made social media posts that played up the tech companies’ donations. Supporters also held a rally in front of Amazon’s Seattle headquarters. “There’s a lot of resentment toward tech billionaires who are part of the The President regime here in Seattle,” she says. The win suggests a way forward for organizers on the local level to take the housing crisis into their own hands. Persistent federal inaction and recent drastic attacks to HUD have provided motivation. “We needed to The President-proof our housing sector,” McCoy says. “And I think that helps because there’s mass opposition to what he’s doing.” The vote also showcased a groundswell of resentment toward Big Tech that has been percolating among voters. The authority will initially be modest in its ambitions, as it won’t have funding to develop housing anywhere near the scope or scale of the private market. The plan is to build or preserve 300 units a year, once funding comes in, according to the social housing development authority—but it will own those units and will be able to issue its own debt. The first step, proponents say, is to make sure the money actually comes through. What will Seattle’s social housing authority do? The initial ballot referendum to build a social housing authority in Seattle passed in February 2023 with 57% of the vote. It created a public development authority, a type of government-owned private entity that can take out debt by issuing bonds. The term “social housing” has been used broadly in recent years to refer to types of housing that are not subject to the speculative market, including public housing, forms of subsidized affordable housing, and housing owned by community land trusts. Seattle’s referendum referred to social housing as “publicly owned and financed mixed-income housing intended to be permanently affordable.” According to the housing authority’s charter, that means it will acquire or build housing and rent it to people making between 0% and 120% of the area median income, with rents never exceeding 30% of a tenant’s income. The median income for a family of four in Seattle is about $160,000, according to the Seattle Housing Authority. That means families in properties owned by the authority could be paying between $0 and about $4,700 a month, depending on their income. Since the authority’s properties are not meant to be resold, it could provide a modicum of stability to lifelong renters as they age. Market-rate properties are meant to increase in value every year, but seniors with fixed incomes don’t see their pay increase as they age. For decades, working Americans in general haven’t seen their pay increase significantly. The authority’s charter also creates a mediation provision for tenants to prevent evictions: According to the charter, “residents MUST be afforded opportunities for restorative justice conflict resolution prior to being subject to eviction procedures.” “There’s not the pressure of somebody’s investment that is in cross purposes to their ability to stay there,” says Julie Howe, a Seattle Social Housing board member. The authority will issue its own debt in the form of bonds and create a revolving loan fund, lending itself money for construction and acquisition that would be paid back through rents, with higher rents subsidizing lower rents. Debt is a large and under-discussed factor in the cost of housing, as developers often price units to pay back loans. By using its own funds for construction, the authority will be able to reduce interest payments that can cause rents to balloon. The authority will be governed by a board with 13 members, including 7 appointed by the Seattle Renters’ Commission, an advisory board that consults with the mayor and city council. They will be mainly focused on the authority’s fiscal responsibilities and making sure it remains aligned with its mission. While public housing is notoriously underfunded in the United States, the result of a bipartisan aversion to government-owned housing, McCoy says the mixed-income approach that Seattle is taking with its own development authority might prove more sustainable, as it doesn’t require as much direct subsidy. The authority’s approach is also less convoluted than building housing using Low Income Housing Tax Credits, which requires multiple layers of financing on top of the federally issued credits. But there still needs to be a dedicated revenue stream to staff the development authority, to purchase and construct housing, and to issue bonds. The state law establishing public development authorities does not allow them to impose taxes. And the 2023 ballot referendum was limited to creating the authority; a dedicated funding stream was always going to require a second ballot measure. Some opponents of the social housing authority, which includes not just big tech but affordable housing developers, believed that the new ballot measure was an opportunity to relitigate whether the authority should be established at all. “They’re really looking for a do-over,” McCoy said prior to the February vote. Taxing the wealthy Rather than opposing the authority outright, opponents opted to put option 1B on the ballot to essentially recreate the affordable housing system that exists in Seattle, with no new funding. That option would have effectively made the social housing development authority moot: the city’s affordable housing fund that it would have pulled from can only go toward people making 80% of the area median income or lower, which means that the authority would not be able to cross-subsidize rents. According to Howe, the board member, this would have put the agency in conflict with affordable housing developers who rely on the existing funding stream. “That would essentially go against how we were founded,” Howe says. Suresh Chanmugam, a tech worker organizing with the group Tech for Housing, says tech companies don’t mind Washington having one of the most regressive tax codes in the nation. Because the state has no income tax, most taxes are derived from consumer sales and property, regressive taxes where poorer people have an effective tax rate much higher than the wealthiest. Chanmugam believes rich companies use the lack of an income tax as a pretext to pay their employees less than they would in other states. He says that dozens of members of the Tech for Housing coalition knocked on doors, tabled at farmers markets and phone banked across the city. “When people hear, ‘Hey, do you want to tax companies to fund social housing?’, people say yes, because there’s near universal appeal in Seattle for making big businesses pay their fair share in taxes,” Chanmugam says. He says he personally spoke to about 300 voters while canvassing and only received pushback from one or two people. It makes sense that tech workers have opposing priorities to their employers: While tech workers are typically high earners, many would benefit from the social housing authority, which would ensure that people making 120% of AMI, or around $190,000 for a family of four, would pay only 30% of their wages toward rent in units it owns. That would greatly offset any pass-through cost put on their wages by tech companies. According to campaign finance records, Microsoft and Amazon were tied for the highest donations to the campaign for option 1B—using existing tax—at $100,000 each. It’s not the first time that spending from tech companies has backfired in Seattle. In 2019, Amazon and the Chamber of Commerce supported a slate of City Council candidates, most of whom lost. The corporate tax was also opposed by the mayor; ads for option 1B, which would use existing funds, had pictures of his face on it. One opposition mailer included the mayor’s face and signature and the message, “I strongly urge you to vote for Prop 1B. We need to build and operate social housing the smart way. 1B uses existing city funds, and has all the voter accountability and transparency that 1A doesn’t have.” The mailer notes that 1A “builds homes for the poorest city residents.” Only two current city council members support the corporate tax, according to McCoy. “Our city council has taken a very reactionary turn,” McCoy says. But the campaign used the political opposition to their advantage, citing the mayor’s stance in opposition mailers and messaging. Money being held up Despite the measure’s success, supporters say the city is still lagging on funding the authority. The new payroll tax is retroactive to January 1, 2025, but the city told supporters of the corporate tax the system to bill for it will take a year to build out, so that money won’t be available for the authority until early 2026. In the past, the city has used an “interfund loan,” borrowing money from its existing funds to process a new tax right away. McCoy says the city didn’t initially appear willing to take similar measures to pay for the social housing authority—though the mayor’s office later contacted the authority to discuss a bridge loan. A spokesperson for the mayor’s office says the city offered the loan to the authority to keep it afloat until the payroll tax revenue comes in next year. “We have not determined the amount of the bridge loan yet, and any funding would require approval from the City’s Debt Management Policy Advisory Committee and the City Council,” the spokesperson said in an email. Additionally, the original February 2023 ballot measure required the city to pay for staff for the authority for 18 months, but supporters say the city has only paid for 12 months. The spokesperson at the mayor’s office says that the city had disbursed all $850,000 of its contractually obligated startup costs, with the final payment on March 4. Roberto Jimenez, CEO of Seattle Social Housing (SSH), told Shelterforce Next City, “The mayor interprets the charter and contract differently than does SSH. I believe we will reach agreement.” Jimenez says his recent conversation with the mayor’s office was positive. He says the authority has already started looking at opportunities to purchase housing. That includes real estate deals that have stalled because buyers have had trouble accessing financing. He says construction is getting harder to do because of rising interest rates and the uncertainty of The President’s tariffs. But ideally, the authority will be in a position to build small and midsize housing that larger developers now avoid because larger multifamily buildings are more financially feasible. But first the money needs to arrive. “Things could happen very quickly if the money gets freed up,” he says. “The challenge that we’re facing right now is we don’t have the resources to hire staff yet, and we don’t have the resources to really pursue analysis of these real estate options.” Despite the hostility to the social housing development authority and its funding mechanisms from the political class, voters have now affirmed that they want it, twice. “I think people don’t need to be afraid of it,” Jimenez says. “I think it’s an alternative form of housing that makes a lot of sense and has worked around the world. And it’s becoming much more utilized in the U.S. over the last couple of years. You’re going to see a lot more of it.” —By Roshan Abraham, Next City This story was originally copublished by Next City and Shelterforce. View the full article

When Formula 1 superstar Lewis Hamilton announced in December that he would be leaving the Mercedes team for Ferrari after 246 Grands Prix, 84 victories, and 6 drivers’ championships in 12 seasons, much of the focus was on Hamilton’s future plans. Just as compelling was the empty seat Hamilton was leaving at Mercedes. His departure triggered an intense internal process for the automaker—the search for a successor. Many of the discussions and debates that resulted in Mercedes choosing young Italian driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli played out over messaging app WhatsApp. That process is now the subject of a new one-hour documentary on Netflix called The Seat, dropping on May 5. Directed by Kyle Thrash, and produced by RadicalMedia, it’s also a WhatsApp commercial. The Meta-owned app is a producer, and created the project with its content partner Modern Arts. WhatsApp’s global head of marketing, Vivian Odior, says the company decided to create the doc in order to fully show how the app is often part of critical inflection points in its users’ lives. “When it comes to telling those stories, we believe in giving the space to properly unpack the role we play and share the full story of our user base,” says Odior. “We don’t believe we should be limited by ad formats. Storytelling allows us to occupy a unique position in the hearts of users and pushes beyond the functional role we play.” This isn’t some ad-tiered piece of content. It’s a legitimate addition to the streamer’s F1 library. Many marketers will be shaking with jealousy or excitement, inspired to make their own move into entertainment. But be forewarned, creating content that can go head-to-head with other films and TV is not for the faint of heart, nor is it for those searching for a formula. Even WhatsApp knows this is a unique brand opportunity. Make your own luck WhatsApp has long been a brand partner to the Mercedes-AMG Petronas F1 team, and last year Modern Arts created a short film on Hamilton called Push Push. It chronicled the ups and downs of his racing career, as well as his personal struggles with dyslexia and bullying, woven into a conversation he has with a group of teens today about their own lives. That helped build the relationship and trust with Mercedes to make The Seat possible. Modern Arts has a track record of telling compelling stories around the platform, like its award-winning, 26-minute doc We Are Ayenda, about WhatsApp’s role in helping the Afghanistan Women’s Youth National Football Team escape the Taliban. Zac Ryder, the agency’s cofounder and co-chief creative officer, says that made it a lot easier to start figuring out a story to be told around privacy with the Mercedes team. “It just so happens that not only is WhatsApp a sponsor of the team, but the entire Mercedes team literally runs on WhatsApp,” Ryder says. “You very rarely ever send an email. It’s all done on WhatsApp. They have hundreds of WhatsApp groups, and that’s how their entire team is organized, from little details around traveling to big things like engineering and car designs. It’s all shared across WhatsApp.” In theory, this sounds like a formula for the greatest product demo video ever made. But Formula 1 teams are known to be about as forthcoming with secrets as the Pentagon. Ryder says Mercedes saw the value in giving the film access to its internal process, with the goal of helping F1 fans fall in love with Antonelli, a relatively unknown 18-year-old driver. For WhatsApp, the goal was to tell a privacy story by showing how well it functions in high-stakes situations. “Our job was to figure out how those two things can coexist to make something that was going to be compelling,” Ryder says. No one formula It’s a unique situation for a brand to have its product at the center of a major sports story. Ryder says the strategy quickly became to make the project revolve around trust. The Mercedes team was trusting its F1 driver’s seat to Antonelli, but in the process it was also showing its trust in WhatsApp as a communications platform. In a typical commercial edit, marketers will obsess over how many times the product is mentioned, or the product appears, or the logo is flashed. Modern Arts CEO Brooke Stites says the film is not about that because the brand and its product are so intertwined with the story itself. As a marketing investment, Stites says the film cost about as much as it would to make and buy ad time for a 60-second commercial. Here, the entire budget went into the production because being on Netflix means there isn’t the need to pay for advertising space on TV and online. “It’s a totally different model,” says Stites. “It’s not cheap, but it’s what you’re going to spend on a 60-second spot that you then have to spend 10 times more to buy places that force people to watch it. Everyone who watches F1 content on Netflix is going to get served our film.” The Seat is not a paid advertising arrangement with Netflix; it was acquired by the streamer in the same way other film and television content is acquired. Other major streamers were vying for the film, but Netflix’s connection to the long-running docuseries Formula 1: Drive to Survive made it the ideal home. For some time brands and ad agencies have been putting “make a film for Netflix” in their marketing briefs, but the reality is, it’s not that simple. Stites says there are some critical ingredients a project needs in order to get anywhere near Netflix or any other top-tier streamer. “You have to have an amazing story and quality of craft,” she says. “All these streamers are looking at it and asking, ‘Is this something that’s adding value to my audience? Is this something that my viewers are going to actually want to engage with?’ That was a big part of the F1 piece.” For other brands interested in this type of storytelling, Stites has a piece of advice: Tell a compelling story that involves your brand, don’t just tell your brand story. Every brand wants to tap into culture. To tell stories people really want to hear, you need to find the stories in culture that authentically include your brand instead of trying to force-feed your brand into culture. “We’re not telling a story about WhatsApp. It’s not about the brand,” says Stites. “Stories involving brands already exist in culture that are really actually very interesting, and people are willing and wanting to engage with them. Tell a story that people are going to care about, versus starting from a place of ‘Let’s tell a brand story.’” View the full article

SEO legend Todd Friesen names seven SEO fundamentals for winning in AI search, and it’s still called SEO The post SEO Rockstar Names 7 SEO Fundamentals To Win In AI Search appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Figure for period before US president announced sweeping levies surpasses expectationsView the full article

President Donald The President’s first 100 days of his second term in office have been marked by whipsawing tariff policies; declarations that handicap his own goals; confusion as federal workers are fired, rehired, and fired again; and government officials quitting. In other words: chaos. And the next 100 days will likely be full of chaos, too. Some of this is intentional, like the rapid clip of executive orders, DOGE’s assault on federal workers, and the spate of illegal deportations. This “flooding the zone” strategy was developed by The President’s first-term adviser Steve Bannon, who has remarked on The President’s ability to “overwhelm” Democrats and the media with an onslaught of actions. This bombardment of activity, much of which is unconstitutional, has made it difficult for lawmakers and courts to keep up with The President. But when they’re able to, they’re often ruling against him, showing that The President’s directives crumble under the law. In February, over one 90-minute span, three separate federal judges delivered legal setbacks to The President—blocking the administration from freezing federal grants and loans, ordering the administration to pay foreign aid-related money it owed, and halting The President’s executive order suspending refugee admissions and funding. In just the past week, judges—both liberal and conservative—ruled against The President in 11 different lawsuits. And these are just some of the setbacks. Outside of the courts, when The President gets pushback, he has backtracked on his comments or switched course. The President threatened to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell, but when that prompted a major stock sell-off, he told reporters he had “no intention” of doing so. After issuing 145% tariffs on China, spurring concerns about a recession, he told reporters that “145% is very high and it won’t be that high,” and that the tariffs will “come down substantially.” The The President administration took aim at Harvard University, threatening to cut off federal funding and investigating them for permitting antisemitism. When the elite university stood up to him—saying no government should dictate what private universities can teach, who they can hire, or what topics they can pursue—the administration once again walked back their comments; it blamed a “mistake” for setting off that confrontation. There’s been disarray and turnover among government officials, too. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has been caught in multiple controversies for his use of Signal to discuss military attacks. Last week, Hegseth’s chief of staff left that role following “friction” between him and other senior advisers, and also after facing questions about how the Pentagon is being managed under Hegseth. Some longtime government workers have also resigned—including a Treasury Department official, a director at the Food and Drug Administration, and the acting Social Security Administration commissioner—in protest of the The President administration’s actions, including those of DOGE. (More than 20 DOGE workers have also resigned.) Others have been forced out or fired by the administration, though some of those action were unlawful—including The President’s termination of National Labor Relations Board member Gwynne Wilcox. Turnover was also a hallmark of The President’s first term: By 2018, just 14 months into his first term, The President had replaced four Cabinet members, outpacing any first-term president in the past 100 years. By 2019, he fired his third national security adviser, another record. He also ran through multiple communications directors, including Anthony Scaramucci, who lasted just 10 days. Per the Brookings Institution, the total first-term turnover of his “A-team” (including senior advisers) reached 92%. The President’s actions have also seemed to run counter to his own purported goals. By clawing back renewable energy projects, he’s hurting his own aim of increasing American energy production. By stoking fears of a recession with his economic actions, he’s made it less profitable for oil companies to boost production, despite his “drill, baby, drill” goal. The President is also frequently contradictory; in just one example, he released an Earth Day statement about reducing global emissions, while also advocating for the increased use of coal and hobbling climate action broadly. The President’s “flood the zone” or “shock and awe” strategies are intended for maximum chaos, aimed outward to disarm and overwhelm his opposition. But other examples show a different kind of chaos, an internal disorder he perhaps can’t quite control. Already, The President’s approval rating has fallen to 39%, down from 45% in February, and Americans feel worse about the economy now than they did a month ago. Almost half of poll respondents would give him a failing grade for his first 100 days. Though the The President administration has largely followed the policies outlined by Project 2025, it has also been clear that The President will waver on some things in the face of opposition. One former National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) communications worker said in a recent press briefing that the administration will measure the uproar to canceled government contracts, and if there’s enough blowback, they’ll end up approving the funding. The President’s relationships with wealthy advisers have also influenced his actions, like when he shilled for Tesla on the White House lawn. All this makes it even harder to know what to expect in the next 100 days, or six months, or three years. “A lot of this is not really an agenda, and more sort of random impulses by individuals,” said Jesse Young, former chief of staff to climate envoy John Podesta, during that same press briefing. “He doesn’t really seem particularly well coordinated.” Young pointed to how the State Department recently fired Pete Marocco, a The President appointee who was in charge of dismantling USAID, as an example of this lack of coordination. That firing caused blowback against Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who had clashed with Marocco. Some say Rubio disliked Marocco’s “bulldozer” style, while Marocco allies say Rubio was obstructionist. Per Politico, Marocco’s firing was described by one White House official as “the first MAGA world killing from inside the White House.” What that means for the future of the foreign aid isn’t clear, but it hints at how senior leaders under the The President administration may find themselves fired or caught in scandal, or may resign because of internal conflicts. And that means more chaos going forward. “The agenda and the policy of the administration will shift a lot as they lose people,” Young says. “It’s just going to be enormously unpredictable.” View the full article

Since its inception in 1965, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has enforced antidiscrimination laws and acted as the first line of defense for Americans who experience workplace discrimination on the basis of race, gender, religion, age, disability, or sexual orientation. Even while facing a shrinking budget and staffing constraints, the agency has managed to secure significant payouts for workers who have been the target of discrimination. In 2024, the EEOC recovered nearly $700 million for about 21,000 workers, a sum far beyond its $455 million budget. The past year also saw an uptick in the number of discrimination charges fielded by the EEOC, an increase of about 9% from the year prior to over 88,500 charges. Over the past few months, however, President The President has taken multiple steps to undermine the authority and independence of the EEOC. Presidents typically allow commissioners of federal agencies to serve out their terms, regardless of their political affiliation. But just days into his presidency, The President fired two EEOC commissioners—Jocelyn Samuels and Charlotte Burrows, who was chair of the agency under President Biden—before their term limits were up. In doing so, he eliminated the Democratic majority and left the agency without a three-person quorum. (Samuels has filed a lawsuit contesting her termination.) Without a quorum, the EEOC cannot vote to issue new regulations or guidance or revise existing regulations or guidance. The agency also cannot pursue certain types of litigation or systemic cases of discrimination. A new acting chair Andrea Lucas, the new acting chair of the EEOC and a conservative voice known for her criticisms of diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in the workplace, has furthered the president’s anti-DEI agenda since being instated. Former EEOC officials like Jenny Yang, a partner at workers’ rights law firm Outten & Golden and onetime EEOC chair, have been alarmed by The President’s influence over the agency’s priorities. “It’s really an unprecedented and quite radical shift from pursuing the historic mission of the EEOC—which was to advance equal opportunity for everyone and to ensure employers prevent and remedy discrimination—to one that is really turning our civil rights laws on their head and targeting employers for taking efforts to prevent discrimination,” Yang says. “[The EEOC is] seeming to suggest that its mission is actually only focused on some workers that have the kinds of claims that this administration thinks are worthy.” (The EEOC did not respond to a request for comment for this story.) As she stepped into the role of acting chair in January, Lucas suggested that the EEOC had not thoroughly investigated certain types of discrimination. “I look forward to restoring evenhanded enforcement of employment civil rights laws for all Americans,” she said in a statement. “In recent years, this agency has remained silent in the face of multiple forms of widespread, overt discrimination.” Lucas went on to note that her priorities would be in line with The President’s executive orders and would include “rooting out unlawful DEI-motivated race and sex discrimination” and “defending the biological and binary reality of sex and related rights, including women’s rights to single‑sex spaces at work.” Alleged overreach Lucas has executed on those priorities in the months since, issuing a document on DEI-related discrimination that defines what constitutes an “unlawful” DEI initiative and addressing questions like whether a DEI training could create a hostile work environment. In a particularly controversial move, Lucas sent letters to 20 law firms in March asking for details on their DEI-related employment practices, specifically flagging diversity fellowships and employee resource groups in some cases. Yang and other former EEOC officials have described this move as a clear overreach and beyond the scope of a commissioner’s authority, even outlining their concerns in a letter addressed to Lucas. (A group of law students has also brought a lawsuit against the EEOC over its inquiries to law firms.) “It was really just stunning and frightening to see such a blatant disregard of Title VII statutory language because the commission only has authority as enumerated by Congress,” Yang says. “The commission’s authority stems from opening an investigation of a charge. But there’s no authority to ask employers for sensitive information not through the charge process.” Part of the reason for that, she points out, is a confidentiality provision that ensures privacy as the EEOC collects information related to the charge. While the EEOC may have lacked the authority to send those letters, four law firms have already reached settlement agreements with the agency in response to the inquiries, even promising to drop the term DEI and committing to “merit-based” employment practices. “It seems like these letters were really an attempt to intimidate the firms into voluntarily dropping any efforts that they might have been engaged in to advance equal opportunity in the workplace,” says Katie Sandson, the senior counsel for education and workplace justice at the National Women’s Law Center. Shifting agency priorities Beyond explicitly targeting DEI programs, multiple reports indicate that the EEOC has already started deprioritizing charges related to gender identity. EEOC employees have reportedly been instructed to classify charges of gender identity discrimination as low priority, a category typically intended for charges that lack merit. The agency is also reportedly dismissing lawsuits that involve discrimination against transgender and gender-nonconforming workers, citing The President’s executive order that recognizes only two biological sexes. Other reports have found that EEOC judges are being asked to stop hearing cases that involve allegations of discrimination over gender identity. A number of EEOC employees have reportedly left the agency since Lucas took over, according to The New York Times, in part due to concerns that the agency has been politicized; some employees, like administrative judge Karen Ortiz, have publicly pushed back on the new directives and refused to stop evaluating cases. A new executive order handed down by The President just last week could put more pressure on the EEOC to dismiss certain cases outright, Yang says. The order challenges the theory of disparate impact liability, which refers to when someone is treated differently on the basis of protected characteristics like race and gender—the concept behind countless discrimination cases. The President instructed the EEOC to “take appropriate action” on all investigations or suits that involve a theory of disparate impact. “It could be a criminal background screen, pay equity issue, or hiring discrimination,” Yang says. “It’s likely, based on that executive order, that all of those pending charges are just going to be dismissed rather than investigated, and that will have a significant impact on many workers.” A changing footprint Workers who turn to the EEOC could also face more hurdles if the agency shuts down eight field offices that have been marked for lease termination by the Department of Government Efficiency—a concern that Democrats in Congress have also raised in a letter to Lucas. “Field offices play a really important role in the EEOC,” Sandson says. “For many workers, they’re the first point of contact with the EEOC in their own communities, and it’s where they go when they want to pursue an action. They investigate these cases, they do intakes, they do outreach and education events. Closing those offices would just be another action that would really undermine the EEOC’s ability to serve workers across the country.” The EEOC is often the sole option for workers who face discrimination on the job, particularly those in low-wage jobs who can’t afford to hire a lawyer on a contingency basis. But that could change if the agency is now deprioritizing certain types of employment discrimination. “Many workers will have no recourse,” Yang says. “The private bar can step in, in some cases, but there are many other workers who won’t be able to vindicate their rights. Laws require enforcement to have meaning, and this is just a giant step backwards for equal opportunity. I worry that many workers won’t know where to go.” View the full article

Floor tiles designed to block cellphone signals. Special window film to ruin the photos of overhead drones. A bevy of hidden electronic jamming devices. This might sound like the arsenal of a high-tech spy, but it’s actually just a few of the trappings required to keep a conclave secret in 2025. In the wake of Pope Francis’s death and funeral this weekend, the Catholic Church is now in a high-stakes race to prepare for the papal conclave, the traditional ceremony that will determine the next pope. On May 7, around 135 Roman Catholic cardinals will be sequestered in the Sistine Chapel for a series of ballot votes to decide who will inherit leadership of the church—a process that can take anywhere from two days to several weeks. The conclave is designed to be a highly secretive process, wherein the outside world is entirely ignorant to the discussions happening inside the Sistine Chapel, and the cardinals themselves likewise have no connection to the outside world. However, with all of the technology available in 2025 (like drones, AI, and advanced microphones), maintaining that secrecy is much more difficult than it was in 2005, when cellphones were first banned. It doesn’t help that thousands of conclave followers are turning the event into a gambling opportunity, betting their hard-earned cash on the event’s outcome and making the public even more ravenous for a glimpse inside the chapel walls. To prepare for this highly publicized event, the Vatican is currently in the process of a design overhaul of the Sistine Chapel to host its temporary residents—and to keep information tightly contained. Jamming devices, armed guards, and high-tech floor tiles Right now, much of what we know about the Vatican’s conclave security measures comes from reports on the last conclave back in 2013. That year, fears surrounding potential leaks through hidden devices or internet signal were a serious concern, especially after an unfortunate incident in 2005 when a German cardinal reportedly accidently leaked the conclave’s papal choice before the official announcement. To prevent any similar oversights in 2013, the Vatican disabled its internet signal by using jamming devices that prevented messages from any device transmitting information in or out of the chapel’s walls. There was a rumor that the jamming devices were placed in the floorboards, which was ultimately dispelled by the Reverend Thomas Rosica. “They won’t work if you put them there,” Rosica told reporters. Instead, he said, the jamming devices were installed high up on the walls, “like a shield on an airplane.” At the time, veteran Vatican journalist Andrea Tornielli, who is currently the editorial director of the Holy See publication Vatican News, reported that the Vatican’s anti-bugging technology took the form of a Faraday cage inside the Sistine Chapel, the Santa Marta residence, and Synod Hall, where pre-conclave meetings took place. A Faraday cage is a kind of enclosure that prevents the transmission of electromagnetic waves by surrounding a targeted area with an electrically conducting material. Further security measures at the last conclave included privacy film on all windows to prevent any drone photography, rigorous checks for hidden devices inside the chapel and on the cardinals themselves, and an elite force of guards armed with heavy weapons. This time around, information on the Vatican’s security plans is not yet widely available. However, there is one detail that’s already emerged. According to an interview with NPR religion correspondent Jason DeRose today, “The floor being installed in the Sistine Chapel right now has special cellphone-blocking technology to keep inside information in and outside information out.” Fast Company has reached out to the Vatican for more information on new security measures, and will update this story accordingly. Because insight on the cardinals’ decision cannot be transferred to the public via the internet, they will instead use a tried-and-true method: smoke. Each day that the cardinals do not reach a decision, black smoke will issue from a chimney at the Sistine Chapel. When the choice is made, the smoke will be white. Per a report from the Associated Press, the Vatican is currently working on installing a new chimney to ensure that all of the cardinals’ ballots are properly burned. Meanwhile, a second chimney installed beside it will issue the ceremonial black or white smoke. View the full article

A new partnership between music creation platform BandLab and Sony is set to bring users production tools that are aimed at making independent musicians competitive with big-budget artists. Starting this summer, BandLab will integrate Sony’s spatial sound technology, 360 Reality Audio, directly into its song-creation app—allowing the songwriters and producers who use it to build immersive songs on their smartphones, using any headphones. “A lot of these creators don’t have access to expensive equipment and gear,” says Jordy Freed, who leads brand, business development and strategy for Sony’s personal entertainment business. “When we look at 360 [Reality Audio] and some of the other technologies we’ll integrate, we’d be doing a disservice to current and future trends of music creation and listening if we didn’t open this up” to more people. Executives from both companies say the features that BandLab will add in the coming months are just the start of a broader partnership that positions Sony and its personal entertainment business—which encompasses its consumer and professional audio businesses—as a ground-floor partner to BandLab’s 100 million–strong user base. Making amateur production immersive During the production process for most songs, producers and musicians assign elements—vocals and instruments, for example—to a channel (left or right in the most basic form). With spatial sound tools offered by companies such as Sony and Dolby Atmos, song-makers can assign any element, or object, a position and volume based on distance in a virtual sphere around a listener’s head. Though Apple’s spatial audio on Apple Music can be paired with hardware capabilities like head tracking to create a more dynamic spatial experience, a listener doesn’t always need special headphones to listen to an immersive song. But the tools for making immersive music have been reserved for pricier software suites and studio equipment. “For many years, it’s been so limiting for who can create in spatial, just from a pure economic basis,” Freed says. “A lot of the tools that have existed in spatial are often on the higher end in terms of price points and knowledge needed to use them. If you’re an emerging creator, are you seeing the return on investment if you’re spending that money?” He says the BandLab partnership will be the first time a broad swath of musicians will be able to experiment with immersive audio. Initially, users will have access to a free set of curated, spatial-enabled beats onto which they’ll be able to add vocals, instruments, and other production elements, with the final song being sa BandLab cofounder and CEO Meng Ru Kuok says the partnership is designed to make sure BandLab users are able to compete in a music industry in which streamers have been building demand for immersive listening steadily for years. In January 2024, Apple implemented a bonus payout of up to 10% for songs that are also available in spatial audio on Apple Music. The move came as a growing number of listeners opted for the immersive versions of songs on the streaming platform. Last summer, Apple VP of Apple Music and Beats told Wallpaper that 90% of Apple Music users were listening to songs with spatial audio. Though Apple’s spatial experience is powered by Dolby Atmos, Amazon music currently support Sony’s 360 Virtual Audio. (Tidal removed its support for Sony’s 360 Virtual Audio summer.) “From the consumption and listening side, there’s been massive progress, but creation and music has always lagged—largely because of the infrastructure of people needing desktop equipment, expensive audio interfaces, expensive mixing gear, and those kinds of things,” Kuok says. “We don’t want our creators to be left behind. We see in Sony a partner that is technologically able to make it accessible for people just through a pair of headphones.” Equipping smartphone creatives for the future The spatial audio tools are just the start of multiyear partnership between Sony and BandLab. Freed says Sony’s work with BandLab is part of his division’s broader efforts to engage with emerging artists and creators. The company works closely with the Recording Academy on its Grammy U program, which supports up-and-coming music professionals via events and networking opportunities. Additionally, in March, Sony and New York University announced the creation of the Sony Audio Institute, which over the next 10 years will offer students in the school’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development access to Sony tech and research opportunities. “It was important for us to have a fully rounded-out effort—from the Grammy folks to the 100 million–plus BandLab users, most of whom are under 25 years old and creating with smartphones,” Freed says. BandLab is seeing its fastest user growth in Nigeria and South Africa, as well as Latin America, all areas where smartphones are the dominant tech among creators. Freed says the partnership could expand to include creator camps and other educational opportunities with BandLab users to train them on Sony technology or connect them with industry professionals. “This is not something that we look at and ask what the business impact is for the next quarter,” Freed says. “You do something like this because you really care deeply about community and growing a creator base to bring everyone together and shape where things are going for what it means to be a music creator—because it’s changing.” View the full article

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A decade ago, Scott Osborn would have eagerly told prospective vineyard owners looking to join the wine industry to “jump into it.” Now, his message is different. “You’re crazy,” said Osborn, who owns Fox Run Vineyards, a sprawling 50-acre (20-hectare) farm on Seneca Lake, the largest of New York’s Finger Lakes. It’s becoming riskier to grow grapes in the state’s prominent winemaking region. Harvests like Osborn’s are increasingly endangered by unpredictable weather from climate change. Attitudes on wine are shifting. Political tensions, such as tariffs amid President Donald The President’s trade wars and the administration’s rollback of environmental policies, are also looming problems. Despite the challenges, however, many winegrowers are embracing sustainable practices, wanting to be part of the solution to global warming while hoping they can adapt to changing times. ___ EDITOR’S NOTE: This story is a collaboration between Rochester Institute of Technology and The Associated Press. ___ The Finger Lakes, which span a large area of western New York, have water that can sparkle and give off a sapphire hue on sunny days. More than 130 wineries dot the shorelines and offer some of America’s most famous white wines. At Fox Run, visitors step inside to sip wines and bring a bottle—or two—home. Many are longtime customers, like Michele Magda and her husband, who have frequently made the trip from Pennsylvania. “This is like a little escape, a little getaway,” she said. Traditionally, the plants’ buds break out in spring, emerging with colorful grapes that range from the cabernet franc’s deep blues to the soft greens of the region’s most popular grape, riesling. However, a warming world is making that happen earlier, adding to uncertainty and potential risks for farmers. If a frost comes after the buds have broken, growers can lose much of the harvest. Year-round rain and warmer night temperatures differentiate the Finger Lakes from its West Coast competitors, said Paul Brock, a viticulture and wine technology professor at Finger Lakes Community College. Learning to adapt to those fluctuations has given local winemakers a competitive advantage, he said. Globally, vineyards are grappling with the impacts of increasingly unpredictable weather. In France, record rainfall and harsh weather have spelled trouble for winegrowers trying their best to adapt. Along the West Coast, destructive wildfires are worsening wine quality. Winegrowers as part of the solution Many winegrowers say they are working to make their operations more sustainable, wanting to help solve climate change caused by the burning of fuels like gasoline, coal, and natural gas. Farms can become certified under initiatives such as the New York Sustainable Winegrowing program. Fox Run and more than 50 others are certified, which requires that growers improve practices like bettering soil health and protecting water quality of nearby lakes. Beyond the rustic metal gate featuring the titular foxes, some of Osborn’s sustainability initiatives come into view. Hundreds of solar panels powering 90% of the farm’s electricity are the most obvious feature. Other initiatives are more subtle, like underground webs of fungi used to insulate crops from drought and disease. “We all have to do something,” Osborn said. One winegrower’s sustainability push For Suzanne Hunt and her family’s seventh-generation vineyard, doing something about climate change means devoting much of their efforts to sustainability. Hunt Country Vineyards, along Keuka Lake, took on initiatives like using underground geothermal pipelines for heating and cooling, along with composting. Despite the forward-looking actions, climate change is one of the factors forcing the family to make tough decisions about their future. Devastating frosts in recent years have caused “catastrophic” crop loss. They’ve also had to reconcile with changing consumer attitudes, as U.S. consumption of wine fell over the past few years, according to the wine industry advocacy group Wine Institute. By this year’s end, the vineyard will stop producing wine and instead will hold community workshops and sell certain grape varieties. “The farm and the vineyard, you know, it’s part of me,” Hunt said, adding that she wanted to be able to spend all of her time helping other farms and businesses implement sustainable practices. “I’ll let the people whose dream and life is to make wine do that part, and I’ll happily support them.” Tariffs and U.S. policy changes loom Vinny Aliperti, owner of Billsboro Winery along Seneca Lake, is working to improve the wine industry’s environmental footprint. In the past year, he’s helped establish communal wine bottle dumpsters that divert the glass from entering landfills and reuse it for construction materials. But Aliperti said he’d like to see more nearby wineries and vineyards in sustainability efforts. The wine industry’s longevity depends on it, especially under a presidential administration that doesn’t seem to have sustainability at top of mind, he said. “I think we’re all a bit scared, frankly, a bit, I mean, depressed,” he said. “I don’t see very good things coming out of the next four years in terms of the environment.” Osborn is bracing for sweeping cuts to federal environmental policies that previously made it easier to fund sustainability initiatives. Tax credits for Osborn’s solar panels made up about half of over $400,000 in upfront costs, in addition to some state and federal grants. Osborn wants to increase his solar production, but he said he won’t have enough money without those programs. Fox Run could also lose thousands of dollars from retaliatory tariffs and boycotts of American wine from his Canadian customers. In March, Canada introduced 25% tariffs on $30 billion worth of U.S. goods—including wine. Osborn fears he can’t compete with larger wine-growing states like California, which may flood the American market to make up for lost customers abroad. Smaller vineyards in the Finger Lakes might not survive these economic pressures, he said. Back at Fox Run’s barrel room, Aric Bryant, a decade-long patron, says all the challenges make him even more supportive of New York wines. “I have this, like, fierce loyalty,” he said. “I go to restaurants around here, and if they don’t have Finger Lakes wines on their menu, I’m, like, ‘What are you even doing serving wine?’ ” ___ The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. ___ This story was first published on April 23, 2025. It was updated on April 28, 2025, to add context about the decision to close Hunt Country Vineyards by the end of the year. —Natasha Kaiser of Rochester Institute of Technology and Makiya Seminera of The Associated Press View the full article

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Influencers get a lot of stick these days. The latest thing they’re being blamed for: shark attacks. Scientists have noted a recent rise in shark attacks, and according to new research published in the journal Frontiers in Conservation Science, of the 74 recorded bites in the seas around French Polynesia, 5% were assessed as acts of self-defense. Professor Eric Clua of PSL University in France, who led the research, holds social media responsible. “I don’t encourage, as many influencers do on social networks, [people] to cling to a shark’s dorsal fin or stroke it, under the pretext of proving that they are harmless,” Clua told The Times. “The sharks here feel like family,” one such influencer with 111,000 followers wrote in the caption of an Instagram post. In one picture, she is seen grabbing the nose of a shark; in another, she reaches out and gently pushes its nose as it swims toward her. “Don’t get it twisted, the sharks don’t give a f*** about me,” she adds in the caption. “Which absolutely makes me a crazy shark lady.” While they might feel like family, that doesn’t mean the sharks consent to being used as props in a social media post—a lesson some people have unfortunately learned the hard way. Earlier this year, a tourist vacationing in the Caribbean was allegedly trying to take a photo of a bull shark swimming in shallow waters when it bit off both her hands. Although sharks are not naturally inclined to bite humans, they are wild predators that will act in self-defense. Researchers examined a global database known as the Shark Attack Files and found more than 300 incidents fitting the same defensive pattern, dating back to the 1800s. Most of these bites involved small and medium-size sharks, including gray reef sharks, blacktip reef sharks, and nurse sharks. When it comes to great whites, which are more dangerous, humans are generally wise enough to steer clear. “People know the difference between a [Yorkshire terrier] and a pit bull, whereas they don’t know the difference between a blacktip reef shark and a bull shark, which are their marine equivalents,” Clua said. “They are responsible for fewer than 10 human deaths a year worldwide. Whereas dogs are responsible for more than 10,000 deaths and are perceived positively by the public.” Even using the term “shark attack” is misleading, researchers argue, as it creates the perception of sharks as aggressors and undermines conservation efforts that rely on public support. Around 100 million sharks are killed annually (about 274,000 per day), targeted for their fins, meat, and as bycatch. As it stands, they have more reason to be scared of you than you have of them. So, if you find yourself swimming alongside a shark, the scientific advice is simple: Look, don’t touch. View the full article

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