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Sometimes the keywords you need to rank for are the ones you’re not allowed to use. Whether it’s trademark restrictions, brand guidelines, or industry stigma, you might be asked to capture demand without using the exact terms people search. Here’s how to navigate that challenge, align with search behavior, and still build visibility. When the keyword you need is off-limits It’s a common scenario in SEO: “We want to rank for (insert super competitive search term),” and, in the next breath, “Don’t use (that exact same phrase) on the page.” My very first SEO job, over 10 years ago, set the goal of ranking in the top 3 for the term “custom koozies.” I’ve been in heated debates over the proper term for these drink coolers. In my household, they were called “coolie cups.” The general term is “can coolers,” but search volume tells us the vast majority of the U.S. would call these products “koozies.” Search volume data settled the debate, but Koozie® was a registered trademark. We worked our way to the top of the search results without relying on the restricted term as the primary on-page language. A few years later, I landed at a marketing agency that specializes in the senior living industry. There were many new terms to familiarize myself with: assisted living, independent living, skilled nursing, and continuing care retirement community (CCRC), among others. Keyword research showed that users were searching “nursing home,” but it turned out that many of the organizations had begun to steer away from the term “nursing home” because of its negative connotations. The problem is, they’re a nursing home, and that’s what real people call them. I felt like I was having déjà vu, with a new goal of ranking for a term that I wasn’t allowed to use. Dig deeper: Branded search and SEO: What you need to know Your customers search everywhere. Make sure your brand shows up. The SEO toolkit you know, plus the AI visibility data you need. Start Free Trial Get started with How to rank for keywords you can’t use You don’t need to use the exact keyword to rank for it, but you do need to send the right signals when a term is restricted, discouraged, or off-limits — even if it reflects how people actually search. 1. Pull the data and confirm direction In some cases, you can get an “aha” moment just by showing the data. When I tell clients that “skilled nursing near me” has 4,400 monthly search volume, but “nursing home near me” gets searched 27,100 times per month, it sometimes softens their stance. Pulling local search volume or localized search terms can be beneficial, too. Do the research and follow the data. It’s important to get clear on exactly how off-limits a term is. Is it acceptable to use it in non-focal page copy with a different primary term, or is it OK to use it alongside a preferred term? Confirm what’s allowed versus unacceptable use. 2. Use all the terms around it Create a list of terms related to your primary term, and be sure to hit on those, too. For Koozies, this would be “beer,” “drink,” “keeping your drink cold,” and common uses such as “bachelorette party” and “wedding.” These help build context for search engines. 3. Use similar terms and break down phrases Consider whether there are similar terms to the primary term, and be sure to use those, too. For Koozies, we could use “cozies” and “coolies.” If your primary term is more than one word, use each individual word frequently. For nursing homes, we can discuss “nursing” care and use “home” throughout the page. 4. Use the term indirectly This tactic involves referencing the term on the page, but not necessarily directly describing your product. In the case of nursing homes, you could say “More than a nursing home” in a header, or “Looking for a nursing home in Ann Arbor?” in the page copy. Dig deeper: Semantic SEO: How to optimize for meaning over keywords Get the newsletter search marketers rely on. See terms. 5. Incorporate the product that can’t be named onto the page This was key for the Koozies situation. The non-Koozie® brand products couldn’t be called Koozies, but when we added a Koozie brand product alongside the best-selling non-Koozie brand products, suddenly we could call this category “Can Coolers & Koozies.” The average person wouldn’t consider these separate products, but, officially, we did. 6. Get creative with anchor text The text that links to your page can significantly influence how search engines understand it. Consider where you can control the anchor text, and use your primary term in both off-site and internal linking. 7. Use the term in non-visible elements Alt text is perfect for keyword placement for those terms that the industry frowns upon but that are publicly accepted. This avoids the text appearing on the page while still describing the product. I’d use caution with trademark terms when using this tactic to avoid misleading or violating trademark guidelines. Don’t sleep on title tags. This might be the most important tactic: find a way to get your primary term in the title tag. For those frowned-upon terms, this can be simple if you have approval to use the term in non-focal areas. Although the title tag is the first thing someone may see in the search results, it’s not necessarily visible on the page, making it a strong opportunity to balance the language of the searcher with your brand voice. For trademarked products, this works well with tactic five. If possible, including the trademarked products on the named page allows you to put both the trademarked term and the generic term in the title tag. 8. Add definitions Defining terms on your website is a great way to incorporate them and clarify the relationship between your offering and the common terms. Definition-focused content is great for SEO and AI visibility. Dig deeper: The shift to semantic SEO: What vectors mean for your strategy See the complete picture of your search visibility. Track, optimize, and win in Google and AI search from one platform. Start Free Trial Get started with Your game plan for off-limits terms Make sure to seek legal counsel’s approval for any tactics around trademarked terms. They can help give you guidelines and rules for clarity. Try all of these tips, or a combination of a few, to help your site start ranking for those coveted terms that you aren’t allowed to use. Gather the data, create a strategic approach, test, and refine. View the full article

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Google’s product data push goes beyond Shopping ads. Learn why feed optimization now matters for AI search, free listings, YouTube, and retail visibility. The post Google’s Product Feed Strategy Points To The Future Of Retail Discovery appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Hello again, and welcome back to Fast Company’s Plugged In. Before we go any further, an invitation: On Thursday, April 23, at 1 p.m. ET, my colleague Jared Newman and I will be cohosting “The AI Productivity Playbook: A Practical Guide to Working Smarter,” a livestreamed event exclusively for Fast Company subscribers. We’ll highlight the AI work tools we find actually useful and share advice on how to get the most out of them. You can RSVP here. And if you have any questions or tips related to our topic, I would love to hear them. Over a lifetime of writing, I have used more word processors than I can count. Long-defunct obscurities such as Scripsit and Pfs:Write. Quip, which still exists but has been running on fumes for years. Microsoft Word and Google Docs, which will surely outlive us all. But I started using my favorite word processor of all time just six weeks ago. I acknowledge that I may be a tad biased: I vibe-coded it myself. Anthropic’s Claude Code did all the programming, based on my ideas, instructions, and questions. I call my web-based word processor Doolee Write—a nod to Doolee, the note-taking software I conjured up a year ago. At first, I wasn’t positive that trying to get it up and running wasn’t the equivalent of deciding to design my own car on a whim. (Insert your own Homer Simpson reference.) But within a couple of nights of furious Claude sessions, the essential features had come into place. Then I thoughtfully added more elements until my wish list had been exhausted. For now, at least, I am Doolee Write’s sole user. But I’ve already forgotten what the Before Times were like. By my wholly unscientific estimate, I’m about 20% more productive since I started writing in it—and 250% happier. Why construct a word processor when the world already has more of them than it knows what to do with? I had one simple reason: It was the only way to get one that felt like it was made for me. My writing projects tend to involve supplementary materials such as transcripts. I start typing with only a rough idea of what I want to say, and appreciate help organizing my thoughts and shuffling stuff around. I appreciate tools for maintaining focus. And most of what I create is full of hyperlinks and ends up being published online in WordPress. Microsoft and Google are never going to design a word processor for that specific scenario. But it turned out that it wasn’t all that hard. Doolee Write documents support bundled extras such as text files, PDFs, and audio recordings. There’s a built-in outliner that excels at wrangling documents made up of many small chunks, such as my recent oral history of Apple’s earliest years. I find the Pomodoro time management system—which I learned about in a 2015 Fast Company article—invaluable for keeping me focused, so I built it in. My functionality for embedding links and copying text as HTML are much nicer than those in any off-the-shelf package I know. I even found room for four mini-games—riffs on Tetris, Breakout, blackjack, and Othello—because, well, I could. (I figure that if I’m going to be distracted from work, it’s best to stay within the confines of the app.) To be sure, some of what I came up with is available elsewhere. I certainly drew inspiration from Scrivener, a writer’s word processor I once cherished, though its iPad version has barely changed in a decade and desperately needs an update. By making my own DIY word processor, I was able to pick and choose my favorite features and put everything exactly where I want it. It feels like I’m finally wearing my own clothes after a life in ill-fitting hand-me-downs. A few more of the lessons I’ve gleaned from this experience so far: AI is great—when it’s your AI, your way Word and Docs share an oppressively thirsty approach to AI, which they shove in your face by making document summarization the single most prominent feature in their interfaces. For me, it’s wholly superfluous: In most cases, when I load a document I already know it cold, because I wrote it. But I’m hardly opposed to AI on principle. My word processor has a NotebookLM-like research tool, a Grammarly-style writing coach, and Otter-esque transcription—all of which were remarkably easy to set up via API access. They’re a click away when I want them, and otherwise out of my business. That’s how I think most productivity-oriented AI should be. Lack of features is a beautiful thing Virtually any word processor extant would trounce Doolee Write in a checklist of supported features. For instance, it omits all sorts of theoretically standard formatting options, such as the ability to insert images—not because I couldn’t figure out how to implement them, but because I don’t need them right now. It never quite dawned on me how distracting unused features are until I jettisoned all of them. I can be more innovative than the big guys Microsoft and Google have every incentive to keep their products reassuringly familiar to the masses. That’s why Word has been largely frozen in time since adopting its “Ribbon” toolbar design 20 years ago. Docs, which looks like Word did in the 1990s, is even more antediluvian. From the start, I knew I wanted Doolee Write to ditch the interface overload of drop-down menus and icon-laden toolbars. Instead, it has left-hand sidebars, where 95% of its functionality lives, and a distraction-free mode that hides even those sidebars when I’m typing. It makes sense to me, and that’s all that matters. It’s not about the cost I can use Doolee Write for free, since I host it myself on an account I was already paying for. Building the app, however, has been a pricey exercise. After blowing through the credits I get with my Claude account, I racked up several hundred dollars in overage fees. (Note to Fast Company’s accounting department: I plan to expense a portion of that, but am too guilty to put in for the full amount.) On Wall Street, the specter of companies deciding to save money by writing their own apps is known as the (ugh) SaaSpocalypse. But I didn’t come up with Doolee Write to avoid paying for word processing. Actually, I still subscribe to Word and Docs as part of their respective suites. I’ll use them for projects that require revision marking and real-time collaboration, neither of which I bothered with in Doolee Write. (Writing there is about the pleasure of being alone with my thoughts, not working well with others.) If all vibe coding was good for was churning out knockoffs of existing apps, it would be pretty sad. It’s the opportunity to build something better than what’s out there—for you—that makes it worthwhile. I’m my own IT person Save a file in Microsoft’s OneDrive or Google Drive, and you can be pretty confident the tech giant in question won’t lose it. But it quickly dawned on me that assuming Doolee Write’s database of documents would be bulletproof was a data-loss disaster in the making. I managed to build in several levels of backup, redundancy, and auto-exporting, greatly reducing the chances of anything going awry. If it does, I’ll have nobody to harangue but myself. As deeply gratifying as I find using my new bespoke word processor—and my year-old note-taking app, which I continue to live in as well—I’m not sure if I have more vibe-coded productivity software in me. Email might be a contender, if I can figure out how to make it compatible with Gmail and Outlook. But I wouldn’t know where to begin with a spreadsheet. And I don’t have enough gripes with my calendar, Fantastical, to crave life without it. Still, even if Doolee Write turns out to be my vibe coding magnum opus, the fact that it’s now possible to describe an app and be using it minutes later has changed my life for the better, in a way I wouldn’t have guessed possible. Way back in the 1890s, Mark Twain’s friend Charles Dudley Warner said that everyone talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it. For decades, the same was true about software. Now we have no excuse. You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on fastcompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard. More top tech stories from Fast Company Google DeepMind’s Demis Hassabis on the long game of AI A decade ago, Hassabis’s lifelong enduring love of play and AI led to AlphaGo beating the world’s deepest board game. The lessons still drive his work today. Read More → AI anxiety is turning volatile After a Molotov attack on Sam Altman’s home and threats against OpenAI, a fringe but intensifying strain of AI fear is spilling into the real world. Read More → Get ready for the great American TV trade-in rush Millions of pandemic-era TVs are hitting replacement age just as bigger screens get cheaper and a packed sports calendar fuels demand. Read More → What good AI in government actually looks like By deploying frontier models to help communities access federal money, a new tool is showing how to build AI in the public interest. Read More → Adobe’s new Firefly AI Assistant could forever change the way you use its apps The new agentic AI removes the complexity of the Adobe Cloud apps interface so amateurs can use their power and professionals can do a lot more, faster. Read More → SpaceX’s insane IPO valuation is based on a sci-fi tale Experts say it will take decades to make Elon Musk’s cosmic vision real. Read More → View the full article

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It’s sometime after midnight on a Monday morning when Zach unlocks his phone and starts scrolling for something to bet on. He’s 26, tucked into his childhood bed at his parents’ house in Washington, D.C. He moved back in after a stint in Las Vegas that didn’t go as planned. The NFL is done for the night. The NBA’s late games have wrapped. Mainstream sports are fast asleep. In FanDuel’s live betting tab, he finds a women’s tennis tournament streaming from somewhere in Southeast Asia. Two unranked, unknown teenagers, one boasting a 0–1 career record. Empty arena, no ball boys. Between points, the players jog to the fence to retrieve the ball themselves. He puts money on it. “I wasn’t thinking what a normal person would think,” says Zach, who asked to be identified only by his first name. “I was on autopilot.” Fourteen months earlier, in the fall of 2023, Zach downloaded FanDuel for the first time and went on the best run of his gambling life—eleven bets, eleven wins, a two-week stretch in which everything he touched turned to money. He won a couple of thousand dollars, he says. He was on a heater. He spent the next year-plus chasing that same kind of luck, that same feeling. He never found it. Multiply Zach by twenty million, and you get a sense of what’s become a gambling epidemic. Since the Supreme Court struck down the federal ban on sports betting in 2018, Americans have legally wagered more than $650 billion on sports. Nearly half of American men between 18 and 49 now carry an active sportsbook account on their phone. The apps pump out bonuses to keep users betting. Promotional credits, “no sweat” bets refunded as credits if the “no sweat” bet is lost, and boosted odds on popular games. Ninety percent of legal sports bets in the U.S. are now placed on phones. More than half are live bets, placed while games are in progress. When a user goes quiet, they get a push notification; when they lose big, a reload bonus appears. “They make you feel like you’re getting free money,” Zach says. “Then the free money’s gone, and you’re using your own. By then, you’re already hooked.” The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates as many as 20 million Americans have a serious gambling problem or are at risk of developing one—a figure that has grown 30 percent since legalization. What hasn’t grown is the number of options to help gambling addicts. The federal government spends $3.6 billion a year treating people struggling with alcohol and drugs, while those addicted to the 24-hour casino in their pocket are largely left to fend for themselves. The desperation loop Rick Benson has heard some version of Zach’s story hundreds of times. Benson, 70, is the founder of Algamus Recovery Centers in Goodyear, Arizona—the oldest dedicated gambling addiction treatment program in the United States, and one of fewer than ten residential facilities in the country that treats gambling addiction exclusively. Benson was a gambling addict himself. He started betting on horses at 24 and progressed through what he has since identified as the three phases of gambling addiction: the winning phase, the losing phase, and finally, the chasing/desperation phase, which can turn a bad run into an endless loop. Benson’s loop developed when he convinced himself he could be a professional blackjack player. He moved to Las Vegas and kept meticulous track of the mathematical edge he believed he had. As his losses piled up, his life collapsed around him. What Benson eventually understood, and what brain research has since confirmed, is that gambling addiction isn’t a willpower problem. It’s a dopamine problem. When a gambler places a bet, the brain manufactures the same neurochemical reward triggered by cocaine, alcohol, or pornography. Brain scans of gamblers in action show the same neural sectors lighting up as in cocaine users. The gambler’s drug, however, is money, which creates a trap that has no analog in substance addiction. No cocaine addict thinks the solution to their problem is more cocaine. But for a gambler on a bad run, the only way to turn it around—and this is the trap—is with another bet. “I remember being in financially desperate shape and thinking: I can only see three alternatives,” Benson says. “Rob a bank, turn a drug deal, or go to the casino and win my money back. The casino was the only option where the consequences weren’t prohibitive.” Biggest strength, greatest risk factor Like Benson, Zach felt like he had an edge. He grew up a serious sports fan—a Wizards obsessive who read the box scores in the Washington Post every morning before school, who played travel basketball, soccer, and rugby, who understood sports deeply enough to genuinely believe that he saw things other people missed. That confidence was, in part, what made him vulnerable. “A lot of people who end up gambling feel like they have the edge because they’ve followed sports their whole life,” he says. “That was me.” Zach’s gambling history predates FanDuel. As a kid, he watched his father play online poker every night. His father was good, too, consistently ranking in the top 100 players online. Once, at around nine years old, Zach logged on to play. He meant to log into his father’s play-money account, but accidentally opened the real one. He burned through $400 before his father noticed. In college, studying abroad in Switzerland, he went to the casinos after class and came home some days with more than $1,000 in his pocket. He knew even then that he enjoyed it a little too much. By 2021, he was 23, fresh off a successful e-commerce venture, with real money in the bank for the first time. He put nearly all of it—a six-figure sum—into a cryptocurrency called Chainlink. Within a few months, he’d lost 80 percent of it. He considered chasing that loss by purchasing other digital coins. The problem was that he didn’t know cryptocurrency. He had no proprietary knowledge. No edge. But he knew sports. He moved to Las Vegas, got a job, and put his paycheck every Friday into the Caesars Sportsbook. The app made it easy to forget he was spending real money. “Five hundred dollars feels the same as a hundred,” he says. “It’s literally just a thumbpad.” For nearly two years, the loop played out the same way for Zach. Get paid. Gamble. Lose. Crash for a few days. Re-motivate. Repeat. “It’s like climbing an avalanche,” he says. “You just can’t make any progress.” The target kept moving. First, he was chasing the crypto losses. Then the sports betting losses stacked on top of them. Then just the previous week’s deficit. He bet on the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL. When the American slate ended, he found European hockey. When that ended, Japanese baseball. And then, at 1 a.m., amateur women’s tennis in Southeast Asia. A few weeks after that night, after a bad beat on a Mets game, Zach bottomed out. He went downstairs to his mother, sobbing—something she hadn’t seen him do since he was a child. The next morning, his parents started making calls, trying to find help for their son. Nowhere to turn There are thousands of residential facilities in the United States dedicated to treating alcohol and drug addiction. There are fewer than ten that focus on gambling. Benson opened Algamus in 1992 because when he needed residential treatment himself, it didn’t exist. He knew from experience why gambling-specific care mattered. Sit a gambling addict next to a heroin addict with track marks on his arms and a meth addict with rotted teeth, he says, and the gambler’s first thought is that he doesn’t belong there. “Even though emotionally he’s just as devastated,” Benson says, “he doesn’t see himself as the same.” Algamus is deliberately boutique—a residential home that houses a handful of clients at a time, never more than a dozen. That intimacy is the point, and part of the problem. Facilities this small and this specialized are forced to survive on margins that leave almost no room to scale and little incentive for new treatment centers to enter the space. Insurance coverage for addiction treatment is inconsistent and often inadequate. For a gambling disorder, it’s even worse. Roughly 15 percent of the insurance verifications Algamus processes come back with gambling disorder written out of the policy entirely. The program charges $26,000 for its five-week residential stay and cannot accept Medicare or Medicaid. The administrative burden of Medicare certification—compliance audits, specialized billing systems, dedicated staff—costs more than a facility this size could recoup from reimbursement rates that rarely cover the actual cost of care. Medicaid has become the single largest source of funding for substance use disorder care in the United States, sustaining thousands of residential facilities and covering millions of patients annually. Gambling disorder receives no equivalent federal support. That leaves treatment providers to survive on a patchwork of state allocations, private insurance, and out-of-pocket payments, while older patients have no option but to self-pay. “I have a 66-year-old man,” Benson says, “and his only alternative is $26,000 out of pocket, on a fixed income. It’s a very sad situation.” Research consistently shows that intensive, in-person therapy produces meaningful reductions in gambling disorder severity, with face-to-face treatment outperforming remote or self-guided alternatives. But sustained recovery often requires ongoing support long after discharge. Across multiple studies, long-term relapse rates for gambling disorder run as high as 75 percent. Money, by its very nature, complicates the recovery equation. Unlike alcohol and drug treatment, which are built almost universally around total abstinence, the gambling recovery world is more divided. Gamblers Anonymous follows the abstinence model, but many researchers now recognize controlled gambling as a viable goal for some patients, simply because a recovering addict can avoid a substance entirely. For a recovering gambler, using money is unavoidable. Zach flew into Phoenix on July 26, 2025, was picked up by a staff member named Doug—a recovering gambler himself—and driven to Algamus’s residential home in Goodyear. The program ran Monday through Saturday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., and included group therapy, individual sessions with a master’s-level therapist, yoga, gym visits, and Gamblers Anonymous meetings in the surrounding community. They let residents watch sports. The philosophy was that the NFL isn’t going anywhere, and neither is the temptation to bet on it. You have to learn to live alongside it, not wall yourself off from it. His parents helped with the cost. He knows that makes him one of the lucky ones. “What would I have done if I didn’t have them?” he says. “I think I might still be gambling today.” A $25 solution to a $14 billion problem? Elliott Rapaport watched a close friend spend months navigating the search for gambling addiction treatment—calling hotlines that led nowhere, finding therapists untrained in the disorder, discovering his insurance covered almost nothing. In 2023, Rapaport founded Birches Health to try to close the gap. The model is telehealth: therapy delivered remotely, covered by insurance, available nationwide. Birches now works with more than 100 insurance plans across all 50 states. According to Rapaport, 94 percent of patients pay less than $25 per session out of pocket—a number that looks very affordable next to Algamus’s $26,000 residential price tag. The question Rapaport raises, without prompting, is whether it actually works. The honest answer is that the evidence is real, but still building. A 2024 randomized trial published in JAMA Network Open and a large Swedish cohort study in the Journal of Medical Internet Research both found meaningful reductions in gambling behavior through internet-delivered cognitive behavioral therapy, especially when paired with a trained therapist rather than fully self-guided. Birches’ own data shows 85 percent of patients reporting improved symptoms after nine sessions. Benson is supportive of telehealth, in principle, yet skeptical that it can replicate what five weeks in residency can provide. “The stressors are still there,” he says. “The phone is still there.” Rapaport doesn’t entirely disagree. He frames Birches not as a replacement for residential care but more for “month four through year 40″—a sustained recovery infrastructure that follows a crisis, or that serves the many people for whom a $26,000 residential stay is simply not an option. “There is no cure,” he says. “Gamblers Anonymous has known this for 50 years. People go to meetings for the rest of their lives. We want to build the modern version of that.” The patient population that needs Rapaport’s version is growing fast. Young men between 18 and 35 are the most vulnerable. For them, sports betting arrived already gamified and social. “Their friends think it’s hilarious when they lose money,” Rapaport says, “until it’s obviously not funny anymore.” More than one in three boys between 11 and 17 has gambled in the past year, according to one survey. On college campuses, students have been found logging into accounts under a parent’s name or funneling bets through older classmates. In Massachusetts—where online gambling is legal—school counselors have identified gambling as the fastest-growing behavioral concern among middle schoolers. Both Benson and Rapaport agree that the current system is nowhere near adequate to handle a generation that grew up with a casino in their pocket. Everyone wins, except the user In March, a landmark product liability lawsuit compared DraftKings and FanDuel directly to tobacco, cocaine, and heroin—products engineered, the filing argues, to addict their users by design. The suit is led by Richard Daynard, the attorney who secured the $206 billion settlement from the tobacco industry. DraftKings says it intends to “vigorously defend” the suit. FanDuel declined to comment. The federal government has no spending allocated toward gambling addiction research or treatment. The National Council on Problem Gambling estimates the total economic cost of the crisis at $14 billion a year, largely absorbed by employers, healthcare systems, and the criminal justice system. Only about eight percent of people with a gambling problem ever seek help. Those who do often opt for outpatient therapy because it’s cheaper, logistically simpler, and easier to hide from a spouse. Benson understands the reasoning, but doesn’t endorse the math. “If I do two hours of outpatient therapy a week,” he says, “for the other 166 hours in the week, I still have my gambling device in my pocket, and all the stressors in my life are still there.” Senator Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut has spent two years trying to redirect money the federal government is already collecting from the industry toward the people the industry is leaving behind. His GRIT Act would direct 50 percent of the existing federal excise tax on sports wagers—more than $300 million annually—toward gambling addiction treatment and research without imposing any new taxes. His SAFE Bet Act would go further, restricting sports betting ads to certain hours, banning the AI-driven targeting the industry uses to find and re-engage vulnerable users, limiting deposits to five per customer per day, and creating a national self-exclusion registry so problem gamblers don’t have to file paperwork in every state where they might place a bet. The AI targeting is the newest threat, according to Blumenthal, who compares it to “a cocaine seller having the technology to pick potential victims of addiction.” The industry’s public position is that it takes responsible gaming seriously. FanDuel and DraftKings both point to spending dashboards, deposit limits, and self-exclusion tools as evidence. Lori Kalani, DraftKings’ Chief Responsible Gaming Officer, grew up in Las Vegas, the daughter of gambling addicted parents. “They left me on the street when I was 15,” she says. “Back in those days, responsible gaming was a placard on an ATM machine in a casino.” Kalani leads a team of 50 people whose sole responsibility is monitoring DraftKings platforms for problem behavior. Last year, they conducted 92,000 manual reviews of user accounts flagged for risky behavior by the company’s automated monitoring system. DraftKings reported 4.8 million average monthly unique paying customers in 2024 across its platforms, meaning those 92,000 reviews covered less than two percent of its active base. According to Kalani, the industry is also building a shared self-exclusion database through the Responsible Online Gaming Association that would prevent a self-excluded user on one platform from opening an account on any member platform. But self-exclusion requires a gambler to first identify themselves as having a problem—something most problem gamblers never do. The tools that exist are largely built for the people who come forward. For everyone else, the industry has few answers. What the industry has invested in is keeping regulators at bay. A watchdog report from the Campaign for Accountability found that major gambling companies have simultaneously lobbied to kill consumer protections, including a proposed ban on in-game betting in Minnesota and cooling-off prompt requirements in Virginia. In 2025, FanDuel spent $1.1 million on federal lobbying—seven times what it spent the year prior—largely to fight the SAFE Bet Act. DraftKings spent $900,000, more than double the previous year. Over the decade prior, FanDuel and DraftKings, which together control around 80% of the online sports betting market, spent more than $20 million fighting regulations in at least 20 states. When the two companies—along with Fanatics—launched prediction market apps in late 2025, they stripped out addiction hotline information and session time tracking that their own sportsbook apps had featured. After the lapse was reported in the media, both added the tools. Prediction market apps let users bet on virtually any outcome—sports, politics, entertainment, financial events—and operate in states where sports betting remains illegal, exposing millions of new users to the same addictive mechanics as sportsbooks, but with fewer consumer protections. According to the most recent data, states allocated approximately $134 million to problem gambling treatment and prevention in 2023, drawn almost entirely from state tax revenues rather than the companies themselves, and roughly one-tenth of what addiction experts say is needed. Kalani says that since 2022, DraftKings has contributed $15,000 annually to each of 35 state problem gambling councils—roughly $525,000 a year, about $2.5 million in total since 2022. FanDuel, in a statement to Fast Company in response to inquiries, said it invests more than $130 million annually in responsible gaming alongside its parent company, Flutter. The company did not specify how much of that total goes directly to treatment as opposed to tools, research, and education. By contrast, in 2024, the gambling industry as a whole increased spending across all advertising channels by 15 percent to approximately $2 billion. Traditional sports betting accounted for 61 percent of that overall spend. “What [these companies] are devoting to problem gambling is a pittance,” Blumenthal says. “It hardly deserves the name of support for treatment or research.” FanDuel did not respond to questions about whether it believes the current treatment infrastructure is adequate, how it defines problem gambling on its platform, or the specific provisions of the SAFE Bet Act it opposed in its 2025 lobbying effort. Both of Blumenthal’s proposed bills remain stalled at the committee level. Early recovery Zach returned home from Algamus in September 2025, just as the NFL season kicked off. Within days, he was bombarded by gambling ads on pregame shows, broadcast tickers, and in his Instagram feed. He deleted apps from his phone, but as a sports fan, he acknowledges that he can never escape the ads. Today, he can watch a Wizards game without running betting lines in his head—something that for years, he was unable to do. He has a good job, a girlfriend, and hasn’t gambled in more than eight months. He says he often thinks about the people who don’t have what he had: a supportive family, finances to cover a five-week residential program, and the luck of finding one of the handful of places in the country equipped to help. He thinks about how there are so few options for treatment, while the platforms that kept him up until 1 a.m., betting on nonsense, are valued in the tens of billions and continue to grow. By 2029, analysts project Americans will lose nearly $24 billion annually to online sports betting. “There’s no separation anymore,” Zach says. “Gambling is sports, and sports is gambling. Everyone seems to be financially benefiting from it. The only person that’s not benefiting is the user.” View the full article

German bank found it had accepted deposits of more than €100,000 from individuals subject to EU sanctions restrictionsView the full article

Five years ago, tech angel investor Chris Adamo and a few friends jumped on a burgeoning trend in the digital asset world: they used a virtual real estate broker to buy 23 parcels of property in a metaverse called The Sandbox. He doesn’t remember exactly how much he spent, but it was around $200,000 for the whole group. The real estate, to be clear, consisted of pixelated parcels in “hip,” “trendy” virtual “neighborhoods,” an asset that crypto bros and Web3 enthusiasts like Adamo saw as the future of tech and digital investment. At one point, it ballooned tenfold in value. Adamo was far from alone. Across the four major metaverse platforms, property sales topped $500 million in 2021. It wasn’t just niche investors making that call. Perhaps most famously, Mark Zuckerberg bet big on the metaverse. He called it “the successor to the mobile internet.” Convinced that one billion people would eventually use it, he poured $80 billion into the effort and, in one of the most visible signals of that bet, renamed Facebook as Meta. Adamo and his cohort bought into that vision. “When metaverse worlds and NFTs started, our friend group wanted to begin learning and playing in the proverbial sandbox,” Adamo says. “Since we all had already owned so many NFTs, as an experience to learn that realm, land ownership seemed like the next logical trial by fire.” But big promises to investors gave way to weak financial performance and low user counts, and many metaverse companies have struggled in recent years. The Verge reported in 2023 that Decentraland’s billion-dollar metaverse had as few as 38 active users on a given day. Animoca Brands, which owns The Sandbox, cut 50% of its staff and closed all offices worldwide last year. Perhaps most damningly, Mark Zuckerberg announced last month that Meta would effectively shut down Horizon Worlds in June. All of its employees were laid off and the metaverse budget cut by 30% as the company pivoted toward wearables like its viral AI and AR glasses. As for Adamo, he tells Fast Company that the money his group put into Sandbox real estate has effectively been written off as a sunk cost, one he has accepted won’t yield returns anytime soon. They tried to sell and take the loss, but there was “no one to buy them,” he says. For now, they’re holding on, partly in the hope that the assets might rebound, partly, as Adamo jokes, as a kind of historical artifact. “Going into it, we knew that it was going to either be a complete wash (too early) or a big outcome if it took off,” he says via Instagram direct message. “Sadly, the tech and adoption was just too slow and lost steam as COVID ended and people got back to real-world activities.” How the metaverse real estate economy works The metaverse house-hunting process largely mirrors the real-world one. Land can be bought at auction or at a fixed price. Once a buyer secures a parcel, they pay in crypto and receive the keys as a non-fungible token (NFT). Owners can then build whatever they want, a mansion, a bungalow, even a to-scale replica of Epcot Center. They can settle into their pixelated Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow, or, more realistically, try to flip it to the next buyer. Entire firms sprang up to support this ecosystem, including brokerages like Metaverse Property and designers who offered to digitally stage virtual homes. The parcels Adamo purchased were in a coveted area of The Sandbox, near the buzzy NFT Bored Ape Yacht Club compound and a plot owned by Adidas. He declined to share exactly how much his group, which called itself the MetaCollective DAO, ultimately lost, but prices offer a sense of the stakes. At the time, Sandbox properties started at around 1 ETH, roughly $3,000. One parcel near Adamo’s sold for about 42 ETH, or nearly $130,000, in 2022. This wasn’t just a passive investment; Adamo and his group had ambitions for the land. “We tried to create a virtual college, the first metaversity, but sadly it never quite had time to take off,” Adamo says. He envisioned a full syllabus, with courses on cryptocurrency, chain building, partnerships, fundraising, communications, and more. They weren’t the only ones spending big in the virtual world. Snoop Dogg famously sold a parcel in The Sandbox for $450,000. At the start of 2022, MetaMetric Solutions reported that metaverse real estate sales topped $85 million in January alone. Matt Upham, a TikTok creator who makes content about AI, tech, and coding, also bought land for $15,000 in 2021 and later lost money on the investment. Five years on, he told followers he regretted it. “I was, like, 25, and that was the dumbest financial decision of my life,” he said in a video posted in March after the shutdown announcement. “Metaverse as a concept is completely done. Meta is shutting down Horizon Worlds—their Metaverse—and I bet the rest are going to follow.” Hrish Lotlikar, CEO of the virtual real estate platform SuperWorld, still sees a future. His company sells 64.8 billion plots of land across the globe as NFTs, effectively turning the real world into a layered digital marketplace where users can advertise products and services tied to specific locations, something like Groupon built on crypto rails. Today, he says, a parcel is valued at about $20, or 0.01 ETH on Base. Lotlikar argues that the cooling of the metaverse was always part of the cycle. “I think the key point here is, you know, this isn’t the end of the metaverse, it’s the end of a specific approach to it,” he tells Fast Company. “We’re seeing a shift now towards real-world utility, like Meta’s AR and AI glasses, and real-world integration. ” Lotlikar believes the core issue with the metaverse was in adoption. “I think Meta took this big bet on a fully immersive virtual world,” he says. “Like a video game with avatars. And that required massive behavior change. That’s hard, right? Especially after COVID, people are like, ‘Hey, I wanna meet people in the real world.’” He sees integrated AR wearables, like Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses, as a bridge between the physical world and a more widely adopted Web3 future. In his view, the core premise still holds: that every inch of the planet can be for sale ten times over, in digital economic layers wrapped like cling film around the world. “If you think of Airbnb, they revealed a secret that maybe before Airbnb, a lot of people didn’t think of, which is, the room in your apartment or house could be a hotel room,” he says. “Most people couldn’t put that together before Airbnb. You know, the idea that Uber brought out is, your car could be a taxi. That’s the secret that we’re revealing at SuperWorld, is that everything you see around you, there’s trillions of dollars of commerce that’s happening in real-world locations—you can actually become a stakeholder in those locations.” But Lotlikar is one optimist in a sea of people ready to leave this chapter behind. Many other players have decided to move on. When, for example, Fast Company reached out to virtual real estate firm Metaverse Property for comment, the email was inactive, and every single executive of the group named on the website has listed a new job title on their LinkedIn. View the full article

At the Aysaita Refugee Camp in northeastern Ethiopia’s Afar region, there are about 40,000 Eritreans struggling to meet their basic daily needs. For the 10,000 children younger than 10 who live in the camp, that includes one often overlooked resource: play. At many refugee camps around the world, play can, understandably, become an afterthought as humanitarian organizations focus on delivering essentials like housing and food. But studies show that play is critical for helping kids develop executive motor function and relational skills. It’s also a key therapeutic tool for children who have experienced trauma. These insights inspired Playrise, a U.K.-based charity designing play structures for children living in disaster-relief sites around the world. Alexander Meininger, the founder and director of Playrise, says the concept for the nonprofit came about in early 2024. As he watched his own two young kids learning through play, he was simultaneously keeping up with an influx of news about conflict and war in various global locations, including Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, and Eritrea. During this time, he became increasingly concerned about how children displaced by violence would be impacted by the lack of access to play structures. “Play is important generally for every child to develop, but especially for kids who are in these really extreme circumstances, it helps them to regain some sense of normality, overcome some trauma, escape the horrors that they’ve been through,” Meininger says. “It is really beyond the physical and mental development for every child: For them, play has a really big role in terms of healing.” Alongside the London architecture firm OMMX, which specializes in what it calls “socially responsible architecture,” Meininger has spent the past two years working on a prototype for a flat-packed play structure that can be easily shipped and built on-site. The first Playrise structure—set to be shipped to the Aysaita camp at the end of April—is endlessly reconfigurable, safe for climbing, and designed to be adaptable to any environment. The goal is to eventually make play universally accessible to the nearly 50 million kids who are currently displaced from their homes due to violence and conflict. Play as a tool for healingBefore the Playrise team began the design process in earnest, they consulted with several different refugee communities around the world in order to understand their unique challenges, natural environments, and how the kids themselves actually wanted to play. To gather those insights, OMMX cofounder and director Hikaru Nissanke, Meininger, and a team of project members spent June and July of 2025 conducting workshops. They traveled to Cairo, where many Palestinian children have fled from the Israel-Hamas war; six different villages in south Egypt, which is home to a group of refugees from Sudan; and the Aysaita Refugee Camp. Nissanke brought along a kit of fabric pieces, fashioned by a tailor near his London office, to set up makeshift playgrounds at each site. In the U.K., he explains, his team typically engages kids through structured activities, like coloring, playing with tools, or working with stickers. In the workshops, they focused instead on movements like dancing, jumping, and singing—intuititive staples of play that the kids could guide themselves, rather than requiring excessive explanation or instruction through a translator. “We wanted something very direct, authentic, and in the moment,” Nissanke says. “We didn’t want to just assume one way of thinking, like, This is how we do it in the U.K., therefore this is the way we’ll do it in Ethiopia. We wanted to learn from them as much as possible rather than teaching.” With free rein, the children’s creativity flourished. They transformed fabric into parachutes, slides, monkey bars, and hammocks—features that informed Playrise’s design. “A big takeaway is that they did love everything,” Nissanke says. “That was a really huge challenge.” At each of the three sites, it was clear that the kids didn’t want just one unchanging structure; they wanted to be able to climb, create forts, build stages, and play based on their imaginations. At the same time, the workshops highlighted how different the architectural conditions of refugee camps are: In Aysaita, the available space was a vast, arid desert made of sandy terrain and exposed to the sun, whereas in Cairo, the available area was a cramped courtyard within a walled enclosure. Playrise would need to create a system that could be mass-produced, flat-packed, built on-site, and constantly reconfigured based on both the kids’ ideas and the constraints of the natural terrain. The best solution “was to give them a tool kit so that they could then build their own forms of play for whatever they need at that moment in time,” Nissanke says. Flexibility also helped the kit become more culturally responsive, a takeaway the design team learned from workshops in Ethiopia. “The parents said that they really would see benefit to their children building and maintaining a play structure because it is a directly transferable skill to looking after their homes, which are incredibly fragile and precarious,” Nissanke adds. A modular playground designed like LegoIn the early phases of the design process, Meininger and Nissanke thought of Playrise’s modular system like a set of giant Legos: Each part had to be flexible enough to be used in an infinite number of ways, but strong enough to hold up to years of play. First, they selected wood to serve as the main building block of the system. While in Ethiopia and Egypt, the team noticed multiple metal playgrounds that had been abandoned because a single break in the structure would make it unsafe, and because the material would reach scorching temperatures in the desert heat. Wood, in contrast, could offer durability and stay relatively cool under direct sunlight. The next phase of the design process, and the most challenging, was finding a way to secure wood joinery. “It’s a bit of a compromise, because if you want it to go together as easily as possible, the easiest thing is stuff that just clicks together like Lego—but that wouldn’t be sturdy enough,” Meininger says. Instead, he and Nissanke designed a custom bolt that could be screwed and unscrewed with simple, easy-to-use tools. Through a collaboration with a U.K. organization called the Play Inspector, which consults on play structures to make sure that they reach a high safety standard, Meininger and Nissanke learned that any small hole on a playground could trap fingers. So along each beam of wood they drilled a series of 26-millimeter-wide holes (about 1 inch, which is large enough to be safe for kids’ hands) and created a fitting consisting of a pipe, bolts, and washers that allow these beams to be joined together in almost any configuration. Once the beams were complete, the final step was developing a series of supplemental parts—the Lego accessories of Playrise. To shield kids from the blazing sun, Nissanke designed colorful fabric “sails” that can be tied down between the beams to create pockets of shade. They also double as a canvas kids can paint. Additional parts in the kit include climbable handholds, swings, and rope nets. “I worked on this for the whole year, and I’ve seen a thousand pictures and drawings, but when you see it in reality it really looks like a giant toy,” Meininger says. “You look at it, and it looks a bit like Lego, and you think, Wow, this is really joyful.” Playrise’s next stepsRight now, Playrise is preparing to ship its first modular playground to Aysaita by the end of April; playgrounds in Cairo and the south of Egypt will follow. Meininger and Nissanke plan to use learnings from these locations to inform future updates to the design. They’re already expanding the accessories to include more accessible options at ground level for kids who may be unable to climb, like drums and sensory toys. They want to eventually stock a complete kit on their website that can bring the benefits of play to the sites where it’s needed the most. “Everything kids do is play,” Meininger says. “That’s how they experience the world. That’s how they learn. That’s how they grow and develop. Sophia Apdi, a child psychologist who sat with us on a roundtable recently, expressed it really nicely. She said, ‘Play is the language of children.’” View the full article

If you watched the Super Bowl in 2026, you likely saw Serena Williams share her weight-loss journey on GLP-1 medications in a commercial. Like millions of others around the country, if you’ve ever considered taking one of these drugs, you probably went online to learn more about where you can get them and how much they cost. Online searches for GLP-1 medications like Ozempic and Wegovy have risen dramatically since 2022. Advertisements like Williams’s Super Bowl commercial both reflect and help drive that growing demand. More and more advertisements for weight-loss medications are appearing in people’s daily lives. These ads can be appealing, intrusive, confusing, or even misleading, and have sparked widespread concerns about inappropriate use and adverse events. But the high cost of GLP-1 medications, combined with the lack of adequate coverage by insurance plans, has helped fuel a booming online market for cheaper alternatives. As health services researchers studying prescription medication safety, we are highly concerned about the risks of online advertisements selling alternative versions of GLP-1 weight-loss medications. Serena Williams’s Super Bowl ad promoted GLP-1 drugs for weight loss. Not all GLP-1 medications are the same As of April 2026, the most popular GLP-1 medications approved by the Food and Drug Administration include semaglutide, sold under the brand names Wegovy, Ozempic, and Rybelsus; tirzepatide, sold as Mounjaro or Zepbound; and orforglipron, sold as Foundayo. These brand-name medications have undergone rigorous clinical trials and extensive FDA evaluation, including review of clinical data, manufacturing processes, and facility inspections, to ensure safety, quality and effectiveness. Many of the GLP-1 drugs advertised on the internet are not the FDA-approved medications but rather “compounded” GLP-1 products made in compounding pharmacies. They contain the same active ingredient—semaglutide, tirzepatide or orforglipron—but add minor but clinically important modifications such as using a different salt form, adding different inactive ingredients and varying drug concentrations or dosages. In addition, they may be produced and stored under inconsistent quality standards. Compounding pharmacies are intended to create personalized versions of FDA-approved medications to meet unique patient needs that cannot be met through the mass-produced brand-name medications. However, there is no evidence to suggest that the modifications being made to GLP-1 medications sold by compounding pharmacies meet those criteria. Instead, companies are using compounding pharmacies to bypass the FDA-approved manufacturers and generate profit. In February 2026, the FDA released a report alerting patients and providers about the risks of compounded GLP-1 medications. The report notes the presence of counterfeit Ozempic, the use of non-FDA-approved ingredients such as retatrutide or cagrilintide, and products bypassing regulations by being labeled as “not for human consumption.” As of July 2024—the most recently issued report—the FDA had received more than 1,000 reports of adverse events related to compounded semaglutide and compounded tirzepatide. These include gastrointestinal effects like nausea, vomiting, and abdominal pain, as well as fainting, headache, migraine, dehydration, acute pancreatitis, and gallstones. These effects occur because drug concentrations in compounded medications can vary significantly, leading to serious dosing errors. The Better Business Bureau is seeing a rash of “subscription traps” for GLP-1 drugs. Steps to safely obtain GLP-1 medications online First, if you or someone you know is considering GLP-1 medications for weight management, it’s important to know that leading medical organizations have specific recommendations for the use of these drugs. For instance, the American Diabetes Association only recommends the use of GLP-1 drugs for weight loss for those with a body mass index, or BMI, of at least 30, or among those with a BMI of 27 or greater if they have at least one other condition such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, or high cholesterol. People with a BMI below 27 need further clinical evaluation to determine if a GLP-1 medication is appropriate for them. If you and your doctor determine that it is appropriate to seek GLP-1 medications for weight management, it’s important to avoid compounded versions of GLP-1 drugs unless your healthcare provider specifically recommends them. But identifying which GLP-1 medications are compounded can be challenging. It’s important to carefully examine how the medication is labeled on the website. Websites selling compounded versions of GLP-1 drugs are not allowed to use the FDA-approved brand names of products like Ozempic, Wegovy, and Zepbound. If a product description includes spelling errors or terms such as “compounded,” “generic version,” or “same active ingredient as [brand name],” it often indicates that the product is a compounded formulation. When in doubt, try contacting the online retailer and ask if the product is a compounded drug. If you decide to obtain GLP-1 medications online, it’s important to choose reliable and transparent sources. The manufacturers of several FDA-approved GLP-1 medications provide official online platforms such as Novocare and LillyDirect. These allow people to get medication information and transparent pricing and to get the drugs delivered to them at home or to pick them up at a pharmacy. When possible, using these official sources can reduce the risk of encountering misleading advertisements or unverified products. Red flags Online retailers that offer GLP-1 drugs without requiring a prescription or medical evaluation are illegal and unsafe. Advertising the ease of getting a prescription or only requiring an online form to obtain a prescription is a red flag. As a rule of thumb, patients should always begin their treatment by consulting with their local primary care provider who can evaluate their complete medical history. It is also important to verify whether the pharmacy associated with the website is properly licensed and compliant with regulatory standards, since many online sellers rely on compounding pharmacies that are based outside the U.S. or are not appropriately licensed. Therefore, patients should check whether the pharmacy that will ship their medication has a physical address and a telephone number based in the U.S. Patients should verify whether the pharmacy is registered on the official FDA database of approved compounded pharmacies and licensed as per the board of pharmacy of the state where the pharmacy is physically located. Using pharmacies that are not registered or licensed is highly unsafe and can result in serious adverse effects. If the online retailer does not clearly disclose which pharmacy they are using, you should contact the retailer to confirm this information. Finally, even after you receive your medications, you will need to carefully review the product and its label. This can help determine whether the medication being offered corresponds to an FDA-approved product or a compounded formulation. Products that arrive without proper packaging, labeling, or an expiration date, or have a foreign language on the packaging, may be unsafe or unverified products. Sujith Ramachandran is an associate professor of pharmacy administration at the University of Mississippi. Liang-Yuan (Claire) Lin is a PhD Candidate in Pharmacy Administration at the University of Mississippi. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

In a new neighborhood in Helsinki, you can skip owning a car. One key part of the district’s design? A new bridge that’s part of the city’s growing bicycle superhighway network. The 1.2-kilometer-long bridge, about three quarters of a mile, connects an island called Laajasalo to the city center. It opens to cyclists and pedestrians on April 18 and will soon also include trams. No cars can cross it; drivers have to take a longer route over an older bridge. On one edge of the island, a former industrial site is now filled with apartment buildings, and the population is quickly expanding across the whole island. “We’re looking at quite large new numbers of residents that will be in this part of town,” says Hanna Harris, the city’s chief design officer. “And the decision was made that we need to connect those parts of town across the water to downtown, but that we need to do it in a way that won’t increase congestion.” Called the Kruunuvuorensilta, or crown bridge, it’s part of the city’s broader work to decrease car use, including large investments in new rail lines and bike infrastructure. On the bridge, designers focused on the experience for people on foot or bike rather than those on the tram, who will only spend a couple of minutes crossing. “If people feel it’s too difficult or long a walk or cycle ride, then they won’t use it,” says Tom Osborne, director of UK-based Knight Architects, which partnered on the design with WSP Finland. The bridge curves slightly, which helps it seem less long to someone walking across. “A lot of times if you’re in a very long crossing and a very straight alignment, you get this vanishing point which can be quite intimidating and it feels like you’re never getting towards the end,” Osborne says. “But if you have a gentle curve, you can see your destination, which tends to make you feel safer and that you’re making better progress towards it.” The bike path connects to the bigger bike network at each end of the bridge, and it’s separated so cyclists can ride quickly without the risk of crashing into pedestrians. Halfway across, the bridge widens and there are benches where people can rest and take in the view. In the winter, a snowplow will clear the paths so people can keep riding and walking. (Two tram lines will also begin running either late this year or in 2027.) Because Helsinki is built on an archipelago, the path connects to a few other small islands before reaching the main train station. In the new development, residents are opting not to buy cars. “The density of that development is much greater because there’s no parking or fewer parking spaces required for each flat,” says Osborne. “And everyone’s buying bicycles, rather than buying cars, because that’s the mode that the bridge facilitates.” While the bridge was under construction, the city ran a ferry so that people weren’t tempted to start driving. The new bridge “makes biking and public transport a lot more attractive options on trips between Laajasalo and the inner city of Helsinki,” says Niko Setälä, the city’s team manager for the project. Transportation is now the city’s largest source of emissions. Though leadership is encouraging the switch to electric cars, it’s critical to make biking, walking, and transit as appealing as possible, he says. Right now, if someone wants to drive from the island to an office downtown, it’s a longer route. “You can still drive, but [the design is] trying to make people act in their own self interest,” Osborne says. “So if it’s cheaper and faster to cycle, then people will.” View the full article

SecurityNational Mortgage Co. alleges that the larger competitor facilitated the mass resignation of its staff from Glendale and Scottsdale offices. View the full article

Work sucks for women. Not all women, but far too many. There’s the gender pay gap, where full-time working women earn 81 cents for every dollar men earn, according to the most recent data from the Census Bureau. There’s the glass ceiling that prevents women from leadership advancement, as evidenced by the fact that only 37% of leadership positions in the U.S. are held by women despite representing 47% of the workforce. Let us not forget the disproportionate harassment at work that women experience compared to men, the gender sidelining, and the exclusion from the “boys’ club.” And if that’s not enough, there’s the additional unpaid domestic work that women are expected to do outside of the office—cooking, cleaning, and child rearing—that’s often overlooked and undervalued. That’s assuming they haven’t been displaced out of the workforce altogether, like the more than 300,000 African American women who lost employment in 2025 alone, despite being the most academically educated population in the country. Yes, women have it bad when it comes to work, and that ain’t good. Yet these realities still persist. I say that as someone who has benefited from the injustices women have suffered at work and, for far too long, I’ve been far too quiet about it. Perhaps it’s because earlier in my career I wasn’t as aware as I should have been that they existed. Or maybe it’s because I, too, have to wrestle with the challenges of marginalization as a Black man in America, so I perceived my hands as being “too full” to fight for someone else’s equality while I’m busy fighting for my own. Or maybe I didn’t care as much because it wasn’t happening to me. Honestly, I’m not sure which one it was or if it was a combination of them all. Whatever the case, as the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King once espoused, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” And that’s exactly why we brought Stacy London on the From the Culture podcast to illuminate these wrongs and help shed light on how to make them right. London is a multihyphenate—New York Times best-selling author, entrepreneur, fashion expert, and television personality as the cohost of TLC’s What Not to Wear. These days, however, she’s most passionate about advocating for women who are navigating the dynamics of midlife, when they’re often devalued once they age beyond their child-bearing years. London is very vocal about the aforementioned struggles of women in work and the negotiations that women have to make about their identity when they walk through the office door. While there are social expectations for everyone to “get along,” she asserts, there are additional hardships that women have to endure if they have any ambition to climb the corporate ladder—hardships from which men are typically exempt. During our conversation with London, I kept hearing America Ferrera’s monologue from the Barbie movie play over and over again in mind: “You have to never get old, never be rude, never show off, never be selfish, never fall down, never fail, never show fear, never get out of line.” This is the patriarchy, the social system where men hold the majority of power, privilege, and control in society, and it sucks. Not just for women, but for all of us. Beyond MLK’s moral note about the importance of rooting out injustice, the patriarchy demands harmful expectations of masculine norms, which often restrict emotional development and promote mental health concerns among men. As a proof point, look no further than the loneliness epidemic we’re experiencing in young men who fall prey to the misguidance of the manosphere. Like most things that are socially constructed, London argues that the system is the way it is because that’s the way it’s been. But that’s not how it has to be. As she underscores in our conversation on the pod, things can be different if we invest the effort to see to them differently. She, like other feminists, has maintained the tradition of calling out injustices to women and taking the subsequent actions necessary to right the wrongs. In most cases, it starts by helping people see the world through a reality that is not their own—and that’s why we had London on. That’s why I’m writing this article. That’s why even though, admittedly, I was late to the feminism party, I’m now handing out invitations for others to join. I do all this to help others who were once like me see it differently so that we all might benefit, in work and in life more broadly. Because yes, injustice anywhere is an injustice everywhere. Check out our full interview with Stacy London here. View the full article

I tend to write about AI from the perspective of the bleeding edge, looking at how journalists and media companies are using the technology to change the way they work, reach new audiences, and transform their organizations. But the reality is that there’s a stigma around using artificial intelligence in the journalism community. In conversations I have with working reporters and editors, there’s clearly still a lot of reluctance, if not outright disdain, for using AI in almost any part of their work. Looking at recent coverage of journalists using AI, however, you might think some of that disdain is going away. The Wall Street Journal recently profiled how Fortune business editor Nick Lichtenberg uses AI to turbocharge his output, sometimes writing as many as seven stories in a single day. The same day, Wired highlighted how several prominent reporters—including independents like Alex Heath and Taylor Lorenz as well as The New York Times’ Kevin Roose—use AI in various editorial tasks, sometimes in the writing itself. With all this, it feels as if a kind of dam has burst, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s happening at the same time Claude Cowork—which brings incredibly powerful agentic AI to everyone—has transformed the AI landscape. (An interesting aside buried in all this coverage of journalists’ use of AI is that it appears Claude is rapidly becoming what the Mac became among media pros: the platform of choice for creatives who “know better.”) A cautionary tale in copy and paste However, if the relationship between journalists and AI has been warming up, it got splashed in the face with a cold bucket of water last week when The New York Times severed ties with a freelance writer who had submitted a book review that was at least partially AI-written. The review by Alex Preston, published in early January, included passages that were nearly identical to Christobel Kent’s review of the same book that was published in The Guardian months earlier. Preston admitted he used AI to assist in writing his book review, saying that he had “made a serious mistake.” While the incident is certainly a wake-up call for the Times (and not necessarily the first one) about how it communicates its AI policy to freelancers, it’s also a flapping red flag for any newsroom tempted to allow more AI use in their operations. Suddenly, there’s an error that seems to justify all the rules against it. That’s why it’s important to confront this directly. The incident steers us back into the dark cave of AI scandals in media—from CNET’s bot-authored service journalism to the made-up book titles in the Chicago Sun-Times’ “summer reading list” last year. It threatens to undermine all the gains many journalists and newsrooms are achieving in productivity, content optimization, and more, and potentially encourages those just taking their first steps with AI to fall back on the easy, blanket rule of “just don’t use it.” That’s why it’s important to look closely at how AI was used so we can better delineate between good and bad AI use. It’s easy to say there wasn’t enough “human in the loop” (an increasingly unhelpful term)—but where in the loop? With prompting, fact-checking, something else? The whole point of AI is to outsource some human decision-making to sophisticated machines, so rather than pointing out the obvious—that humans need to shape and monitor the process—it’s better to zero in on the specific decisions that AI was asked to make, and whether the human gave the right parameters and restrictions. When you examine this closely, it definitely appears the answer is no. According to The Guardian story, the two reviews have eerily similar language—so close that it’s difficult to argue against outright plagiarism. Look at these two passages: Original review, published August 21, 2025: “most significantly a song of love to a country of contradictions, battered, war-torn, divided, misguided and miraculous: an Italy where life is costume and the performance of art, and where circuses spring up on wasteland.” Times review, published January 6, 2026: “populate what is ultimately a love song to a country of contradictions: battered, divided, misguided and miraculous. This is an Italy where life is performance, where circuses rise on wasteland.” Looking at the dates and the unquestionable similarities, we can draw some conclusions. It’s obvious Preston directly or indirectly asked the AI to create text he intended to include in the piece, and not just based on his notes. Given that the two reviews were published four months apart (and considering the typically lengthy editing process at the Times, he likely submitted it much earlier), that’s almost certainly not enough time for the AI’s training data to be updated. Which means the AI tool he used was incorporating web search (aka RAG) to come up with the copy. This was a mistake. Giving Preston the benefit of the doubt, he may not have deliberately told the AI he was using to synthesize other reviews of the book, and perhaps it grabbed The Guardian review on its own. But he certainly didn’t tell the AI not to do that, which would seem to be an essential part of your prompt if you want to avoid the very plagiarized text he ended up including. From taboo to tool It bears repeating: In many—if not most—cases, how you use AI matters more than whether or not you use it at all. That requires acquiring a thorough understanding of these tools’ abilities and pitfalls, being meticulous about the parameters of your prompts, and a willingness to adapt your process continually. It’s an ongoing process, and it needs guardrails—such as “always” and “never” commands to avoid specific problems and (human) fact-checking. Otherwise, you’re playing with a gun that could easily go off. There are systemic safeguards beyond simple techniques. Whether you’re an independent writer or a full newsroom, it pays to have an AI policy. As a media AI trainer, I of course would encourage investing in training, but I think it’s still objectively a good idea. But most importantly, the trial-and-error that comes with figuring out the boundaries of “good AI” should be kept out of public view if you can avoid it. In the case of AI-assisted writing, developing your prompting and guardrails in a private sandbox is essential. That may seem obvious, but part of the “magic” of AI is that it creates outputs that seem identical to human-created outputs that have gone through a rigorous process. To the untrained eye, the appearance of competence feels good enough. Unlocking AI’s potential as a partner in writing and journalism means not simply trusting the underlying process, but accepting your role to build it, test it, and adjust it as needed. The more journalists do that, the more the stigma will fade. View the full article

Something has gone badly wrong in communication between Downing Street and government departments View the full article

How savvy CPAs are unlocking powerful insights buried in their practice management systems. Plus: Download the slide deck. Gear Up for Growth With Jean Caragher Go PRO for members-only access to more Jean Marie Caragher. View the full article

How savvy CPAs are unlocking powerful insights buried in their practice management systems. Plus: Download the slide deck. Gear Up for Growth With Jean Caragher Go PRO for members-only access to more Jean Marie Caragher. View the full article

Despite Google’s status as one of the true giants of U.S. tech, it’s never quite been able to make its Pixel phones a mainstream success. Last year, for instance, the company enjoyed record U.S. sales in September after the launch of the Pixel 10 line, according to Counterpoint Research. But despite achieving 28% year-on-year growth, the Pixel still only accounted for 6.1% of the $600-and-up smartphone market in the U.S., which is dominated by Apple. There is one market, however, where Google has managed to turn the Pixel into a big hit, and surprisingly, it’s in a country that was one of the last to adopt its search engine. The entry-level Pixel 8A and 9A have been some of the best-selling phones in Japan in recent years, and this seems to have prompted Google to pull out all the stops for the latest iteration. Announced this week, the Pixel 10A is getting a design-forward variant that’s exclusive to Japan. Google calls the color “Isai Blue,” and it was developed in partnership with the Japanese creative company Heralbony, based in the city of Morioka in Iwate Prefecture. “Isai” is a term that refers to “unique brilliance,” and the shade of blue used is intended to represent the symbolic color for autism. Earlier this month, Heralbony launched a campaign called the Beyond Blue Project to tie into World Autism Day on April 2. The connection there is that Heralbony collaborates with artists who have disabilities and helps integrate their creative work into lifestyle products. The Isai Blue Pixel 10A, for example, features exclusive wallpapers by artists including Midori Kudo, Kaoru Iga, and Shigaku Mizukami, and the Pixel software dynamically adjusts its app icons and color schemes in response. The Japan-exclusive Pixel 10A comes in specialized packaging with artwork from Kudo. It also includes a limited bumper-style case to highlight the device’s color, and a set of included stickers by artist Nozomi Fujita. It will be available in a single 256-gigabyte configuration for 94,900 yen ($596). “Smartphones have now become an integral part of our daily lives,” said Heralbony project planner Rinko Daimon in a statement. “I believe there is great significance in the fact that by featuring artists’ work on these familiar devices, people will naturally encounter the artists and engage with their expressions as part of their everyday lives.” Taking Japan Seriously It’s another example of Google taking Japan seriously and tailoring its product marketing in a way that feels authentic and well thought-out. The Pixel series has long been heavily advertised with unique campaigns featuring local celebrities, and the results speak for themselves: Google often sells more Pixel phones by volume in Japan than in its home market of the U.S., despite the much smaller population. Last year, the Pixel 9A and 8A were the second- and fourth-most popular Android phones in the country, according to Japanese analytics firm BCN. Pixel phones are now available on all of Japan’s major carriers, and Google has often priced them aggressively and offered regular discounts—which has helped keep prices affordable despite rising costs and the weakening of the yen. A modest upgrade The Pixel 10A, then, may well prove to be another hit in Japan. But there might be another reason that Google is making a big effort to win people over in what’s already its biggest market: The phone itself isn’t actually much of an upgrade this year. Unlike the Pixel 10 and 10 Pro, which feature Google’s latest Tensor G5 processor, the 10A uses the same G4 chip from the Pixel 9 range. The 6.3-inch OLED screen is almost identical to the previous panel but has slightly higher peak brightness and sturdier Gorilla Glass. The camera hardware is unchanged, save for an even tinier bump—in fact, it’s slightly recessed now. The battery is the same 5,100-milliampere-hour (mAh) capacity but charges a little faster, at up to 30 watts with a cable or 10 watts wirelessly. To be clear, the Pixel 10 phones weren’t radical upgrades over their predecessors, either. But they did at least get the new G5 chip, as well as Google’s MagSafe-style Pixelsnap magnetic wireless charging solution. Both headline features are absent on the 10A. This would be a solid upgrade for anyone using a 7A or 8A, to be sure. Most people who bought last year’s second-most popular phone in Japan, however, are unlikely to be very convinced. But Google’s announcement of a Japan-exclusive model—which is not something particularly common for Western tech brands—makes the launch feel like an event all the same. And it helps that Heralbony is a classy partner for the collaboration, providing some stylish art and an authentic connection to the local market. The two companies are even putting on a weeklong exhibition in Tokyo’s trendy Shimokitazawa neighborhood next month, where visitors can see the phone for themselves and get limited-edition pin badges with artwork by Fujita from a gacha (vending) machine. In what has proven to be perhaps the most important market for the Pixel, Google has turned an otherwise pedestrian phone upgrade into an inspiring, design-forward event. The Pixel 10A might not be the most exciting phone of 2026, but it should be one of the more eye-catching launches in Japan this year. View the full article

Conservatives refuse to accept prime minister’s move to shift blame by sacking top Foreign Office official View the full article

Errands, Target runs, tennis games, and even flying to Europe—these are just some of the things employees have done while taking “soft off days.” The idea of taking soft off days, in which you use a work day to do just about anything else, has become a phenomenon. Videos across social media instruct employees on the best way to take a soft day while assuaging any guilt. While employers might see it as wasting company time, many people believe soft off days are harmless—even needed. So-called “time theft,” the practice of running errands or doing personal matters on the clock, has become widely pervasive since the pandemic normalized remote work. From consciously long lunch breaks to Botox appointments, many workers increasingly view the practice as crucial for their work-life balance. But now, the nature of activities has escalated to include things like hopping on a personal flight. Take Emma, who was fully remote at her old job. (Emma is using a pseudonym to protect her identity.) She started using time on the clock to do laundry, run to the store, or leave early for a workout—but took more “liberties” after no one noticed, eventually graduating from garden-variety time theft to a full-on soft off day. “One weekend, I flew to a European country on Wednesday night without telling anyone, took a couple of calls Thursday and Friday, and just kept my Slack live. No one knew I was in a different time zone,” the U.S.-based worker explains. Emma would still get all her work done, and felt little guilt at a company where even the management “were just collecting a paycheck,” rather than being motivated to grow the organization. Sure, flying to another country on company time is a bit brazen compared to other soft off day activities. But “using work-from-home days to rotate loads of laundry, pay bills, clean the house, or engage in a hobby can be quite supportive in balancing the cognitive load that it takes to feel more balanced,” explains Angela Williams, LCSW, a psychotherapist and executive coach. And in a world where more workers than ever are sick of the rat race and “corporate ick,” this phenomenon could well become a more common one. How workers pull it off For those taking a soft off day, finishing all tasks and not making significant breaks obvious are key. This can mean staying active on team chats, like Emma, or spreading their workload accordingly. “If I want a ‘soft off day’ I will typically plan my workload for the week around this so I have less to do, and don’t have to feel guilty,” says Grace, who’s also using a pseudonym. “I also won’t do it if it will put a strain on the rest of my team.” Then there’s Hannah (also a pseudonym), who will book a meeting with herself to play tennis for part of a day. While out, she’ll regularly check her work phone for any messages and stay active in any work group chats. Plus, she often plays first thing in the morning, at lunch time, or on Friday afternoons, when people are less likely to contact her. What drives people to do this One reason is low pay. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found about 70% of respondents felt underpaid for their quality or amount of work. At Emma’s previous job, she felt like the company paid her too little for the amount of work they required. “I took ‘soft off days’ to make up for the earnings gap; it made me feel better to earn less as long as I had a ton of freedom and flexibility,” she explains. “I was still able to go above and beyond in my role even with these days off. If I were struggling with my workload or being unresponsive to internal and external messages, I likely would not have taken so many liberties.” Soft off days typically aren’t someone trying to exploit remote work. In fact, Emma explains that, in her current hybrid job, she works the same amount at the office—but without the flexibility to use her extra time as she wishes. Most people use soft off days as a way to make up for things like poor compensation and long hours. They’re still getting their work done, while taking back some agency over their time. ‘They’re trying to stay functional without burning out’ “The ethical question of ‘soft off days’ has nothing to do with doing laundry at 2 p.m.,” says Jessica Kriegel, author and Chief Strategy Officer at consulting firm Culture Partners. “The real question is whether the employee delivered what they said they would. If they did, the laundry is irrelevant.” Again, the ethics of this might depend on exactly what you’re doing. (Some may have no problem doing laundry and might draw the line at international travel.) But when an employee is consistently required to work late, soft off days—or parts of days—can help provide work-life balance, proponents argue. Such is the case for Hannah, who uses the time to create “boundaries” with her job. “We go through very intensive periods each quarter. When it’s slow, I will take a little time for myself so that I feel like I still have opportunities to enjoy my extracurriculars,” says Hannah. “This is also how I avoid burning out. So, in the long run, it’s probably best for myself and my managers. If anything, they should encourage it.” Meanwhile, Grace finds them necessary when chores have built up or she has to get ready for a trip. “The real issue isn’t ethics, it’s that our expectations of productivity haven’t caught up with how people are actually living and working,” explains Williams. “Most people aren’t trying to get away with less work. They’re trying to stay functional without burning out.” Kriegel blames the need for soft off days on leaders who focus too much on control, rather than results. Grace seconds this. “If there was more flexibility, and a culture where you could do your work and leave early, I would probably do this, and then block out a day or afternoon where my company knows I’m not working—and I don’t have to feel guilty about it.” View the full article

If you’re looking to file as a corporation, it’s vital to understand the steps involved in the process. First, you’ll need to choose a unique business name and verify it’s available. Then, appoint a registered agent with a Texas address. After that, you’ll file the Certificate of Formation and draft corporate bylaws. These steps lay the groundwork, but ongoing compliance is fundamental for maintaining your corporation’s good standing. What comes next might surprise you. Key Takeaways Choose a unique business name and verify its availability through the Texas Secretary of State’s office. Appoint a registered agent with a physical address in Texas for legal document service. File the Certificate of Formation (Form 201) online or by mail, paying the $300 filing fee. Draft corporate bylaws to outline governance rules and adopt them during the initial board meeting. Comply with ongoing requirements, including annual franchise tax reports if applicable, to maintain good standing. Choose a Unique Business Name When starting a corporation, one of the first steps is choosing a unique business name, and it’s vital to get this right. Begin by conducting a search through the Texas Secretary of State’s office or using the SOSDirect service to verify the name isn’t already in use. Your chosen name must include a corporate designation like “Inc.” or “Co.” to comply with state requirements. Be mindful of any restricted words that might lead to legal complications. If you’re not ready to file immediately, consider reserving your business name for up to 120 days by submitting a Name Reservation form with a $40 fee. This gives you time to finalize your plans. Moreover, check for the availability of a corresponding online domain name to improve your business’s digital presence. Following these steps is vital for successful corporate filing and comprehension of how to file as a corporation. Appoint a Registered Agent Appointing a registered agent is a vital step in establishing your corporation, as this individual or business entity serves as the official point of contact for legal documents. In Texas, every corporation must designate a registered agent, who can be either a resident or a business entity authorized to operate in the state. This agent must agree to accept legal documents on your corporation’s behalf and have a physical address in Texas—no P.O. Boxes allowed. It’s important that this address is a place where documents can be served during normal business hours. When you file your corporation’s Certificate of Formation, you’ll need to include your registered agent’s information. If you ever change your registered agent, be sure to update this information by filing an amendment with the Texas Secretary of State. Choosing a reliable registered agent helps guarantee your corporation remains compliant and receives important legal correspondence without delay. File the Certificate of Formation Filing the Certificate of Formation is crucial for officially establishing your corporation in Texas, as it marks the legal creation of your business entity. You’ll need to complete Form 201, which requires information such as your corporation’s name, registered agent, initial directors, and authorized shares. Keep in mind there’s a $300 filing fee, and you can submit the form online through SOSDirect or by mail. Here’s what to include in your Certificate of Formation: Required Information Details Notes Corporation Name Your chosen business name Must be unique Registered Agent Individual or business entity Must be authorized in Texas Purpose and Mailing Address Purpose of the corporation and address Include effective date Once you submit the Certificate and it’s accepted by the Secretary of State, your corporation is officially formed. Draft Corporate Bylaws Drafting corporate bylaws is a fundamental step in establishing the internal governance of your corporation, as these documents define the rules and procedures that will guide your organization. Although you don’t need to file bylaws with the state, you must adopt them during your initial board meeting and keep them in a corporate records book. Your bylaws should include provisions for meetings, voting rights, officer roles, and stock issuance, which create your corporation’s operational framework. It’s advisable to consult a legal professional when drafting these bylaws to guarantee they comply with state laws and address your corporation’s specific needs. Maintaining updated bylaws is essential for protecting your corporation’s legal status and guaranteeing clarity in governance. This clarity can help mitigate conflicts among stakeholders, promoting a smoother operational environment for everyone involved. Hold the First Board Meeting After you’ve drafted your corporate bylaws, the next step is to hold the first board meeting. This meeting is essential for adopting those bylaws, which outline how your corporation will be managed. During the meeting, you should appoint corporate officers, such as a president, secretary, and treasurer, to handle daily operations. It’s equally important to authorize the issuance of stock to initial shareholders, documenting this in the meeting minutes to maintain accurate records. If you’re considering S corporation status, discuss and approve this election, as it can greatly impact your tax treatment. Finally, verify that the minutes from this first meeting are documented and retained in your corporate records. Keeping these records not only guarantees compliance but also promotes transparency in governance. Taking these steps will lay a solid foundation for your corporation’s future operations. Issue Stock Certificates Now that you’ve held your first board meeting and established your corporate structure, it’s time to issue stock certificates to represent ownership in your corporation. These certificates should include vital details like the corporation’s name, the shareholder’s name, the number of shares, and the date of issuance. You can choose to issue physical certificates or digital shares, depending on your preferences and state regulations. It’s important to maintain a stock transfer ledger to document each transaction, noting the names of purchasers, the number of shares bought, and purchase dates. Shareholders can contribute cash, property, or services in exchange for stock, and you must accurately record these transactions for legal and tax purposes. Compliance with relevant regulations is critical during this process to avoid potential legal issues, so consulting legal or financial professionals is strongly recommended to guarantee you’re following the proper guidelines. Comply With Ongoing Requirements To guarantee your corporation remains in good standing, it’s essential to comply with ongoing requirements that may vary by location and business type. In Texas, for example, if your annual revenue exceeds $2.47 million, you must file an annual franchise tax report (Form 05-102) by May 15 each year. Although there’s no annual report required for the Secretary of State, adhering to local, state, and federal tax obligations is critical. Moreover, keep accurate corporate records, including meeting minutes and bylaws, as these protect your corporation legally. Depending on your business type, you may need to obtain and periodically renew various licenses or permits. If you operate as a foreign corporation in Texas, remember to register with the Secretary of State and appoint a registered agent, which involves filing the Application for Registration (Form 301) and paying a $750 fee. Compliance guarantees your corporation can operate smoothly and legally. Frequently Asked Questions What Are the Steps Required to Form a Corporation? To form a corporation, start by choosing a unique business name and conducting a trademark search. Next, file the Articles of Incorporation with your state’s Secretary of State, including crucial details like the corporation’s address and purpose. Appoint initial directors and hold a board meeting to adopt bylaws. After that, obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS, and guarantee compliance with ongoing state requirements, such as annual tax filings. Can I Declare Myself a Corporation? You can’t simply declare yourself a corporation. To establish a corporation, you must file official documents, like Articles of Incorporation, with your state’s Secretary of State. This process involves selecting a unique business name, appointing a registered agent, and detailing your corporation’s structure and purpose. Although you can be the sole shareholder and director, following these legal steps is essential to guarantee you gain the protections and liability limitations a corporation offers. What Are the Three Steps to Start Your Corporation? To start your Corporation Service Company, first, choose a unique name that meets state regulations and conduct a trademark search. Next, file the Certificate of Formation with the Secretary of State, including vital details like the corporation’s name, registered agent, and purpose, during paying the required fee. Finally, draft corporate bylaws that outline your management structure and hold your first board meeting to issue stock and document corporate resolutions, ensuring compliance with state laws. Can I Set up an S Corp Myself? Yes, you can set up an S Corporation by yourself. You’ll need to file Articles of Incorporation with your state’s Secretary of State and submit Form 2553 to the IRS for S Corp status. Make sure your business meets eligibility requirements, like having no more than 100 shareholders and one class of stock. Don’t forget to obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) for tax purposes and maintain corporate formalities for limited liability protection. Conclusion In summary, filing as a corporation in Texas involves several clear steps, from selecting a unique business name to complying with ongoing requirements. By carefully following each step, including appointing a registered agent and drafting corporate bylaws, you can establish a solid foundation for your business. Remember to maintain accurate records and fulfill any annual reporting obligations to guarantee your corporation remains in good standing. With diligence, you’ll be well-equipped to navigate the corporate environment effectively. Image via Google Gemini This article, "7 Simple Steps to File as a Corporation" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

If you’re looking to file as a corporation, it’s vital to understand the steps involved in the process. First, you’ll need to choose a unique business name and verify it’s available. Then, appoint a registered agent with a Texas address. After that, you’ll file the Certificate of Formation and draft corporate bylaws. These steps lay the groundwork, but ongoing compliance is fundamental for maintaining your corporation’s good standing. What comes next might surprise you. Key Takeaways Choose a unique business name and verify its availability through the Texas Secretary of State’s office. Appoint a registered agent with a physical address in Texas for legal document service. File the Certificate of Formation (Form 201) online or by mail, paying the $300 filing fee. Draft corporate bylaws to outline governance rules and adopt them during the initial board meeting. Comply with ongoing requirements, including annual franchise tax reports if applicable, to maintain good standing. Choose a Unique Business Name When starting a corporation, one of the first steps is choosing a unique business name, and it’s vital to get this right. Begin by conducting a search through the Texas Secretary of State’s office or using the SOSDirect service to verify the name isn’t already in use. Your chosen name must include a corporate designation like “Inc.” or “Co.” to comply with state requirements. Be mindful of any restricted words that might lead to legal complications. If you’re not ready to file immediately, consider reserving your business name for up to 120 days by submitting a Name Reservation form with a $40 fee. This gives you time to finalize your plans. Moreover, check for the availability of a corresponding online domain name to improve your business’s digital presence. Following these steps is vital for successful corporate filing and comprehension of how to file as a corporation. Appoint a Registered Agent Appointing a registered agent is a vital step in establishing your corporation, as this individual or business entity serves as the official point of contact for legal documents. In Texas, every corporation must designate a registered agent, who can be either a resident or a business entity authorized to operate in the state. This agent must agree to accept legal documents on your corporation’s behalf and have a physical address in Texas—no P.O. Boxes allowed. It’s important that this address is a place where documents can be served during normal business hours. When you file your corporation’s Certificate of Formation, you’ll need to include your registered agent’s information. If you ever change your registered agent, be sure to update this information by filing an amendment with the Texas Secretary of State. Choosing a reliable registered agent helps guarantee your corporation remains compliant and receives important legal correspondence without delay. File the Certificate of Formation Filing the Certificate of Formation is crucial for officially establishing your corporation in Texas, as it marks the legal creation of your business entity. You’ll need to complete Form 201, which requires information such as your corporation’s name, registered agent, initial directors, and authorized shares. Keep in mind there’s a $300 filing fee, and you can submit the form online through SOSDirect or by mail. Here’s what to include in your Certificate of Formation: Required Information Details Notes Corporation Name Your chosen business name Must be unique Registered Agent Individual or business entity Must be authorized in Texas Purpose and Mailing Address Purpose of the corporation and address Include effective date Once you submit the Certificate and it’s accepted by the Secretary of State, your corporation is officially formed. Draft Corporate Bylaws Drafting corporate bylaws is a fundamental step in establishing the internal governance of your corporation, as these documents define the rules and procedures that will guide your organization. Although you don’t need to file bylaws with the state, you must adopt them during your initial board meeting and keep them in a corporate records book. Your bylaws should include provisions for meetings, voting rights, officer roles, and stock issuance, which create your corporation’s operational framework. It’s advisable to consult a legal professional when drafting these bylaws to guarantee they comply with state laws and address your corporation’s specific needs. Maintaining updated bylaws is essential for protecting your corporation’s legal status and guaranteeing clarity in governance. This clarity can help mitigate conflicts among stakeholders, promoting a smoother operational environment for everyone involved. Hold the First Board Meeting After you’ve drafted your corporate bylaws, the next step is to hold the first board meeting. This meeting is essential for adopting those bylaws, which outline how your corporation will be managed. During the meeting, you should appoint corporate officers, such as a president, secretary, and treasurer, to handle daily operations. It’s equally important to authorize the issuance of stock to initial shareholders, documenting this in the meeting minutes to maintain accurate records. If you’re considering S corporation status, discuss and approve this election, as it can greatly impact your tax treatment. Finally, verify that the minutes from this first meeting are documented and retained in your corporate records. Keeping these records not only guarantees compliance but also promotes transparency in governance. Taking these steps will lay a solid foundation for your corporation’s future operations. Issue Stock Certificates Now that you’ve held your first board meeting and established your corporate structure, it’s time to issue stock certificates to represent ownership in your corporation. These certificates should include vital details like the corporation’s name, the shareholder’s name, the number of shares, and the date of issuance. You can choose to issue physical certificates or digital shares, depending on your preferences and state regulations. It’s important to maintain a stock transfer ledger to document each transaction, noting the names of purchasers, the number of shares bought, and purchase dates. Shareholders can contribute cash, property, or services in exchange for stock, and you must accurately record these transactions for legal and tax purposes. Compliance with relevant regulations is critical during this process to avoid potential legal issues, so consulting legal or financial professionals is strongly recommended to guarantee you’re following the proper guidelines. Comply With Ongoing Requirements To guarantee your corporation remains in good standing, it’s essential to comply with ongoing requirements that may vary by location and business type. In Texas, for example, if your annual revenue exceeds $2.47 million, you must file an annual franchise tax report (Form 05-102) by May 15 each year. Although there’s no annual report required for the Secretary of State, adhering to local, state, and federal tax obligations is critical. Moreover, keep accurate corporate records, including meeting minutes and bylaws, as these protect your corporation legally. Depending on your business type, you may need to obtain and periodically renew various licenses or permits. If you operate as a foreign corporation in Texas, remember to register with the Secretary of State and appoint a registered agent, which involves filing the Application for Registration (Form 301) and paying a $750 fee. Compliance guarantees your corporation can operate smoothly and legally. Frequently Asked Questions What Are the Steps Required to Form a Corporation? To form a corporation, start by choosing a unique business name and conducting a trademark search. Next, file the Articles of Incorporation with your state’s Secretary of State, including crucial details like the corporation’s address and purpose. Appoint initial directors and hold a board meeting to adopt bylaws. After that, obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) from the IRS, and guarantee compliance with ongoing state requirements, such as annual tax filings. Can I Declare Myself a Corporation? You can’t simply declare yourself a corporation. To establish a corporation, you must file official documents, like Articles of Incorporation, with your state’s Secretary of State. This process involves selecting a unique business name, appointing a registered agent, and detailing your corporation’s structure and purpose. Although you can be the sole shareholder and director, following these legal steps is essential to guarantee you gain the protections and liability limitations a corporation offers. What Are the Three Steps to Start Your Corporation? To start your Corporation Service Company, first, choose a unique name that meets state regulations and conduct a trademark search. Next, file the Certificate of Formation with the Secretary of State, including vital details like the corporation’s name, registered agent, and purpose, during paying the required fee. Finally, draft corporate bylaws that outline your management structure and hold your first board meeting to issue stock and document corporate resolutions, ensuring compliance with state laws. Can I Set up an S Corp Myself? Yes, you can set up an S Corporation by yourself. You’ll need to file Articles of Incorporation with your state’s Secretary of State and submit Form 2553 to the IRS for S Corp status. Make sure your business meets eligibility requirements, like having no more than 100 shareholders and one class of stock. Don’t forget to obtain an Employer Identification Number (EIN) for tax purposes and maintain corporate formalities for limited liability protection. Conclusion In summary, filing as a corporation in Texas involves several clear steps, from selecting a unique business name to complying with ongoing requirements. By carefully following each step, including appointing a registered agent and drafting corporate bylaws, you can establish a solid foundation for your business. Remember to maintain accurate records and fulfill any annual reporting obligations to guarantee your corporation remains in good standing. With diligence, you’ll be well-equipped to navigate the corporate environment effectively. Image via Google Gemini This article, "7 Simple Steps to File as a Corporation" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Professional workdays are full, fast, and designed for productivity, not recovery. In Microsoft’s 2025 Work Trend Index, 80% of global workers said they don’t have enough time or energy to do their work, and workers were interrupted about every two minutes during the day. That’s the experience of modern work: back-to-back meetings, endless emails and chats, and constant task-switching. The day doesn’t pause for you. We know breaks matter. But for most of us, the problem in taking them isn’t desire or discipline, it’s that the workday doesn’t seem to have room. The good news is you can build short, targeted recovery into the day you already have, once you learn to see the space that’s already there. These are five ways to take breaks even when you think you can’t. #1. Use the Gap: Turn Dead Time into Connection Time Most professionals spend their days in endless meetings and operate in cultures where every minute is expected to be productive. This structure feels constrictive yet has hidden opportunities—the gap time between the start of a meeting and waiting for people to join. That waiting time is often used to squeeze in one more email or chat message. Instead, use it to recover. Try this: Use a meeting’s opening minutes for a social micro-break. Research shows that even brief social interactions during the workday can reduce the emotional toll of work demands and improve energy and mood. Ask a simple question like, “What’s one thing going well for you this week?”, “What’s something that made you laugh recently?”, or “What are you working on that you’re excited about?” These questions do more than fill time; they demonstrate to people that they matter, a fundamental driver of well-being at work. #2. Slow Your Pace: Reset Your Nervous System When work intensifies, our bodies, in response, often pick up the pace—typing quickly, walking faster, speaking with urgency. These rapid movements signal a “threat” to the brain, sending your nervous system into a sympathetic (fight-or-flight) state. For relief, you can self-regulate by downshifting your tempo. No extra time is required—just awareness and a deliberate choice to slow down. Research shows that both slow breathing and intentional, slow movement send a safety signal from the body to the brain, telling it to calm down. By shifting your pace, you stimulate the vagus nerve and activate the body’s rest-and-recovery system. Try this: In the moment, drop your shoulders and for 60-90 seconds breathe only through your nose, inhaling for 5 seconds and exhaling for 5 seconds. Instead of rushing to your next meeting, walk more slowly than usual, focusing on the sensation of your feet hitting the floor. #3. Stop Micro-Multitasking: Let Yourself Focus Too often in meetings we’re half-listening while scanning chat or drafting an email. It feels efficient, but it isn’t. Our brains can’t process two things at once, and task-switching degrades productive time. Technology workflows and hybrid work keep us attached to our devices, yet research shows that having a smartphone in the room while working, even turned off, reduces our available cognitive capacity. A CEO I heard speak this year makes a point of not bringing her cell phone into one-on-one meetings. Why? Because she wants to be fully present to the individual in front of her. By doing so, she not only signals the person’s importance, but she also gives her brain a break from the tax of multi-tasking and digital distraction. This focus itself becomes a form of cognitive rest. Try this: Go analog in your next in-person meeting. Take pen and paper rather than your phone or computer. For an important block of work, put your phone in another room and close all but one work window on your computer. Notice how your attention and energy shift. #4. Trick Your Brain Into a Break: Clear It First, Then Let It Wander Many of us find it difficult to “turn off” our brains when it’s time to shift our attention. We continue to ruminate on a tense meeting, an incomplete project, or a pending decision. This is known as the Zeigarnik Effect: unfinished tasks remain active in our working memory, draining mental energy. Cognitive offloading, moving unfinished tasks or thoughts onto paper or into a system, offers relief and signals to our brain that it can let go. Taking a pause can also be the most productive thing you do. Neuroscience shows that some of our best problem-solving and creative thinking happens not when we’re task-focused, but when we step away. When we stop actively working on a problem, we tap into the brain’s Default Mode Network (DMN), which supports mind-wandering and making creative associations. So instead of feeling guilty stepping away, tell yourself that you are working, because the science says we are. Try this: Before a break or new task, spend two minutes writing down what’s on your mind to get it off your mind. Then, if you can, take a walk without trying to solve anything. Just let your mind wander. #5. Make It Small and Targeted: Align to What You Need Not all breaks are guaranteed to restore you. For example, a scroll through social media may feel like a pause and still leave you more drained than before. A meta-analysis of micro-break research found that short pauses boost energy and reduce fatigue, but the type of break matters. Some break activities actually increased the negative effects of demanding work rather than relieving them. Try this: Allow yourself even a few minutes, and before you take a break, ask yourself: What do I actually need right now? Am I emotionally drained, physically tense, cognitively overloaded, or stuck on a problem? Then choose a break that matches what you need. Learning to restore yourself within full workdays is a skill worth mastering. You don’t need to completely clear your calendar. You can shape your day and integrate breaks by shifting your behaviors and using the time you already have. The day won’t pause for you, but you can learn to pause inside of it. View the full article

Technology is making it easier for everyone to move faster. The important question is who will move in the right direction? New technologies—including AI and automation—are quickly becoming indispensable teammates that can draft, summarize, analyze, and accelerate the work that keeps organizations moving. I see most individuals on my team using AI and automation to complete some tasks in a fraction of the time, allowing them more time to focus on relationship-building, innovation, and value creation. When the use of AI and automation becomes widespread, it will stop being a performance differentiator. Differentiation will come instead from the people that use them with judgment, clarity, and accountability, and that’s where leadership matters. As new technology spreads, human capabilities contribute to high performance In Deloitte’s new research on high-performing teams—based on an external survey of 1,394 US working professionals—respondents were asked to think about teams they have been a part of that consistently meet or exceed expectations over time. We found that surveyed high-performing teams are more likely to use AI in their day-to-day work (78% versus 54%) and more likely to report stronger outcomes including efficiency, problem-solving, and collaboration. Technical know-how certainly matters. But the research was also clear that high performance in the AI era is human-led and AI-powered. Members of surveyed high-performing teams are 2.3 times as likely to feel trusted by their team leader, 2.3 times as likely to feel respected and appreciated by peers, and nearly 1.5 times more likely to report feeling included. They also cited emotional and social intelligence as the top success factor for their team. While AI can generate options quickly, it can’t act on what matters most, set expectations for excellence with others, or own the consequences of outcomes. That’s human work, and it is leader work: staying close enough to provide direction and reinforce judgment, not just measure speed. Despite the importance of human capabilities in maximizing the benefits of AI, most organizations are investing almost exclusively in technology. According to Deloitte’s 2026 Tech Trends, roughly 93% of surveyed organizations’ AI-related budgets are being spent on technology, and only 7% on people. That imbalance may determine which organizations translate AI investment into sustained performance and which simply deploy more technology. It can also signal a broader pattern: investing in technology without investing in the leaders and teams that make them useful. What sets high-performing teams apart Deloitte’s research found teams that say they consistently achieve high performance tend to demonstrate capabilities such as)—curiosity, resilience, divergent thinking, and emotional and social intelligence. While these capabilities are not new, they take on greater importance in the age of AI. They help shape how teams navigate uncertainty, exercise judgment under pressure, and apply technology responsibly in real-world decisions. High-performing teams don’t emerge only because AI was deployed. They’re built through leadership choices, often small, repeatable ones, that build durable capability over time. Here are five moves leaders can implement now to help teams build a culture of high-performance while using AI. 1. Clearly define expectations Expect that work is verified, define in clear terms what “good” looks like, and set standards for, and role model, ethics and integrity. In many ways, this is no different than the expectations a leader sets for all work and how team members hold each other accountable. 2. Continue to invest in human capabilities AI will continue to evolve, and investment in technology will continue to rise, but the next competitive advantage isn’t expected to be defined by technology alone. It will likely be defined by who also builds teams that consistently demonstrate enduring human capabilities. 3. Embed curiosity into workflows Rotate a “second viewpoint” role in key meetings and reviews, or someone explicitly responsible for asking what’s missing, challenging assumptions, and surfacing trade-offs. Make that role responsible for challenging tool-driven conclusions, not just human ones. 4. Use strategic check-ins Our research shows leaders are more likely to perceive their team as high-performing than their team members. A consistent 10-minute check-in—what changed, what’s unclear, what decision is needed, what help is required—can help speed up decisions and impact. Consider using it to spot where technologies are creating bottlenecks, rework, or hidden risk. 5. Cultivate a culture of continuous learning Normalize peer demos, “show your work” walkthroughs, and quick prompt/output feedback. When learning flows laterally, skillsets expand—and AI adoption becomes more effective and consistent. Broaden apprenticeship from skills to craft—how the team thinks, decides, and delivers quality when technology accelerates the work. In our research, 63% of all respondents said enduring human capabilities will increase in importance in the AI era, yet only 33% of all respondents strongly agree their organization is developing technical and human capabilities equally. That gap should be a concern among leadership. As AI scales across the enterprise, executive responsibility scales with it. Leaders can treat AI as a technology initiative or as an opportunity to build enduring human capabilities to achieve and sustain high performance, whatever comes next. View the full article

It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. My senior employee is a terrible communicator My employee, “Jordan,” has been in a senior role for 15 years. Their job involves communication and coordination across many different teams and with customers; understanding and being understood is one of the most important competencies. Jordan’s communication skills are lacking. I have highlighted this as an area for improvement every year I have been their manager (nearly five years) and in annual goals and performance reviews, as did their previous manager. Jordan has attended trainings and I have provided job aids and feedback, but there has been little improvement. I deliver feedback at our weekly meetings, and I only raise one thing at a time, even though there are usually 3-5 communication breakdowns I’ve observed. I bring it up and ask for their perspective, then talk through my perspective and what I’d like to see differently in the future. I give feedback 1-2 times per month, because more than that feels like I am putting them down and being nitpicky every time we talk. Jordan seems to disagree with me. I believe this is the root of their lack of improvement — they don’t think they need to improve because they don’t believe me that there is a problem. When I ask what support they need, they have not been able to give me anything actionable, just “I will work on it.” My boss and I feel that if Jordan can’t improve in this skill, we may need to replace them. Jordan struggles to put themselves in the context of the person with whom they are communicating and, conversely, when they are interpreting someone else’s communication, they struggle to put themselves into the context the person is speaking from and what matters to them. Here’s one typical recent example: Jordan needs to, let’s say, change the design of a teapot a customer has ordered for five years. The customer asked, “Will the new teapots still be able to go in the dishwasher?” Jordan responded, “You can still wash the teapots.” The customer interpreted that response as a “yes.” I knew that we hadn’t tested whether the teapots could go in the dishwasher, and that Jordan was speaking about hand-washing. I said, “We aren’t sure if the teapots can go in the dishwasher. We will get back to you.” Jodan later emailed the customer, “I have confirmed with the Dishwashing Safety team that the teapots are rated to 90 degrees.” The customer does not know what that means; they do not know that we consider teapots rated to 150 degrees to be dishwasher safe, and anything less not safe. I had to again jump in to clarify that the teapots aren’t dishwasher safe. Jordan delivered, verbatim, the response from our internal team to the customer without doing any translation into the customer’s context, or even making sure that the answer actually answered the customer’s question. The customer could have left with the impression that the teapots are dishwasher safe, resulting in customers unhappy when their teapots did not withstand dishwashing. I’ve asked my boss, HR, and manager friends about how to coach Jordan. One person advised that I should document every instance of communication issues and review them with Jordan weekly. I am concerned that, particularly for a senior employee, this will feel as if I am hovering over their shoulder watching everything they do and documenting every tiny mistake they make, which will be demoralizing. What do you think? Jordan isn’t right for this job. You’ve been coaching them for nearly five years. They not only haven’t improved, they disagree that there’s even a problem to fix. The reality is, not everyone has the skills you’re looking for. Some people can get better at it within the amount of time that a manager can reasonably invest in coaching. Some people could get better at it if they had extremely hands-on help over a long period of time, going beyond what’s reasonable for a manager to invest. Even with that, some people won’t ever get better at it to the level that’s needed in a job where it’s a central and essential skill. You have made a good faith effort, and it’s not working. It’s time to move to the next step in managing the situation, which means telling Jordan very clearly that things are now at the point where if you don’t see XYZ specific changes in XYZ amount of time, you will need to let them go. (That amount of time should not be lengthy, given how long you’ve already been working on this — I’d give a maximum of two months to demonstrate significant improvement or otherwise you’ll just be dragging things out for no reason.) Related: my employee can’t accept that his performance is bad 2. My coworker is in crisis but not doing her work I work for a very small company (literally four employees and the boss) that I was hired to eight months ago. HR is one of several roles that I fulfill, and one I’ve had zero training for. My boss is great but he’s away from the office most of the time because he isn’t a U.S. citizen and he travels a lot, so we employees are very free with little oversight most of the time. Enter problematic coworker, Lisa. Lisa is a wonderful coworker and good friend … most of the time. Other times, she gets drunk at work and misses workdays with little notice, even though she’s already used up all her allowed PTO for the year. In the last few months, she’s lost both her parents and had some other serious personal stuff going on; she’s really going through it and I would feel for her deeply even if we weren’t friends. Recently she was hospitalized for what I suspect may have been an attempt to end things, though I don’t know that for certain. She’s been saying she’ll work from home while she recovers, but she doesn’t answer work messages or send emails, which is a major portion of her job. I don’t want her to be stressed out when she should be recovering, and I definitely don’t want her to lose her job, but like I said, she’s used her PTO for the year already and she’s just not doing her work. I’m worried the boss will let her go considering the problems we’ve had with her in the past, but I also don’t feel right about just letting her miss work. What do you recommend? Oh no. Your company is too small to be covered by FMLA (which would require you to hold her job for her for up to three months while she’s on leave), but that doesn’t mean that it can’t choose to offer something similar. How senior is your role? If you’re fairly junior and your HR work is usually things like dealing with benefits paperwork and ensuring payroll gets processed (as opposed to higher-level HR strategy, employee relations, management, etc.), it’s probably not really within your purview to handle this; your boss would need to. But someone should be reaching out to Lisa to find out what she needs during this time and giving her some options, which ideally would include the option to take extended leave if she needs it. (If we’re using FMLA as a framework, that leave would normally be unpaid since she’s out of PTO, although of course in practice that can make it harder for people to use it.) 3. How honest can I be in a stay interview? My organization recently announced that they will be conducting stay interviews. In the past, they conducted anonymous surveys to get an idea of general workplace perception and environment, and I do not know if the interviews are in place of or in addition to the survey. Either way, I do have real issues with the organization and its leadership that I have raised on surveys in the past but which still remain unaddressed (mostly to do with a lack of timely communication between leadership and staff and attempted standardizations of policy that only work for staff in non-public-facing positions, although there are also unaddressed issues involving a huge safety lapse a couple of years ago) but am unsure of whether it’s safe to bring up those concerns in a stay interview. I feel like it would be one thing to mention these issues in an anonymous survey or even an exit interview, but I am concerned that something I say in a position where they will know who I am and that I currently intend to continue working for the organization could potentially be held against me. Are my concerns founded? Will being fully honest in a stay interview potentially harm me, or would it be more helpful to share the issues I feel the organization has? There’s no guarantee that your feedback in a stay interview won’t be used against you. It shouldn’t be — that would go against the entire spirit and purpose of conducting them — but does it happen? Sure. Not all the time and not under good managers, but enough that it’s a legitimate worry. Generally the way you know whether it’s safe to be honest with upward feedback in any form, and particularly when it’s non-anonymous, is by watching whether your company has done the work to assure people it’s safe. That’s stuff like creating opportunities for meaningful input that’s taken seriously and at least sometimes acted on, actively welcoming dissent, and demonstrably not penalizing people who offer opinions that make leadership uncomfortable. If you haven’t seen enough of that to feel comfortable, assume it’s safer to pull your punches. On top of all that, in your case, you’ve already raised these issues and they haven’t acted on them. So they already have the info you’re considering offering with your name attached this time; there’s not a lot of benefit to you in sticking your neck out further. 4. When you’re allergic to nuts and your employer puts nuts in your workplace as retaliation A question based on a novel I read recently. The main character is a waitress with a severe nut allergy. The restaurant doesn’t serve nuts, so it’s all good. She upsets the owner and comes in a few days later to find that they’ve updated the menu to include several items with nuts. When she asks if she’s being fired, she’s told no, that would require paying unemployment, but she’s free to quit if she can no longer perform the job duties. Other than being overtly evil, this wouldn’t hold up, right? She could still file for and receive unemployment? She could likely still receive unemployment, both because it’s a fundamental change in the job for her that means she has to leave it through no fault of her own, and also because it’s clearly retaliatory. In fact, depending on what she did to upset the owner, it’s possible there’s legal recourse too; if the nuts were in retaliation for her engaging in legally protected behavior (like making a good faith report of harassment, discrimination, or safety violations or requesting medical or religious accommodations), that would be illegal. And employment lawyers will tell you that retaliation is often much easier to prove than other offenses from an employer. The post senior employee is a terrible communicator, retaliation via nut, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article