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Super Bowl LIX is almost upon us, bringing with it a host of questions. Who’s gonna win? What brand will have the best commercial and who will star in it? Also, why are ticket sales plummeting? But there are a lot of questions most of us aren’t thinking about. Questions like, What if the game gets canceled? How will New Orleans and the NFL protect the city and venue from threats? What if an unforeseen event injures players, fans, workers, or worse . . . Taylor Swift? Most would rather not consider such horrors. I don’t think anyone wants to live in a world where Kendrick Lamar is a no-show for halftime. But one group focuses exclusively on questions like these, sometimes as early as two years before the big game: insurance companies. Because football’s biggest stage makes the Super Bowl one of the world’s riskiest events. The business of insuring the Super Bowl is as expensive as it is secretive. Many details (premiums, coverage, companies involved) are not public. So we tracked down Martin Ridgers, owner of MKR Specialty Insurance Brokerage. Ridgers has helped insure 10 Super Bowls, as well as the World Cup, the Olympics, and even presidential inaugurations. He provided some insight into what it takes to insure the Super Bowl. Super liability “It’s almost like setting up a small city when you execute an event of this magnitude,” Ridgers says. Which is why, he says, “It’s not really the NFL that’s setting up the Super Bowl. It’s the city, which creates its own committee and its own organization.” For this reason, since so much of the hoopla surrounding the Super Bowl happens off the field (and even outside the venue), the NFL strategically shifts most liability to the host city’s committee, which becomes responsible for everything from accidents at NFL-sponsored events to property damage and worker injuries. Traffic incidents, temporary structures, emergency-response delays, protecting fans (ranging in varying degrees of intoxication)—the list of risks is exhaustive. And it’s not just game day that needs to be insured. It’s the entire week of Super Bowl festivities. And with potential payouts in the $100 million-plus range, a select few insurance providers are even willing and able to cover such costs. “There’s probably less than five insurance companies in the United States or even worldwide that can deal with a Super Bowl,” Ridgers says. “So it’s not like they’re buying regular car insurance where they can go out to 20 insurance companies and get a quote.” The biggest risk It’s difficult to imagine Super Bowl LIX being canceled. But it’s not out of the question. In 2011, an ice storm paralyzed Dallas for several days and threatened Super Bowl XLV at JerryWorld. In 2014, Super Bowl XLVIII in New Jersey narrowly escaped a snowstorm, which hit less than 12 hours after the game. So just about every party involved—the city committee, the NFL, the television network airing the game, cleaning companies contracted for the event, local hotels—buy cancellation insurance. This makes cancellation the number-one risk on Super Bowl Sunday. The closest the Super Bowl has come to getting canceled was in 2013. During Super Bowl XLVII at the New Orleans Superdome, the site of this year’s game, the power went out during the third quarter. After 34 minutes, it came back on and the game continued. Had power not been restored and the game postponed as a result, an insurance policy would have likely been triggered to cover the costs of extra lodging, staffing, setup, and much more, according to Ridgers. “It’s unlikely that there was a claim in that instance because the power came back on,” he says. “But it opened the door for a variety of claims had that not been resolved.” Media liability is also a key consideration. These policies protect the network airing the game from broadcast interruptions (like power outages), sound issues, and in some cases FCC violations—you know, from unforeseen issues like wardrobe malfunctions. Insuring the halftime show Perhaps the biggest controversy in Super Bowl history—halftime or otherwise—came in 2004 at Super Bowl XXXVIII, when Justin Timberlake pulled off part of Janet Jackson’s costume during their performance, exposing her breast. This became known as “the wardrobe malfunction” and led to CBS facing $550,000 in FCC fines. The fines were later thrown out, but the incident shined a light on a crucial aspect of event insurance. “A lot of times, fines are not insurable,” Ridgers says. “I’m not saying that they can’t be insurable, I’m saying they’re not necessarily insurable. Because [being fined] means you are guilty of a violation of something you know you shouldn’t have done in the first place.” The cost of defending fines, however, is insurable, Ridgers says—through if the accused party is found guilty, they may be required to pay the insurance company back. Beyond wardrobe malfunctions Indoor pyrotechnics, crews assembling stages and platforms quickly and on the spot, artists performing on stage, backup dancers . . . with or without wardrobe malfunctions, executing a spectacle like the Super Bowl halftime show is a liability nightmare. According to Ridgers, it’s not the NFL or the city or the venue that typically insures the halftime show. It’s the artist. “I’ve worked with people doing the halftime shows,” he says, “and most of the time they will set up a separate corporation or company just to do that show, then start attaching things to that. So if they bring in a secondary artist or somebody, they will become a part of that corporation or will be brought on as a subcontractor.” Security, he says, is usually the venue’s responsibility. So the artist is responsible for insuring the show—the setups, the pyrotechnics, the dancers, the crew, and the varying liability that comes with it. “The artist either hires a company that’s done it before or they have to create a company to protect what’s happening during the halftime show,” he says. According to Ridgers, insuring the 12-to-15-minute halftime show alone can cost more than $100,000. Protecting Taylor, hosting Trump Taylor Swift won’t be the only A-list celebrity attending Super Bowl LIX. (And it won’t even be her first time.) Strange as it may seem, Donald Trump will be the first sitting U.S. president to attend the Super Bowl in the game’s 58-year history. “Just because we know publicly that Taylor Swift is going to be there doesn’t change anything,” Ridgers says. “There would be plenty of other artists and important people showing up. Now . . . the president? That can increase my exposure.” This is where, Ridgers says, he needs more information than the Secret Service is typically willing to give. Where the president will be, for how long, and what he’ll be doing are all critical factors in calculating the risk associated with his attendance. As you can imagine, those details are often sparse. “Let’s say they come out and say the president is going to take the stage in the middle of the field,” Ridgers says. “Now, it becomes a political rally rather than just a football event. That could change the premiums. It could change the terms and conditions. And it could change whether I insure the show or not.” Defense wins championships The burden of insuring Super Bowl LIX is as massive as the event itself and the liability that goes with it. Rather than a single policy, Super Bowl insurance operates as a complex portfolio starting with a base policy and layering on additional coverage. While premiums and general coverage amounts are not publicly disclosed, we can use our imaginations. The city of Las Vegas spent $60 million to host last year’s Super Bowl. The New York/New Jersey Super Bowl Host Committee was responsible for Super Bowl XLVIII. Played at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, it was the most expensive ever at $70 million. Factor in the myriad of liabilities across the board, and the potential payout and the premiums stack up pretty quickly. “The [Super Bowl] itself can sometimes cost into the seven figures to insure,” Ridgers says, electing not to share any further details. Essentially, when hosting an event like the Super Bowl, the opportunities for things to go wrong are almost infinite, so the event has to be insured as such. When discussing the responsibility of putting on Super Bowl LIX, Ridgers compared it to that of owning a tiger. “There’s really not a lot of defense if I’ve got a tiger and the tiger bites your head off,” he says. “I can say, ‘My tiger’s been nice and kind for the last 10 years!’ It doesn’t matter. It’s considered a weapon immediately.” View the full article

Tj Power is the lead neuroscientist at the DOSE Lab and cofounder of Neurify, a trailblazing organization in the mental health sector. He is also a renowned international speaker, having captivated audiences worldwide and worked with major corporations and health services. What’s the big idea? Human brain chemistry is at odds with modern lifestyles. The activities and habits that naturally boost dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins have been largely replaced by routines that leave us feeling depleted. Uplift mood, tune focus, boost energy, and deepen relationships by fostering optimum conditions for your body’s favorite neurotransmitters. Below, Tj shares five key insights from his new book, The DOSE Effect: Optimize Your Brain and Body by Boosting Your Dopamine, Oxytocin, Serotonin, and Endorphins. Listen to the audio version—read by Tj himself—in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Dopamine that requires effort is better Dopamine is your brain’s motivational fuel. When elevating your dopamine levels, focus on the idea of earning dopamine and not just getting instant, quick hits. In our hunter-gatherer past, dopamine rewarded us for effort. It made activities like hunting for food or building shelter feel good so that we wanted to keep doing these things. Today, dopamine is getting hijacked by quick hits like social media, sugary snacks, and online shopping. These easy dopamine fixes cause brief neurochemical spikes that then crash out and make us feel quite low. To optimize dopamine naturally, start your day with action. Instead of going on your phone first thing in the morning, go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, splash some water on your face, or even get a little bit of sunlight. This kind of action naturally starts generating dopamine in your brain. Throughout your day, really connect with goal-oriented tasks. Maybe that’s tackling a challenging project at work or cleaning your home. We all know that feeling, for example, when you need to change and wash your bedding. It’s an annoying task that isn’t particularly fun. You wake up one morning and think, yeah, I should probably change and wash my bedding today. And then a few days later, you’re like, oh yeah, I need to. You go through the hell of unbuttoning the duvet, getting the sheet off, jamming it in the washing machine so it all fits in one load, getting it out, drying it, and putting it all back on the bed. Eventually, you find yourself getting into your freshly washed bed, and you think about how nice it feels to be under clean covers. No one regrets washing their bedding. That’s dopamine. Dopamine rewards you for an effortful task that is beneficial to you as a human being. Try to limit quick dopamine behaviors. Replace endless scrolling with something like reading, writing, solving a problem, or connecting with a human. If we can reduce quick dopamine and increase slow dopamine, then our brain will operate much better. 2. Build connection through the love hormone Oxytocin is a connection chemical that strengthens relationships and develops trust. In the past, oxytocin was essential to survival because it drove cooperation within tight-knit social communities. Today, digital habits and individualistic lifestyles weaken oxytocin pathways, leaving us feeling isolated and lonely. To elevate oxytocin, consider a few of these actions: Physical touch. Hugging someone for five seconds is a scientifically proven way to raise oxytocin. Deepen social moments. When socializing with people you love, remove distractions. Get that phone as far away as possible. Eye contact is a priority. Listen actively and ask interesting questions. Altruism. Pro-social behavior—like acts of kindness, helping a friend, writing someone a thank you, or smiling at someone and asking how their day’s going—increases oxytocin. 3. Have a dose of nature’s antidepressant Serotonin is the body’s mood booster. Spending time outdoors in the sunlight and consuming unprocessed foods supports serotonin production. Unfortunately, our modern indoor lifestyles and processed diets deplete this chemical, leading to mood swings and fatigue. To boost serotonin levels, spend more time outdoors. On a sunny day, you might only need five minutes outside to achieve a nice increase in this chemical. On cloudy days, you’ll require 10 to 15 minutes. Often, we only go outside when it’s sunny, neglecting the cloudy days when we really should be getting out there. A simple rule I like to follow is the principle of seeing sunlight before checking social media every single morning. As someone who’s addicted to my phone, going on social media first thing in the morning primes my brain for that dopamine loop, causing me to stay on my phone all day. Observing sunlight before social media is an essential routine in my life that helps maintain my serotonin levels. The second part of this is prioritizing gut health to increase serotonin. Ninety percent of this chemical is made in your gut. Anytime you eat fibrous, rich, nutrient-dense foods, your body uses them to generate serotonin. The third part is a practice called underthinking. When overthinking, our brains and thoughts go rapidly and often in a negative direction. It’s important that we know how to calm down our bodies in those moments. If we settle our hearts and reduce cortisol levels (the stress hormone), our thoughts will also calm. We often do this with a physiological sigh. This is where you take a double inhalation through the nose, followed by a big exhalation from the mouth. Repeating this three to five times—double in, one out, double in, one out—builds serotonin and slows overthinking. 4. Use endorphins to alleviate pain Endorphins are your brain’s natural painkillers. They’re activated by physical activity, hot environments, and laughing regularly. For our ancestors, endorphins were critical for enduring the physical demands and stressors of surviving in the wild. To activate them in your life, you need to make sure you move daily. Exercise triggers this chemical. Take a 10-minute walk. Try walking faster or up a hill, or turn it into a little jog or sprint. Any moment of physical activation is great. “To activate them in your life, you need to make sure you move daily.” Next, I suggest experimenting with heat therapy, like a warm bath or sauna. You may have experienced this before getting in a bath: suddenly, you feel a bit more relaxed, neurobiologically speaking. That’s because endorphins are released into your brain, calming you down. Finally, we really need laughter. Our research at the DOSE Lab shows that humans in our modern world are not laughing enough. We ask people, on a scale from one to 10, how frequently they laugh. Using data from 50,000 people, we got an average answer of only 5.1. If your personal answer to that question is a low number, you need to prioritize happy social moments or funny movies and TV shows. Things that get you laughing are essential for this chemical. 5. Get happy from DOSE Happiness isn’t just a fleeting emotion. It’s deeply rooted in brain chemistry. You can transform your mental and emotional state by understanding and intentionally boosting dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, and endorphins. Start with small changes to your daily lifestyle: phone habits, food choices, and time spent outside. Over time, you’ll notice significant shifts in your motivation, mood, relationships, and happiness. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission. View the full article

If you tune into the Puppy Bowl on Sunday, you’ll likely see a key person’s influence — even if you don’t actually see her. Victoria Schade is a dog trainer and novelist who’s the show’s lead puppy trainer and wrangler. She’s the one making sure the shelter pups have a conflict-free contest and that they’re captured at their most adorable—all from off-camera. It is Schade who gets the puppies to look up during the “The Star-Spangled Banner” or run through a tunnel to get to the field for the starting lineups. She’s on the lookout for possible conflicts or nervous dogs. “My responsibilities include ensuring puppy happiness and safety during gameplay,” she says. “So if there’s any moment where a puppy looks like they’re overwhelmed or they just need a break, I’ll step out and give them a little break on the sideline.” Schade has been working with the doggies on the Animal Planet show for 19 years and is believed to be the longest serving member of the Puppy Bowl crew. She also works the kitten halftime show and calls filming both her favorite week of the year. “I think she is one of the most dedicated, hardest working people out there in the business,” says Puppy Bowl referee Dan Schachner, now in his 14th year. “She doesn’t ever seem to run out of energy. She never says no to a request and there’s always brightness and sunshine from her with every step.” Schade has coached hundreds of dogs over the years but never adopted one from the show—until now. She took home Boris, known on the show as Mr. Pickles, from Dallas Dog rescue. “I saw star quality. So this was the year,” she says. Treats and funny noises Early on, Schade was responsible for recruiting and selecting the puppies, a task now that leans on animal rescue groups and shelters throughout the country. These days, she’s the lead trainer. “If you’re seeing the puppy looking up at the camera, I’m typically right there with the treat,” she says. “It’s a lot of treats and funny noises. And that does the trick.” This year, Schade is stepping out from the sidelines and joining Schachner on camera for an hour-long pre-game kickoff show, which features a doggie combine and a draft. Other show highlights include segments with Dan Smyers, from superstar country duo Dan + Shay, and Kansas City Chiefs defensive tackle Derrick Nnadi. Schade has developed some very special animal-related skills over the years, including anticipating when one of the players needs to relieve itself. “One of my Puppy Bowl skills is reading butts. So I know when a puppy is going to go to the bathroom and I’ll typically say like, ‘Watch out in the 20-yard-line, we’re going to have a deposit’ and everyone’s ready to go with that cleanup.” The Puppy Bowl made its debut as counter-programming to the Super Bowl in 2005. Dogs score touchdowns on a gridiron carpet when they cross the goal line—any goal line—with a toy in their mouth. The show is really just an excuse to spend time watching adorable, clumsy pups play with chew toys, wag their tails furiously and lick the camera. A deeper reason is to encourage animal adoption. According to the ASPCA, approximately 390,000 shelter dogs are euthanized each year and 2 million shelter dogs are adopted. Most of the puppies are usually adopted by airtime, since the show was filmed in the fall. But the point is to show that animals just like the ones on the show can be found at any shelter at any time. This year’s three-hour television event will feature 142 rescue puppies from 80 shelters across 40 states—and one from Nicaragua, a Chihuahua-German shepherd. There will be 11 special-needs dogs. “That’s the most amount we’ve ever had,” says Schachner. “Look out for Jolene, who is a pitbull mix that’s in a wheelchair. Look out for a three-legged Boston terrier from New York City. And my personal favorite, is Sprinkle, who is a blind and deaf Aussie. So it’s just incredible to watch them play.” The inaugural Puppy Bowl was watched by nearly 6 million viewers. Last year, 12.6 million viewers tuned in. In comparison, this year’s Golden Globes attracted 9.3 million. Practical advice for raising puppies Schade, whose first book was Bonding With Your Dog, and who then pivoted to writing pet-oriented novels, like Life on the Leash and Dog Friendly, is a wealth of information about our four-legged friends. She advises dog owners to learn to read the body language of their pet, to try to understand what they’re trying to say. Like tail-wagging—how tight? And where is the tail positioned? Schade is a big advocate for positive reinforcement and science-based training, not the so-called alpha dog approach, which uses intimidation or force. “There’s no need to be the alpha, which has been debunked anyway. You are your dog’s ally. You’re their friend. You’re their No. 1. And it’s a relationship based in compassion and understanding.” That means load up on treats. She advocates keeping them in your pocket and consistently using them as rewards for good behavior, especially when potty training. “I cannot stress it enough: When you think you’re treating enough, treat more because, especially during puppyhood, it is such a critical learning period and every interaction is a chance to teach something.” —By Mark Kennedy, Associated Press View the full article

Ever since DeepSeek burst onto the scene last month, there’s been no shortage of opinions about what the Chinese startup’s artificial intelligence accomplishments mean for America’s AI giants like OpenAI, Microsoft, Google, and Meta. However, there’s one company that’s usually been absent from any discussion of just how bad DeepSeek’s arrival is for many of America’s tech giants: Apple. Whenever a tech insider or analyst mentions Apple and DeepSeek together, its usually to suggest that the arrival of the Chinese LLM could be beneficial to the iPhone maker. Is that really the case? AI technology is moving so quickly (DeepSeek virtually appeared out of nowhere) that it seems futile to make long-term predictions about any advancement’s ultimate impact on the industry, let alone an individual company. Still, I can see a few ways that Apple may benefit from DeepSeek and its successes. Partnering with DeepSeek can give Apple Intelligence a way into China The most direct way that Apple could benefit from DeepSeek’s arrival is if the company decided to actually partner with the Chinese startup. It’s no secret that Apple badly wants to bring Apple Intelligence to China, as the company’s software chief, Craig Federinghi, told me last June when it first previewed its AI platform. China is Apple’s second-largest market after the US. Apple believes that the addition of Apple Intelligence to its phones represents a unique selling point that will attract new iPhone users and encourage existing ones to upgrade, leading to increased sales. Increasing sales in China is very important to Apple, where its phones have been struggling recently against domestic rivals (the Cupertino company recently saw its China sales drop 11.1% on an annual basis). The problem for Apple is that China has stringent laws surrounding AI systems—even those designed for consumers. That’s why, to meet the country’s legal requirements, Apple might likely partner with an already approved AI provider in China. Indeed, in December, Reuters reported that Apple was in early talks with Tencent and ByteDance about the possibility of integrating their AI models into Apple Intelligence in the country. But now Apple may have a third option: DeepSeek. From both a technological and optical perspective, choosing the small startup’s LLM for integration with Apple Intelligence in the country could be a wise move. Technologically, integrating DeepSeek into Apple Intelligence on iPhones in China could confer several performance benefits. Two significant advantages of DeepSeek over other LLMs are that it can run on less powerful chips and uses less energy. This makes it perfect for Apple’s Apple Intelligence platform, which tries to perform as much on-device computing as possible to make things speedier and more private for its users. Partnering with DeepSeek over other AI providers in China may also be excellent optics for Apple from a marketing standpoint, at least locally. Ever since DeepSeek upstaged the much better-funded U.S. tech giants, the small startup has become a point of pride in the nation. Its founder, Liang Wenfeng, even reportedly received a hero’s welcome when he returned to his hometown of Zhanjiang over the Lunar New Year holiday. If Apple wants to increase sales in China, what better way than by touting that the AI developed by China’s tech hero is powering Apple Intelligence? AI R&D just got cheaper for Apple Even if Apple doesn’t partner directly with DeepSeek, the Chinese startup’s disruption of the U.S. AI industry seems to offer some indirect advantages for Apple. Before DeepSeek’s arrival, general wisdom held that if a company wanted to be competitive in the AI race—to be in it to win it—it needed to invest tens of billions of dollars in research and development. After all, that’s what OpenAI, Microsoft, Meta, and Google have done. Apple could have thrown the same amount of money into AI development in order to catch up with its U.S. rivals—but DeepSeek’s success shows that the company may not have to do that anymore. DeepSeek says that its model was trained for less than $6 million, a pittance compared to the money OpenAI and Meta, for example, have spent training their models. And DeepSeek’s R1 LLM outperforms OpenAI’s and Meta’s models in many areas. If it’s now known that powerful LLMs that can compete with the heavyweights can be created and trained for just cents on the dollar, Apple no longer needs to consider spending tens of billions to catch up and can direct its massive cash stockpiles elsewhere. Further, DeepSeek claims it took just two months to train its model. If that’s the case, then Apple will be able to catch up to its U.S. competitors in no time. Apple’s position in the AI race So, does DeepSeek’s arrival give Apple a leg up in the AI race? When it comes to potentially bringing Apple Intelligence to China and boosting iPhone sales in the country, it very well may. But outside of China, it’s impossible to say if DeepSeek’s arrival will actually materially benefit Apple’s position in the AI race long-term. DeepSeek’s innovations seem to show that you don’t need to spend billions of dollars and years training advanced AI models. This revelation doesn’t only benefit Apple, however. While Apple now might not have to spend the time and money its US competitors did to create a model on the scale of ChatGPT and Llama, neither do other companies now, which levels the playing field for everyone, big and small. Besides, who knows what other AI breakthroughs are just around the corner? DeepSeek virtually came out of nowhere. There’s no guarantee it won’t be upstaged by another groundbreaking AI advancement in the months ahead that disrupts the industry all over again. And because of that, it’s impossible to say who will be in what place on the future AI leaderboards—no matter if you’re talking about Apple, OpenAI, or DeepSeek itself. View the full article

Israel to free about 180 Palestinian prisoners later on Saturday as ceasefire stretches into third weekView the full article

Saving the planet is so 2024. Clean energy leaders across the globe are now tailoring their messages to emphasize the greener side of green: wealth-building. It’s an idea that sells far better in the new world of nationalism and tycoon leaders. Messaging from the U.S. renewable energy industry and the United Nations on climate change has typically focused on the urgent need to cut greenhouse gas emissions for the sake of environmental and human health. To bolster the argument, they cite record-shattering heat around the world, the frequent climate disasters costing billions of dollars and the human toll of it all. But a sharper emphasis on profit potential has become evident as President Donald Trump stormed into office with a flurry of rollbacks to clean energy initiatives and an emphatic declaration of plans to “unleash” oil, gas and mining. In a lobbying blitz in Washington this week, solar, wind, hydropower and other clean-energy interests touted their role in a “robust American energy and manufacturing economy” and sported lapel pins that said “American energy dominance” — a favorite Trump phrase. Meanwhile, in a major policy speech Thursday in Brazil, the U.N.’s top climate official played up the $2 trillion flowing into clean-energy projects and recalled a friend telling him that appealing to people’s “better angels” only goes so far. That friend, according to U.N. Climate Executive Secretary Simon Stiell, added: “In the great horserace of life … ‘always back self-interest … what’s in it for me.’ ” It’s not that clean energy backers haven’t made the case before. But a different landscape, especially in the U.S., stands to make it more potent. “It’s a very winning message for outreach to conservatives because it’s really true,” said former U.S. Rep. Bob Inglis, a South Carolina Republican who founded the conservative climate group RepublicEN.org. “If we play our cards right and lead the world to this, we can create a lot of wealth, create a lot of jobs here in America.” Inglis pointed to Elon Musk’s empire-building on electric cars, solar panels and batteries. “When right-of-center people hear, ’you know, you can you make a profit at this’ then it makes sense. Otherwise, it’s like, why are people giving stuff away?” Inglis said. Jobs especially have long been a big selling point for solar and wind energy and electric cars, but there’s a push to not think of self-interest as a dirty word — and instead to harness it, United Nations officials said. When Stiell mentioned the $2 trillion in his speech for clean energy, he called it “unstoppable because of the colossal scale of economic opportunity it presents.” Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer, who is also a professor of international affairs, said climate change is such a difficult problem, “if some people feel the need to cater to narrower self-interests which can be bundled into a solution to the problem, why not?” In letters and at more than 100 congressional meetings this week, industry leaders from the Solar Energy Industries Association, Oceantic Network and other organizations appealed to keep crucial tax incentives in place so their projects can be globally competitive. The appeal targets lawmakers who might dismiss climate change but be open to an economic rationale, said Jessie Stolark, executive director of the Carbon Capture Coalition, which spearheaded a letter. “In the past administration, obviously, we emphasized the common interest around climate mitigation,” Stolark said. “The messaging with this current administration and with the Republicans is shifting more to that energy piece, the economic piece, the jobs piece. “I think you want to meet an audience where they are, what’s important to them, what’s going to drive the conversation forward.” Liz Beardsley, senior policy counsel at the U.S. Green Building Council that was part of the sweeping lobbying effort, said the economy has always been a core component of its messages, and that “doing good is also good for business.” To Lisa Sachs, director of the Columbia Center on Sustainable Investment, messaging that climate efforts were strictly for the planet was actually disingenuous. “The honesty and coherence of the business and financial sectors in making the economic case for the transition is refreshing, at least, after years of doublespeak, greenwashing and confusion,” Sachs said. “It’s not a perfect strategy from a climate or social perspective, as the private sector cannot on its own fully decarbonize the economy … But under this administration, it’s probably our best bet for progress.” President Trump may not be reachable, but his Energy and Interior secretaries are and they have power, said Frank Maisano, a longtime Washington spokesman for energy interests from oil and gas to wind and batteries. It’s time for a change, said Joanna Depledge, a climate historian at Cambridge University in England: “Banging on about the catastrophic climate crisis is obviously doing no good at all.” —Seth Borenstein and Alexa St. John, Associated Press Associated Press reporter Tammy Webber contributed to this report. The Associated Press’s climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters, and funded-coverage areas at AP.org. View the full article

Ethan Bernstein is a professor of business administration in the Organizational Behavior unit at the Harvard Business School. He spent five years at The Boston Consulting Group and two years in executive positions at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Michael Horn is the author of several books, including the award-winning Disrupting Class, Choosing College, Blended, and From Reopen to Reinvent. He is the cofounder of and distinguished fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute. He also teaches at the Harvard Graduate School of Education and cohosts the higher education podcast Future U. Bob Moesta is the president and founder of the Re-Wired Group, an adjunct lecturer at the Kellog School of Management at Northwestern University, and a research fellow at the Clayton Christensen Institute. What’s the big idea? No job will tick every box on your dream job requirements. It’s important to put in the work to understand what role and environment will provide progress in your career, not perfection. To switch jobs productively and expect job satisfaction, critical steps need to be completed before submitting your application anywhere. Below, coauthors Ethan, Michael, and Bob share five key insights from their new book, Job Moves: 9 Steps for Making Progress in Your Career. Listen to the audio version—read by Michael and Ethan—in the Next Big Idea App. 1. Identify the root causes of why you want to change jobs. Every year, roughly one billion people change jobs. If you’re like most people, you’re probably switching jobs roughly every four years. Hundreds of millions report that they’re disappointed with the outcome of their switch. Maybe you ended up in a new role and then quit quietly. Maybe you started your next job search just months after starting a new job. Or maybe you’re like the two-thirds of American workers who report to Gallup that they are disengaged in their current jobs. When most people think about changing jobs, they tend to focus on the features they want, like better hours, less travel, higher pay, a worthier title, faster advancement, greater responsibility, more impact, and more vacation or benefits. All those things sound nice, but such lists rarely help us progress in our careers because they fail to ground us in the true reasons we’re looking for something new. What is actually driving a job move right now? By using the Jobs to Be Done theory around why people change behavior and studying over a thousand people who have switched jobs, we’ve distilled the forces that cause someone to make a switch. We didn’t just study people who were thinking about changing jobs because bitchin’ ain’t switchin’. People love to complain and think about what could be better. But to understand what really causes these changes meant looking at those who made the switch. When we looked at the functional, social, and emotional forces that pushed someone to make a job move, we noticed they clustered into four common patterns, which we call quests for progress: Get Out. When a person can’t see a way to thrive in their current job or their manager makes it feel like a dead end. They want to escape where they can be supported and challenged. Regain Control. When a person feels overwhelmed (or bored) in an aspect of life. They want to find an employer that gives a say in how to allocate time and do work. Regain Alignment. When a person’s current employer does not fully value their experience, knowledge, or credentials. They want an environment and role in which they are respected, acknowledged, and reengaged by making full use of their skills. Take the Next Step. When a person has reached a career or life milestone and wants an exciting place to move forward and take on more responsibility. 2. Make career progress by figuring out specifically what you want to do in your next job. The most straightforward way to determine what quest you’re on is to understand how you want your next job to motivate or energize you each day and how you want it to make use of your capabilities. By understanding whether you’re looking to build or reset along those two dimensions, you can figure out what quest you’re on. For example, one individual longed for a reset from a role at a large multinational company where, in her view, “overachievers [went] to feel bad about themselves.” She wanted to reset how her job energized her. In contrast, an individual at a tech company was energized by her team. She wanted her next job to build on that feeling of community spirit with a culture where “people stood up for each other.” The other question is how your job makes use of your capabilities. One individual who had worked in the global health arena found herself as the chief of staff to the executive director of a research institute. She loved the organization’s mission but quickly realized that her role wasn’t aligned with her skillset. She wasn’t sufficiently respected for her capabilities and wasn’t challenged to grow them further. She found a new role within the same organization so she could reset how work made use of her capabilities. When another individual considered leaving the military, a phone call telling her she was up for a prestigious promotion persuaded her to stay. That’s because the new role would allow her to build on her current capabilities—something she desired. 3. Job seekers should build three to five prototypes of what they could do next. In product development, successful designers learn what progress customers want to make in their lives before building prototypes to test their early ideas. They experiment with multiple rough mock-ups that they can easily change. Career choices benefit from experimentation, too. If you try to skip to the end by picking one option off a list of job postings, you’re likely to either get overwhelmed by the variety of possibilities or end up overly constrained by the first options you consider. You probably want to get to the answer of what’s next quickly, but that’s the hard way to switch jobs. “A good job move is about smart tradeoffs.” There is no perfect or dream job that fulfills every dimension. A good job move is about smart tradeoffs. If you think there is a perfect job, then you’re setting yourself up for disappointment and, crucially, you don’t know how to make trade-offs, so that you can make real progress. Crafting multiple prototypes is productive in the short term and the long run. It helps uncover the interdependencies and trade-offs inherent in a quest. Having three to five prototypes will help because, like in new product development, the contrasts between them indicate what is critical and what you’re willing to give up. Humans are not always great at identifying exactly what we want to do in life, but the human brain is quite good at ruling out certain options when it sees them alongside others. To build prototypes, talk to people in jobs like the ones you’ve mocked up. To be clear: This isn’t a standard informational interview. Many informational interviews meander around the topic of how someone came to their current role and only vaguely touch on what it’s like in practice. They tend to focus on how the interviewer can get a similar job, perhaps at the same company, even if that’s not the intent. That’s not how we want you to do this. We want you to be hyper-focused on what people do daily and weekly in their role—and how those activities pertain to what energizes you and the capabilities you want to use in your next job. That’s how you’ll figure out what is a good move and what isn’t. 4. Learn to tell your career story effectively. After you’ve identified your quest and prototyped jobs to figure out what you want to do next, in an ideal world, you would go to the job market and find a no-hassle match. But, like other matchmaking endeavors, finding your next job is never that easy. Part of the reason you have done so much work to get to this point is because what organizations think applicants want isn’t typically the same as what you actually want. As a result, they have trouble attracting the right people and developing them effectively. You are living in an imperfect world where you will have to translate your prototype into a career narrative that managers and organizations can understand. Learning how to tell that career narrative to the world is critical. Conventionally, people might have referred to this as an elevator pitch. But most people see an elevator pitch as a chance to sell yourself to others. We’re not trying to make you a salesperson (yet)—we want you to be a storyteller first. Tell the story between the lines of your résumé; share the story spine, not just the highlights. You don’t have to be a born storyteller to craft a good story spine. You can take your cues from one of the best storytellers in the world: Pixar. “Turning your quest for progress into a story is an effective way to get noticed and be understood.” In 2011, Emma Coats, a storyboard artist at Pixar, tweeted 22 guidelines to make anyone a better storyteller. Her fourth point about creating a “story spine” to provide narrative structure has received the most sustained attention. Given that the human brain is wired to learn and retain information through stories, turning your quest for progress into a story is an effective way to get noticed and be understood. The story spine will help you create and tell this story well. In Job Moves, we help you follow a Mad Libs-like template to craft your career story and nail it so that employers understand where you’ve been, and be compelled about where you’re going and why. 5. Successful job switching is a social process. At every turn, switching jobs is social. Trying to figure out what quest you’re on? Turn to a trusted friend, mentor, manager, or colleague to unpack your last job switch. Looking to understand what drives your energy and what capabilities you want to continue developing? A mentor can help you spot trends and clues from your past jobs. Building prototypes? You’ll benefit from others extending their networks to you—from informational interviews to learning about new opportunities and ultimately landing a job. Despite all the activity on online job boards, most roles are still filled through personal connections. If we recognized that a good job move is a social process for finding the best outcomes for individuals and organizations, then we would build a common language around job moves that includes vocabulary for why a person usually moves, what quest they are on as they do so, how to generate options together, and how applicants can tell their stories. That’s why we wrote a social book with chapters for job movers, mentors, and even organizational leaders. Even though few people feel comfortable talking about why they might or might not move jobs, it’s the best way to make progress. Here’s an analogy. Consumers expect a customized user experience each time they buy a product: a digital storefront tailored to them and their purchasing patterns. Apps know how to do that from data collected about a consumer’s buying behavior. Because we’ve gotten so used to customized user experiences, we’re expecting customized employee experiences as well. But the only way that can happen is if we share enough data on ourselves–our pushes and pulls, energy drivers and drains, capabilities, quests, prototypes, story spines—for that to be possible. The ultimate key is to encourage people to think progress not perfection, as you pay it forward and help others make job moves. This article originally appeared in Next Big Idea Club magazine and is reprinted with permission. View the full article

Repeal of ‘de minimis’ exemption had sparked turmoil at US customs and postal service as shipments piled upView the full article

Nowadays, when you hear someone talk about faxing, there’s a decent chance it’s the punchline to a groan-inducing dad joke. (Not that I would ever be guilty of such silliness, of course. I stick strictly to the fax.) And yet, here in the futuristic-feeling time of 2025, we all find ourselves facing the very occasional and impossibly baffling need to send something somewhere specifically by fax. Try as you might, sometimes, you just can’t avoid it. (One might even say those are just the fax of life!) Faxing is antiquated technology through and through, but for whatever reason, we as a society don’t quite seem ready to shed it entirely—despite the fact that we’ve got approximately 4.3 gablillion better ways to transmit documents, be it via messaging, email, or secure cloud sharing. Heck, you could even ask Gemini or ChatGPT to summon a virtual carrier pigeon and see what sort of nonsense they cough up in response. When the specific request for a fax slaps you back to reality, though, you’ve got no choice but to figure out some way to make it happen. You certainly won’t find any easy options within the apps Google gives you as part of its Workspace productivity suite. But good golly, have I got just the tool for you to tuck away in your virtual toolbox for the next time that need arises. Unearth all sorts of little-known tech treasures with my free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. A useful new discovery in your inbox every Wednesday! Free fax, no tax All right—we’ll make this fax and furious: ➜ The next time you find yourself facing the hilarious but unavoidable demand to send something via fax, an app called HP Smart is the tool you need. ​HP Smart​ is a completely free app that looks like a run-of-the-mill interface for futzing around with an HP-made printer. And it is that, on the surface—but beneath that uninspiring outer layer is a hidden gem of a feature that anyone can take advantage of, whether you have a physical printer in front of you or not. ⌚ It’ll take you about two minutes to figure out and get running the first time, then all of 20 seconds to use after that. ✅ You just open up the app on whatever type of device you’re using—phone, computer, carrier pigeon, you name it—and then: Make your way through the initial setup screens. The app will ask you to sign in with an HP account. Fret not, though, for you can create one right then and there, on the spot, for free. On the app’s main screen, find the “Mobile Fax” option. If you don’t see that right away—which I didn’t, the first time I opened the app on Android—look for an option to “Personalize Tiles” at the bottom of the screen. You should then be able to activate the toggle next to “Mobile Fax,” which’ll then cause the missing option to appear. Click or tap that option (or peck it, in the case of a carrier pigeon), then tap the command to compose a new fax. And hey, how ’bout that? There, in front of your fax-addled face-beak, will be a simple screen for specifying your lucky recipient and selecting exactly what files you want to transmit. Fill out a few fast fields, and poof: HP Smart will send any file or photo as a fax for you. You can select an existing file or photo, if you have a digital version already ready, or you can use the app’s built-in camera option to capture a virtual copy of a physical document right then and there. You can even add in your own custom cover page, if you’re really feelin’ wild. Need a cover sheet? Yep: HP’s app can handle that, too. And that’s pretty much it! Hit that Send Fax button, then just sit back and watch as HP Smart works its retro-tech transforming magic. You’ll see your fax being sent right from your phone or computer. Within a matter of moments, you’ll see confirmation that your fax has been delivered, as a physical sheet of paper somewhere in the real world—all for the ever-reasonable price of precisely $0. The app lets you send faxes to ​a sprawling list of countries​ that isn’t limited only to the U.S. It’s specifically for sending faxes, though; if you for some reason need to receive a fax, please go get your head examined. Sorry. Them’s just the fax—and nothin’ but the fax. HP Smart is available as a native app for ​Android​, ​iOS​, ​Windows​, and ​Mac​. It is completely free to use for now, with no caveats or catches and no credit cards required. Officially, HP says it’s part of an ongoing “trial,” but the trial has been running for months with no sign of an imminent end (and if HP does ever decide to start charging for the service, it says it’ll give 30 days’ notice before making any such shift). HP promises that faxes sent through its service are confidential, secure, and even compliant with the strict U.S. HIPAA privacy regulations. Get even more productivity-boosting goodness in your inbox with my free Cool Tools newsletter—a single new standout discovery every Wednesday! View the full article

Nobel-winning economist Daron Acemoglu on trade wars, tech industry hubris — and how loss of faith in US institutions could spiral View the full article

It is possible to develop a model with the best intentions, and for that model to be misused later onView the full article

No longer the most powerful profession, finance still provides better company View the full article

Company looking at potential flotation as soon as next year in what would be a boost for LSE View the full article

Strenuous denials of a clampdown on felines are only feeding suspicions in an animal-loving nationView the full article

Newly-confirmed Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought, a key architect of Project 2025, has been charged with overseeing an agency Republicans have vowed to eliminate, according to a Wall Street Journal report. View the full article

Canva has introduced a range of new features aimed at enhancing presentations, collaboration, and design customization. The latest updates include offline presenting mode, interactive animations, collaboration enhancements, and AI-driven creative tools, addressing key user needs in delivering impactful presentations. Enhancing Presentation Delivery One of the most requested features from users was the ability to present without relying on an internet connection. Canva’s new Offline Presenting Mode allows users to deliver presentations seamlessly, ensuring that slides, animations, and transitions function without disruptions. This feature is designed for conferences, client pitches, and educational settings where connectivity may be unreliable. Additionally, the Record Yourself on Mobile feature lets users create narrated presentations or video updates directly within the Canva mobile app. Videos are saved automatically for later editing and sharing. Keeping Audiences Engaged Canva has introduced interactive tools to help presenters maintain audience attention: On-Click Animations: Enables elements to appear at precise moments, guiding the audience’s focus on key points. Draw in Present Mode: Allows presenters to annotate, underline, or sketch directly on slides during live presentations, ideal for educators and collaborative teams. Organizational and Collaborative Improvements Canva has streamlined slide management and teamwork with new enhancements: Customizable Page Numbers: Users can style slide numbers for easy navigation and consistency across decks. Data Labels for Charts: Simplifies data visualization by adding automatic labels to bar charts. Page-Specific Links: Enables users to share links that direct collaborators to specific slides instead of scrolling through entire presentations. Custom Page Embeds: Allows seamless integration of selected slides into other documents or designs for improved content sharing. AI-Powered Creative Tools Canva continues to expand its AI-driven design capabilities: Style References in Dream Lab: Users can upload reference images to generate AI-created visuals that match a specific aesthetic. Stock Photo Generation in Brand Kits: Canva’s AI can generate new stock images tailored to a brand’s look and feel. TypeCutout: A tool that integrates text and images by creating transparent cutouts, adding visual depth to presentations and graphics. All new features are now available for Canva users. With these updates, Canva aims to provide a more flexible, engaging, and AI-powered experience for presentations and creative projects. Image: Canva This article, "Canva Expands Presentation Tools with Offline Mode, Interactive Features, and AI-Powered Creativity" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

Canva has introduced a range of new features aimed at enhancing presentations, collaboration, and design customization. The latest updates include offline presenting mode, interactive animations, collaboration enhancements, and AI-driven creative tools, addressing key user needs in delivering impactful presentations. Enhancing Presentation Delivery One of the most requested features from users was the ability to present without relying on an internet connection. Canva’s new Offline Presenting Mode allows users to deliver presentations seamlessly, ensuring that slides, animations, and transitions function without disruptions. This feature is designed for conferences, client pitches, and educational settings where connectivity may be unreliable. Additionally, the Record Yourself on Mobile feature lets users create narrated presentations or video updates directly within the Canva mobile app. Videos are saved automatically for later editing and sharing. Keeping Audiences Engaged Canva has introduced interactive tools to help presenters maintain audience attention: On-Click Animations: Enables elements to appear at precise moments, guiding the audience’s focus on key points. Draw in Present Mode: Allows presenters to annotate, underline, or sketch directly on slides during live presentations, ideal for educators and collaborative teams. Organizational and Collaborative Improvements Canva has streamlined slide management and teamwork with new enhancements: Customizable Page Numbers: Users can style slide numbers for easy navigation and consistency across decks. Data Labels for Charts: Simplifies data visualization by adding automatic labels to bar charts. Page-Specific Links: Enables users to share links that direct collaborators to specific slides instead of scrolling through entire presentations. Custom Page Embeds: Allows seamless integration of selected slides into other documents or designs for improved content sharing. AI-Powered Creative Tools Canva continues to expand its AI-driven design capabilities: Style References in Dream Lab: Users can upload reference images to generate AI-created visuals that match a specific aesthetic. Stock Photo Generation in Brand Kits: Canva’s AI can generate new stock images tailored to a brand’s look and feel. TypeCutout: A tool that integrates text and images by creating transparent cutouts, adding visual depth to presentations and graphics. All new features are now available for Canva users. With these updates, Canva aims to provide a more flexible, engaging, and AI-powered experience for presentations and creative projects. Image: Canva This article, "Canva Expands Presentation Tools with Offline Mode, Interactive Features, and AI-Powered Creativity" was first published on Small Business Trends View the full article

President delivers payback for having his own privileges pulled by predecessor over January 6 riotsView the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. This comment section is open for any non-work-related discussion you’d like to have with other readers, by popular demand. Here are the rules for the weekend posts. Book recommendation of the week: Perfume and Pain, by Anna Dorn. A cancelled writer searches for inspiration and develops a surprising relationship with her new neighbor. Funny and smart. (Amazon, Bookshop) * I earn a commission if you use those links. View the full article

Fans of Apple TV+'s Severance, your day is about to be improved: Apple has released eight chapters of The You You Are, the fictional self-help book by Dr. Ricken Lazlo Hale that is central to the plot of the show. If you want to read it, you can even download it for free, or listen to the audiobook version, narrated by Ricken himself (actor Michael Chernus). The brief excerpts from The You You Are that have appeared in Severance are among the funniest bits in the show, but the book as released isn't just for laughs: It's also a great representation of how propaganda works, both in the Severance universe and in real life. In the "outie" world of the show, The You You Are is a joke, a pretentious self-help book only fools take seriously. But in the world of the innies, an ill-gotten copy of The You You Are is seen as a work of towering genius with the power to change lives and change the world. This is only because the sole other book in the Lumon office is The Compliance Handbook, a ponderous, quasi-religious text that exists only so Lumon can keep control of its employees. The innies' reaction to Ricken's work reminds me of those people who read half a book (or a single headline) and suddenly think they know everything about a complex topic, and who hasn't met a few of them? What is The You You Are about?Ricken's book excerpt is hilarious and in keeping with the show's darkly comic style. It opens with, “It’s said that as a child, Wolfgang Mozart killed another boy by slamming his head in a piano. Don’t worry. My research for this book has proven the claim untrue,” and continues in that vein. Ricken's book purports to be a practical guide to self-improvement, where readers are meant to gain self-knowledge by following a series of steps: Figure out your YouType (more on that below), write it on a piece of paper and affix it to your vanity. Write your name on another post-it and tape it next to your YouType. Choose a theology and add a "totem" of it to your YouShrine. “This could be a Christianman’s cross, an An-Ra Scarab, or a Masonic square and compass," Ricken writes, also suggesting you can "use a photo or etching of me." Add something you consider sexy. As the author puts it: "Something that whispers to your nethers in a voice only they can hear. This may be a pinup photo from wartimes of yore, a beloved undergarment, or a still life of a sinewy gourd." Ricken also suggest you can use a picture of him for this step. Think of an insult you've heard. Write an acrostic poem using the letter of each word of the insult and add it to your vanity. Ricken goes with "Everyone laughs at you the second you walk out of the fucking room," which was once said to him by Severance main character Mark S. Print out a copy of a poem that Ricken wrote and paste it to your vanity. “Conceive and found a charitable organization based on a cause that you hold dear...Whether you wish to curtail bear populations, bathe the infirm, or send bottled water to astronauts, stay the course until the organization is procedurally viable. Then, once your licensing paperwork comes in, affix it to the vanity amongst your other totems.” This is where the excerpt ends. Too bad; I hear page 197 slaps. Does The You You Are include any clues about the plot of Severance?In Chapter 3, Ricken mentions going to a theater to see "an American religious satire film which I consider to be the most over-celebrated piece of commercial cinema ever produced," a film we know as Sister Act. There's other evidence in the show, but the Sister Act bit confirms that Severance takes place somewhere around now in something like our world, despite the ancient computers and everyone driving cars from the '80s and '90s. The You You Are also gives us a ton of backstory about Ricken's character and history. For instance, he was conceived and born as part of a "nine-month performance art piece originated by [his] parents titled 'Smells Like Afterbirth, F**ker.'” There's no information about how, exactly, Ricken has enough money to afford his relatively lavish lifestyle. It certainly isn't from sales of his books, and his parents were performance artists, so it's not likely to be family money either—unless, as some have theorized online, that Ricken is actually a black sheep member of the Eagan clan. Maybe the most important thing in The You You Are are the passages where we learn about Ricken's feelings toward Mark's (maybe) dead wife Gemma. When Ricken writes about Gemma, he seems to be in love with her. This could be a red herring, but as Severance unfolds, I wouldn't be surprised if Ricken's feelings toward Gemma become a major plot point. The deeper meaning of The You You Are within the Severance universeThe "big idea" behind Ricken's book is the "YouType," the kind of made-up psychological concept common to self-help books, pseudo science, and cults—think "love languages," the Myers-Briggs personality inventory, and Scientology's "emotional tone scale." According to Ricken, everyone fits into one of five YouTypes: The Coward, The Warrior, The Dove, The Scribe, and The Vestal. This mirrors the idea behind Lumon's Compliance Manual. According to Kier Eagan, there are four "tempers," Woe, Frolic, Dread, and Malice, and everyone else are defined by the ratio of each within themselves. Kier's ponderous religiosity and Rickens' brain-dead aphorisms seem like two sides of the same coin. In the show, when the "powers that be" at Lumon discover the book has inspired the innies to revolt, their reaction isn't to ban or discredit The You You Are. Instead, they approach Ricken with an offer to write a new version of the book, specifically for innies. Ricken, ever the egotist and attention seeker, is eager to go ahead with the project so at least someone will take his book seriously. Lumon's plan is no doubt to coopt the (unintentionally) subversive ideas in Ricken's book and twist them to support the Lumon status quo. It's not a heavy lift, given the book contains passages like, "A society with festering workers cannot flourish, just as a man with rotting toes cannot skip.” This is all a sly commentary on how revolutionary ideas are routinely manipulated and co-opted to serve the ruling class, and how easily people can be tricked into feeling like they're "sticking it to the Man," even when the Man is at once profiting and protecting itself by taking the teeth out of dangerous ideas. Think Wal-Mart selling Che Guevara t-shirts, or one of the richest corporations in the world making a TV show about the dehumanization and misery of corporate drudgery. View the full article

YouTube's Android app is cluttered, slow, and full of ads. Even worse: It tracks every video you watch. NewPipe is a free and open source Android alternative interface for YouTube that's fully private and doesn't show ads. We've talked about ways to watch ad-free YouTube videos, and NewPipe is arguably the best one for Android users. Even better: NewPipe plays the audio from videos in the background, making it perfect for multitasking. You can listen to music, podcasts, or video essays on YouTube while doing chores, all without the need to keep the screen on. It also offers picture-in-picture mode, so you can watch videos while using another app, and downloads videos so you can watch them offline. These are features you'd otherwise need a paid YouTube Premium subscription for to get in an app. Credit: Justin Pot There are a few potential downsides. You can't sign into your Google account, meaning your subscriptions won't be in the application. There also isn't an algorithm. This is inevitable for any app built around privacy but is worth thinking about. The good news is that you can add subscriptions inside the application, allowing you to build a steady stream of videos from creators you trust. There's also a bookmarking feature, allowing you to mark playlists or videos you'd like to watch later. In short, you're going to have the opportunity to be a little more proactive about which videos you want to watch. There is support for exporting and importing your subscriptions and playlists, which is useful when switching devices. Another potential downside is that you can't get in Google Play—you'll need to either install the .apk file from the website, which is going to require that you allow your device to install software from "unknown" sources. An alternative, which would also make installing updates easier, is to install NewPipe using F-Droid, which is a dedicated app store for open source Android publications. View the full article

WITH THE SUPER BOWL around the corner, what can business leaders learn from elite athletes about high-level performance? Be like Roger. And Michael. And Simone. And Usain. And many others. That’s key advice for business leaders seeking to improve their impact and excel in a sustainable, long-term way that’s good for them and everyone around them. The Roger, in this case, is none other than Roger Federer, the tennis legend considered an exemplar of athleticism and sportsmanship. But underlying Federer’s and other top athletes’ outsized success is rigorous devotion to routines and practices that optimize their state of mind and body for high-level performance. This matters to effectiveness in the business domain, too, where such practices are often ignored or dismissed, even though they support one’s centeredness and capacity to maintain focus, be creative, and make good decisions, even under great pressure. The takeaway? Leaders in any organization can enjoy higher performance on every dimension if they establish a discipline of daily, weekly, monthly, and annual practices that systematically support their centeredness. So why does maintaining practices that yield a high-performance state of mind matter so much for leadership? Here’s why. The Need for a Performance-Enhancing State of Mind A key thing athletes and leaders share is the need for a performance-enhancing state of mind. Specifically, both perform best when they are able to enter and maintain a calm, alert state under high stress, whether facing match point on the tennis court or an unexpected setback at the negotiation table, as research suggests. This ability to focus and perform under stress is what sets the Michael Jordans and Roger Federers apart from the rest—they may not be the best overall athletes, but they’ve truly mastered the all-important mental part of the game. The problem is that most business executives, even high-performing ones, don’t recognize the value of mental state like elite athletes do, so they don’t develop skills and habits to get to that state consistently and effortlessly. Indeed, executives often see themselves as industry or functional domain experts—whether in tech, health sciences, finance, or as an engineer, designer, or head of operations. But they fail to recognize what’s often their most primary role or function: leading others to set vision, build and evolve the team, solve problems, and navigate challenges collaboratively. Most executives also think that performance is a function of effort: more effort, more results – the “no pain, no gain” mantra historically embraced by athletes. The reality is that this is not the key to productivity. Pushing hard alone isn’t sufficient and can be counterproductive. Coherent, creative, efficient, intelligent thinking and decision-making are what drives productivity. For this, a calm and alert state of mind is key — a state of centeredness. Athletes train to optimize this state. Here’s how they do it. They Embrace a Growth Mindset Great athletes focus on process over outcomes. We don’t have control over all outcomes, but we do have control over our process. Leaders must stop obsessing over outcomes and “perfection,” and embrace challenges as opportunities for growth and improvement. Some of the most successful leaders in sports, like former Super Bowl-winning coach Bill Walsh, exemplify this mindset; he emphasized focusing on continuous improvement, not winning. Committing to high standards and constantly learning, striving, and improving is critical. When leaders try to control everything and everyone around them, they fail to understand the value of differentiating what they and their team have control over and what they don’t. They Practice Deliberate Practice The researcher Anders Ericsson pioneered the idea of “deliberate practice” after observing that elite athletes, musicians, and other high-performers practice consistently in a particular way. That is, they identify key skills they want to improve—whether a complicated sequence on violin or a tricky shot in basketball—and practice it relentlessly with the help of feedback from knowledgeable coaches. In this way, deliberate practice is far superior to naïve practice, which is essentially doing something repeatedly, without expert guidance or feedback loops, and hoping for improvement. Leaders will perform better if they embrace deliberate practice just like athletes do. It means identifying key skills that will benefit your overall leadership effectiveness—such as inviting more input from your team—and then practicing in a deliberate manner. Have clear goals around your leadership skill development—“I will raise my team’s 360-degree ratings of my openness to input by 50% within two months”—and solicit regular feedback from colleagues. Great leaders are always practicing in a deliberate way. They Sleep Like Their Life Depends on It Sleep optimizes a leader’s state of mind and, in turn, overall performance. The link between sleep and physical, emotional, and cognitive capacity is well-established. “Rest and restore” is now a fundamental principle in athletic training and similarly applies to leadership. Sleep and rest are critical for peak performance, as illustrated by Federer’s goal of 10-12 hours of sleep every 24 hours. He’s not alone: LeBron James says he averages nine hours, and Usain Bolt considered sleep a critical part of his sprint to multiple world records. Simone Biles, considered the greatest gymnast of all time, similarly prioritizes nine hours of sleep. Yet the culture of business executives promotes the idea that sleep time is time wasted or a sign of weakness, and too many think they can perform well on 3-4 hours of sleep. They can’t. For example, evidence shows that for most of us, operating on fewer than six hours of sleep is equivalent to operating while drunk. In the U.S., over $400 billion of productivity is estimated to be lost each year due to sleep debt. They Meditate to Be Great Regular practice of meditation—even if just minutes a day—promotes positive physical and mental health outcomes, including lower anxiety and better concentration and memory. NBA stars like Michael Jordan, Shaquille O’Neal, and the late Kobe Bryant all used meditation to perform at their best. Research shows meditators demonstrate more coherent brain signatures. There are different forms of meditation, but most are based on finding quiet time to clear your mind, often coupled with deep breathing to enter a relaxed state. Meditation can also involve mental imagery. Federer utilized visualization to enhance his performance, picturing himself succeeding physically and mentally on the court. They Exercise for Excellence Of course, physical fitness is necessary for athletic performance. But it’s not just for athletes; it’s critical for leaders. Maintaining physical fitness not only increases energy levels but uplifts mood and enhances focus. Three or more hours of moderate aerobic exercise per week increases mitochondrial density and supports neurogenesis, thereby enhancing energy levels and brain power. Higher-intensity aerobic exercise once or twice a week has a material impact on increasing VO2 max, which is associated with reduced stress, anxiety, and depression, along with improved cognitive function, memory, and overall brain health. The bottom line: exercise is an important practice for effective leadership. They Eat Right Don’t forget about nutrition. Aim for the right volume of calories for your size and activity level, along with balanced proportions of nutrients. A healthy diet has been linked to every kind of health outcome, but is notoriously challenging for busy people to get right. During her tennis career, Serena Williams maintained—and still does—a healthy, largely plant-based diet as part of her philosophy of “eating to live” rather than vice-versa. Novak Djokovic ascended to arguably the best men’s player of all time, and he credits a consistent, healthy diet as a key factor. So What? It’s logical that our inner life affects our outer behavior, and healthy mind-body practices place us in a position to realize more of our potential. A more balanced, rested, energized, clear mental state enables us to function at a higher level in our thinking, feeling, and more complex leadership capacities. The benefits of being a leader athlete are countless if leaders intentionally practice leadership and work to foster a high-performance state of mind by engaging in a routine of activities that support leadership growth at all levels. Individual and organizational success will naturally follow this proactive approach to leadership fitness, no matter your playing field. * * * Jeremy Blitz-Jones is a Leadership Coach at Peak Leadership Institute, an organizational behavior firm. His background is in organizational development, with a focus on leadership, strategy, and process optimization. For the past 15 years, he has been designing learning experiences for tech companies, schools, and nonprofits, exploring innovation, education, management, and personal growth. He has worked with teams from organizations including Harvard Medical School, F5 Networks, Angellist, and Google. Laurent Valosek is CEO of Peak Leadership Institute. He has 35 years of experience as an entrepreneur, educator, and researcher, including serving as CEO of three tech start-ups and leading a strategy management consultancy. He has worked with executives from companies such as Google, Salesforce, Superhuman, TikTok, and Roper Technologies. Laurent has published numerous research papers on human development and leadership and teaches a course at Stanford University called Leadership from Within. * * * Follow us on Instagram and X for additional leadership and personal development ideas. View the full article

Peter Thiel-chaired group has Washington and Westminster network that helped secure around $3bn in official contractsView the full article

When the Nintendo Switch 2 was officially announced, it was hard to feel like it wasn’t just more of the same. With no weird 3D gimmicks and no absurd naming scheme, did it even really feel like a new Nintendo device? But eagle-eyed viewers picked up on something else—Nintendo, it turns out, might be the first console maker to build a mouse right into its default controller. At about 1:01 into the announcement trailer, you can see what looks like an optical sensor pop up on the side of one of the Switch 2’s Joy-Con controllers (or whatever they end up being called), and just a few seconds later, those same two controllers glide along a desk on their side, as if they’re being used like mice. The moment followed weeks of rumors and supposed leaks, but nothing concrete had surfaced…until now. In a patent filed on August 1 of last year and published on Feb. 6, Nintendo describes an “input device” that looks and sounds a lot like a Switch 2 Joy-Con (that’s what I’m going to call it for now) being held on its side and includes a “sensor for mouse operation.” Finally, it seems like Nintendo's Switch 2 might not be so boring after all. Credit: Nintendo via World Intellectual Property Organization In a diagram included with the patent, a hand seems to be using the Joy-Con’s shoulder and trigger buttons as mouse buttons, and perhaps using the thumbstick as a scroll wheel. A button does seem to be missing from the Joy-Con in the diagram, the mysterious new C button seen in the Switch 2 trailer from the end of last month, but aside from that, everything seems to be depicted exactly as expected. Technically, Nintendo isn’t the first to have this idea. A similar feature, albeit with slightly clunkier implementation, is already available on the Lenovo Legion Go, with that device’s “FPS mode.” But with Nintendo giving mouse control to its entire user base, developers will likely feel much more comfortable supporting the control scheme. So, what could a mouse on the Switch 2 mean? Well, more natural PC ports and easier aiming in shooting games, for sure. But I’ve got a slightly more out-there theory. I think Nintendo wants to bring DS games to the TV for the first time since the Wii U's virtual console. The company recently added Game Boy Advance games to an upgraded tier of the Switch Online library, but with a mouse, Nintendo could easily bring over DS games to the Switch 2 as well. Yes, technically, the Joy-Con’s motion controls could mimic a touchscreen stylus to a degree, but a mouse will much more easily provide the speed and precision needed for DS classics like The World Ends With You, which has never really translated well to any other systems (despite multiple attempts from Square Enix). Finally, there will be a good official method for playing these games that doesn’t involve actually breaking out the old DS Lite (or, yes, a 3DS). But even if I’m wrong and the mouse just becomes an optional control feature for certain games, it is funny to imagine a future where the Nintendo Switch has better support for shooters than the Xbox. View the full article

Bluesky is setting itself up to be a social media jack of all trades. There's the main experience, of course, which replaces something like X or Threads. But it's not all about the text posts: Soon, you'll be able to use an app like Flashes to transform Bluesky into a kind of Instagram. Before that drops, however, you can use a different app to turn Bluesky into TikTok. It's not quite there yet, but it's a fascinating look into a unique kind of social media client—an app that turns one platform into something else entirely. Introducing Bluescreen for Bluesky Bluescreen is a Bluesky client with one singular purpose: It identifies the videos from your Bluesky feed and delivers them to you in a TikTok-style endless scrolling interface. You don't interact with text-based posts, nor do you see still images. It's as if Bluesky offered a "video only" feed. But, since they don't, Bluescreen exists. It's a cool idea, and it's also the idea behind Flashes. Instead of isolating the videos in your Bluesky feed, Flashes isolates the images, which lets you turn Bluesky into an Instagram alternative. If you're surprised to hear two different Bluesky clients using the same strategy to achieve two similar outcomes, that's because they're both developed by the same person: Sebastian Vogelsang. Vogelsang announced Flashes before Bluescreen, but released the video app ahead of the photo app. While we wait for the Instagram of Bluesky to get here, we can try out the TikTok of Bluesky instead. Using Bluescreen to watch videos on Bluesky Credit: Lifehacker In execution, Bluescreen does it what's it's supposed to, though there is definitely some room to grow. Once you connect your Bluesky account to the client, you'll be presented with a video—just as you are when opening an app like TikTok, or when using Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts. As with these services, there are multiple options to interact with the video: Tapping the heart button gives the video a like, without having to leave the video feed itself. If you tap on the comment button, however, Bluescreen leaves the video feed, and shows you the comments in a different window. You can tap the button with the two arrows to repost the video, and the three dots icon to access additional controls, like Translate, Share, and Report. There's also a general mute button available in the bottom right corner. If you tap the video itself, you'll pull up the standard iOS video control menu. From here, you can play and pause, rewind or jump ahead, AirPlay, or control the volume of the video, if you'd rather not mess with your iPhone's general volume setting. Speaking of volume, that is my one main criticism of Bluescreen as it exists right now: Each video is muted by default, even though the mute button says the volume should be on. You have to tap this mute button twice; once to mute the video, then again to unmute it, before it starts playing. You need to do this for each video you swipe through. Oddly, this is only a problem when watching through your phone's speakers: Connect a pair of Bluetooth headphones, and the videos sound off as they should. I imagine this is a bug that Vogelsang will work out in due time. At the top of the page, you can choose which feed to pull videos from. The App Store page says you can choose from thousands of feeds, but if that sounds overwhelming, you can stick with video from your main feeds, such as the Following or Discover tabs, or any of your pinned feeds. It's neat to choose the Astronomy feed I follow, for example, and see videos specifically about this topic. (It also shows me I might need to drop some of my pinned feeds, due to low-quality content.) You can also use the search icon in the top right to search for whatever content you like, in addition to finding trending topics. Again, if you've used a social media platform before, you'll be familiar with this. In theory, this could be an awesome experience. If you curate your Bluesky feeds well enough, you could have a varied filter of all short-form videos posted to the platform. It's still an early concept, so the UI isn't quite as fluid or polished as established video apps, but I can totally see the potential here. Uploading your own videos via BluescreenThis isn't just a passive experience, however: You can use Bluescreen to upload videos to Bluesky. If you hit the (+) on the bottom of the screen, you can choose a video from your library to post on Bluesky via Bluescreen. You can access light editing tools along the way, add a caption for your video, choose who can reply to the post, and the language of the post before publishing. Remember: You're not posting on Bluescreen; rather, Bluesky. While it'll look like you're posting on a new platform, all you're really doing is posting a video to your existing Bluesky account. Credit: Lifehacker View the full article