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Google has added price tracking data charts for each retailer within Google Search. On the right side, after you click on a product, Google may show a price chart with pricing over time. Google may also let you click on the available merchants and retailers to see how the price has changed for that specific merchant over time.View the full article

Google now supports Sitelinks for local search ads in the Google Maps interface. They show in the form of a carousel, under a sponsored ad listing in the Google Maps interface.View the full article

Google’s crawl stats report is missing a single day of crawl data, which seems to be impacting all sites within Google Search Console. Google has not yet confirmed the issue but it seems to be impacting everyone. What it looks like. Here is a screenshot from one of my profiles within Search Console, showing the date that is missing for this site is October 14, 2025: Crawl stats report. The Crawl Stats report in Google Search Console shows you statistics about Google’s crawling history on your website. For instance, how many requests were made and when, what your server response was, and any availability issues encountered. You can use this report to detect whether Google encounters serving problems when crawling your site, Google said. You can access the report over here. History. This has happened a few times before, when this specific crawl stats report was missing a couple of days of data. Google did fix the report a day later, or maybe the data itself fixed the report a day later. It is unclear if Google will restore the data for this specific bug or not, we did reach out. It happened in May 2022 February 2022 November 2021 Reporting issue only. It is likely that this is just a reporting issue that will resolve itself in the coming days. I would not worry about this being a sign or not a sign of any Googlebot crawling issues. It is likely just an issue with the crawl stats report itself. Why we care. You may notice this data gap in your report and worry. There is no need to worry, everyone is seeing this data gap. This seems like a widespread reporting issue impacting all who try to check their crawl stats report. Give it a few days and check back later, but I doubt this has impacted your crawling, indexing or ranking in Google Search. View the full article

What they didn’t teach you in the marketing org chart: how to win when the window is closing. Picture a marketer who sees VIPs starting to lapse on a Thursday morning. By noon, they’ve pulled the data, developed three creative variants, launched a triggered journey and measured incremental improvement. No tickets, no queues, no committees. By Monday, the save rate is up 18%. That’s not luck; that’s Positionless Marketing. It’s do-it-now competence, powered by technology. The mindset comes straight from a classic business book: Mark McCormack’s “What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School: Notes from a Street-smart Executive.” His playbook celebrates practical judgment, preparation, bias to action, relentless follow-through, relationships, and owning the details. Mark H. McCormack (1930–2003) was the lawyer-turned-entrepreneur who essentially invented modern sports marketing. He founded IMG in 1960 after a handshake deal with Arnold Palmer (later adding Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player) and pioneered athlete representation, brand endorsements, event management, licensing and media rights, building IMG into a global powerhouse. Positionless Marketing applies McCormack’s same street-smart principles to modern marketing by collapsing the assembly line so one marketer can prepare, act and close the loop without waiting on analysts, designers, or engineers. The result is speed with accountability. Here are five bridges from McCormack’s playbook to Positionless practice. 1) Preparation beats pedigree: Data power McCormack’s edge begins before the meeting: know the person, the room, the leverage. In Positionless Marketing, data power puts that prep at a marketer’s fingertips. Propensity scores, lifecycle stage, content affinity, margin constraints, channel history—surfaced instantly—let a single owner tailor the “pitch” (offer, timing, channel) before a touch ever goes out. Old way: Wait a week for an audience pull. Positionless way: Define and size the audience in minutes, with built in profit and frequency guardrails. 2) Bias to action: Creative power McCormack wouldn’t over-theorize; he’d get a proposal out today. Creative power does that for campaigns. Generative tools produce channel-ready copy and visuals in minutes, so a marketer can ship the minimum viable message now, not after a studio queue. Old way: Brief → sprint → reviews → missed moment. Positionless way: three variants live this afternoon, with tone, brand and compliance templates baked in. Generative AI drafts the headlines, renders the hero images and adapts copy for email, SMS and push… while a human marketer steers strategy and approves the output. 3) Follow-through is everything: Optimization power After the meeting, McCormack locked next steps. In Positionless, Optimization power is that follow-through: automated next-best actions, live tests and incrementality measurement that turn intent into outcomes. Old way: “Let’s see how it did” in next month’s deck. Positionless way: Experiments auto-allocate to winners, journeys self-tune, and show lift in real time. 4) Relationships over transactions: Personalization at scale People buy from people who “get” them. Positionless marketers orchestrate lifecycles that feel human because they’re timely and relevant: day-one welcomes that actually onboard; milestone nudges that reward progress; win-backs that reference history rather than reset to zero. Old way: the same 20%-off blast to everyone. Positionless way: right offer, right moment, right channel… because the context is understood. 5) Own the details: Cut the assembly line McCormack won on details. In Positionless Marketing, one owner controls the full chain: insight to creative to launch to measurement. Details don’t die in handoffs. No lost audiences, outdated extracts, mis-sized segments, or “we’ll fix it next sprint.” The same person who saw the opportunity can prove the outcome. This isn’t anti-strategy; it’s anti-handoff. Strategy sets the playing field… who we serve, what we promise, how we win. Positionless changes the physics of execution within that field. When the same marketer can prepare, create, and optimize in a single afternoon, the organization gains cycle time and clarity. Proof points from Positionless teams: Time-to-launch: From days to minutes. Campaigns that once took a week go live before lunch. Consider Caesars Entertainment that reduced campaign execution time from five days to five minutes Leading consumer brands have achieved 16.1x increase in purchase rates while saving 300 working hours per year, all with the same team size FDJ United condensed what used to require seven teams and six weeks into a single-person, single-day workflow A practical playbook: McCormack in spirit Equip every marketer with the three powers. Data access without tickets, generative creative with brand guardrails and optimization that runs by default. If a task requires a queue, ask why. Replace the static calendar with a rolling experiment backlog. Keep always-on journeys tuned; reserve the calendar for moments that truly require orchestration. Measure teams on learning velocity and incremental revenue. Codify “street smarts” as system smarts. Document quick wins: early access for loyalists, charm-tier offers that beat deep discounts, time-of-day effects, and turn them into reusable policies the platform enforces. McCormack’s lesson wasn’t “be reckless.” It was “be ready, act fast and follow through.” Positionless Marketing is that mindset operationalized. It takes the discipline of direct, data-driven marketing and removes the delay, giving one accountable owner the data power to prepare, the creative power to act and the optimization power to learn, again and again, until the results are undeniable. The marketing org chart may still list roles. But today’s marketing belongs to the person who can see the opportunity, move now, and prove what happened. That’s how deals got done in McCormack’s world. And Positionless is how marketing closes the deal with customers in real-time today. View the full article

Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday. Gregg Renfrew is back. Four years after the entrepreneur sold her clean skincare and cosmetics brand Beautycounter to The Carlyle Group in a deal valued at $1 billion—and more than a year after she and the private equity firm shut down the company amid falling sales—Renfrew today is officially launching Counter, a new company built on Beautycounter assets she acquired from Carlyle’s lenders. A season of learning Counter, which has been quietly selling products online since June 25, shares its predecessor’s clean ethos and uses some of its formulations. Renfrew also secured data on all of Beautycounter’s customers. But Counter is an upstart compared with Beautycounter, which reportedly booked $400 million in annual sales at the time of the Carlyle acquisition. Despite her considerable experience as an entrepreneur—she previously cofounded a bridal registry site bought by Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia—Renfrew is, in many ways, going back to basics, focusing on profitability and listening to customers and sellers. “I come into this today with a level of humility,” she tells Modern CEO. “I don’t claim to have all the answers. I’m in a season of learning.” Beautycounter’s demise was indeed humbling. (My Fast Company colleague Elizabeth Segran offers a thorough recounting of the company’s rise and fall.) Sales foundered and the company struggled to service its debt. Efforts to revive Beautycounter, such as a deal to sell its products in retailer Ulta Beauty, and changes to leadership, including the return of Renfrew as CEO in 2022, ultimately could not save the business. Renfrew says buying back the Beautycounter assets instead of starting a new company from scratch wasn’t just a way of kick-starting a business. It was an emotional decision, too. “To let the old company completely go and die when it pioneered, created, and led clean beauty—knowing that it had been a very successful entity at one point in time—I didn’t want to let go of all that,” Renfrew says. She adds: “My daughter Georgie was literally bawling in front of me saying, ‘You can’t just let this thing die. Mom, you worked so hard for so long.’” Second chances and lessons learned Renfrew is not the first founder with seller’s remorse. In 2023, Ben and Nate Checketts took back control of Rhone, the apparel brand they started, from investor L Catterton. Sprout Pharmaceuticals founder Cindy Eckert sold her company to Valeant Pharmaceuticals (now known as Bausch Health Companies Inc.) in 2015 for $1 billion, then bought it back two years later because the giant didn’t make “reasonable efforts” to commercialize Sprout’s female sexual health drug. At Counter, Renfrew is applying lessons learned the hard way from the Beautycounter collapse. She is not the majority shareholder, but she says she has a high degree of decision-making authority. Her backers are mostly individuals, most of whom invested with her before. The one institutional investor came in “knowing that we were going to do things a little bit differently,” such as prioritizing profitability over growth. “Profitability gives you optionality,” she says. “One of the things I’m very acutely aware of is you don’t ever want to be in a situation where you’re not profitable. And if that means the business is slightly smaller and it takes longer to grow, that’s okay, because your customers then know that you’re going to be around in five years.” She’s doing teleconference meetings with customers and sellers, asking what’s working and what’s not. “I’m seeking to understand and learn,” she says, adding that she “recognizes that we’re here in service of others who will afford us the opportunity to build a great brand and a great community.” Counter’s success is by no means assured. The clean beauty category Renfrew helped create is now crowded with competitors, and the demise of Beautycounter left employees, sellers—the company sold through its website but also through so-called ambassadors who earned a commission on sales—and customers in the lurch. Counter may have to, well, counter lingering negative feelings. “Those who continue to purchase from us in this new company—we owe a debt of gratitude,” Renfrew says. “We need to treat them with the respect that they deserve.” For Renfrew, one way of showing them that respect is, this time, to build a company that’s built to last. What’s your approach to business longevity? If you’re a founder or work at a founder-led company, what are the ways that your business is ensuring its longevity? Share your insights with me at stephaniemehta@mansueto.com, and we’ll include some of the best reader feedback in a future newsletter. As a reminder, I’m soliciting nominations for Modern CEO of the Year via this form. Submissions are due November 21, and we’ll share our pick—or picks—in a newsletter at the end of December. Read and watch: entrepreneurial second acts Cindy Eckert on buying back sexual health company Sprout Pharmaceuticals Chipotle founder Steve Ells wants to shake up restaurants with his new concept, Kernel Mark Lore on what it takes to be a serial entrepreneur View the full article

Over the past few years, business leaders have lived through a masterclass in volatility. A global pandemic, supply chain breakdowns, surging cyberattacks, economic whiplash, and now the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence have reshaped markets in unpredictable ways. For many executives, resilience once meant little more than business continuity planning: extra servers, backup systems, and insurance policies. But the world we lead in today demands more. Resilience is no longer just about defense—it’s about growth. The organizations that thrive amid disruption are not those with the strongest walls, but those with the most flexible foundations. They are able to absorb shocks, pivot quickly, and find opportunity where others see only risk. In a landscape defined by constant change, resilience has become the ultimate competitive advantage. From Recovery to Reinvention When the pandemic forced millions of people to work remotely overnight, some companies stumbled, scrambling to rewire systems and processes on the fly. Others adapted seamlessly, scaling their infrastructure, safeguarding data, and even uncovering new business opportunities. The difference wasn’t foresight—it was resilience. Resilient companies don’t wait for crises to test their systems. They build for adaptability from the start. This means modern digital infrastructure that can flex with demand, decision-making processes that prioritize speed and clarity over bureaucracy, and leadership cultures that empower teams to act quickly. Crucially, it also means a mindset shift: The goal is not to return to a “normal” that no longer exists. It’s to reinvent faster than your competitors. Resilience Across Three Dimensions Leaders often ask where to start. My experience points to three dimensions that define organizational resilience today: infrastructure, decision-making, and culture. 1. Infrastructure that bends, not breaks Digital infrastructure is the invisible backbone of every modern business. If it is brittle, the business is brittle. Legacy systems that can’t scale or integrate force organizations to spend more time fixing problems than creating value. By contrast, companies with modern, cloud-enabled infrastructure can adapt quickly—whether to reroute supply chains, scale up for surges in customer demand, or safeguard data against emerging cyber threats. For example, when ransomware attacks spiked during the pandemic, companies with strong cyber resilience strategies—combining secure storage, rapid recovery, and smart automation—were able to restore operations in hours, not weeks. They didn’t just avoid losses; they preserved customer trust. And when AI applications exploded onto the scene, those with flexible, well-governed data environments could test and deploy faster than rivals still wrestling with fragmented systems. 2. Decision-making at the speed of change In uncertain environments, resilience depends as much on how decisions are made as on the data that informs them. Traditional hierarchies slow response times, with insights stuck in silos and approvals delayed by bureaucracy. Resilient organizations create clarity about who decides what and empower people closest to the action to act. They ensure data flows across departments so that leaders at every level have a shared picture of reality. This approach marries speed with accountability. In my conversations with executives, I often hear stories of how front-line empowerment made the difference in moments of disruption—retail managers adjusting inventory strategies in real time, or manufacturing supervisors reconfiguring production on the fly. These shifts didn’t happen because the CEO dictated every move; they happened because the organization trusted its people to act on data-driven insights quickly, and ensured the data they rely on is accessible, reliable, and available where and when it’s needed. 3. Culture as the engine of resilience Infrastructure and processes matter, but ultimately resilience is human. It is defined by how people respond under pressure—and whether they feel empowered to adapt and innovate. Resilient cultures are built on trust and psychological safety. Employees who feel trusted are more willing to experiment. Teams that feel supported are more likely to take ownership. Leaders who model adaptability create a ripple effect that normalizes flexibility across the organization. This human dimension is often overlooked, but it is what allows resilience to scale. Without it, even the most advanced systems and strategies will falter. With it, organizations can turn volatility into a proving ground for growth. Why Resilience Now Means Growth It may sound counterintuitive to equate resilience with offense, not just defense. But the connection is real. When uncertainty is constant, the ability to adapt faster than competitors is itself a growth strategy. Consider how cloud transformation, once viewed as a cost play, is now enabling new digital business models. Or how investments in cyber resilience not only prevent losses, but also unlock customer confidence—a critical differentiator in trust-sensitive industries. Or how AI adoption, grounded in resilient data strategies, is enabling companies to innovate while others struggle with integration challenges. In each case, resilience doesn’t just protect the enterprise—it expands its possibilities. It shifts the narrative from “How do we recover?” to “How do we reinvent?” The Leadership Imperative The challenge for leaders is to stop treating resilience as an insurance policy and start treating it as a core strategy. That requires moving beyond siloed initiatives—one group working on cybersecurity, another on supply chains, another on culture—and instead weaving resilience into every layer of the business. The most effective leaders I’ve seen approach resilience as a flywheel: Modern infrastructure supports faster decisions; faster decisions empower people; empowered people innovate in ways that strengthen the system further. Over time, resilience compounds into sustainable advantage. Resilience used to mean survival. Today, it is the strategy that separates those who stumble from those who soar. For leaders, the priority is no longer defense against disruption; it is building resilience as the engine of growth. View the full article

Party accuses council members of bringing Reform ‘into disrepute’ as film of private meeting shows fractious disputeView the full article

WordPress co-founder discussed ways to motivate companies to do the right thing The post Mullenweg Talks About Commercially Motivating WordPress Companies appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

On ​my podcast this week​, I took a closer look at OpenAI’s new video generation model, ​Sora 2​, which can turn simple text descriptions into impressively realistic videos. If you type in the prompt “a man rides a horse which is on another horse,” for example, you get, well, this: AI video generation is both technically interesting and ethically worrisome in all the ways you might expect. But there’s another element of this story that’s worth highlighting: OpenAI accompanied the release of their new Sora 2 model with a new “social iOS app” called simply Sora. This app, clearly inspired by TikTok, makes it easy for users to quickly generate short videos based on text descriptions and consume others’ creations through an algorithmically curated feed. The videos flying around this new platform are as outrageously stupid or morally suspect as you might have guessed; e.g., Or, The Sora app, in other words, takes the already purified engagement that fuels TikTok and removes any last vestiges of human agency, resulting in an artificial high-octane slop. It’s unclear whether this app will last. One major issue is the back-end expense of producing these videos. For now, OpenAI requires a paid ChatGPT Plus account to generate your own content. At the $20 tier, you can pump out up to 50 low-resolution videos per month. For a whopping $200 a month, you can generate more videos at higher resolutions. None of this compares favorably to competitors like TikTok, which are exponentially cheaper to operate and can therefore not only remain truly free for all users, but actually ​pay their creators​. Whether Sora lasts or not, however, is somewhat beside the point. What catches my attention most is that OpenAI released this app in the first place. It wasn’t that long ago that Sam Altman was still ​comparing the release of GPT-5 to the testing of the first atomic bomb​, and many commentators took Dario Amodei at his word when he proclaimed​ 50% of white collar jobs might soon be automated​ by LLM-based tools. A company that still believes that its technology was imminently going to run large swathes of the economy, and would be so powerful as to reconfigure our experience of the world as we know it, wouldn’t be seeking to make a quick buck selling ads against deep fake videos of historical figures wrestling. They also wouldn’t be entertaining the idea, ​as Altman did last week​, that they might soon start offering an age-gated version of ChatGPT so that adults could enjoy AI-generated “erotica.” To me, these are the acts of a company that poured tens of billions of investment dollars into creating what they hoped would be the most consequential invention in modern history, only to finally realize that what they wrought, although very cool and powerful, isn’t powerful enough on its own to deliver a new world all at once. In his famous 2021 essay,​ “Moore’s Law for Everything,”​ Altman made the following grandiose prediction: “My work at OpenAI reminds me every day about the magnitude of the socioeconomic change that is coming sooner than most people believe. Software that can think and learn will do more and more of the work that people now do. Even more power will shift from labor to capital. If public policy doesn’t adapt accordingly, most people will end up worse off than they are today.” Four years later, he’s betting his company on its ability to sell ads against AI slop and computer-generated pornography. Don’t be distracted by the hype. This shift matters. The post Is Sora the Beginning of the End for OpenAI? appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

On ​my podcast this week​, I took a closer look at OpenAI’s new video generation model, ​Sora 2​, which can turn simple text descriptions into impressively realistic videos. If you type in the prompt “a man rides a horse which is on another horse,” for example, you get, well, this: AI video generation is both technically interesting and ethically worrisome in all the ways you might expect. But there’s another element of this story that’s worth highlighting: OpenAI accompanied the release of their new Sora 2 model with a new “social iOS app” called simply Sora. This app, clearly inspired by TikTok, makes it easy for users to quickly generate short videos based on text descriptions and consume others’ creations through an algorithmically curated feed. The videos flying around this new platform are as outrageously stupid or morally suspect as you might have guessed; e.g., Or, The Sora app, in other words, takes the already purified engagement that fuels TikTok and removes any last vestiges of human agency, resulting in an artificial high-octane slop. It’s unclear whether this app will last. One major issue is the back-end expense of producing these videos. For now, OpenAI requires a paid ChatGPT Plus account to generate your own content. At the $20 tier, you can pump out up to 50 low-resolution videos per month. For a whopping $200 a month, you can generate more videos at higher resolutions. None of this compares favorably to competitors like TikTok, which are exponentially cheaper to operate and can therefore not only remain truly free for all users, but actually ​pay their creators​. Whether Sora lasts or not, however, is somewhat beside the point. What catches my attention most is that OpenAI released this app in the first place. It wasn’t that long ago that Sam Altman was still ​comparing the release of GPT-5 to the testing of the first atomic bomb​, and many commentators took Dario Amodei at his word when he proclaimed​ 50% of white collar jobs might soon be automated​ by LLM-based tools. A company that still believes that its technology was imminently going to run large swathes of the economy, and would be so powerful as to reconfigure our experience of the world as we know it, wouldn’t be seeking to make a quick buck selling ads against deep fake videos of historical figures wrestling. They also wouldn’t be entertaining the idea, ​as Altman did last week​, that they might soon start offering an age-gated version of ChatGPT so that adults could enjoy AI-generated “erotica.” To me, these are the acts of a company that poured tens of billions of investment dollars into creating what they hoped would be the most consequential invention in modern history, only to finally realize that what they wrought, although very cool and powerful, isn’t powerful enough on its own to deliver a new world all at once. In his famous 2021 essay,​ “Moore’s Law for Everything,”​ Altman made the following grandiose prediction: “My work at OpenAI reminds me every day about the magnitude of the socioeconomic change that is coming sooner than most people believe. Software that can think and learn will do more and more of the work that people now do. Even more power will shift from labor to capital. If public policy doesn’t adapt accordingly, most people will end up worse off than they are today.” Four years later, he’s betting his company on its ability to sell ads against AI slop and computer-generated pornography. Don’t be distracted by the hype. This shift matters. The post Is Sora the Beginning of the End for OpenAI? appeared first on Cal Newport. View the full article

The difference between OpenAI and Anthropic has never been clearer. OpenAI is constantly in the news with a new consumer app or feature, and is being billed as the next great consumer tech platform. Most recently it made news by offering a social network around its Sora image generator, and even says it plans to allow NSFW content on ChatGPT. Anthropic, meanwhile, has chosen a different path. The company stresses that because it gets most of its revenues from businesses and developers, it’s not trying to capture the mass market, and it’s not terribly concerned about how long users spend on its platform every day. “We are interested in our consumer users to the degree they are doing work, solving problems in their life,” says Anthropic design chief Joel Lewenstein during an interview with Fast Company this week. “Because we’re not interested in passive consumption and image generation and video generation—we just sort of have ruled those out from a mission perspective . . .” Anthropic was famously founded by a group of OpenAI execs who defected in 2021 to found a more safety-focused AI lab. That focus hasn’t changed. “Our interests are in making things that are beneficial while minimizing the risks of those same products because everything has a double-edged sword,” Lewenstein says. “We see . . . helping people grow and expand and create and solve problems as being the right risk-reward tradeoff.” The San Francisco-based startup believes that work-first focus will ultimately win out as AI eventually shows its profoundest effects in the lives of businesses, not consumers. At a conference Wednesday, Anthropic’s cofounder and policy director Jack Clark says Anthropic will eventually overtake OpenAI because of its enterprise focus, its strong technological roadmap, and because its research is “accelerating faster” than its rival’s. All of this is reflected in the look and feel of its Claude chatbot–the main entry to access Anthropic’s powerful models–but also in its attitude. Not warm and fuzzy When it comes to work, Claude is pleasant, even empathetic, but serious–and it comes with a free BS detector. “Sycophancy” in AI models, after all, has become a serious problem. OpenAI recently admitted having to push an update to its GPT-4o model to fix its sycophantic behavior. And its CEO Sam Altman stated in a post on Oct. 14 that users will be able to reintroduce that personality if they liked it. The model reportedly had a habit of praising or validating user statements even when they were delusional or concerning (one user claimed a divine identity). Some analysts believe that such behavior in a model is more than a bug, but a choice made by the model maker in the interest of getting people to use the platform more. A sycophantic chatbot in a work setting can act something like a yes-man, embracing and offering to further develop even the worst business ideas. This can lead to a range of reputational and financial harms, not to mention seriously damaging trust in the AI. Sychophantic AI could be especially dangerous to Anthropic, which wants its user to use Claude not just for quick content generation, but as a collaborator or thinking partner to do serious work. In order to do that, the user needs to build confidence and trust in the reasonableness of the AI. So Anthropic trained the models behind Claude to push back on logically suspect thoughts from the user. Lewenstein says his company worked especially hard to train this into its newest model, Claude Haiku 4.5, which it says is the most sycophancy-resistant model available in its size. The ‘artifacts’ shift The idea of “Claude as collaborator” has directly impacted the chatbot’s user interface. With the introduction of “Artifacts” last year, Anthropic added a highly functional workspace around the chatbot. The idea of the Artifacts UX is to show a working draft of the project the user and the AI are working on in real time, within a panel at the right side of the interface. This might be a document draft, a chart, or a code preview, which the user can inspect, click, highlight, and suggest changes. The user can tell Claude to write something in a new way, or integrate a new idea from an uploaded PDF or text file. “I cannot overstate how big of a shift that is, and [it] anchors a lot of the way that we think,” Lewenstein says. By this he means that Artifacts encourages the user to think of Claude as a smart work companion, rather than just a content generator. “It creates this sense of you’re making something alongside Claude,” Lewenstein says. “We’re not just giving you the answer. We’re not having you just download it and we’re done . . .” Rather, the human and chatbot enter a dialog where they gradually shape the output into what the user wants. Lewenstein acknowledges that while AI tools have a growing number of power users, a significant percentage of users have yet to scratch the surface of what’s possible. He says a major challenge of the user interface design is to invite people to Claude’s features more fully. Artifacts can show users their options so that they can proceed in an experimental way, learning as they go. And, as of last month, Claude now can automatically remember past chats, so it might proactively ask if the user wants to include some theme or piece of data (perhaps a relevant piece of proprietary product research or a business plan) it’s encountered before. “I think the more things that Claude is able to do—Claude can now make PowerPoints and make Excel documents—the more things that it makes, the more important it is that there is some space that you can actually see and engage with that content,” Lewenstein says. The reason Claude can make presentations and spreadsheets is because of “skills,” or packets of knowledge that Claude can call up when the user needs them. On Thursday, a day after announcing its new Claude Haiku 4.5 model, the company announced that Claude users can now make their own “agent skills.” If a user worked with Claude to create a presentation, for example, and called in a number of style sheets and marketing guidelines to do it, they can package all that work up in a skill and use it again the next time they need to do a presentation. In essence, Claude is enabling a user to create a kind of agent that has expertise and experience working with the user on a specific task. Agents AI agents can reason and act autonomously to do things like fetch data, perform actions, create plans. OpenAI recently announced a new tool called Agent Builder that provides a simple, graphical interface to create agents, define their workflows, and pull in tools the agent can use (a safety guardrail tool, for example). OpenAI says this could speed up the process for developers, and reduce the need to build agents from scratch. Anthropic believes that the right UX for building and managing agents depends on the type of user and their level of expertise. When developers within businesses build agents, Lewenstein explains, they write them as code, and Anthropic provides them a number of governance and security tools to help manage them. There’s no abstraction layer that represents the parts as objects that can be dragged around on a screen (at least not yet). Lewenstein says consumers, prosumers, and average knowledge workers usually just want to describe a goal they want the agent to achieve, then let the AI carry out the necessary functions behind the scenes to make it happen. That’s the direction Anthropic is pursuing now. “Whether users even want to think about agents as a concept remains an open question,” he says. Still, Anthropic is exploring several different kinds of agent approaches within Claude, some of them tightly integrated with chat, some of them less so. The focus is on what people are trying to accomplish, Lewenstein says. “Anthropic will provide whatever is needed in any form factor to achieve that, and the company isn’t wedded to any particular UX paradigm yet.” He cites the old marketing adage: “Users don’t really want a quarter-inch drill bit, they want a quarter-inch hole.” Claude of the future Right now, users are still trying to understand how AI agents can fit into their overall workflows. In a work setting they may be skeptical that the agent will produce reliable, actionable work. They will naturally want to know a lot about how the agent is doing its work, how it’s getting from a directive to a result. Lewenstein says that Claude now lets users click to see all the steps the agent (powered by the model) took to reach a result. Building that into the UX, he says, wasn’t a terribly challenging problem. But, over time, Claude will become more autonomous and capable of working unsupervised for longer periods of time (already the Claude Sonnet 4.5 model can work by itself for 30 hours). This could create challenges for the UX, which will have to show an audit of every step in the work that was done. “We have these components in the UI which we’ve been working on for the last couple of years, which is a short little summary and then if you expand it, it actually shows you, ‘Here’s everything I did for the last X hours,’ so that you can really build up an understanding but also a trust.” In the first phases of AI agents being used within enterprises, users will have to think through what tasks they can delegate to agents, and what tasks to keep for themselves. Future versions of Claude, Lewenstein says, might help the user understand this. “I think this is the future of where a lot of these products need to go—understanding someone’s workflow enough, [and] its own capabilities enough, to proactively say, ‘I will take this work off your plate and I will leave you with this thing,’ and that should feel very empowering to people,” Lewenstein says. An AI for work Even for its consumer users, Anthropic is interested in helping them do work, not pass the time. So the same Claude user interface works pretty well for both personal and business use cases, Lewenstein says. He says consumers use Claude for a lot of personal things that might as well be work things—complex problems like planning a vacation or navigating a complicated renovation. “We see consumers or people who are not doing it for their employer finding a lot of benefit in basically all the same basic features that we have [in Claude] for work.” Eighty percent of Anthropic’s revenues come from enterprise customers. After crossing $1 billion a year in annualized revenue run rate (ARR) at the beginning of 2025, the company expects to hit $9 billion in ARR by the end of the year, Reuters reports, and then $26 billion in 2026. While OpenAI doesn’t usually talk about its revenue mix, its CFO Sarah Friar said in 2024 that the company made 75% of its money from consumer subscriptions. As of June 2025, OpenAI’s ARR was reportedly $10 billion (excluding licensing revenue from Microsoft and large one-time deals). Analysts expect OpenAI to reach about $12.7 billion in total revenue in 2025. 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Layoffs might make headlines, but the real measure is how leaders support the remaining employees. Layoffs are undeniably challenging for good reason. However, it’s what leaders do in the aftermath that determines whether a culture fractures or recovers. I’ve led workforce complex reductions at Amazon, Microsoft, startups, and PE-backed firms. While every situation was unique, the same pattern appeared each time. It wasn’t necessarily the layoff that broke the culture. It was the leadership response. Layoffs disrupt the culture and impact more than just headcount. I’ve watched talented, engaged employees turn quiet and withdrawn after layoffs. Not because they stopped caring, but because they stopped feeling safe. The aftermath of layoffs can be unsettling for those who remain. Organizations expect survivors to absorb heavier workloads while they navigate shaken trust and mixed emotions. Layoff survivors often experience relief, guilt, grief, and anxiety about what’s next. This is the leadership moment too few prepare for. Post-layoff culture recovery isn’t automatic—it’s intentional. In these moments, they need to communicate. It’s a make-or-break opportunity to rebuild confidence, reinforce values, and heal a company’s culture. Culture recovery hinges on many factors. Leadership must step up to manage the aftermath. Here’s how to approach it: Lead with candor, not corporate speak Layoffs are typically a financial decision, but culture recovery is a leadership decision. Don’t miss your moment. Layoffs don’t kill culture. Neglect does. Leaders who avoid the hard conversations, hide behind jargon, and pretend it’s business as usual are the ones who lose the trust of their employees. After all, silence creates speculation. That’s why it’s important that leaders directly address and over-communicate early. I’ve introduced pulse checks, frequent town halls, and open forums. You can’t rebuild morale through Slack updates or pizza parties. You need to do this in an authentic way. When my company had to conduct layoffs several years ago, it was a stressful experience. As the HR leader, I carried a significant emotional burden in conversations with employees who were impacted as well as those with those who remained. Our executive team met with staff to answer tough questions and provide updates. The first few sessions were a bit tense for both me and our leaders, as we faced some tough questions. We stumbled at first with too much corporate speak, and employees saw right through it. The room was tense. But eventually, that discomfort became a turning point when leaders stopped with the jargon and started showing real vulnerability. After that, the dynamic shifted. Acknowledging the emotional climate is important because it helps us reclaim performance and commitment. If we wanted to show our support for employees, we needed to address these issues head-on. Many companies carefully plan their layoff process, including announcements and severance packages. However, they often neglect what comes next. People don’t remember the slide decks or talking points—they remember how you showed up at this moment. Empty buzzwords do more harm than good. Speak to people on a human level and create space for honest conversations about what is certain and what’s unknown. Be open about changes involving the business, team structure, available headcount resources, or ongoing uncertainties. Reaffirm what hasn’t changed. At the same time, you also need to be clear about the path forward. Create safe spaces for emotion After layoffs, the workplace feels different, and pretending otherwise only deepens the sense of unease that employees feel. Leaders who acknowledge this reality set the stage for recovery. To help teams reengage, you need to take the time to listen to your employees. When you give people this kind of face, they’re more likely to adapt more quickly and regain momentum. Validating emotions doesn’t weaken performance—it accelerates it. Employees who feel like you’ve heard them are far more likely to reengage, contribute, and collaborate. Weekly check-ins become vital for building connections. These conversations are not always easy, but they’re necessary for healing. Over time, that openness strengthens collaboration and restores trust. Rebuild culture from within Rebuilding from within starts with clarity. Employees need context—why you made certain decisions, and what resources are available moving forward. People want details that help them understand what’s ahead and how their work fits the bigger picture. This is also the moment to reenergize the team. Reaffirm the mission and values so employees can reconnect to a shared purpose. Even in uncertainty, knowing the “why” behind the work helps people stay motivated. Leaders need to act. Retaining key talent, ensuring workloads are sustainable, and recognizing the additional effort required of those who remain all demonstrate that leadership is paying attention. A common mistake leaders make is assuming that the remaining team members will just pick up the slack. This assumption can lead to increased burnout or, even worse, the loss of valuable talent. A better approach is prioritizing tasks, eliminating low-value work, and having an honest conversation about the short-term trade-offs that are involved. Recognize that this is a cultural moment Layoffs test culture. They don’t automatically destroy it—what damages culture is indifference, silence, or meaningless lip service. When leaders respond with honesty and care, disruption can become a catalyst for renewal. You shape culture through daily choices: the courage to answer tough questions, the discipline to maintain consistent communication, and the humility to admit when you’ve compromised trust. Employees notice whether leadership avoids the hard truths or embraces them. Moments of disruption invite reflection. Leaders can use this time to reassess values, address blind spots, and strengthen practices that they might have overlooked. Openness about what needs to change prevents damaging back-channeling and reinforces inclusivity. Culture is the foundation on which every company rests. If it fractures, performance and morale follow. But a stronger culture can emerge when leaders step into this moment with honesty and courage. View the full article

The crawl stats report in Google Search Console is missing a day of data again. The data gap is for October 14, 2025. If you look at the chart, you will see a hole in the data, where it is missing a full day of data.View the full article

OpenAI has announced that starting in December, ChatGPT will allow the generation of erotic content for verified adult users. At the same time, Elon Musk’s xAI has launched Grok Imagine, an image-generation system that already includes an NSFW mode for producing explicit imagery. None of this should surprise anyone. Desire, fantasy, and pornography have always been powerful engines of technological adoption. Photography, video, the internet, and even online payments all grew, in part, because of it. The interesting question is not about sex: it’s about what these decisions reveal about the kind of humanity Big Tech companies are shaping. Desire as a managed service This is not about prudishness or panic. Sexuality will, of course, find its digital expressions. What’s unsettling is not the presence of eroticism in technology, but its industrialized management. The difference between eroticism and algorithmic consumption is the same as that between experience and dopamine: one is built through relationship; the other is dosed from the outside. By integrating sexuality into large language models and visual generators, platforms are not liberating desire: they are administering it. They decide which fantasies are “acceptable,” which bodies exist and which don’t, what limits imagination deserves, and which ones are preemptively censored. The promise is freedom; the result is regulation of pleasure. From exploration to domestication When excitement, tenderness, and curiosity are mediated through an interface, our relationship with our bodies and with others changes. This isn’t moralism. It’s behavioral architecture. Algorithms learn what attracts us, replicate it, reinforce it, and turn it into dependence. Users stop exploring desire; they repeat it. And repetition, safe, comfortable, and risk-free, becomes a form of domestication. There’s no need to manipulate people with ideology when you can condition them with pleasure. Constant stimulation is a far more effective form of control than censorship ever was. A new vector of capture It’s no coincidence that this expansion arrives just as large language models mature and corporations compete to keep users inside their closed ecosystems. Sex, in this context, becomes just another vector of attention capture, a way to deepen the emotional bond between humans and machines. The goal is no longer for AI to respond, but to accompany, excite, soothe, and replace. The fantasy isn’t companionship: it’s containment. An artificial partner designed never to challenge, never to refuse, never to feel. This is not technological liberation. It’s the automation of comfort. From entertainment to managed desire As I said a couple of weeks ago, we’ve been here before. From social networks to gaming, digital entertainment has followed the same logic of permanent stimulation. What changes now is the terrain: it’s no longer about free time: it’s about desire itself, that core where emotion and biology meet. Turning desire into a managed service run by algorithms is the final step toward a docile humanity, one in which even intimacy becomes a subscription. Digital sex vs. algorithmic sex The point is not to moralize about pornography: it’s to understand what it means to hand over control of erotic imagination, one of humanity’s most powerful creative forces, to closed systems that do not explain how they learn, what they filter, or whom they serve. The problem is not digital sex. It’s algorithmic sex. Not pleasure, but control. Once these systems learn to measure, adjust, and stimulate desire, free will becomes just another optimization parameter. The new anesthesia Behind this apparent liberalization of content lies a simpler, more effective strategy: keep us busy, satisfied, and distracted. Not indoctrinated: anesthetized. A form of emotional livestock, fed by impulses engineered on distant servers. Algorithmic sheep: artificially happy, productive, and unable to tell the difference between genuine desire and manufactured stimulus. View the full article

A new music startup created an instrument that can turn your microwave, electric toothbrush, and baby monitor into hauntingly beautiful music. Its branding converts all of those fascinating outputs into an infinite series of Victorian-inspired patterns. Eternal Research is a brand founded by musician Alexandra Fierra, and it’s dedicated to “unlocking the existing music hidden in everyday things,” per its website. The company’s debut product is called the Demon Box. This fully analog device uses an intricate array of sensors to detect the electro-magnetic fields (EMFs) of almost any electronic device around it, and then turns those EMFs into music. The brand hit its funding goal on Kickstarter in a matter of hours, and the first Demon Boxes (which cost $999 a pop) are set to ship in November. The Demon Box blends the study of music-making with modern technology—and for its launch it needed a brand to match. The New York-based agency Cotton Design was tasked with creating a visual identity that an infinitely audio-reactive generative model that transforms sound into historically accurate Victorian patterns. Like the instrument itself, the brand eschews convention to create something unique. A music brand inspired by vampires, high fashion, and the Victorian era When Talia Cotton, founder and creative director at Cotton Design, first met with Fierra, she felt as if Fierra was “on another frequency than the rest of the world.” Fierra’s approach to music is all about craft, experimentation, and the intricacy of the sound that exists in the everyday world. Her vision for Eternal Research’s branding combined that attention to detail with a mysterious, almost vampiric visual sensibility. “She kept on sending us these examples,” Cotton says. “She sent us an empty unboxing experience for YSL, because she said there was something special about that unboxing experience. There was a box, that held an envelope, that held a scarf—all these different layers of the brand that she thought were very thoughtful. She also sent us an old collector’s edition VHS tape of [Bram Stoker’s] Dracula in a coffin-shaped box.” These small pieces of Fierra’s inner world slowly started to piece together for Cotton’s team, which included coder Noah Schwadron and project manager Sewon Bae. But there was one source of inspiration that became a kind of north star for the brand. ​​”[Fierra] is a collector of old books from the Victorian era,” Cotton says. “She has a very deep appreciation for the craft that is associated with that period in time, which is defined by ornamentation, and by the careful, slow process of making these outputs. Each Victorian pattern was unique.” Eventually, Cotton realized that Fierra’s fascination with Victorian design sensibilities was the perfect basis for Eternal Research’s brand—the challenge was to figure out how to pull off an identity for a modern music brand company based on inspiration from the 19th century. How Eternal Research pulled brand inspiration from A24 Cotton describes Eternal Research’s brand as geared toward two different consumer bases: one who is just discovering the brand, and another who is an avid follower prepared to pay the sizable $999 cost of the Demon Box. To appeal to both of those consumer segments, Cotton’s team needed to balance a strong element of personalization with a sense of approachability. “This was really tricky for us, because on one hand there was the ornament, the detail, the special-feeling experience, and on the other hand, [Fierra] was very gung ho about making this feel open; like anybody could understand it,” Cotton says. For consumers that are just discovering Eternal Research, Cotton’s team took inspiration from brands outside the music tech space with cult followings, like the movie studio A24—which Cotton says pulls some of its mystique from seeming almost “unbranded.” Similarly, Eternal Research’s most frequently used assets, including its logo and sans serif wordmark, are kept simple and unornamented to invite new customers to learn more. But as fans of the brand dig deeper, the branding story pulls them into a more and more expressive world. That world is anchored by a generative model, coded from the ground up by Schwadron, that turns any sound input into a Victorian-inspired ornamental design. These patterns, which can be made in an infinite array of combinations, appear everywhere from the brand’s social media content to its website, letterheads, and packaging—and the model is available online for anyone to use. A brand that turns sounds into Victorian patterns Cotton Design’s audio-reactive design relies on historical sources to create period-accurate Victorian patterns. The team sifted through hundreds of vintage book covers, illustrations, and re-creations to understand how these patterns were constructed and which motifs recurred most commonly—down to the angles of individual curves and the kind of floral patterns that were most popular. The base of the generative model can be understood as a kind of map. Each map is composed of a grid and a series of circles, which tell the model where the pattern’s lines should go. Every time the model is reloaded, it creates a random base map. From there, it takes in a sound input and interprets not only the input’s volume, but also its frequency, texture, and timbre. These sound qualities are digested by the model and correlated to more than 30 different pattern parameters, like line density, length, animation speed, the number of floral accents, and more. With all of these layers stacked on top of each other, the outcome is a model that can literally make an infinite number of sound-based Victorian illustrations. While audio-reactive designs have become more popular in recent years, this project is perhaps one of the most expressive, detailed applications of the technique to date. Paired with the music generated by the Demon Box, the brand is like an otherworldly symphony for both the ears and eyes. View the full article

When samurai warriors went into battle in 16th century Japan, their swords included a piece of hidden art. Within the tsuba, the hand guard at the bottom of the blade, metal smiths carefully crafted beautiful and complex designs, including flowers, animals, and landscapes. The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston has one of the largest collections of Japanese art in the United States in its permanent collection, including hundreds of tsubas. It has just collaborated with the fine jewelry designer Monica Rich Kosann to create a collection of necklaces inspired by three tsuba designs—a crane, a turtle, and a butterfly—to introduce these ancient works of art back into the modern world. Kosann’s pieces, which cost between $925 and $3,050, are made from gold and silver, and one piece is encrusted with diamonds. They will be sold at the MFA as well as Kosann’s store. Kosann carefully went through every single one of the MFA’s tsubas and settled on these three creatures. She was particularly drawn to their symbolism, which she learned about as she spoke with the museum’s curators. The crane symbolized good luck and the turtle symbolized a long life, both of which a samurai would hope for as they went into the battlefield. But warriors also realized that they might never make it home alive. “The butterfly symbolized a short life, but a full, glorious one,” says Kosann. “I find that very moving, and something that many people can relate to.” Sarah Thompson, curator of Japanese prints at the MFA, says that most of the tsubas that have survived are from the 16th century, when Japan was engaged in a lengthy civil war. Metal smiths would create these tsubas out of precious metals, often iron combined with two alloys that are unique to Japanese metalwork, shibuichi (which is copper blended with silver) and shakuto (which is copper blended with gold). Over time, these pieces became status symbols, signaling the importance of the warrior and his family. “As far as I know, the design of the tsubas were personally selected by their owners,” says Thompson. “And because they could be put together [on the sword] in different ways, you might have several that you could change.” Kosann was drawn to this project because she has built her business on creating jewelry based on storytelling and symbolism. When she launched her eponymous jewelry brand two decades ago, she focused on creating lockets inspired by those she found at vintage markets, since these were a way for a person to tell a story about their life and the loved ones who have shaped them. Today, the brand continues to be known for its lockets, but Kosann has expanded to include many other pieces of jewelry designed to tell stories about the wearer’s identity. For instance, she has a collection of pendants inspired by fables and fairy tales. There’s one that features a red apple, which appears everywhere from the biblical story of the Garden of Eden to the story of Snow White. She reimagines it as a symbol of empowerment. And there’s another one that features the tortoise and the hare, made from green tourmaline and white diamonds. “The moral and meaning in mythology never get old,” says Kosann. “So many people feel like they’re behind in the journey of life, but the tortoise and the hare reminds us that slow and steady often wins the race.” Her collection for the MFA is an extension of this work. In some ways, the project is a departure for her, because she’s inspired by a form of art that was designed for men who would then carry it into the very masculine space of the battlefield. She believes the symbolism within these tsubas are relevant to the modern woman, who might want to embody the spirit of a fearless warrior. “I think about the butterfly,” says Kosann. “It represents transformation and beauty, and how it’s not the length of your life that matters, but whether you lived it well.” View the full article

People are fascinated with leadership, and rightly so. After all, most of the “big things” that happen in the world (both good and bad) can be directly traced to decisions, behaviors, or choices of those who are in charge: presidents, prime ministers, CEOs, executives, and anyone tasked with turning a group of people into a high-performing unit, coordinating human activity, and shaping the impact institutions have on society, all the way down to individuals. In line, scientific research shows that up to 40% of the variability in team and organizational performance can be accounted for by the leader—in other words, who we put in charge, or who emerges as leaders, drastically influences the fate of others. This begs the obvious question of how and why some people become leaders in the first place. Furthermore, few psychological questions have intrigued the general public more than the question of whether nature or nurture is responsible for shaping and creating leaders: so, are leaders born or made? If you want the quick and short answer, it is YES. Or if you prefer, “a bit of both” (which is generally the case in psychology). Let’s start with the nurture part, which is the one more likely to resonate with popular or laypeople’s views . . . (1) Environment shapes character and competence Our early environments (especially during childhood) play a profound role in molding the attitudes, motivations, and habits that underpin leadership. Supportive parents, good schooling, early exposure to responsibility, access to a stimulating wider community, and opportunities to practice decision-making all nurture proto-leadership skills such as conscientiousness, self-control, curiosity, assertiveness, and empathy. On the flip side, adversity can also build resilience, independence, and determination. In other words, leadership potential often germinates in the soil of early experiences, but it’s impossible to accurately predict the direction of the development, which is what makes life interesting and fun. At the same time, things aren’t random, and science-based predictions will work more often than not (on average, for most people, we can improve from a 50% guesswork to around 80% hit rate). (2) Expertise legitimizes leadership No one wants to follow a leader who doesn’t know what they’re talking about. That’s why domain-specific knowledge is essential for legitimacy. You can’t lead a tech team without understanding technology, or a marketing department without grasping customers and branding. Expertise breeds credibility, and credibility breeds followership in turn. This is why great football coaches will probably fail as corporate CEOs, and why even the best military leaders may not be adequate startup founders. While charisma or confidence may get you noticed, sustained leadership requires demonstrable competence. This is learned, not inherited, because it’s about harnessing the social proof that makes you a credible expert in the eyes of others (and I mean other experts not novices!). (3) Personality evolves through life experience Traits like curiosity, openness, emotional stability, and conscientiousness (all strong predictors of leadership effectiveness) are partly malleable. They evolve in response to life experiences, feedback, and learning. The so-called “bright side” of personality (ambition, sociability, diligence) and the “dark side” (narcissism, impulsivity, arrogance) both reflect a mix of innate dispositions and environmental reinforcement. The first decade of life is particularly critical, but development continues throughout adulthood. So while personality sets the stage, experience writes the script. Now for the less popular, but equally important “nature” side of the debate. (4) Leadership is partly heritable Behavioral genetics (especially twin studies) show that leadership is not purely learned. Roughly 30 to 60% of the variance in who becomes a leader can be attributed to genetic factors. Rich Arvey and colleagues at the National University of Singapore found that identical twins, even when raised apart, are significantly more likely to occupy leadership roles than fraternal twins. This doesn’t mean leadership is predetermined, but it suggests some individuals are born with psychological and biological predispositions, like higher energy, extraversion, or risk tolerance, that increase their odds of taking charge. (5) Intelligence and personality are strongly genetic Two of the most powerful predictors of leadership (cognitive ability and personality) are themselves highly heritable. Robert Plomin’s decades of research suggest that around 50% of the variance in both IQ and personality traits can be traced to genetics. Since these traits strongly predict who emerges as a leader and how effective they are, we can reasonably infer that part of leadership is literally in our DNA. Brains, not just behavior, matter: smarter, more emotionally stable individuals tend to make better decisions, handle stress, and inspire confidence; all qualities that attract followers. (6) The unfair advantages of birth Finally, there’s the uncomfortable truth that social class, privilege, and demographic factors like gender, race, and attractiveness (each partly determined by who you are born to) also shape leadership opportunities. Tall, good-looking, well-spoken individuals from higher socioeconomic backgrounds are more likely to be perceived as leadership material, regardless of actual competence. These advantages aren’t “earned,” yet they strongly affect leadership trajectories. Nature determines the lottery ticket; society decides how valuable it is, even if this is arbitrary and unfair. To be sure, societies that dislike this fact (including most Western democracies) are seeing big decreases in upward social mobility. For instance, in the U.S., approximately 50% of a father’s income position is inherited by his son (in Norway and Canada, the figure is less than 20%). With wealth and money come advantages and access to leadership positions, so while nature isn’t destiny, it certainly inhibits or amplifies opportunities. In sum, the science of leadership suggests that it is both born and made. Genetics endows us with certain predispositions (intelligence, temperament, even physical appearance) that make leadership more or less likely. And our socioeconomic status and parental resources at birth shape the nature of what’s possible, or at least likely. But environment, learning, and experience are the catalysts that turn those predispositions into performance. Leadership, in other words, is a potential meeting opportunity. And while we can’t control our genetic hand, we can absolutely learn to play it better. View the full article

AWS reports ‘operational issue’ affecting the US east coast View the full article

In 1998, five kids met in a cafe in Belgrade. Still in their 20s, they were, to all outward appearances, nothing special. They weren’t rich, or powerful; they didn’t hold important positions or have access to significant resources. Nevertheless, that day, they conceived a plan to overthrow their country’s brutal Milošević regime. The next day, six friends joined them and they became the 11 founders of the activist group Otpor. A year later, Otpor numbered a few hundred members and it seemed that Milošević would be the dictator for life. A year after that, Otpor had grown to 70,000 and the Bulldozer Revolution brought down the once-unshakable dictator. That’s how change works: in phases. Every transformational idea starts out weak, flawed, and untested. It needs a quiet period to work out the kinks. Through trial and error, you see what works, begin to gain traction, and eventually have the opportunity to create lasting change. If you’re serious about change, you need to learn the phases of change and manage them wisely. The Emergent Phase Managers launching a new initiative often seek to start with a bang. They work to gain approval for a sizable budget as a sign of institutional commitment. They recruit high-profile executives, arrange a big “kick-off” meeting, and look to move fast, gain scale, and generate some quick wins. All of this is designed to create a sense of urgency and inevitability. Yet this approach usually backfires. Every idea starts out weak and untested. You might think that you have a sound concept. You may have even seen it work before and achieve impressive results. But until the idea has gained traction in your current context, you don’t really know anything. You’re shooting in the dark. That’s why in the emergent phase, you want to move deliberately. For example, in his efforts to reform the Pentagon, Colonel John Boyd began every initiative by briefing a group of collaborators he called the “Acolytes,” who would help hone and sharpen the ideas. Only once the ideas had been subjected to intense scrutiny would he move on to congressional staffers, elected officials, and the media. The truth is that change is never top-down or bottom-up, but always moves side-to-side. You will find the entire spectrum—from strong supporters to committed opponents—at every level. That’s why you need to go to where the energy already is, not try to create and maintain it by yourself. Find people who are as enthusiastic and committed as you are. That’s what was achieved in that cafe in Belgrade. They didn’t have a movement, resources, or anything more than the rough contours of a plan. But they had a core team that was committed to shared values and a shared purpose. That’s where every change effort needs to start. The Engagement Phase Once you have your core team in place, you’ll want to start mobilizing others who might be open to joining your effort. The tipping point for change in most contexts is only 10%–20% participation, so you don’t need to convince everyone at once. You want to attract, not try to overpower, scare, or shame people into bending to your will. The first thing you want to do is to identify a Keystone Change, which has a clear and tangible goal, involves multiple stakeholders, and paves the way for future change. When we work with organizations, we always encourage the teams we work with to “make it smaller,” until their Keystone Change is laser focused on one process, one product, one office, or one . . . something. Another key strategy is to design a Co-Optable Resource that others can use to achieve their own goals, but also further the change you’re trying to build. A good Co-Optable Resource must be both accessible—no mandates or incentives—and impactful, meaning that it needs to deliver practical value and be scalable. For example, in a cloud transformation at Experian, the CIO didn’t simply mandate the shift, which he had full authority to do, but instead started with internal APIs, which don’t carry the same risks and wouldn’t encounter much resistance. That was the Keystone Change. Then he set up an “API Center of Resistance” to help product managers who wanted to build cloud-based products. What’s key during the engagement phase is that you are working to empower rather than to persuade. By helping others to achieve things that they want to, you can build traction and set the conditions for genuine transformation. The Victory Phase Once you have shown that change can work with a successful keystone project and begun to attract a following, you will begin to gain traction. This is when you need to start planning for the victory phase, which is often the most dangerous phase, because that’s when you are most likely to encounter vicious opposition. Once the opponents of change see that genuine is actually possible, that’s when the knives come out. They will see that genuine transformation is possible and will seek to undermine it in ways that are dishonest, underhanded, and deceptive. That’s what you need to be prepared for, because it almost always happens. The good news is that these efforts are usually desperate and clumsy. They often backfire. What’s key is to not take the bait and get sucked into a conflict, although that will be tempting. When someone viciously attacks something we believe passionately in and have worked hard for, it offends our dignity and we want to lash out. What’s important to remember is that lasting change is always built on common ground. So you want to focus on shared values in how you communicate and how you design dilemmas. You will never convince everybody, nor do you need to, but you do need to create a sense of safety around change and show that you want to make it work for all who are affected by it. Protect Your Ugly Baby Pixar founder Ed Catmull once wrote that “early on, all of our movies suck.” The trick, he explained, is to go beyond the initial germ of an idea and put in the hard work it takes to get something to go “from suck to not-suck.” He called early ideas “ugly babies,” because they start out, “awkward and unformed, vulnerable and incomplete.” There’s something romantic about the early stages of an idea, but it’s important to remember that, much like Catmull’s ugly babies, your idea is never going to be as weak and vulnerable as those early days before you get a chance to work out the inevitable kinks. You need to be careful not to overexpose it or it may die an early death. You need to protect your ugly baby, not shove it out into the world and hope it can fend for itself. You need to resist the urge to jump right in with a big launch. Change follows a predictable, nonlinear pattern often described as an S curve. It starts out slowly, because it’s unproven and flawed. Few will be able to see its potential and even fewer will be willing to devote their energy and resources to it. Early on, you need to focus on a relatively small circle who can help your ugly baby grow. These should be people you know and trust, or at least have indicated some enthusiasm for the concept. If you feel the urge to persuade, you have the wrong people. As you gain traction, identify flaws, and make adjustments, your idea will grow stronger and you can accelerate. Large-scale change cannot be rushed. It is not a communication problem and wordsmithing snappier slogans won’t get you very far. It is a collective action problem. People will only adopt it when they see others around them adopt it. That’s why you need to approach it carefully. Give it the respect it deserves, and it can work wonders for you. View the full article

I just got back from a week on the beach. The water was crystal clear, the sky blue, and my butt was in a lounge chair all day. I certainly enjoyed myself and caught up on a ton of sleep. But did I return to work today bursting with ideas and fresh energy? If I’m honest, not really. It feels more like I left my brain sunning itself on the seaside. Meanwhile, I need to dig myself out from under a mountain of work and complete my massive back-to-school to-do list. Where did I go wrong in my vacation planning? If I was looking to maximize floating time and the amount of tasty fish I ate, nowhere. But according to psychology, as much as I enjoyed my break, I also fell prey to one of the most common vacation myths. Like many people, I assumed that sloth is the most effective way to unwind and refresh. I would have been better off if I had swapped my swimsuit for a “skillcation” instead. What’s a skillcation? First, what’s a skillcation? Exactly what it sounds like—a vacation dedicated to either learning a new skill or improving an existing one. This could range from a low-key guided birdwatching getaway or a sweaty boot camp to a week of cooking classes in a bucolic setting. “Consulting agency Future Partners has found that 39% of travelers are drawn to such trips,” Thrillist reports. HuffPost claims skillcations are a trend that’s “gaining popularity.” Ben Martin, of hospitality strategy firm HKS, told HuffPost that learning-focused travel “satisfies a desire for personal growth and cultural engagement.” And indeed one way to look at the skillcation trend is as yet another way the productivity and personal growth-focused ethos of work life is seeping into our off-hours. But there’s another, more positive way to look at the rising interest in holidays that promise to teach you to learn to knit or sail or identify songbirds. Science suggests this type of travel actually satisfies a deep psychological need. This ultimately leaves us more refreshed than bobbing in the sea for a week. The psychological benefits of skillcations With the world and the economy feeling precarious these days, just about all of us are stressed. Recently, best-selling author Adam Grant had fellow psychologist Sabine Sonnentag of the University of Mannheim in Germany on his podcast Worklife to discuss the best way to reset and truly refresh our brains. When we feel like we’re low on energy and inspiration, it’s natural enough to think you need rest, Sonnentag explained. “Relaxation is what many people think when they think of recovery, unwinding, maybe doing nothing. Just relaxing. And so in terms of more physiological processes, it means a low sympathetic activation. So, lower blood pressure, lower heart rate,” she said. There is certainly nothing wrong with a little rest. Some is, of course, essential for health and happiness. “But that is not the only avenue to becoming recovered,” Sonnentag stresses. What often works better than rest to leave us feeling psychologically refreshed? Something called “mastery experiences.” These are “activities that are challenging. So for instance, learning a new language or having a hobby that really asks to step outside one’s comfort zone,” Sonnentag says. Things exactly like what you experience on a skillcation, in other words. Why mastery experiences are so refreshing Signing up for a skillcation might help you improve your pickleball game or Italian cooking skills. But it will also get you physically moving and push your boundaries. Together that is likely to promote a deeper sense of refreshment for a number of reasons that Grant and Sonnentag explore together. Getting physically tired and then sleeping soundly after is often more physically restful than fitfully snoozing between reapplications of sunscreen. It’s also likely to more thoroughly distract you from whatever is stressing you out in your life. You can’t fret about work while you’re learning to rock climb. But you can as you go through the pages of a trashy beach read. (My personal experience affirms this is true.) But perhaps more important, mastery experiences remind us just how resilient and capable we are. You take a suntan back from your average beach vacation. You return from a skillcation armed with a sense of achievement and competence. Which is more likely to give you greater energy and clarity when you get back home? Learn your way to real relaxation As time use expert and author Laura Vanderkam wrote in her book What the Most Successful People Do on the Weekend: “Other kinds of work—be it exercise, a creative hobby, hands-on parenting, or volunteering—will do more to preserve your zest for Monday’s challenges than complete vegetation.” What’s true of weekends, it’s true of vacations, too. Far be it for me to say you shouldn’t visit a tropical paradise for your next vacation if that’s what you want to do. I’ll always want some beach time in my life, personally. But if supposedly “restful” vacations somehow haven’t been leaving you feeling rested, maybe it’s time to try something different. A skillcation might be just what your brain needs to feel focused and fired up again. —Jessica Stillman This article originally appeared on Fast Company‘s sister publication, Inc. Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy. View the full article

The one practical career security no one can take from you is control. I’ve built my career on five core mindsets that helped me transition to being responsible for my own career success. It’s how I run my professional life. Careers are not just built. They’re owned. That’s how you become indispensable. Your career isn’t a ladder. It’s a business. And you are in charge. Most people treat it like a job. I treat it like an asset. Every skill, every project, every task matters. If you want leverage, freedom, and a career that works for you, these mindsets can help you take your career to another level. They can determine your choices, growth, and freedom. And change how you see your own value. 1. The ‘company of one’ mindset You are the CEO of you. A one-person corporation. Your skills are your products. Your personal brand is your marketing department. Every project you take, every email you send, and every skill you learn is either an asset or a liability for your company: you. Think of meetings as pitches, tasks as investments, and mistakes as expensive lessons. When you walk into a meeting, you’re not just a participant; you’re a service provider. That mindset is how you change from what can my company do for me to what value did I provide today? And how does it strengthen my portfolio? Every action or decision compounds; every skill stacks in your favour. You can’t outsource responsibility. You’re the company. Most people wait for promotions or recognition. Build leverage. Taking responsibility for your career success starts with becoming the boss of you. And treating it seriously, like your life depends on it. That’s how you create leverage. 2. The ‘permanent beta’ mindset The most dangerous phrase in the modern career is, “I’ve arrived.” The minute you think you’re finished, you’re obsolete. Your knowledge has a half-life. That’s why I’m always in a state of permanent beta: always testing, learning, and upgrading. You don’t have to disrupt your career to do this. Micro-learning can help you adapt a “permanent beta” mindset. Listen to a podcast on a new industry trend. Take a weekend course on a topic that will still matter a few years down the line. Read books that challenge your present career mindset. Your value is directly tied to your ability to adapt and grow. Stagnation is a choice. A bad one. 3. The ‘philosophy for career’ mindset Without basic values for life, you are just pursuing the next paycheck and burning out. What does it all mean for you? You need to answer the “why.” Why do you do what you do? What are you working towards? What unique combination of interests makes you come alive? For me, it’s curiosity. The desire to learn from great thinkers, pass on that knowledge. And making a career out of it. It guides what projects I take, what I write, and who I work with. If you don’t know your why, someone else will rent your time to serve theirs. When you have that anchor, rejection from one client or a bad day at one job doesn’t break you. You’re not defined by your title. You’re defined by your life mission. You can lose a job, but you can’t lose your purpose. Philosophy for your career decides the jobs you take, the people you work with, and the projects you walk away from. 4. The ‘investor’ mindset Your skills are assets. Treat them like a portfolio. You can’t dump all your energy into one stock and hope it pays forever. Markets change. Industries collapse. AI eats jobs. The people who survive treat learning as compounding interest. They reinvest. And put time into skills that grow their skill range. They build optionality. You don’t need 10 certificates. You just need to be the person who always has another card to play. Investors put their skills to work. Ship the side project. Take the stretch role. Risk a little. Test the market. Repeat what works. You learned faster than the guy hoarding “potential” in silence. A diversified career portfolio is built on experiments, not guarantees. 5. The ‘owner’ mindset This is the one that ties it all together. Owning means you stop hiding behind career excuses like, “My boss never gave me the chance.” It may be true, but owners play the hand they’ve got and still find a way to win a round. Owners take responsibility for both career stagnation and acceleration. Owning your career path means you stop hiding behind safety nets. Owners stop blaming. No boss, no company, no economy gets the last word on your career. Owners keep evolving even in bad economic conditions. They own their mistakes, their choices, their pivots. When you own something, you protect it, you invest in it, you defend it. You don’t just “have” a career. You run it. Big difference. If your career stalls, you find ways to adapt. No one can do that for us. Your career will always be yours, and yours alone. Own it. View the full article

Police are getting a boost from artificial intelligence, with algorithms now able to draft police reports in minutes. The technology promises to make police reports more accurate and comprehensive, as well as save officers time. The idea is simple: Take the audio transcript from a body camera worn by a police officer and use the predictive text capabilities of large language models to write a formal police report that could become the basis of a criminal prosecution. Mirroring other fields that have allowed ChatGPT-like systems to write on behalf of people, police can now get an AI assist to automate much dreaded paperwork. The catch is that instead of writing the first draft of your college English paper, this document can determine someone’s liberty in court. An error, omission, or hallucination can risk the integrity of a prosecution or, worse, justify a false arrest. While police officers must sign off on the final version, the bulk of the text, structure, and formatting is AI-generated. Who—or what—wrote it Up until October 2025, only Utah had required that police even admit they were using an AI assistant to draft their reports. On Oct. 10, that changed when California became the second state to require transparent notice that AI was used to draft a police report. Governor Gavin Newsom signed SB 524 into law, requiring all AI-assisted police reports to be marked as being written with the help of AI. The law also requires law enforcement agencies to maintain an audit trail that identifies the person who used AI to create a report and any video and audio footage used in creating the report. It also requires agencies to retain the first draft created with AI for as long as the official report is retained, and prohibits a draft created with AI from constituting an officer’s official statement. The law is a significant milestone in the regulation of AI in policing, but its passage also signifies that AI is going to become a major part of the criminal justice system. If you are sitting behind bars based on a police report, you might have some questions. The first question that Utah and California now answer is “Did AI write this?” Basic transparency that an algorithm helped write an arrest report might seem the minimum a state could do before locking someone up. And, even though leading police technology companies like Axon recommend such disclaimers be included in their reports, they are not required. Police departments in Lafayette, Indiana, and Fort Collins, Colorado, were intentionally turning off the transparency defaults on the AI report generators, according to an investigative news report. Similarly, police chiefs using Axon’s Draft One products did not even know which reports were drafted by AI and which were not because the officers were just cutting and pasting the AI narrative into reports they indicated they wrote themselves. The practice bypassed all AI disclaimers and audit trails. The author explains the issues around AI-written police reports in an interview on CNN’s ‘Terms of Service’ podcast. Many questions Transparency is only the first step. Understanding the risks of relying on AI for police reports is the second. Technological questions arise about how the AI models were trained and the possible biases baked into a reliance on past police reports. Transcription questions arise about errors, omissions, and mistranslations because police stops take place in chaotic, loud, and frequently emotional contexts amid a host of languages. Finally, trial questions arise about how an attorney is supposed to cross-examine an AI-generated document, or whether the audit logs need to be retained for expert analysis or turned over to the defense. Risks and consequences The significance of the California law is not simply that the public needs to be aware of AI risks, but that California is embracing AI risk in policing. I believe it’s likely that people will lose their liberty based on a document that was largely generated by AI and without the hard questions satisfactorily answered. Worse, in a criminal justice system that relies on plea bargaining for more than 95% of cases and is overwhelmingly dominated by misdemeanor offenses, there may never be a chance to check whether the AI report accurately captured the scene. In fact, in many of those lower-level cases, the police report will be the basis of charging decisions, pretrial detention, motions, plea bargains, sentencing, and even probation revocations. I believe that a criminal legal system that relies so heavily on police reports has a responsibility to ensure that police departments are embracing not just transparency but justice. At a minimum, this means more states following Utah and California to pass laws regulating the technology, and police departments following the best practices recommended by the technology companies. But even that may not be enough without critical assessments by courts, legal experts, and defense lawyers. The future of AI policing is just starting, but the risks are already here. Andrew Guthrie Ferguson is a professor of law at George Washington University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

The job market is rough. So when candidates are landing interviews, they’re often cramming every skill, accomplishment, and experience they can muster into the interview process, hoping to edge out the competition. Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong. Hiring managers often tune out in such cases, causing the rapid-fire qualifications to backfire. It’s what Marc Cendella, CEO of career platform Ladders, calls “answer inflation.” Answer inflation is when experienced professionals respond to interview questions with lengthy résumé recitations and meandering stories that bury their actual value, he explains. Take the classic: “Tell me about yourself.” It’s the question that most interviews kick off with. And while it may seem straightforward enough, there’s actually an art to delivering a strong elevator pitch to hook the hiring manager’s attention from the off. “Many candidates think that the interviewer is trying to socialize or make small talk—but that’s rarely the case,” Cendella told Fast Company. “This question can actually tell an interviewer a lot. When asked an open-ended question, do you take the chance to answer thoughtfully? Can you prioritize and organize your thoughts under pressure? Or are you rambling, caught off guard?” “Tell me about yourself” is also not a chance to detail your entire life story. An answer filled with irrelevant details and outdated roles is more likely to lose the hiring manager’s attention halfway through than impress them with your decades of experience. While you may think the more information you can cram in the better, Cendella says the opposite is often true. “Hiring managers see it time and time again: experienced professionals tend to assume their longer track record requires longer explanations,” he explains. “As a result, they’ll respond to interview questions with long-winded stories that bury their actual value. Or, they merely list all of their past roles and accomplishments—like a résumé reading.” Instead, trim the fat and replace vague descriptions with quantifiable achievements. “Think about those key challenges hiring managers are facing, and how your past experience could fill in the gaps,” Cendella explains. “Every response you have should ladder up to a clear, compelling narrative about why you’re the solution to their current problem.” He recommends taking two to three concise examples that demonstrate impact and let the numbers do the talking for you. Let’s imagine you’re in the process for a project manager role. Rather than droning on about your years in project management, use this script as an example: “In my last role, I inherited a project that was three months behind schedule and turned it around within six weeks by implementing clearer communication channels and regular team check-ins,” he says. It’s clear, concise, and not bogged down by answer inflation. Remember the golden rule: Show, don’t tell. View the full article

There’s a lot of tours in New York City (I’ve highlighted my favorites here) but I think one thing people don’t do enough of is Airbnb experience. Most of us know Airbnb through their stay features but they also have a lot of experiences where you can get a local to show you around. I actually like these experiences more than traditional tours because they have locals who share something they are passionate about, they are small groups, and they are usually a bit more off the beaten path. I don’t think people take these tours enough and they are always one of my favorite things to look for whenever I travel anywhere in the world. New York City has a ton of options you can choose from. Here are my favorites: Explore Brooklyn’s Pizza Scene Pizza and NYC go hand in hand like bread and butter and this Brooklyn pizza tour run by travel writer Dani Hienrich takes you to some of the best spots in the city while also giving you a really detailed history of pizza in the city (who knew slives weren’t a thing until the 1940s!). I’ve taken a lot of pizza tours in the city and I think dani runs the best one because she explains the history, is super fun, and it’s a more off the beaten path tour so you’re not being herded around in a large group of twenty. Book here! Sketch Masterpieces at the Met Museum In this fun experience, you visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and meet,X, a seasoned artist who will guide you on a sketching journey. You’ll begin with a friendly introduction and sketching warm-ups, then walk through selected galleries pausing to draw iconic sculptures and artworks of your choice. Along the way, he’ll also explain the history of sculpting and painting techniques and the sotry behind some of the exhibits. It’s definitely a fun and hands on way to explore the MET. Book here! Explore African American History On this walking tour in Lower Manhattan, you’ll meet your host Larry at the National Museum of the American Indian and then walk through a tapestry of hidden Black New York: from the site of Bowling Green (where enslaved Africans helped build the city), to remnants of Fort Amsterdam, and to the location of the 17th-century enslaved houses. You’ll pass Wall Street to learn about its slave-market past, visit Federal Hall and a former free-African oyster house, walk through Foley Square (site of the original execution grounds), and conclude at the African Burial Ground National Monument. Larry is one of the best tour guides I have ever had. He’s so fun, engaging, funny, and filled with a ton of knowledge. I love this tour and learned a lot on it. It’s such a cool and unique way to see lower Manhattan. He also runs an amazing Harlem tour too! Book here! Create and Taste a New York Pizza If you want to do more than eat pizza, visit Paulie Gee’s, where your host Logan will guide you through the history of New York–style pizza before you shape your own dough, choose from a variety of sauces and toppings, fire your creation in a wood-fired oven. Afterwards, you’ll sit down to eat your creation as well as some other famous dishes from the restaurant. It’s run and interactive and Logan is a really interesting and personable host. Located in Greepoint, it’s an area most tourists skip so afterwards be sure to explore this locals only part of town. Book here! *** The next time you’re in NYC and looking to do something fun and unique be sure to look into Airbnb Experiences as they are really fun and interesting. I’ve done a dozen or so of these and these ones I think are the absolute best out of those. But if you find one you love be sure to email me about it so I can check! Get the In-Depth Budget Guide to New York City!For more in-depth tips on NYC, check out my 100+ page guidebook written for budget travelers like you! It cuts out the fluff found in other guides and gets straight to the practical information you need to travel in the city that never sleeps. You’ll find suggested itineraries, budgets, ways to save money, on- and off-the-beaten-path things to see and do, non-touristy restaurants, markets, bars, safety tips, and much more! Click here to learn more and get your copy today. Book Your Trip to New York City: Logistical Tips and Tricks Book Your Flight Use Skyscanner to find a cheap flight. They are my favorite search engine because they search websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is left unturned. Start with Skyscanner first though because they have the biggest reach! Book Your Accommodation You can book your hostel with Hostelworld as they have the biggest inventory and best deals. If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as they consistently return the cheapest rates for guesthouses and cheap hotels. If you’re looking for more budget-friendly places to stay, here is a list of my favorite hostels the city. Additionally, if you’re wondering what part of town to stay in, here’s my neighborhood guide to NYC! Don’t Forget Travel Insurance Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are: Safety Wing (for budget travelers) World Nomads (for mid-range travelers) Insure My Trip (for those over 70) Medjet (for additional evacuation coverage) Looking for the Best Companies to Save Money With? Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel. I list all the ones I use to save money when I’m on the road. They will save you money when you travel too. Need a Guide? New York has some really interesting tours. My favorite company is Take Walks. They have expert guides and can get you behind the scenes at the city’s best attractions. They’re my go-to walking tour company! Want More Information on NYC? Be sure to visit my robust destination guide on NYC for even more planning tips. The post The Best Airbnb Experiences in New York City appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site. View the full article

There’s a lot of walking tour companies in Paris. I’ve taken hundreds (I’ve reviewed my favorite tour companies in this post). Besides formal tours, there’s another thing I love to do in Paris: Airbnb Experiences. Airbnb Experiences are like the holy grail of tours: they are unique, off-the-beaten path, and run by locals who just want to share something they love. They aren’t cookie cutter walking tours or activities lead by a guide holding an umbrella. I absolutely love Airbnb Experiences. They are one of my favorite things to do in any city and, frankly, I don’t think nearly enough travelers do them. Whenever I run polls about them, half usually say they have never heard of them! Now, I am telling you about them and urging you to add them into your itinerary on your next visit to Paris. Paris has a huge amount of Airbnb experiences and I’ve probably done between 20-25 of them. Here is my list of the top Airbnb Experiences in Paris: Rediscover Jacqueline Marval Jacqueline Marval was an impressionist painter who hung around Matisse, influenced Picaso, and was then largely forgotten to history. This exclusive gallery tour hosted by Paris-born curator Camille showcases her family’s 40-year effort in collecting Marval’s art and showcasing her legacy to the world. She tours you through their gallery, telling you about Marval’s life story and the history behind each piece. I didn’t know anything about Marval before this and it was really interesting to learn about her story and see her beautiful paintings. She was super talented. The experience also culminates with champagne served on a secluded terrace. All in all, this is an amazing experience to learn about a forgotten artist in the beautiful setting. Plus, Camille is well integrated into the Parisian art scene and can give you suggestions on what galleries and temporary exhibits to visit. Book here! Savor French Wine and Cheese in a Hidden Shop This was an amazing and intimate wine and cheese tasting hosted by certified expert, Erwan. In this cozy, no-classroom atmosphere, you’ll sample six unique French wines paired with six cheeses and fresh bread. Erwan shares the stories behind each bottle, making this experience both educational and delightful. I’ve taken a lot of wine and cheese classes in Paris and this was one of the best. The wines and cheeses are super unique and tasty and Erwan really gives you a detailed but easy to understand overview of wine and cheese in France. He’s super personable and funny and I think this is one of the best wine and cheese experience in Paris. Book here! A Frenchie Food & Wine Experience If you want something more high end, check out this tasting experience at Altro Frenchie by Greg Marchand. He’s a famous chef from Chef’s Table. You start at Frenchie Caviste with a sparkling aperitivo on the terrace, before a head sommelier guides you through a tasting of three distinctive wines from the cellar. Then you’ll move next door for a chef-curated tasting lunch. I think gives you a lot of value for the price. You get four glasses of wine, cheese, and a flatbread to start followed by a huge tasting menu (six courses) with even more wine. It’s really, really good value if you’re looking for a high-end food experience. Book here! Secrets of the Tower with Eiffel’s Descendant In this experience, you join Savin Yeatman-Eiffel, a filmmaker and direct descendant of Gustave Eiffel, at the base of the Eiffel Tower for a look at the building of the Eiffel tower through his family’s eyes. You’ll uncover the scandalous debates that surrounded its creation, view rarely seen family photos, sketches, and heirlooms from a private Eiffel archive. I think this a really interesting way to learn about the Effiel Tower. Not only do you get the historical information that every other tour is going to give you but you get added insider family perspective you are definitely not going to find anywhere else. (Note: You don’t go up the tower on this tour.) Book here! Black Presence in Paris: A Historical Tour This is a wonderful tour that teaches you about the contributions of Black people in France, a subject not a lot of standard history walks touch upon. Beginning at the Panthéon, the host, Binkady, shares the lives of trailblazers like Josephine Baker, Félix and Eugénie Éboué, and a formerly enslaved man who triumphed over Napoleon. Along the way, you’ll uncover the influence of Black women writers at the Sorbonne, then finish outside the Luxembourg Palace, where you’ll hear about pioneering Black leaders such as Severiano de Heredia and Gaston Monnerville. I learned a lot on this tour and X is areally engageing and interesting tour leader. He used to work for the Opera so has a lot of insight into seeing shows throughout the city. Book here! Inside Paris’s First Microbrewery I think this is an excellent Experience that ticks all the right boxes. It’s unique (first microbrewery in Paris), in an area of the city most tourists don’t visit, and led by a passionate local (the owner, Antoine). Antoine tells you about his story, the story of microbreweries in Paris, the brewing process, and what they sell and why. He was engaging, funny, and told good stories. We also got a good sampling of beer. This is a 5-star experience and the exact kind that exemplifies what makes Airbnb Experiences so special. Book here! *** While there’s tons of walking tour and experience options in Paris, I think you do yourself a disservice if you don’t take at least one Airbnb Experience while you visit. To me, these ones are the top of the top! Get Your In-Depth Budget Guide to Paris!For more in-depth information, check out my guidebook to Paris written for budget travelers like you! It cuts out the fluff found in other guides and gets straight to the practical information you need to travel around Paris. You’ll find suggested itineraries, budgets, ways to save money, on- and off-the-beaten-path things to see and do, non-touristy restaurants, markets, bars, transportation and safety tips, and much more! Click here to learn more and get your copy today! Plan your trip to Europe like a pro Get all my best Europe travel tips as well as free planning guides sent straight to you and see more of the country for less! Get your guides here! Book Your Trip to Paris: Logistical Tips and Tricks Book Your Flight Use Skyscanner. They are my favorite search engine because they search websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is left unturned. Book Your Accommodation You can book your hostel with Hostelworld as they have the biggest inventory and best deals. If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as they consistently return the cheapest rates for guesthouses and cheap hotels. For suggested hostels, here is a list of my favorite hostels in Paris. If you prefer hotels, these are my favorite hotels. And, if you’re wondering what part of town to stay in, here’s my neighborhood breakdown of Paris! Don’t Forget Travel Insurance Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are: Safety Wing (for budget travelers) World Nomads (for mid-range travelers) Insure My Trip (for those over 70) Medjet (for additional repatriation coverage) Looking for the Best Companies to Save Money With? Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel. I list all the ones I use to save money when I’m on the road. They will save you money when you travel too. Want More Information on Paris? Be sure to visit my robust destination guide to Paris for even more blogging tips! The post The Best Airbnb Experiences in Paris appeared first on Nomadic Matt's Travel Site. View the full article