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The sky is about to get a lot clearer. NASA’s latest infrared space telescope, SPHEREx—short for Spectro-Photometer for the History of the Universe, Epoch of Reionization, and Ices Explorer—will assemble the world’s most complete sky survey to better explain how the universe evolved. The $488 million mission will observe far-off galaxies and gather data on more than 550 million galaxies and stars, measure the collective glow of the universe, and search for water and organic molecules in the interstellar gas and dust clouds where stars and new planets form. The 1107-lb., 8.5 x 10.5-foot spacecraft is slated to launch March 2 at 10:09 pm (ET) aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. (Catch the launch on NASA+ and other platforms.) From low-Earth orbit, it will produce 102 maps in 102 infrared wavelengths every six months over two years, creating a 3D map of the entire night sky that glimpses back in time at various points in the universe’s history to fractions of a second after the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago. Onboard spectroscopy instruments will help determine the distances between objects and their chemical compositions, including water and other key ingredients for life. SPHEREx Prepared for Thermal Vacuum Testing [Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/BAE Systems] Mapping how matter dispersed over time will help scientists better understand the physics of inflation—the instantaneous expansion of the universe after the Big Bang and the reigning theory that best accounts for the universe’s uniform, weblike structure and flat geometry. Scientists hypothesize the universe exploded in a split-second, from smaller than an atom to many trillions of times in size, producing ripples in the temperature and density of the expanding matter to form the first galaxies. “SPHEREx is trying to get at the origins of the universe—what happened in those very few first instances after the Big Bang,” says SPHEREx instrument scientist Phil Korngut. “If we can produce a map of what the universe looks like today and understand that structure, we can tie it back to those original moments just after the Big Bang.” [Photo: BAE Systems/Benjamin Fry] SPHEREx’s approach to observing the history and evolution of galaxies differs from space observatories that pinpoint objects. To account for galaxies existing beyond the detection threshold, it will study a signal called the extragalactic background light. Instead of identifying individual objects, SPHEREx will measure the total integrated light emission that comes from going back through cosmic time by overlaying maps of all of its scans. If the findings highlight areas of interest, scientists can turn to the Hubble and James Webb space telescopes to zoom in for more precise observations. To prevent spacecraft heat from obscuring the faint light from cosmic sources, its telescope and instruments must operate in extreme cold, nearing—380 degrees Fahrenheit. To achieve this, SPHEREx relies on a passive cooling system, meaning no electricity or coolants, that uses three cone-shaped photon shields and a mirrored structure beneath them to block the heat of Earth and the Sun and direct it into space. Searching for life In scouting for water and ice, the observatory will focus on collections of gas and dust called molecular clouds. Every molecule absorbs light at different wavelengths, like a spectral fingerprint. Measuring how much the light changes across the wavelengths indicates the amount of each molecule present. “It’s likely the water in Earth’s oceans originated in a molecular cloud,” says SPHEREx science data center lead Rachel Akeson. “While other space telescopes have found reservoirs of water in hundreds of locations, SPHEREx will give us more than nine million targets. Knowing the water content around the galaxy is a clue to how many locations could potentially host life.” More philosophically, finding those ingredients for life “connects the questions of how `did the universe evolve?’ and `how did we get here?’ to `where can life exist?’ and `are we alone in that universe?’” says Shawn Domagal-Goldman, acting director of NASA’s Astrophysics Division. Solar wind study The SpaceX rocket will also carry another two-year mission, the Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere (PUNCH), to study the solar wind and how it affects Earth. Its four small satellites will focus on the sun’s outer atmosphere, the corona, and how it moves through the solar system and bombards Earth’s magnetic field, creating beautiful auroras but endangering satellites and spacecraft. The mission’s four suitcase-size satellites will use polarizing filters that piece together a 3D view of the corona capture data that helps determine the solar wind speed and direction. “That helps us better understand and predict the space weather that affects us on Earth,” says PUNCH mission scientist Nicholeen Viall. “This`thing’ that we’ve thought of as being big, empty space between the sun and the Earth, now we’re gonna understand exactly what’s within it.” PUNCH will combine its data with observations from other NASA solar missions, including Coronal Diagnostic Experiment (CODEX), which views the inner corona from the International Space Station; Electrojet Zeeman Imaging Explorer (EZIE), which launches in March to investigate the relationship between magnetic field fluctuations and auroras; and Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP), which launches later this year to study solar wind particle acceleration through the solar system and its interaction with the interstellar environment. A long journey SPHEREx spent years in development before its greenlight in 2019. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed the mission, enlisting BAE Systems to build the telescope and spacecraft bus, and finalizing it as the Los Angeles’s January wildfires threatened its campus. Scientists from 13 institutions in the U.S., South Korea, and Taiwan will analyze the resulting data, which CalTech’s Infrared Processing & Analysis Center will process and house, and the NASA/IPAC Infrared Science Archive will make publicly available. [Image: JPL] “I am so unbelievably excited to get my hands on those first images from SPHEREx,” says Korngut. “I’ve been working on this mission since 2012 as a young postdoc and the journey it’s taken from conceptual designs to here on the launcher is just so amazing.” Adds Viall, “All the PowerPoints are now worth it.” View the full article

Property listings group says house-hunters spent 1bn more minutes on its site last year View the full article

In 2021, Eugene Kashuk was looking for a new venture. The Ukrainian entrepreneur realized in the wake of the pandemic that there was a large gap in education. Students were lagging behind, particularly in math. Kashuk started Brighterly, a platform that connects math teachers from all across the globe with students in the United States for private tutoring. Brighterly offers private lessons for $20 per 45-minute lesson—much cheaper than the average rate of about $40 per hour in the United States. In part, Brighterly is able to keep costs down because it uses AI to generate lessons so teachers are able to use their time to focus on their student instead of coming up with problem sets and exams. Fast Company chatted with Kashuk about Brighterly’s growth story and the role of AI in education. How does Brighterly work? Brighterly founder and CEO Eugene Kashuk [Photo: Brighterly] We are a marketplace that connects teachers with students, but we’re not an ordinary marketplace where there’s no control over quality levels or standardization. We have a pretty sophisticated way of hiring and managing teachers and only accept 3% of applicants. We look for teaching skills and soft skills: 90% of our teachers have prior teaching experience. We also have our own custom methodology and curriculum designed by a team of in-house experts, and then we use AI to generate content. On the other side, we’ve got a platform that connects teachers, parents, and kids and allows for lessons to happen. Lessons themselves are fun, interactive, and gamified, and it all revolves around the school curriculum. It’s a high-impact education where we are able to gain academic results as fast as possible. You mentioned using AI to create lessons. How do you make sure it’s not hallucinating or creating misinformation? We are human driven in terms of the content that we create. There are some processes that you can automate using AI. For example, you need to explain fractions to a kid. The best way to do it is to find a circular object such as a pizza you split into pieces. You can use AI to generate images. You can use AI to generate ideas on what kind of circular object will work the best here and will be engaging and fun for the kids. We don’t ask AI to tell us what to teach. As we see it, you can only use AI to create content that is aligned with what you teach. What do you see as the role of AI in education? When I think of AI technologies replacing human educators, I’m more afraid than excited. I’ll caveat and say the technology evolves so fast that you never know what it will look like in a few years. At this point, I don’t see any potential that AI tutors might replace real human educators. In order for education to work, teachers need to form an emotional bond with their students. Not everything can be covered by logic and algorithms; you need to have that human input to understand what the child really needs. We’re not at a moment where AI can really replace human interaction in education. However, we have great capabilities to generate content or to generate language to help create lessons and personalized assessments, which can be very useful for educators. So you’re saying AI can lighten the load for teachers so they can focus on nourishing the emotional bond with students. And so teachers can also focus on decision-making. You need a human teacher to understand how well a student is doing and assess what they need next. For example, maybe a student seems to grasp a topic but the teacher can sense that they’d benefit from some more repetition. I don’t see at this point how AI can pick up on moments like this. Is there anything else you’d like to add? The education gap isn’t just in math—there’s also a reading problem. We get daily requests for more reading lessons, so we’ll be launching a reading course as well. There was a COVID relief program that allocated resources to cover those gaps, but it’s unclear if it’ll be funded in the future. In the meantime, the knowledge gap is growing. Currently, we only cover elementary and middle school, but we’ll also be launching a high school product to help with that gap. Children are the future and right now existing solutions for the knowledge gap aren’t working. We need more. View the full article

At Buffer, we are always looking for ways to help our team work more effectively and creatively. Our latest investment in productivity is a company-wide AI Tools Stipend of $250 per teammate per year. This initiative reinforces our ongoing commitment to supporting innovation while giving our teammates the autonomy to choose tools that best fit their individual workflows. Here's why we're introducing this stipend and how we expect it to impact our work. The evolution of AI in our workflowsOver the past year, we've seen AI tools rapidly transform how many of us work. What started as occasional experimentation with tools like ChatGPT has evolved into more regular integration of AI assistants in various aspects of our workflow — from drafting content and generating ideas to debugging code and analyzing data. Late last year, our Engineering Managers began exploring the idea of offering a stipend specifically for Engineers to experiment with productivity-boosting AI software. We noticed some inconsistencies in reimbursement requests for these tools and aligned on providing structured support for this exploration. The positive impact on our engineering team made it clear that AI tools could benefit everyone at Buffer, regardless of their role. That's why we've decided to extend this stipend to all teammates. Why we're introducing an AI tools stipendThe pace of AI tool development has accelerated dramatically, and we want to empower our team to experiment and find what works best for their specific needs. There are a few key reasons behind this decision: Autonomy and flexibility: Different roles benefit from different AI tools, and we want teammates to have the freedom to choose what works for them rather than prescribing a one-size-fits-all solution.Reducing friction: By providing a dedicated stipend, we remove financial barriers to trying new tools that might significantly improve productivity.Learning together: As we all explore different AI tools, we can share insights and recommendations, collectively building our understanding of how these technologies can best support our work.Staying ahead of the curve: AI technology is evolving rapidly, and we want to ensure our team has access to cutting-edge tools that help us continue delivering exceptional service to our customers.How our AI stipend worksWe've allocated $250 per teammate per year for AI tools. With our current team size of 71 people, this represents a potential additional operating expense of up to $17,750 annually. The stipend offers flexibility, allowing teammates to maintain a yearly subscription to one primary tool, access others occasionally for specific projects, or mix and match several tools throughout the year. We've designed the AI Tools Stipend to be straightforward and flexible: Eligibility: All Buffer teammates are eligible to use the full $250 stipend annually.Covered tools: The stipend covers AI-powered tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, Midjourney, Cursor, Cody, Spiral, Raycast, and similar tools that enhance productivity and creativity.Subscription recommendation: We suggest opting for monthly subscriptions rather than annual commitments to maintain flexibility in trying different tools.Free alternatives: Many AI tools offer free versions, so we recommend exploring those first before committing to a paid plan. Additionally, Gemini Advanced is already available through our Google Workspace.Knowledge sharing: In the spirit of transparency, teammates who use the stipend are encouraged to share the tool they're exploring in our #culture-ai Slack channel so we can all learn together.Learning together: building an AI knowledge baseOne of the most exciting aspects of this program is the opportunity to collectively discover and share best practices for using AI tools. By encouraging discussion in our #culture-ai Slack channel, we hope to: Create a repository of real-world use cases specific to Buffer's workHelp teammates discover tools that might benefit their particular workflowIdentify patterns in how different teams are leveraging AIWe already have some early success stories: Content Team: Experimenting with AI for research and ideation while maintaining our unique voice. The stipend is already having an impact here as our content writer, Tami, wrote an article detailing an experiment with five AI chatbots and how they might fit into creators’ workflows.Engineering Team: Boosting productivity through AI-assisted coding.Customer Advocacy Team: Exploring ways to enhance customer interactions with AI support.Through these shared experiences, we'll continue to refine our understanding of how AI can best support our work at Buffer. Over to youThis stipend is just one part of our broader approach to thoughtfully integrating AI into our work at Buffer. We see AI tools as assistants that can handle routine tasks and provide creative inspiration, freeing up our human team to focus on the work that requires genuine human connection, creativity, and strategic thinking. We’d love to hear your thoughts: Do you have questions about how we're approaching AI adoption at Buffer?Are you using AI tools in your work? Which ones have you found most valuable?As always, we're learning as we go — we believe in the potential of AI to enhance our work while still keeping human creativity, connection, and judgment at the center of what we do. Read more about AI at Buffer🧠 The AI Mindset Shift: How I Use AI Every Day 📚 How 1.2 Million Posts Created with Buffer’s AI Assistant Performed vs Human-Only — and What That Means for Your Content 🤖 How Buffer’s Content Team Uses AI 🛠️ The Story Behind Buffer’s AI: An Interview with Diego Sanchez View the full article

“But what is death?” I am sitting down with Katrina Crawford and we are here to talk about the White Lotus Season 3 opening credits. Together with Mark Bashore, Crawford runs the creative studio Plains of Yonder, which has crafted the White Lotus main titles for every season so far. But that question about death wasn’t posed by me. It was posed by her. And it challenges us to reflect on the meaning of death, and the many ways to die. Since White Lotus season 3 premiered on February 16, the internet has been abuzz with theories and criticisms around who died and what the opening sequence means. In response, HBO has said: “You’ll get it soon enough.” So while we wait, we decided to call up Crawford and Bashore so we can dissect one of the most iconic main titles in modern history. The biggest takeaway? Some things can have more than one meaning. [Photo: Courtesy Plains of Yonder] Easter eggs or red herrings? Plains of Yonder has made over a dozen main titles for shows like The Decameron and The Lord of the Rings TV show, Rings of Power. But Crawford says that this title, for White Lotus Season 3, is by far the longest they’ve ever spent developing. While some showrunners don’t consider the main title until the end, Crawford says that Mike White gave the team a whole 10 months to craft the sequence. When they started, Cristobal Tapia de Veer, who wrote the music for previous seasons’ openers, was still composing the new soundtrack. The crew wasn’t even shooting yet. All they had was the script. White Lotus Season 3 has eight episodes. They got the script for the first seven episodes. “We know a lot,” Crawford tells me. But they don’t know who dies. [Photo: Courtesy Plains of Yonder] Crawford combed through those scrips and crafted meticulous profiles for every character, where she tried to understand who these characters are—or who she thinks they are. Once the profiles were complete, she assigned dozens of images to them. Sometimes, she paired a character with an animal (a stoned monkey for the North Carolina mom played by Parker Posy). Sometimes, she crafted a scenario around them (Jason Isaacs’s Timothy Ratliff character appears coiled up in a tree with knives for branches.) These images might intimate a character’s fate or personality, but of course, some interpretations are more literal than others. “Maybe someone is presenting one way, but something else is truth,” she says. [Photo: Courtesy Plains of Yonder] Animal instincts As with every season, animals carried much of the symbolism. “We’ve always found that using animals are a better metaphor than people,” says Bashore. Season 1 was obsessed with monkeys; Season 2 introduced humping goats; Season 3 goes all in on mythological creatures that are half-human, half-beast. (Crawford spent a month poring over Thai mythology books.) The intro opens with a circus of animals, and the first humans to be portrayed are human faces attached to bird bodies. A bit later into the sequence, Lek Patravadi’s Sritala Hollinger character (the hotel owner) appears by a pond, holding a creature that is half human, half bird—perhaps a clue about her mysteriously absent husband. Most of these metaphors are predictably obscure. Amy Lou Wood (who plays Chelsea) appears in the middle of an incriminating scene depicting a leopard that has bitten off a deer’s head with two foxes bearing witness. Which animal is she? Meanwhile, Natasha Rothwell, who plays Belinda from Season 1, is portrayed next to a stork staring down at its reflection in the water, while a crocodile is lying in lurk. Will it snap her up in its jaws? [Photo: Courtesy Plains of Yonder] Fiction or reality? That the team spent ten months developing the title isn’t so surprising considering the complexity of these characters. But there is one more character in the story, and that is Thailand. Like with the first two seasons, the location plays a key role in the story. To build that sense of place, the team spent ten days filming at three Royal temples in Thailand. “We shot the daylights out of it,” says Bashore, noting that they took over 1,000 photos of patterns, colors, outfits, and of course, those iconic Thai rooflines. “We looked for quick visual cues, patterns that feel iconically Thailand.” [Photo: Courtesy Plains of Yonder] Getting permits to film was no small feat considering the sacred nature of the temples. The team had to coordinate access with HBO, and other logistical challenges meant that the title took longer to make. But could the delay signal something else? Some shows, like Game of Thrones, have created main titles that change from week to week. Was the White Lotus Season 3 main title so challenging to make because the team had to tweak it as the season progresses? Crawford gives a cheeky shrug that neither confirms nor denies it: “We can’t talk about anything you haven’t seen.” What we can talk about is what Crawford calls “the Temple of White Lotus.” Indeed, the temples help anchor the show in Thailand, but the real star of the show is the White Lotus resort, which may have been filmed at the Four Seasons Resort Koh Samui, but remains a fictional place. To emphasize the otherworldly setting, the team broke down the photographs they took into little squares and shuffled them to create new images out of them—like a patchwork that looks and feels real, but ultimately isn’t. “We’re not trying to say this is a real place,” says Bashore. “It’s just a vibe we’re soaking in.” [Photo: Courtesy Plains of Yonder] This vibe ultimately blossoms in the seven worlds the team created for the title sequence. The story begins in the jungle, then unfolds in a village, a temple, a pond (in which we see Sam Nivola’s body afloat), a gloomier forest with ominous snakes coiled around trees, an epic battle scene, and the grand finale—“disaster at sea”—where a throng of men gets swallowed by giant fish. Could this mass killing scene signify more than one death in the show? Crawford’s response? You know it already: “But what is death?” View the full article

For more than two decades, users have turned to search engines like Google, typed in a query, and received a familiar list of 10 blue links—the gateway to the wider web. Ranking high on that list, through search engine optimization (SEO), has become a $200 billion business. But in the past two years, search has changed. Companies are now synthesizing and summarizing results into AI-generated answers that eliminate the need to click through to websites. While this may be convenient for users (setting aside concerns over hallucinations and accuracy) it’s bad for businesses that rely on search traffic. One such business, educational tech firm Chegg, has sued Google in federal district court, alleging that AI-generated summaries of its content have siphoned traffic from its site and harmed its revenue. Chegg reported a 24% year-on-year revenue decline in Q4 2024, which it partly attributes to Google’s AI-driven search changes. In the lawsuit, the company alleges that Google is “reaping the financial benefits of Chegg’s content without having to spend a dime.” A Google spokesperson responded that the company will defend itself in court, emphasizing that Google sends “billions of clicks” to websites daily and arguing that AI overviews have diversified—not reduced—traffic distribution. “It’s going to be interesting to see what comes out of it, because we’ve seen content creators anecdotally complaining on Reddit or elsewhere for months now that they are afraid of losing traffic,” says Aleksandra Urman, a researcher at the University of Zurich specializing in search engines. Within the SEO industry, anxiety over artificial intelligence overviews has been mounting. “Chegg’s legal arguments closely align with the ethical concerns the SEO and publishing communities have been raising for years,” says Lily Ray, a New York-based SEO expert. “While Google has long displayed answers and information directly in search results, AI overviews take this a step further by extracting content from external sites and rewording it in a way that positions Google more as a publisher than a search engine.” Ray points to Google’s lack of transparency, particularly around whether users actually click on citations in AI-generated responses. “The lack of visibility into whether users actually click on citations within AI overviews leaves publishers guessing about the true impact on their organic traffic,” she says. Urman adds that past research on Google’s featured snippets—which surfaced excerpts from websites—showed a drop in traffic for affected sites. “The claim seems plausible,” she says, “but we don’t really have the evidence to say how the appearance of AI overviews really affects user behavior.” Not all companies are feeling the squeeze, however. Ziff Davis CEO Vivek Shah said on an earnings call that AI overviews had little effect on its web traffic. “AI’s presence remains limited,” he said. “AI overviews are present in just 12% of our top queries.” It remains to be seen whether Chegg is an outlier or a bellwether. Ray, for her part, believes its lawsuit could be a pivotal moment in the fight over AI and SEO. This case will be fascinating to watch,” she says. “Its outcome could have massive implications for millions of sites beyond just Chegg.” View the full article

There’s a new website that tracks how much of Project 2025, the 922-page conservative playbook, has already come to fruition under President Donald Trump’s administration. It shows that, in less than two months, more than a third of the right-wing agenda’s objectives have been fulfilled. The site, called Project 2025 Tracker, is broken down into bite-sized sections based on the goals laid out in document. Project 2025 was written by the conservative think tank Heritage Foundation and several members of Trump’s first administration, and although the President distanced himself from the document on the campaign trail, he’s since said he agrees with many parts of it. His administration has already proved itself to be at least partially aligned with the project’s policy goals. While other major media outlets have compiled list-style round-ups of President Trump’s executive orders thus far, the tracker takes a more visual, big-picture approach to understanding how closely Trump’s second term is mapping onto a far-right blueprint—including a Project 2025 progress bar. [Image: Project 2025 Tracker] Breaking down Project 2025 The Project 2025 Tracker is the result of an unplanned collaboration between two Reddit users. It started with Adrienne Cobb, an archaeologist by trade who, outside of work, runs a political and legal news subreddit with 183,000 members called r/Keep_Track. Last month, Cobb decided to make a spreadsheet tracking the Trump administration’s progress on Project 2025 initiatives, which quickly gained traction on her subreddit. “Project 2025 is one of the biggest threats to democracy, to the common good, that we’ve faced,” Cobb says. “It is important that Americans understand what it is and how it may impact their lives. But most people don’t have time to read a 900-page document. So, I set out to read it myself and extract the objectives to make it easier for everyone to digest.” To build the spreadsheet, Cobb sifted through every chapter of Project 2025, each of which “addresses a specific federal agency and recommends how a president can ‘reform’ it in accordance with the Heritage Foundation’s vision,” she says. For every agency section, Cobb identified a series of “objectives,” which she’s defined as any moment when the author of a chapter explicitly calls for an action to be taken. This is to avoid “any subjective reading between the lines,” Cobb says. That includes everything from a suggestion that the Center of Disease Control “should immediately end its collection of data on gender identity” to a directive to reverse the Department of Defense’s “policies that allow transgender individuals to serve in the military” (both of which have since been carried out). The spreadsheet only transformed into a website when fellow Reddit user u/mollynaquafina stumbled across it during their daily spin through the site. “I was scrolling through Reddit, like I do most mornings, and I came across a post from /u/rusticgorilla in the /r/keep_track subreddit,” u/mollynaquafina says. “They posted about the Project 2025 spreadsheet tracker they started. I checked it out and was impressed with the level of detail—with references to specific page numbers and news articles for each objective.” As someone with a background in cybersecurity, u/mollynaquafina says, seeing the information compiled in a spreadsheet “helped to connect the dots in my brain.” Still, they add, others might process information in a visual way. To make the information more transparent, they offered to turn the spreadsheet into a more digestible website. ‘The sheer amount of news each day is staggering’ The first priority of the Project 2025 Tracker, u/mollynaquafina explains, is to highlight just how much progress has already been made in the agenda’s objectives. To that end, the website’s top section is a bright blue “overall progress” bar coupled with a live countdown of time remaining in Trump’s second term. Currently, with 1,423 days left to go, overall Project 2025 progress has already reached 36%. “Trump’s second term has been much more chaotic than his first, which I didn’t think was possible,” Cobb says. “The sheer amount of news each day is staggering. I believe that is the goal, though: to move fast, to overwhelm, to stun. By the time ‘the people’ have a chance to organize against a particular action, the administration has already moved on to the next objective.” As users dig deeper into the site, they can also filter Project 2025 progress by agency, subject (like DEIA or energy), and status. Any objective that has already been carried out is highlighted with a green “completed” bubble and accompanied with links to both a citation in the Project 2025 document and an accompanying news item. U/mollynaquafina has also added a chart and timeline feature to help users take in the holistic picture. “I was very intentional about using factual and neutral language where possible,” U/mollynaquafina says. “My goal is for people who support the Project 2025 objectives to clearly read about them and ask themselves, ‘Is this what I signed up for?’” To keep up with the constant influx of news, Cobb uses what she calls a “low-tech” process of combing through social media, news articles, and federal websites before manually organizing stories by topic in a word-processing document. From there, she compares her notes against the spreadsheet to determine if any news events match up with Project 2025 objectives. The tracker is pulling in around 50,000 to 100,000 visitors each day, with about 10% of traffic originating outside the U.S. Going forward, u/mollynaquafina plans to translate the site into several other languages based on demand. “The community has been very supportive of our effort to track Project 2025 but has also expressed a lot of fear about where the country is headed,” Cobb says. “I think that is totally justified and normal. My hope is that helping people understand Project 2025 will remove some of that powerlessness, remove the fear of the unknown, and spur more collective action to stop its progress.” View the full article

Unless you’re at the very top of the food chain in your organization, you report to someone. And that manager is important for your career success. They will evaluate your performance, give you feedback and mentoring, greenlight ideas, and provide support elsewhere in the organization for things you’re doing. Because of all the roles that a supervisor plays for you, it can be stressful when a new person steps in, or you get promoted and start reporting to someone new. There are several ways you can make this transition easier and lay the groundwork for a fruitful relationship with your new boss: Be mindful of the firehose When your supervisor is replaced with someone else, that person is stepping into a new role. Whenever you take on something new, there is a lot that comes at you those first few weeks. You need to get to know your team, your new responsibilities, your new peer groups. All of that happens while work needs to continue. That’s the reason the information dump you face when you first start a role is often referred to as “drinking from the firehose.” If your new boss is drinking from that hose, then you want to provide them with information slowly. Invite them to let you know when you can have a chance to meet and talk, recognizing that it may take them a week or more to get settled in before they’re ready to have an in-depth conversation. As your supervisor gets settled, you can expand the amount of information you provide. Giving them that information when they’re ready to receive it will greatly increase the likelihood it gets read at all. Provide an introduction You do want to introduce yourself in stages. Start with a quick, one-paragraph introduction to share who you are, how long you’ve been with the organization, and your role on the team. If there are one or two critical things that your supervisor needs to call on you for, then highlight those as well. After that, you can add more information about your broader responsibilities. Highlight projects that you’re working on that may need your supervisor’s input or attention. You might consider creating a cheat sheet for your new boss that lists the things you’re working on, your best contact information, and your key strengths and weaknesses. That way, your supervisor knows when to call on you and the kinds of projects where it might be helpful to include you. After the initial rush, you can add details about projects that don’t need immediate attention and other projects you have been involved in so that your supervisor can recognize the contributions you’ve made. Talk about expectations Your previous supervisor not only knew what you had done but also had a sense of your career trajectory, interests, and goals. Hopefully this person was also actively engaged in helping you grow and providing opportunities for you to move forward with your career goals. Your new boss doesn’t know any of these things about you. If you have expectations for how you want to be treated and what you would like your supervisor to do to help you succeed in your role and advance, you need to talk about those expectations. It’s also helpful for you to discuss any weaknesses that you would like help to address. It is common to want to start your interactions with your supervisor by focusing on your strengths. And you should do that. But you might also be tempted to hide your weaknesses. Instead, it can be useful to be up front with those aspects of your work that you are still developing. It can ensure that you get help when you need it and that you’re considered for professional development opportunities. Ask for what you need Consistent with highlighting your weaknesses, you should generally ask your new boss for what you need from them. If you like to get feedback in the middle of projects, ask for it. If you need more information about the strategy behind a project or plan, ask. Nobody is a mind reader. And the less well someone knows you, the less able they are to anticipate what you need from them. Rather than hoping your new boss will give you everything you need, you’ll have to ask for it. Usually, a supervisor will be glad to have some guidance about how you’d like to engage with them. Asking for what you need is the best way to get the relationship with your new supervisor off to a good start. View the full article

OpenAI published a new write-up explaining how an internal experiment caused significant errors. The post OpenAI: Internal Experiment Caused Elevated Errors appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Humanity has sequenced the genome and built artificial intelligence, and yet it’s still shockingly hard to find the right foundation shade. I’ve spent hours at Sephora searching for a shade that doesn’t make my skin look ashy or unnatural. Then, when I finally do find a match, my skin gets darker after a day in the sun, and the color no longer works. I’m not alone in my frustration. Last year, makeup brands sold $8.4 billion of foundation around the world, but you can still find social media brimming with people complaining about how hard it is to find the right shade. A new brand, Boldhue, wants to solve this problem forever. The company has created a machine that scans your face in three places, then instantly dispenses a customized foundation shade. Using a system similar to Keurig pods, the machine comes with five color cartridges that mix to create the right color; once they run out, you order more. Boldhue Co-Founder and CEO Rachel Wilson and Artistic Director Sir John [Photo: Boldhue] The product could revolutionize the way that everyday consumers do their makeup at home—and also make it far easier for professional makeup artists to create the right shade for their clients. Fueled by $3.37 million in venture funding from Mark Cuban’s Lucas Venture Group, BoldHue believes it can bring this technology to all kinds of other cosmetic products. The Quest To Find Your Shade Karin Layton, BoldHue’s co-founder and CTO, was an aerospace engineer who worked at Raytheon. Five years ago, she realized that her high-end foundation didn’t accurately match her skin. As a hobby, Layton dabbled in painting and had a fascination with color theory. So she began tinkering with building a machine that would produce a person’s exact skin shade. During the pandemic, after Layton decided to turn her idea into real company, she brought her childhood friend and serial entrepreneur, Rachel Wilson, as her business partner. “I really resonated with the pain points she was trying to solve because I am half Argentinian,” says Wilson, who is now CEO. “And while I present as white, I have undertones that make it complicated for me to find the right shade. “I always look like a pumpkin or a ghost when I wear foundation.” [Photo: Boldhue] Women of color, in particular, have trouble finding the right shade. For years, the makeup industry focused on creating products for caucasian women, leaving Black and brown women to come up with their own solutions. This only began to change a decade ago. In 2015, I wrote about a chemist at L’Oreal, Balanda Atis, went on a personal quest to develop a darker foundation that wouldn’t make her skin look too red or black. L’Oreal eventually commercialized the product she created and promoted Atis to become the head of the Women of Color lab, which focuses on creating products for women of color. Danessa Myricks, a self-taught makeup artist, spent years mixing her own foundation using dark pigments she found at costume makeup stores and mixed them with drugstore foundations. In 2015, she launched her own beauty brand, Danessa Myricks Beauty, and four years ago, Sephora began to carry it. [Photo: Boldhue] Today, there are more options for women of color, but many women still struggle to find the right shade. BoldHue believes the solution lies in technology. Color matching technology already exists, but it is not particularly convenient for consumers. Lancome has a machine that color matches, but it’s only available in certain stores. Sephora has ColorIQ, which scans your face and matches you to different brands. But part of the problem is that your skin tone isn’t static; it is constantly changing based on how much sun exposure you have, especially if you are have a lot of melanin. “If you order a shade online, your complexion may have changed by the time you receive it seven days later,” says Wilson. Color-Matching At Home Wilson and Layton believe that having an affordable, at-home solution to color matching could be game-changing. The machine comes with a wand. When you want to create a new foundation shade, you scan your skin on your forehead, your cheek, and your neck. Then the machine instantly dispenses about a week’s worth of that shade into a little container. The machine can store that shade for you to use in the future. But having the machine in your house means that you can easily re-scan your face after a day at the beach to get a more accurate shade. If there are multiple people in a household (or say, a sorority house) who wear foundation, they can each scan their faces to produce the perfect shade. And it could transform the work of makeup artists who typically mix their own shades for their clients throughout the day. “They’re lugging around pounds of products to set and are forced to play chemist all day long,” says Wilson. “If we can shade match for them in one minute, they can focus on the artistry part of their job, and they’re wildly excited about that. It also means they can book more clients in a day, because they have more time.” While on the surface, BoldHue’s technology seems to disrupt to the foundation industry, Wilson believes it could actually empower other makeup brands. Each makeup brand has its own formula that influences the creaminess and coverage of their foundations. BoldHue could create a brand’s formula in the machine, but have the added benefit of highly specific color matches. BoldHue is already in talks to partner with brands to create customized foundations for them, much the way that Keurig partners with brands like Peet’s and Illy to create pods for the coffee machines. But ultimately, the possibilities go beyond foundation. With this technology BoldHue could create other color cosmetics, from concealer to lipstick to eyeshadow. “We think of ourselves as a technology company with a beauty deliverable,” Wilson says. View the full article

For years, the creator economy has become increasingly accepted as the future of media. These days, makeup tutorials on TikTok could have the same impact for a brand as a multi-million dollar marketing campaign, and a progressive Twitch streamer can reach a comparable, if not bigger audience, as MSNBC. But like digital media before it, the creator economy now faces a multifaceted conundrum that could determine its long term fate: shifting priorities from Meta and X, the potential TikTok ban (which, thanks to an executive order from the Trump administration, has at least a stay of execution), industry consolidation, and AI-enabled content overload. Taken together, these issues could spell the end of the influencer and creator economy as it exists in its current form, according to nearly a dozen industry experts interviewed by Fast Company. The appeal of influencers has historically laid with their supposed authenticity. They’re pushing products they believe in or sharing news commentary from an unfiltered perspective, which resonated with consumers. Increasingly, there is a sentiment that this authenticity is fading. And that could spell big long-term changes. AI: Friend of Foe? AI tools have made it easier for influencers to break into the marketplace like using ChatGPT to write articles, or Adobe’s text to image maker to make pictures, and Canva’s AI video generator to make clips. By doing so, these products have made it easier to get content out in the world without developing the skills needed to make higher quality programming. That low barrier to entry—and the general proliferation of AI-fueled content across the web—also means it can be difficult for creators to stand out. At the same time, the ubiquity of AI has for many consumers inserted a skepticism around authenticity. Amazon Web Services researchers believe 57% of online content is already made by AI programs or translated via AI programs. Yet, per a recent Deloitte study, seven out of 10 consumers reportedly think generative AI is ruining the user experience. That’s already having an impact on how consumers interact with creators and influencers. Forty-five percent of 13 to 22 year olds say that influencers don’t have as much sway as they used to, according to a YPulse study. Meanwhile, a survey by EnTribe found 51% of consumers scrolled right past an influencer post that appeared in their feed. “In terms of actually using AI as the way to generate ideas to create content, I think we’re just going to get a lot of quantity and not quality,” says Ivy Yang, founder of Wavelet Strategy, a New York-based communications consultancy. Sure enough, brands have started to catch on to consumer sentiment. A plethora of brands have asked their ad agencies to not use AI in their strategies. Dove notably said it would not use AI-generated content at all. Are Brand Partnerships Really Helping? A staggering 61% of 13 to 39-year-olds believe the more ads influencers do, the less they trust them, according to a YPulse survey. “As soon as the audience starts to feel like this person isn’t authentic or interesting, they just jump to another person who is seen as more authentic and interesting,” says James Nord, founder and CEO of the influencer marketing company Fohr. That authenticity problem is already impacting brands who rely on influencers to push their products. An EnTribe study found that 42% of people who purchased something recommended by influencers regretted that decision which is fueling a credibility crisis. “Inauthenticity can trigger swift backlash, and evolving regulations add complexity. As digital trends shift rapidly, sustainable success demands agility and foresight,” says Lizi Sprague, a cofounder of Songue PR. Brands are progressively spending less on social media marketing all together. A survey of 292 CMOs showed a 23% decline in 2023 and another 11% decline in 2024. Brands are finding more success with more niche “nano-influencers” but that means spreading a wider net and dishing out smaller payouts. Misinformation Crisis Influencers played an outsize role in the 2024 presidential election. Both candidates relied heavily on podcast appearances, but ultimately President Donald Trump’s strategy was to tap into the so-called “manosphere,” which ultimately led to his success by helping him court the Gen Z male vote by double-digit margins. Now, concerns about the surge in misinformation on platforms like X and TikTok are starting to drive news consumers away. Indeed, a 2023 Gartner survey suggests that influencers being on equal footing with established press may be a short-lived phenomenon. The study found that more than half of consumers plan to pull away from social media as soon as this year, citing the spread of misinformation as one of the top reasons—a big concern with a president now in office known for lying on a regular basis. And per a 2024 study from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 62% of creators admittedly do not verify information before spreading it online. “Talking to students about their interactions with social media platforms [. . . ] they kind of feel bad about how much time to spend with these platforms,” says Jacob Nelson, a journalism professor at the University of Utah. Nelson, who has written about shifts in social media audiences for Harvard’s Nieman Lab, says this is the first time his students aren’t optimistic about the future of social media and are in fact pulling away. “No one among the audience seems all that thrilled with the amount of time that they are investing,” he tells Fast Company. Will the Creator Economy Survive? As a cautionary tale, the creator economy ought to look at the digital media sector. In the early 2010s, publishers like Vice and Vox seemed almost invincible. But they were ultimately dependent on the whim of tech giants for their own success—particularly Facebook (which was behind the infamous “pivot to video” trend) and Google. Eventually these Silicon Valley power players shifted their strategy—and proved disastrous for publishers who relied on them. Websites like BuzzFeed, Gawker, and Mic suddenly faced a massive shift in their own manifest destiny (i.e., a cascade of layoffs and consolidations) often under the control of private equity. Ultimately, these changes left many outlets as husks of their former selves. In 2012 the digital media industry seemed unstoppable; in 2018 alone, it laid off over 15,000 workers, according to a report from Challenger, Gray & Christmas. “The platforms frankly are always going to be optimizing for their own business interests,” says Sterling Proffer, former head of growth for Vice Media. Fast forward to today: X, Linkedin, and Meta platforms have all shifted key parts of their business model several times in the last couple years and TikTok is still on the chopping block. That’s why those who don’t have the skills to scale their creator offerings outside of one specific platform may not survive—at least if they want to make creating content a full-time job. “I think that the folks who have been building on that are coming to recognize this element that they’re building on rented land, and there is a need for content creators who can diversify their offerings across platforms and even in real life,” Brett Dashevsky, founder of Creator Economy NYC and the head of Content Creators at Kickstarter, tells Fast Company. Creators who have a specific skill or insight—say, a chef sharing unique culinary knowledge—will stand the test of time. They can upscale their projects to include in-person events like cooking classes, exclusive dinners, cookbooks, and meal kits. But for those who rose to fame thanks just to brand deals and dance videos, the future may not look so sunny after all. View the full article

NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, is most well known for the National Weather Service, providing forecasting that underpins local meteorological reports and major sites like AccuWeather. But the data that NOAA collects is also crucial for private-sector industries, from airlines to insurance. The Trump administration is threatening this agency, and began slashing jobs there on Thursday. That means those other industries are also at risk. When it comes to insurance, climate change already causes billions of dollars in losses globally. Here in the U.S. people who live in areas especially prone to climate risks are seeing their rates skyrocket, or they’re seeing insurance carriers withdraw coverage in high-risk states. Without NOAA data, these trends could worsen, and leave even more Americans with higher insurance premiums—or without coverage at all. “Financial services, including home insurance providers, consistently rely on [NOAA] to comprehend the influence of climate and weather on the economy and to facilitate transactions,” says Manogna Vangari, an insurance analyst at GlobalData. Specifically, insurance providers get data from NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI), which recently revealed that in 2024, the U.S. experienced 27 individual weather and climate disasters causing at least $1 billion in damages each. In total, 2024 saw more than $192 billion in disaster costs, and more than 560 direct or indirect fatalities. NCEI data helps insurers assess risks, and determine premiums. Insurers use this data to develop their catastrophe models, which estimate the economic losses from extreme weather events like hurricanes and floods; that then underpins premiums, underwriting, claims, and more. Insurers also look at data sets on storm report categories by state, as well as databases on specific disaster types such as earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis. Losing that data, Vangari says, would complicate the way home insurance companies price climate-related risks. It also would hinder their ability to accurately model out the risk of extreme weather events, like wildfires and hurricanes, “and to price climate risk with greater precision.” Without knowing those climate risks, insurance companies themselves risk more financial losses. To make up for that uncertainty, they’ll need to raise premiums even more, or they might just choose to pull out of particularly risky areas. The cost of losing that accurate, reliable data would then fall on consumers. Insurance companies also use NOAA retrospective analysis of weather effects to verify claims—like how bad a hailstorm really was, says Rick Spinrad, who served as NOAA administrator from 2021 until January of this year. The insurance industry, as well as the reinsurance industry (which provides insurance for other insurance companies) has had an informal partnership with NOAA for 20 years. Spinrad formalized that partnership with a 2024 memorandum of understanding with the Reinsurance Association of America, an agreement meant to improve risk communication. NOAA has also worked with the insurance industry through its Industry Proving Ground, an initiative to test tailored services for the private sector, and to make sure the agency provides the best data for businesses to be most effective. Because NOAA is a government service funded by taxpayers, its data is free. That means everyone has access to crucial weather forecasts. Project 2025, the conservative playbook that the Trump administration is following, advocates privatizing this service. But experts have said that even private weather companies wouldn’t want that, because then they’d have to bear the cost of collecting the data that the government currently provides. If, instead, this data were accessible only to those who could afford it, that would particularly impact homeowners in vulnerable communities, Vangari says. “Insurers might be hesitant to pay a fee and rely on some other alternative source without access to reliable data,” she adds. “This would lead to a disproportionate increase in insurance premiums. Additionally, insurers may refuse to provide coverage in high-risk areas.” That doesn’t just impact people who may lose their homes and need to rebuild. Broadly, the stakes of losing this data are serious: In places that are susceptible to climate impacts like tornadoes or floods or tsunamis along the coast, timely access to weather data can be a matter of life and death. Not having the data doesn’t stop climate impacts from happening, multiple experts have noted—it just makes us less prepared. Some private companies are starting to invest in their own weather satellites. But completely replicating NOAA’s instrumental fleet and weather coverage—which includes operating 18 satellites, launching weather balloons from nearly 100 locations twice every day, and deploying more than 1,300 buoys—would require an enormous amount of money. What NOAA is able to provide for free, Vangari says, is “a public good. . . . Its services offer safety and security universally, not merely to those who can afford them.” View the full article

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TikTok just updated its desktop viewing experience to offer a smoother UX, expanded features, and more ways to watch. I wish it would go back to how it was before. It’s no secret that TikTok has a mobile-first design. Its beloved hyper-specific algorithm and For You page, as well as its wholehearted embrace of short-form video, has inspired copycats the likes of which include everyone from Instagram to LinkedIn and Substack. TikTok has even changed the fabric of culture itself, shortening attention spans and shaping the music industry as we know it. While TikTok shines on mobile, its desktop experience has historically been significantly less intuitive. The new desktop browser is, by all counts, a marked improvement. But, for those of us who turn to the clunky desktop TikTok to cut down on screen time, it’s not necessarily a good thing. [Photo: TikTok] Ugh, TikTok’s new desktop browser is better The biggest change to TikTok’s desktop browser is the noticeably smoother UX. Previously, scrolling through videos on the homepage could feel delayed and glitchy, which quickly becomes frustrating given that it’s the platform’s main function. Now, each clip transitions smoothly into the next—an element of TikTok’s new “optimized modular layout” that offers “a more immersive viewing experience and seamless feed exploration,” according to a press release. The look of the platform has also been cleaned up and simplified, including via a minimized navigation bar, to “reduce distractions” during doomscrolling. Beyond the improved UX, updated desktop TikTok also comes with a few new features. It’s poached the Explore tab straight from the app, giving users another, less tailored feed to explore. There’s now also full-screen live streaming modes for gamers, a web-exclusive floating player on Google Chrome so users can watch brainrot Subway Surfers TikToks while they shop online, and a collections tool that can organize saved videos into subcategories. And, yeah, on the surface, all of these changes are reasonable responses to TikTok’s lackluster web browser experience. They make it more frictionless, intuitive, and enjoyable. But did the developers ever consider that maybe some of us liked it when it was bad? Can we just not? When TikTok entered the mainstream around the early pandemic, I downloaded it on my phone for a total of about two days. The reason it didn’t make the cut in my app library was not because it was bad, but because it was actually too fun—so much so that reading my AP Lit homework started to feel like an insurmountable task when those little videos were, like, right there. For me, the ideal screen time solution has been to delete social media apps from my phone and only check them when I’m on my computer, where their desktop counterparts tend to be more outdated and, sometimes, downright annoying. My one exception to this rule is YouTube Shorts, but only because its algorithm is leagues behind TikTok’s and therefore tends to drive me away by recommending one too many English hobby horsing videos. Am I still addicted to these apps? Most definitely. But do I feel like I have to check them every 30 seconds? Thankfully, no. TikTok’s desktop experience used to similarly serve as a refuge from the mobile app itself. It was a safe place to get a quick taste of what’s happening online without getting sucked into a three-hour rabbit hole about giving butter to babies. Its irritating quirks were precisely the point—and, I would argue, plenty of other desktop users likely turned to this version for the same reason. Now, though, as the desktop experience creeps ever-closer to the actual mobile app, we’re all going to have to figure out where to relegate TikTok so that we can hack our brains out of craving it. View the full article

A recent Society for Human Resources Management study found that 47% of employees with invisible chronic conditions—illnesses or disabilities that limit activities and functions but lack visible symptoms—have not disclosed their conditions to their employers. When I first read this statistic, I wasn’t surprised. In a world where the majority of people with invisible disabilities fear discrimination and stigma should they disclose, where is the incentive to do so? I am part of the 53% who has disclosed her invisible illness to her employer, and fortunately received support, empathy, and understanding as a result. Without a doubt, privilege is at play here. I’m a white, college-educated woman with five years in my career under my belt. This affords me access to opportunities and healthcare as well as social and cultural latitudes that, unfortunately, many do not share. I wish my experience could be the norm. As I reflect on the experiences that led me to this point, I’m considering how organizations and their leaders can rethink these disclosures to better support employees. Who can afford the risk of disclosing For the majority of my career, I’ve grappled with an acceleration in symptoms from my chronic illness, later found to be a likely result of the Lyme disease I contracted while in utero (something that impacts only a very small population of fetuses globally). My body could not sustain the consistent schedule and output needed to succeed in a traditional workplace, so I turned to self-employment, which allowed me to earn a living while managing decades of health challenges. With my health stabilized, I began seeking traditional employment in 2023. Inevitably, the question of why I was interested in working for someone else after so long working for myself would come up. I decided to be honest and candid, letting employers form their own opinions. While my health challenges were far less acute than they once had been, I knew that my chronic illness would always be a part of my professional story—so sharing that early on in the process would help me gauge reactions and understand whether an organization would be the right fit for me. Plus, I was largely targeting healthcare companies in my search, and I knew that my experiences on the patient-facing side could be an immense asset to leverage during the interview process. Still, each time I shared the reasons behind my unconventional résumé history with a recruiter, I felt a twist of nerves in my stomach, born of the instinctive thought that such an admission would be an overall detriment to the way I am perceived in the workplace. I’m sure you can imagine how delighted I was at the number of recruiters and hiring managers who responded with empathy, kindness, and appreciation for my honesty. One recruiter thanked me for my bravery and shared that she also lives with an autoimmune disorder. Another commiserated with me about how challenging it is to live with Lyme disease, as his mother-in-law had just been diagnosed. These conversations typically segued neatly into discussions about my ability to adapt to and around my chronic illness, underscoring that I am the kind of employee (and person) who looks to leverage her lived experience toward positive outcomes for others—and am committed to using all the effort possible to do so. Ultimately, my approach paid off. Since the start of 2024, I’ve been able to leverage my experience as a “professional patient” (a phrase I coined as a half-joking nod to my lifetime spent in and out of doctor’s offices) to better serve patients and providers through my work as a content marketing specialist for a healthcare startup. Advocating for truly accessible approaches When I joined the organization for which I now work, I once again chose to share my experience living with lifelong chronic illness—this time, with colleagues and my manager. That’s because the internal culture is one that I knew would be accepting and accommodating. During an initial call with a new coworker welcoming me to the team, I learned that they also live with a chronic illness. The ease with which they disclosed, and the way they spoke about the organization’s response—that their disclosure had been met with reminders that their health is the most important thing, and encouragements to arrange elements of their work to be as accommodating as possible—told me that my disclosure would likely be met similarly. As it turns out, I was right. My disclosures sounded different depending on who I was talking to; I often deployed the “professional patient” joke when in conversation with clinicians or researchers, while I got a bit more granular with the people I collaborate with often, such as my team and my manager. Regardless of how the conversation started, it always ended the same way: They were gracious and thankful for my candor, and I was likewise thankful for their understanding and willingness to hear me. Unfortunately, researchers have consistently found that my experience is a rare one. A 2021 academic analysis found that most chronically ill and disabled office workers spend a disproportionate amount of energy concealing all visible symptoms of their condition for fear of discrimination or retaliation. That means their time spent away from work isn’t spent preparing to return refreshed and renewed but rather managing their symptoms so they can continue to conceal them at work. This could include, but certainly isn’t limited to, sleeping 10 to 12 or more hours on the weekends, fitting in all-day IV infusions between errand-running on Saturdays, or staying in their home and not speaking to any friends or family members to manage emotional and cognitive burnout. Is it any wonder that people with disabilities are part of the subgroup found to experience 26% higher work-related burnout? Like millions of other workers across the United States, the choices I make about my career and ways of working are driven primarily by the chronic condition with which I live. Employers, founders, and managers can help alleviate this mental burden for their employees with invisible disabilities by doing these three things: Rethink ending remote work. For many disabled or chronically ill employees, remote, hybrid, and/or flexible work isn’t a nice-to-have—it’s an accommodation and an equalizer. In a remote-first workplace, chronically ill or disabled employees can have equal visibility on their work as their able-bodied and healthy counterparts without having to worry about being judged for their invisible condition. Prioritize curiosity and empathy. Two people with the same invisible condition may have very different symptoms. Encourage managers and leaders to respond to disclosures with empathy and gratitude—responses that lead to massive increases in both employee engagement and well-being. Open the floor. While no one owes anyone a candid disclosure of their health status, consider offering opportunities to impact and shape diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives, such as employee resource groups (ERGs), to employees like me who have elected to do so. Their expertise in their own experience is uniquely valuable, and should be seen as such. To that end, ensure these opportunities are genuinely and thoughtfully offered, not just put together as a way to tick a box on a list of inclusive options. As some organizations choose to downsize DEI initiatives, and even stop using words like equity altogether, it’s never been more vital to ensure employees—regardless of health, ability, gender, race, and more—are supported so they can do their best work. I’m living proof that these approaches work, and I hope that more organizations choose to follow suit. View the full article

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This post was sponsored by Bluehost. The opinions expressed in this article are the sponsor’s own. Is my website ready for 2025’s tech and SEO changes? How can I keep my site fast, secure, and user-friendly? What makes a hosting provider future-proof? In 2025, the extent to which you adapt to emerging technologies, changing user expectations, and evolving search engine algorithms will determine if you’ll thrive or struggle to stay relevant. Staying ahead of emerging trends is essential for maintaining a fast, secure, and user-friendly website. Optimizing performance, strengthening security measures, and enhancing user experience will be key factors in […] The post 9 Trends You Should Watch To Keep Your Website Afloat in 2025 appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Many things are considered distinctly millennial: a man bun, avocado toast, axe-throwing bars. Now you can apparently add millennial burger joints to that list. On February 11, TikToker fairylights2007 shared a clip using Kyle Gordon’s “2011 Millennial” parody song, along with a caption that read: “This song is so truffle fries overpriced burger brick walls metal tin of ketchup.” You know the type. As the video points out, the burgers are typically overpriced—$19 to be exact—always with a brioche bun. Fries are extra and come served in a fryer basket with a special “house sauce” (i.e., ketchup mixed with mayo). Somewhere in the restaurant, a chalkboard lists “local” IPA beers. The menu includes sections like “handhelds” and “sweet treats.” The decor? Exposed piping, string lights, and Edison bulbs. Commenters on the video were quick to point out other telltale signs of millennial burger joints. “A pbj burger on the menu,” one wrote. “Games no one has ever played but every bar has,” suggested another. Chances are, you’ve frequented one of these places at least once—whether you wanted to or not. Gordon’s song has since become the soundtrack to a number of TikTok videos jumping on the trend. “YES we’re a millennial burger joint; YES we overprice everything; YES our truffle fries are mediocre at best; YES we’re two guys with a crazy idea; NO we don’t offer comfortable seating; YES we serve water in mason jars,” one post read. “It was about time all these burger places with the same aesthetic get called out,” another creator added. These burger joints became popular in the mid-to-late 2010s, right around the time millennials were launching their first businesses. But now they’ve become prime targets for the online generation, who love to poke fun at millennials for everything from their “cringe” humor to their love of Harry Potter. And yet, for all the mockery, these places aren’t going anywhere. The “millennial burger joint” may now be shorthand for a style-over-substance hipster eatery, but I, for one, will be enjoying my basket of mediocre truffle fries with garlic aioli. So sue me. View the full article

This post was written by Alison Green and published on Ask a Manager. It’s four answers to four questions. Here we go… 1. My mom answered my phone and told off my boss I was very sick with Covid and my mom had to come take care of me. She already knew issues that I’d been having with my boss; he’s a jerk. I learned later that he called to ask a question that he could have easily found the answer himself. My mother answered the phone and yelled at him because he does a lot of abusive things and keeps us working on days off, even vacation, not to mention when people are very sick. He is the type who can dish out the punishment or rude comments but cant handle it when you do it back even the slightest. Anyway, she told me what she had done. Once I returned to work, I was written up and told my mother is not to answer my phone when anyone from the company calls because they chip in $50 a month for the phone. This is not their phone. Does this warrant a write-up? Do they have the right to say my mother cannot answer my phone? No, this doesn’t warrant a write-up. If you call someone’s personal phone, you risk someone else answering it and conducting themselves differently than an employee would. But there’s no official arbiter of what you can and can’t be written up for; there’s only common sense, and your boss clearly doesn’t have it. The question about whether they can say your mom can’t answer company calls on your phone when they pay part of the bill … eh, probably. If they consider that your work phone, then sure, they can say you’re the only one who can answer it (hell, in a lot of states they could say that without paying any of the bill). It’s a dumb response from them, though. Also, though, your mom should stay out of your work life and not tell your boss off on your behalf! I get the impulse, but she doesn’t have the standing to do that and she ended up causing problems for you at work. But I kind of love her for defending her sick kid. Is she up for telling off other people’s bosses too? She’d probably be in demand. 2. Staff is grumbling about sales team’s “perks” I manage a team of salesmen who call on very large customers. Typically we are responsible for signing 5-10 contracts that generate a lot of meaningful revenue for the company. Because of the size of these contracts and the nature of our customers, we attend a lot of off-hours events to host our customers — things like dinners, concerts, and professional sporting events. As a manager, I try to be flexible with people’s schedules to accommodate all the hours they end up working outside of the normal 9-5. However, I’m running into problems with other departments complaining about my team’s availability or implying that we are more focused on partying than working. This typically happens when they want to connect with someone on my team but that person is using comp time; for example, they had a 7pm dinner the day before so I don’t have them come into work till 10 am but production wants to meet right at 9 am. I understand why there might be a perception issue to say, “Oh, John is coming in late on Monday because he has to spend all Sunday at the suite of an NFL game,” but these events truly are a work day for us. Attending with a customer and trying to have a meaningful business conversation can be a pretty high pressure and stressful thing! We might have a beer at the game but it’s much more about making sure the customer has a great time then it is about actually enjoying the venue. Typically my team has to provide a recap of any conversations that they had and how contract negotiations are advancing. It’s also not fair to expect them to spend a weekend day or a weeknight working and then go back to a regular schedule. My boss understands this but when I’ve tried explaining it to other departments (typically run by people at my level but without sales experience) I’ve had varying degrees of success. I’ve also set up a couple times a week like Monday afternoons, where I can guarantee that my whole team is working at the same time so these departments can schedule meetings. That has helped manage the scheduling issue that we are having, but it’s made the grumbling worse because they feel like we are being unreasonable. Is there a good way that I can explain to my peers outside of sales that we aren’t being divas, we just have a weird work schedule? Can you stop describing the specifics of what they were doing when they were working off-hours and instead just say “he had to work all day Sunday” or “he worked until very late last night”? If you mention dinners and games, people are going to focus on that to the exclusion of the “work” part. You might also try talking with the other managers one-on-one about the pattern and ask for their help in figuring out how to resolve it; sometimes when people are enlisted in solving a problem that they themselves are part of it, they start to get it more. And you could say, “While the events can seem like fun ones, that’s still time that my team has to be ‘on’; they can’t relax, they need to be focused on the client, and that’s time that they can’t be with their family or friends or handling household responsibilities. Since we can’t ask people to spend all their waking hours furthering the company’s business interests and they need to have time off as well, what would you suggest?” But some of this is just a perpetual issue between sales and non-sales people, so your measure of success shouldn’t be “there is zero grumbling about this.” 3. Can I use Discord messages to confirm that my unreliable coworker told me she ignores my emails? Right now, I am building an argument to my boss to change the workflow of a specific task to address a problem I have with a coworker (Clara). Clara’s supposed to be doing this task on my behalf. (For internal policy reasons, I’m not allowed to do it myself.) However, Clara is not reliable at doing this task. Over the years, I’ve made a thousand tiny adjustments to my work to make it as easy as possible for her, and she often still makes errors, which only affect me and are for some reason my sole responsibility to identify and (tell her to) fix. I’ve been stewing silently about this for years, because I thought I was just being a hater, frankly. But at my next review, I’m going to urge our boss to see if I can be given the authority to just handle this task myself. Since all of the measures I take to help Clara and make up for her errors are individually very small, I’m compiling documentation to explain everything I’m doing and confirm that, collectively, they consume a lot of my time and energy — much more than just doing it myself. One item I wanted to include was an email from several months ago, where Clara asked me to indicate importance in the subject line of emails to her; I send out a lot of notices to the whole building, so she mostly just ignores messages from me and sometimes misses important ones. However, when I received this email, it made me so blindingly angry — considering everything else I’m already doing — that I trashed it immediately without responding. Now that I’ve decided to talk to our boss about it, it’s gone from the face of the earth. But I have the annoyed Discord messages I sent to my partner the day-of that confirm that this email once existed. They don’t say anything spicy — essentially, “Clara just straight-up admitted to me that she doesn’t read my emails” with an air of frustration — and nothing rude, hostile, or profane. Do you think it would help or hurt my case to include these? If including them is a bad idea, do you have any alternate suggestions? Even if I had the original email, would it have been too petty to include, anyway? Clara’s otherwise very nice and definitely isn’t acting maliciously, so I still feel insane for actually complaining about this. Don’t include the message you sent to your partner about it. It’ll come across as petty, and it puts the focus on your frustration more than on Clara’s behavior. It will also seem odd that you’re trying to come up with “evidence” that the email existed, when no one has asked for any and in any reasonably healthy work environment, simply telling your manager about what was said will be enough. Just tell your manager what Clara told you and assume you’ll be believed. (If your word isn’t enough, there are bigger problems that would dwarf this anyway.) 4. Manager said we can’t talk to HR without telling him first Is it legal/ethical for a supervisor to tell their team they cannot go to HR without telling him and letting him set the appointment with HR? This comes after a coworker went to HR for two reasons (supervisor issues the entire team is having and a request to move departments). Today the team came in and was told that they cannot go to HR about anything without telling him first what it is about and then he will set an appointment with HR if he deems worthy/necessary. I am thinking it is not illegal, but not exactly ethical and definitely not in the favor of the team as the supervisor will not set up appointments if he wants to hide things and there would retaliation. While it’s not illegal on its face, it creates legal liability for your company. What if someone wants to report harassment or discrimination from your boss? They have to go through him first and he’ll decide if they get to talk to HR about it or not? What if he decides they can’t? It’s very unlikely that HR would be okay with this rule if they knew about it (in part because companies need clear and accessible reporting procedures for harassment and discrimination to effectively defend themselves against lawsuits in those areas), so someone should break the rule to tell HR (and when doing that, should point out that they’re doing exactly what they were told they couldn’t and will need HR’s assistance in ensuring they’re not penalized for it). View the full article

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