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SpaceX owns 98% of global rocket launches, a monopoly with virtually no competition. Only China is competing with Elon Musk at this point in number of launches and, while the country is getting closer to mass-producing reusable rockets, it appears far from making that happen. The world needs to scramble. We can’t let a single company dominate the future of humanity—and much less one that is owned by Musk. “If you copy SpaceX, it’ll take you 10 years to get where they are today,” Lin Kayser, cofounder of Dubai-based engineering AI firm Leap 71, tells me in a video interview. “But in 10 years, SpaceX won’t be where they are today. The game will be over.” Startups and nations need to catch up to Musk, but that means solving a brutal equation: designing engines with comparable thrust (measured in kilonewtons, or kN) and efficiency, but without the decade-long development cycles. And to beat SpaceX, you also need to be able to mass-produce the rockets. This is now more important than ever because the stakes are even higher than just five years ago. Satellite constellations like Starlink, which may soon enable direct-to-phone internet, threaten to sideline telecom operators and centralize control of earth’s critical communication infrastructure on top of controlling the space economy. “Every region needs sovereign launch capability,” Kayser contends. “Otherwise, you’ll pay 10 times what SpaceX pays to access space—if they let you.” His company may have a solution to fix that conundrum. Leap 71 developed artificial intelligence called Noyron that, so far, has successfully designed two rocket engines. Kayser believes that his company, legacy rocket makers, and startups will be able to leverage this synthetic rocket engineer to create a cheaper match to the SpaceX Raptor—and beat Musk at his own game. The 10-foot-high Raptor—which powers the Starship—is arguably the most advanced Western rocket engine in production. Its latest iteration produces 280 tonnes of thrust at sea level, surpassing competing engines like Blue Origin’s BE-4. It uses methalox, an efficient fuel that can be manufactured in places like Mars, which makes it key for deep-space exploration. But the Raptor’s importance lies in the fact that it is the first operational full-flow staged combustion (FFSC) engine in history. This means that it optimizes efficiency and thrust while minimizing thermal stress, so you can reuse it many times, the key for cheap, sustainable space exploration. Only two other FFSC engines have been tested, but they’ve never flown. Leap 71 now wants to achieve the same spaces but better, with fewer 3D-printed pieces, which will make it less expensive than Musk’s engine. Computational blueprint Leap 71 describes its Noyron computational model as an “engineer brain in a box.” Unlike generative AI tools that require human oversight because they are just guessing what could work, Noyron encodes physics, material science, and manufacturing rules to autonomously design rocket engines. It generates not just shapes but also functional hardware ready for 3D printing. “Traditional parametric CAD is geometry-driven. Ours is physics-driven,” Kayser explains. “Calling it parametric CAD would be like saying ChatGPT is autocomplete.” The system’s first breakthrough came in 2024 with a 5 kN rocket engine. The compact, high-efficiency rocket was fully designed by AI and 3D printed in one go as a single-piece copper engine with intricate internal cooling channels. During trials in an old World War II bunker in the U.K., the engine fired flawlessly, validating Noyron’s ability to predict thermal stresses and fluid dynamics. Then, in January 2025, Leap 71 really pushed the envelope by designing one of the most challenging and elusive rocket engines in the aerospace industry: a cryogenic aerospike thruster, an engine capable of working at every altitude to eliminate the need for multiple rocket stages, minimizing elements and costs in the process. Now the company wants to scale up this approach to engines 400 times larger. The new road map includes two reference designs: the 200 kN XRA-2E5 aerospike and the 2,000 kN XRB-2E6 bell-nozzle engine, equivalent to SpaceX’s Raptor. The first, he says, is slated for testing within 18 months of April 2025 (placing it around late 2026). The second is targeted for readiness by 2029. For rocket engine development—with design and testing cycles measured in decades—this is incredibly ambitious. But the timeline is achievable because of how Noyron works, Kayser says. Instead of manually iterating prototypes, Noyron treats all engines as variations of a unified “DNA.” And instead of having to be programmed, its edge lies in its ability to absorb decades of engineering knowledge—even from obscure sources. For its new model, Leap 71 has not only incorporated learnings from its past tests (like data on cooling efficiency and material strain), but also vast amounts of new information, including digitized Soviet-era rocket manuals. “We plug these into Noyron to refine our thermal models,” Kayser says. The AI also learns from every test, creating a feedback loop that collapses design cycles and speeds up the development process. Noyron is not generative AI, but a computational model capable of producing deterministic results that are consistent every time. They are accurate according to the actual physical world and data. It understands. It doesn’t just guess. Input the same specs, and it generates identical designs (try that with ChatGPT, Gemini, Midjourney, or Sora). This is critical for aerospace reliability. “Human engineers can see the rationale behind every decision,” Kayser says. “It’s not a black box.” The challenges While Noyron can design a rocket engine in minutes, proving it works in the physical world is the real test. The company’s ambitions collide with a stark reality: Even the most advanced AI cannot shortcut the laws of physics and bureaucracy. Securing test facilities for large engines is another hurdle. While smaller subsystems (like the 28 kN turbopump it wants to test this year) fit on existing stands, the 2,000 kN engine’s sheer size demands specialized infrastructure. “The critical path here is test-stand availability,” says Kayser. Current options are scarce and scattered around the world. Shipping engines abroad triggers export controls and delays—a problem compounded by geopolitical tensions. Moving a small engine from Germany to the U.K. already takes “two to three weeks,” Kayser tells me. That’s why Leap 71 is in talks with governments in Dubai, Singapore, and New Zealand to co-locate manufacturing and testing. Oman’s planned spaceport and New Zealand’s remote Tāwhaki facility, with its vast sound-dampening landscapes, are leading candidates. “You can’t just put a loud rocket engine next to a city,” Kayser says. The other challenge—the actual production of the engine—has only just become possible, with China’s new 3D-printing behemoths capable of producing parts that are 6.56-by-6.56-by-3.60 feet. In fact, this is what led Kayser and his partner, Leap 71 cofounder Josefine Lissner, to believe that making a Raptor-class engine was even possible. Called the EP-M2050 (and manufactured by Eplus3D), this colossal 3D printer uses 36 lasers to turn metallic powders into all the parts needed for next-gen rocket engines, including the nozzles, which will be much taller than your average human. The printers are so new that quality assurance is still a question mark. Surface roughness, inherent to layered metal printing, disrupts fluid dynamics in cooling channels. Rough walls increase friction, altering fuel flow and thermal stability. Post-printing, parts undergo rigorous cleaning to remove residual metal powder, a task that until now has been handled by German firm Solukon because “any impurities could cause an explosion,” Kayser says. Material uniformity is another gamble. While printers handle alloys like copper-chromium-zirconium, ensuring consistent strength in massive components—especially under the violent vibrations and thermal swings of a firing engine—remains unproven at this scale. The turbopump, which forces fuel into the combustion chamber at extreme pressures, epitomizes this challenge. Leap 71’s 28 kN test rig validates principles for larger designs, but scaling amplifies risks. Turbines spin at supersonic speeds, generating centrifugal forces that warp metal. Rapid temperature shifts—like the -297°F cryogenic oxygen flow meeting 5,430°F exhaust—threaten cracks. “Sealing, material fatigue, and transient conditions during start-up and shutdown are critical,” Kayser explains. “These are not just design problems—they demand practical testing.” That’s why the most unnerving hurdle of rocket development with this method is “blind testing.” Leap 71’s aerospike engine, printed as a single copper block with internal cooling channels, could not be inspected internally before firing. “We had to test blind,” Kayser says. During trials, imperfect oxygen flow led to higher-than-expected temperatures. Although it all worked, it forced an early shutdown. “Instead of risking additional runs, we cut the engine in half to analyze it,” Kayser adds. Each failure feeds back into Noyron’s models, but iteration consumes time and capital. For now, Leap 71’s strategy hinges on incremental validation—testing subsystems like injectors and turbopumps individually—while lobbying governments to fund dedicated test facilities. The road ahead While these are big challenges, they are not insurmountable. The space industry knows it and, according to Kayser, wants a piece of the action. Everyone is looking for a way to leapfrog several years and catch up to—or surpass—Musk. Right now, Leap 71 collaborates with about 15 rocket startups. Kayser can’t disclose their names under confidentiality agreements except for the Exploration Co., which is developing a European Moon lander. These partners lack SpaceX’s vertical integration but want tailored engines without decade-long R&D. “The engine is the most expensive and complicated part,” Kayser emphasizes. “Everyone else just buys them. But there’s no supply.” L3Harris—which now owns the legendary rocket engine maker Aerojet Rocketdyne, makers of the Apollo engines—wants to sell them, but it doesn’t have anything comparable to the Raptor. Blue Origin makes and sells engines for the United Launch Alliance (ULA), but nobody else. The Russian NPO Energomash once dominated the global rocket engine market, supplying the RD-180 that powered ULA’s Atlas V rocket for decades. But RD-180s are now considered relics—and are under sanctions because of the Ukraine war, anyway. “[Current design processes] are actually a problem for many of the micro launcher companies right now,” Kayser says. “So they have relatively small engines. And if they now want to play in the higher leagues, they basically have to embark on a completely new project, create a completely new rocket.” The main differentiation between sizes is the engine, because the rest of the rocket is scalable. It’s harder to scale up the engine because it has completely different specifications and requirements. By using Noyron, Kayser says customers will be able to fine-tune to their own needs and input thrust, fuel type, and size to receive bespoke engine designs for every need. A startup might tweak an aerospike for methane fuel, while another firm could optimize for cost. Some engines will be small and some could be Raptor-class. We will know if it all works in just a couple of years, so we won’t have to wait long: Kayser tells me that he and Lissner expect the first hot firing of the 200 kN XRA-2E5 aerospike engine in October 2026. Full-scale testing of the large 2,000 kN Raptor-class engine is tentatively planned to begin in 2028, with qualification for flight readiness stretching into 2029. If Leap 71 can pull it off, it will be phenomenal for humanity. A new process for rocket development will challenge Elon Musk at his own game and democratize the means to reach orbit for every country on the planet. Plus, if it happens, the dream of having Tony Stark’s J.A.R.V.I.S.-like AI to aid humans to build the future will be real. Kayser certainly believes in it: “We’re building a world where anyone can engineer complex machines.” View the full article

Brawny just went big on bulk. The Georgia-Pacific paper towel brand introduced a new logo set in a thicker font and breathed new life into its lumberjack mascot, the Brawny Man—all as part of a shift to stand out on store shelves and launch a new product, three-ply paper towels. “We weren’t just evolving a visual identity,” Amanda Earley, Georgia-Pacific’s brand director for Brawny, tells Fast Company. “We were launching a new product, shifting our full lineup, and repositioning the brand in culture, all while protecting what made Brawny special in the first place.” Bringing all this to market at the same time was a challenge, Earley says, but necessary to achieve the company’s overall goals: to grow household penetration, drive category growth, and convert the brand’s entire portfolio from two-ply to three. A bolder Brawny logo The logo is one part of that. “We modernized the logo to make it bolder, more confident, and unmistakably Brawny,” Earley says. The typographic beef up was also a strategic decision to “signal product superiority at shelf, reinforce brand strength, and help us stand apart in a space that often feels like a sea of sameness,” she says. Companies like Amazon, OpenAI, and Walmart have all recently made their logos bigger and bolder, but for Brawny, doing so was an imperative because of its brand promise. A paper towel brand that calls itself the strongest can’t be set in a skinny font, especially after announcing plans to increase the ply of its products by 50%. So the company made a few changes to indicate its new weight class. Its logo uses flat, bold, black-and-white letterforms, removing the red shadowing of the previous version. It’s also now set on a firm horizontal instead of a slant. The logo type is sans serif, except for the letters B and A, which have serifs that extend like eaves on a rest stop or ranger station icon. A bulked-up Brawny Man Introduced in the 1970s, the Brawny Man has undergone multiple makeovers over the years and worn his facial hair in various ways—the brand even had Brawny women as part of a 2016 campaign. In this newest iteration, the Brawny Man appears on packaging in the form of an illustration of a handsome, hunky outdoorsy type suitable for casting on The Bachelorette wearing his signature red-and-black plaid shirt. He appears oversize in new commercials, like Brawny’s own Paul Bunyan—and he’s eager to help clean up messes, whether they happen to be in the aftermath of a 40th birthday party or at a treehouse sleepover full of superstitious tween girls. Too often brand mascots “live frozen in time,” says Jaime Robinson, cofounder and chief creative officer at Joan Creative, which helped develop packaging and worked on the Brawny Man’s refresh. “When you have such legendary brand IP like the Brawny Man, you want to approach it thoughtfully but bravely,” Robinson says. It was all about striking the right balance between familiarity and modernity, according to Holly Karlsson, creative director at Bulletproof, the agency that worked on Brawny’s visual identity and packaging design. And by “retaining his rugged dependability while evolving his personality to feel more authentic, warm, and human,” she says, Bulletproof hoped to do just that. The new Brawny Man is a gentle giant with a bold logo to match. View the full article

Loneliness isn’t just a well-being risk, it is an acute business risk. The effects of loneliness don’t just permeate an individual’s personal life, it can negatively impact their professional life. When employees don’t feel a sense of camaraderie or belonging at work, their performance suffers. According to research from Gartner, employees who are satisfied with camaraderie in their organization show a high enterprise contribution of 23%. But employees who are dissatisfied with the camaraderie in their organization show a high enterprise contribution of only 13%. Organizations have taken early steps to mitigate loneliness by targeting interactions within the workplace and beyond, like mandating employees to return to the office to boost collaboration and connection. But proximity alone isn’t a cure for employee loneliness. It ignores the root causes of the issue. Moving forward, CHROs need to address loneliness in the workforce through two primary strategies: improving in-role connectedness to boost productivity and supporting out-of-work connectedness to meet employee well-being needs. Improving in-role connectedness to boost employee productivity Employees should have autonomy when it comes to building personal connections, as well as guidance from HR on how to make the most of their interactions. That requires CHROs to foster guided interactions that engender interpersonal cohesiveness and naturalize sharing behavior, which establishes a new, more human-centered set of collaboration norms. There are three simple actions CHROs can take to achieve this: 1. Empower employees to personalize connection-building CHROs should give employees ownership of building their connections with one another. Not only does this promote personalization of how they strengthen these relationships, it also encourages them to make connections according to their own needs or preferences. CHROs can help employees fortify these peer connections over time in partnership with communication leaders. In turn, they can grow employees’ connection with the organization’s culture and community through socialization. 2. Encourage employees to be intentional about their collaboration needs Gartner analysis found that satisfaction with collaboration significantly impacts employee performance. Now, not all collaboration supports connectedness or productivity. Intentionality helps employees think carefully and understand which mode of collaboration best suits both the nature of their work and their individual preferences. Through guided collaboration and actively reshaping the needs and norms of how individuals interact, CHROs can equip teams to have intentionality and reciprocity when collaborating. Gartner found that organizations that practice guided collaboration achieve profit goals 10% more often than those that don’t. 3. Support affinity groups that connect employees and encourage breaks CHROs should foster connections between employees beyond work-related tasks. Affinity groups, akin to employee resource groups, connect employees based on common interests that align with the company’s business model and values. Imagine a surfboard company offering time off for employees to surf together. These benefits can boost engagement and lead to a more motivated workforce. Support connection outside of work to boost well-being Employees who feel their employer supports their lives outside the office are more motivated to perform in the workplace. There are several ways CHROs can support employee connection outside of work: 1. Offer employees “volunteer time off” (VTO) VTO policies grant employees paid leave for volunteering activities. Some corporations allow staff to take a set number of hours each week, while others grant up to a week of leave. VTO initiatives can enhance employee engagement, build connections with local communities, and showcase corporate social responsibility. 2. Provide interpersonal, out-of-work connection perks Some progressive organizations offer enhanced support to help employees find and make meaningful personal connections outside of work. This includes things like offering stipends for bike passes to encourage well-being in connected social settings. These out-of-office perks also provide talent attraction and retention benefits. 3. Make it easier to take a break with global recharge days With many employees either not taking vacation days or working while on vacation, some organizations encourage employees to use their vacation days jointly to disconnect from work. If most, if not all, employees take vacation together, they can all fully disconnect from work and recharge. Many factors have contributed to the epidemic of loneliness in the workplace, and these feelings of isolation have real business implications for organizations that don’t address them. With CEOs hyper-focused on growth in 2025, and seeing employee productivity as key to achieving it, HR has an important role to play in removing any productivity barriers, including hidden ones like loneliness. By treating loneliness, and outside of the workplace, organizations reap the benefits of a healthier, more productive, and engaged workforce. View the full article

At its annual Google I/O developer conference in Mountain View next week, Google will try to rally developers around one of its next big bets: Android XR. Later this year, Samsung is set to release the first VR headset powered by the spatial computing operating system, and Google is aiming to attract as many developers as possible to build apps for the device. That’s no small task for a company whose history with AR and VR has been marked by inconsistency. Google was among the first to experiment with AR glasses, gave millions their first taste of VR through low-cost mobile viewers, and even launched a stand-alone immersive VR headset before Meta—only to abandon each project in rapid succession, leaving partners frustrated. “Google has burnt a lot of bridges in the XR community,” cautions an industry insider who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of reprisal. Still, there’s a sense of cautious optimism among AR and VR developers that this time might be different. One reason: the competitive landscape has changed. With Apple and Meta investing tens of billions into immersive technology, the pressure is on. Android XR also aligns with Google’s current strengths, particularly in AI and in its push to expand Android’s reach. A Google spokesperson declined to comment for this story. Daydreams and Glassholes Google’s first foray into AR/VR remains one of the industry’s most infamous missteps. Unveiled in 2012, Google Glass paired a camera with a tiny display and was touted as a peek into a post-smartphone world. Instead, it became a cautionary tale. Critics were unnerved by the device’s always-on camera, dubbing users “glassholes.” A $1,500 price tag and limited usefulness sealed its fate, and Google soon dropped its consumer ambitions for Glass. Despite that bruising experience, the company didn’t fully retreat from the space. In 2014, Google introduced Cardboard, a DIY viewer that turned smartphones into rudimentary VR devices. That effort later evolved into Daydream, a more comfortable headset with a controller, supporting immersive videos and simple games. Cardboard and Daydream did reach millions of users, but their reliance on smartphones made them impractical for sustained use. “We were looking for that spark of adoption,” says a former Google employee who worked on Daydream. (Former employees were also granted anonymity by Fast Company out of fear of reprisal.) That spark never came. “It never became a toothbrush use case,” the employee adds, referencing the goal of making the device something people use daily, like brushing their teeth. Over time, Google did achieve that with many of its products: Billions now use Gmail, Chrome, and Maps every day. But that success may have distorted expectations for VR. “You tend to forget how hard it is to get billions of users,” says a second former Google employee involved in VR. Expecting too much too soon may have doomed these projects. “It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy,” the first former employee says. A Long List of Cancelled Projects Google eventually moved beyond smartphone-based VR with a stand-alone headset built in partnership with Lenovo in 2018. Running Daydream, the device had potential to compete with Meta’s Quest, but Google scrapped it a year later. “When it didn’t become a huge success overnight, they pivoted,” says the industry insider. Daydream joined a growing list of abandoned Google AR/VR efforts: the immersive storytelling series Spotlight Stories, the cloud-based video platform Jump and its professional camera line, the 3D modeling tool Blocks, the asset platform Poly, and several consumer VR cameras created with hardware partners. Some of these projects were open-sourced upon cancellation. The popular VR painting app Tilt Brush, for example, lives on as a community-driven project on Meta’s Quest. Others survived the internal shakeups: Owlchemy Labs, acquired by Google in 2017, still thrives. Its whimsical title Job Simulator remains one of the best-selling games on Quest. Many of Google’s early AR/VR projects had real potential—if only the company had stayed the course. “Google had all these weird, cool, fun projects and acquisitions that they made very early, but they just didn’t follow through with them,” says the industry insider. A Lack of Conviction Beyond high expectations, insiders point to a deeper issue: Google’s hesitation to publicly commit to AR and VR. “Google was not willing to put a shoe on the ground the same way Meta has,” says the first former employee. “The difference was that Mark [Zuckerberg] was out there, publicly saying: I’m staking my future on this,” agrees the second. “I never felt that we had that type of conviction from [Google CEO] Sundar [Pichai].” Zuckerberg’s enthusiasm for VR and the metaverse has been widely mocked, but Meta’s persistence has paid off. The company has sold tens of millions of Quest headsets, and its Ray-Ban smart glasses have found surprising success. Apple’s Vision Pro and its reported investments in smart glasses further validate the space. Now Google is returning with big ambitions of its own. Having turned Android into the world’s most widely used mobile OS, the company wants to replicate that success with Android XR. Unlike Apple and Meta, Google plans to build this future through partnerships—starting with Samsung—rather than relying on in-house hardware. There’s precedent for this kind of turnaround. After an underwhelming start, Google’s Android TV platform eventually matured into one of the top smart TV ecosystems, with over 270 million monthly active users on Google TV-powered devices. Google’s Assets: Android and AI To replicate that success in XR, Google will once again leverage its mobile ecosystem. “Google will look to work with developers to port existing Android apps to Android XR, much like the way Apple brought iPadOS apps to the Vision Pro,” says CCS Insight analyst Gebbie. “This could give Google an advantage over Meta.” Google’s massive AI investments could also prove pivotal. The company has already demonstrated how AI can enhance AR glasses, and Gebbie believes AI will be key in simplifying interaction within spatial computing systems. With the tech in place, Google’s future in XR hinges on one factor: commitment. “This time around, Google must fully commit to Android XR if it is to seriously try and build an ecosystem,” says Gebbie. “If Google makes another false start, then its partners may look elsewhere.” “As long as Google has conviction, I would never bet against them,” agrees the second former employee. View the full article

For years, global stars have traveled to West Africa as ambassadors of humanitarian and anti-corruption efforts: Rihanna in Senegal urging world leaders to donate aid, Bono in Ghana championing transparency as “the best vaccine against corruption.” All the while, Vincent Bolloré, the billionaire power broker who wields significant influence over the parent company behind their music labels, was busy building an industrial empire in those same countries. That empire is now at the center of corruption trials, sexual abuse allegations, and a sweeping criminal complaint filed by West African nonprofits. “Vincent Bolloré stole money from our communities and used it to build an empire,” Jean-Jacques Lumumba, the head of the anti-corruption watchdog group Restitution for Africa, alleges in a statement to Fast Company. For some UMG musicians, the accusations against Bolloré present a jarring contradiction: Artists are using their platforms to fight injustice, while a powerful figure profiting from their music built his fortune through actions that critics say undermined democracy. The Bolloré family’s industrial empire traces back over two centuries to its origins in cigarette and Bible paper manufacturing. Over time, its global success allowed the family to pivot into West African industries like rubber, palm oil, and port operations. More recently, the family gained what French courts described in April as “effective control” of the media conglomerate Vivendi. Until 2021, Vivendi owned all of Universal Music Group (UMG), the world’s leading music company, and Bolloré’s fortunes were widely seen as tied to it. In 2021, Vivendi spun off UMG as a publicly traded company, unlocking $53 billion of value on its first day of trading, while allowing the Bolloré family to retain their position as UMG’s largest shareholders. Worldwide, UMG manages five million titles across some of the industry’s most iconic labels: Interscope, Capitol, Def Jam, Island, Republic, Virgin. Technically the Bollorés control just 28% of UMG—10% directly and another 18% through Vivendi. But that gives the Bollorés outsized sway. (Kanye West once claimed he was going to bypass label execs with contract complaints and take his grievances straight to the top: “Don’t need the Arnaud meeting anymore,” he tweeted in 2020, referring to Vivendi’s CEO Arnaud de Puyfontaine. “I will be meeting with Vincent Bolloré.”) This complex web of corporate control casts a long shadow, even as UMG artists champion causes in regions where Bolloré’s other ventures have come under fire. In 2022, Usher and SZA, whose songs include UMG distribution deals, went to Ghana to headline the Global Citizen Festival benefiting West Africa. That same year, fellow UMG client The Weeknd also launched a UN humanitarian fund benefiting the same region. But those actions coincided with a wave of divestment from Bolloré’s businesses on the part of European investment funds: Switzerland’s largest pension funds put his companies on their exclusion list, and Norway’s $1.7 trillion sovereign wealth fund—the world’s largest—pulled out entirely, citing human rights reports alleging abuses in Liberia, Cameroon, and Sierra Leone, including land grabs and rape. That financial pressure mirrored growing legal scrutiny. Over the past decade, Bolloré has faced a series of corruption investigations in France tied to his business dealings in West Africa—ranging from election meddling to bribery and port monopolies. He was indicted in 2018, and French prosecutors continue to pursue charges related to those allegations. Critics of Bolloré contend that artists who remain silent risk inadvertently reinforcing the same exploitative systems many of them seek to challenge. “Dirty money off the backs of African communities” Last month, the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office said it was still working on Bolloré’s corruption trial related to the Togo bribery claims. This came days after Bloomberg News ran a 4,000-word investigation into the sexual coercion of women working on Bolloré’s Liberian rubber plantations. Workers recently set fire to the office and manager’s home to protest the squalid conditions. Now, a coalition of 11 West African nonprofits known as Restitution for Africa (RAF) has filed a brand-new complaint with French authorities accusing Bolloré of using “corruption, favoritism, and influence peddling” to win port contracts in three additional countries: Ghana, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire. The complaint, also filed with the French National Financial Prosecutor’s Office and reviewed by Fast Company, accuses the Bolloré Group of a criminal graft where it conspired with corrupt politicians to build a massive port, rail, and logistics monopoly across West Africa—then cashed out, selling that subsidiary (Bolloré Africa Logistics) for $6.2 billion, more than Sierra Leone’s annual GDP. The complaint argues the money earned should be given to citizens of those African nations. The coalition is calling the complaint “unprecedented in its pan-African character.” RAF followed that by launching a public petition on Thursday called “Global Billionaire Accountability Project.” Over the past month, it has worked to solicit support from 50 major artists under contract with UMG labels—they include Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Sam Smith, The Weeknd, Usher, SZA, U2, Sting, Alicia Keys, and Billie Eilish. The group sent a letter asking them to demand that Bolloré divest from UMG, arguing that UMG artists are financially tethered to “a corporate entity accused of profiting from illicit and exploitative activities.” The letter concludes: “We want to ensure you’re aware that these ill-gotten gains have been funding Bolloré’s ownership of UMG—dirty money off the backs of African communities.” UMG declined to comment. A representative for Vincent Bolloré and the Bolloré Group did not respond to multiple inquiries by Fast Company. Restitution for Africa says so far none of the artists have responded to their letter. Fast Company also sent requests for comment to the publicists of more than a dozen UMG artists who prioritize social impact work. This includes all the artists mentioned above, other industry heavyweights like Lady Gaga and Kendrick Lamar, as well as Angélique Kidjo, the French-Beninese five-time Grammy winner who has served as a UNICEF Goodwill Ambassador in Africa since the mid-2000s. Their representatives did not respond. Bono’s ONE Campaign—publisher of 2014’s widely read “Trillion Dollar Scandal” report warning that “shady business practices” in places like West Africa were siphoning up to “a trillion dollars every year from developing countries”—also didn’t respond to an inquiry. While many artists publicly support causes that would seem to pit them against Bolloré’s business pursuits, stars might fear speaking out could carry contractual and professional risks. In recent years, boldface entertainment names have publicly accused UMG of prioritizing profits over artist interests. Musicians from Drake and Iggy Azalea to Limp Bizkit have spoken out—even sued—over unpaid royalties, licensing conflicts, and disputes over control of their work. And to be sure, pressuring UMG is not without risk, particularly for smaller artists who depend on the corporation’s support to stay afloat. Restitution for Africa is led by the anti-corruption watchdog group Transparency International and Jean-Jacques Lumumba, a former a former banker who in the mid-2010s exposed billions of dollars worth of embezzlements by Congolese President Joseph Kabila’s government and now lives in exile in Europe. At Restitution for Africa, he’s turned to different corruption occurring in his part of the world. “This is not a man who global musicians at Universal Music Group should be OK with taking money from,” Lumumba tells Fast Company. The French government has long grappled with its role in allowing political leaders in postcolonial Africa to steal from their own people, then park that stolen wealth back in France, or elsewhere. In 2021, President Emmanuel Macron’s government enacted a new law strengthening the legal pathway to return such corrupt assets, once seized, to their countries of origin. This followed years of high-profile cases involving hundreds of millions of euros laundered by leaders of countries like Equatorial Guinea and Congo to fund lavish Parisian real estate, high-end art, and expensive cars, the types of corruption Bono protested while in Africa and his ONE Campaign called out in its “Trillion Dollar Scandal.” Past cases primarily targeted corrupt heads of state and their families. But more recently, nonprofits have sought restitution for “ill-gotten” corporate gains. The most prominent example involves French energy giant TotalEnergies’ operations in Congo. In 2019, two anti-corruption nonprofits filed a criminal complaint against Total alleging that it won oil exploration rights through bribery. The case is still being argued five years later, demonstrating the complexities of expanding the target to include companies. But if a whistleblower hadn’t revealed a web of suspicious financial transactions tying Total and Congolese political elites to various bank accounts, it wouldn’t have had legs. That person was RAF’s Lumumba. In 2021, under mounting pressure, Bolloré Group parent company Bolloré SE paid €12 million to settle the Togo bribery charges brought against the corporation. Two years later, the Bollorés sold Bolloré Africa Logistics and started investing more heavily in the media industry, similar to a certain “free speech absolutist” tech billionaire in America. The African sale, combined with UMG artists’ profits, has helped breathe life into a rightwing French media juggernaut. Chanez Mensous, head of litigation and advocacy at the French corporate ethics watchdog Sherpa, calls this “quite symptomatic” of the Bolloré business approach. (Sherpa has joined previous criminal corruption cases against Bolloré, and will be a party to his individual trial next year, distinct from the 2021 corporate settlement, involving the Togo port bribery allegations.) “They prey on countries with weak governance standards,” Mensous says. “They have the financial strength to consider sanctions and fines a reasonable economic risk they can absorb. Their relative impunity is made possible by the control they have over the media. They use SLAPPs [strategic lawsuits against public participation] to silence civil societies and journalists covering these cases.” The family currently controls the telecom giant Canal+, Europe 1, various magazines, and France’s only Sunday newspaper—along with CNews, a free Canal+ channel that Harvard’s Nieman Reports recently criticized for “its role in mainstreaming far-right ideas.” That shift began accelerating after 2017, the year Bolloré took over the channel. Since then, CNews has added figures like Éric Zemmour, the far-right TV pundit turned politician repeatedly convicted of racial and religious hate speech. In the past few years, the network has been a place to find anti-vax histrionics, calls for Muslims to renounce their faith, interest in the Great Replacement Theory, suggestions that immigrants caused Paris’s pre-Olympics bedbug infestation, and full-blown panic over le wokisme—this as many UMG artists worldwide were busy promoting COVID vaccination efforts, calling out police brutality, and condemning white supremacy. Last summer, CNews rose (briefly) to the rank of France’s #1 news channel. Bolloré is also credited with empowering the far-right French leader Marine Le Pen—echoing her brand of nationalism, as well as her warm feelings toward Russia. Weeks ago when Donald The President berated Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, Bolloré’s outlets took cues, turning friendly fire on Ukraine’s European allies. “The far-right broadcasters and newspapers owned by Vincent Bolloré are backing Vladimir Putin,” Le Monde told readers. “The French Rupert Murdoch” Meanwhile, Bolloré’s outlets have undergone an ideological purge serious enough to inspire Reporters Without Borders to produce a documentary chronicling their “repeated attacks on press freedom and the independence of editorial offices,” then denouncing them as “an unprecedented threat to democracy.” During France’s latest elections in 2022, hundreds of journalists and activists formed Operation Stop Bolloré, a coalition that accused Bolloré media of “breaking with all journalistic ethics,” arguing “it is no longer a matter of informing citizens, but of transforming minds.” On top of that, Bolloré lawyers have done their best to silence critical reporters and nonprofits that dig into the company’s business operations, like in 2016 when three newspapers (Mediapart, L’Obs, and Le Point) and two nonprofits (Sherpa and ReAct) reported that a Bolloré company bulldozed West African villagers’ land. In 15 years, the company has hit journalists and activists with at least 20 gag lawsuits. The Bolloré media arm is eyeing expansions back in Africa, too: If a deal awaiting approval closes, the Bollorés will own South African-based satellite TV provider MultiChoice, via the continent’s largest-ever media acquisition, giving them a subscriber base in sub-Saharan Africa of more than 20 million viewers. Of course, Bolloré’s right-wing crusade puts UMG artists in a bigger bind—whether they champion African causes or not, do they want their music profits to flow, in part, to a so-called “French Rupert Murdoch” who is bankrolling a political agenda many of them have publicly denounced? UMG’s ownership structure already presents an ethical dilemma for its most socially conscious performers: Beyond the Bollorés’ 28% control, the next largest shareholder, with 20%, is Tencent—the Chinese tech giant the U.S. government labels a Communist military asset. Noted The President booster Bill Ackman controls the third most, with 10%. Taylor Swift isn’t active in Africa, but she has repeatedly condemned racism and the oppression of women, and has lamented the “naiveté that we used to have about [bigotry].” The Imagine Dragons band members, signed to Interscope, are vocal official ambassadors of the Ukrainian state charity United24. Kendrick Lamar’s music criticizes racial injustice and systemic oppression, while Lady Gaga has used her platform to condemn far-right rhetoric as an attack on democracy and human rights. And that’s just four of UMG’s better-known artists. While Bolloré Group got blacklisted by Swiss funds in 2023 over human rights abuses, it’s harder to find examples of controversial investors caving to public pressure and divesting from publicly traded companies. That highlights the challenge of holding powerful billionaires accountable who can shield themselves from accountability. It also explains RAF’s long-shot strategy of seeking to leverage the platforms of celebrities whose careers aren’t directly impacted by a French shipping mogul, and who have largely ignored outside requests to speak out against him. However, since RAF’s letters went out, one artist has taken note of Bolloré’s business practices: Drake. The rapper is currently suing UMG over Kendrick Lamar’s Grammy-winning diss track “Not Like Us”—a blistering takedown featuring the line “Drake, I hear you like ’em young,” with cover art showing a sex-offender map plastered with pins around Drake’s Toronto home. Just days after receiving the petition, Drake’s lawyers referenced Bolloré’s growing scandals in a legal filing, arguing that “recent headlines involving UMG’s largest stakeholder” call for greater transparency from the label. View the full article

Back in the 1930s, Robert W. Woodruff, president of the Coca-Cola Co., would carry a red swatch in his wallet. Of course, it wasn’t just any red. It was Coca-Cola red. And so anywhere he went and encountered his brand—painted on a wall, wrapping a refrigerator—he would pull out the little swatch to check that it matched. Woodruff understood the importance of Coca-Cola’s brand equity as it expanded globally—a challenge that has only grown since, now that Coca-Cola sells 2.2 billion servings a day across 200 countries, 150 languages, and 30 million points of sale. But where Woodruff used a swatch, Coca-Cola’s design team has spent the past four years dreaming up a modern operational upgrade to its 400 pages of brand guidelines. Teaming with Adobe, it developed Project Fizzion. Trained specifically on Coca-Cola’s design logic, it’s a brand-managing AI that lives inside Adobe platforms like Photoshop and Illustrator, generates designs, and, most of all, helps keep designers across the globe brand-compliant as they dream up the next big campaign. In a design world that’s equally dependent upon and terrified of generative AI tools, Coca-Cola is clear that Fizzion is not about cost cutting via AI. As it’s integrating Fizzion globally, it’s doing so with no reduction in spending on brand campaigns. Instead, the company believes it’s charting a path forward that’s sustainable for creatives to drive better work and eliminate headaches under deadline. “Fizzion was never a design automation tool,” says Rapha Abreu, global VP of design at Coca-Cola. “It’s a creative copilot that is powered by AI but guided by designers.” Dreaming up a new AIWhen Abreu joined Coca-Cola in 2021, his design team—who spent countless hours in meetings explaining to external agencies that their seemingly great ideas broke brand guidelines—became almost philosophical in imagining another way forward. Given that any Coca-Cola campaign can include up to 5,000 separate assets, it had become nearly impossible to manage. “We had this kind of crazy idea,” Abreu recalls. “What if the Coca-Cola logo could learn what to do and what not to do?” They imagined software built so a designer literally couldn’t place the logo in the wrong context. And if that could work for the logo, maybe the same thing could be true for colors, typography, and imagery associated with Coca-Cola campaigns. It was an enticing thought that was ahead of its time, but only a little. Within two years, ChatGPT and other GenAI tools would drop upon the world to automate all sorts of tasks that never before seemed possible. Companies including Adobe and Canva quickly whipped up GenAI tools that could suck in brand guidelines via PDF, then apply them to design templates. Sometimes they worked. And sometimes they didn’t. These sorts of guidelines can have trouble scaling to new, complex projects, and of course they do. Guidelines are just words trying to articulate visual relationships that are sometimes as instinctual as they are codified. Coca-Cola’s idea, led largely by its global head of AI design, Dom Heinrich, was to start with the images themselves, and to train a machine on Coca-Cola’s visual sensibility rather than a written rule set. Given that Coca-Cola and its partners were already working inside Adobe products, partnering with the company on building out such an AI system made a lot of sense. “It happens inside the tools that creatives already use,” says Abreu. “For us, that was the most important thing.” Together, the Adobe and Coca-Cola teams developed a different approach to training AI and deploying it at scale, which they call Project Fizzion (what seems like a most certain nod to Coca-Cola’s carbonated roots). How does Fizzion learn?Many AIs are already trained on images, but Fizzion takes a slightly different approach. It’s trained more on visual design systems, stuffed full of actual Coca-Cola assets. This means Fizzion isn’t analyzing a century of soda campaigns in order to hallucinate a polar bear dressed as Santa Claus sharing a Coke. It’s specifically not generating imagery like Adobe’s own Firefly or DALL-E, but it will create a new variation on an existing design, mixing and matching Coca-Cola assets to do so. Fizzion lives like Microsoft Copilot right inside Adobe software, considering the interdependencies of things on the screen. “When you’re designing a visual identity system, the model should be able to learn, not just from the images but from the relationships between all the components, how the text maps to the images’ other elements that need to be part of it,” says Ash King, senior director of Firefly enterprise solutions at Adobe. “That allows [the designer] to test various aspect ratios, free-form.” Fizzion can see the canvas a designer is working on in real time, complete with the positioning of logos, imagery, and typefaces. The AI learns from Coca-Cola’s own designers only when a project is finalized. Once a designer has a product they like—and knows works with brand standards—they save it as what they call a Style ID that adds to the AI’s knowledge. That’s basically the visual logic of one Cola-Cola campaign. At this time Fizzion also collects all necessary brand assets for that campaign so that it can incorporate them perfectly whenever necessary. (In other words, Fizzion is pulling the Coca-Cola logo fresh every time, rather than dreaming up what it’s supposed to look like from old references.) This is how Fizzion is trained to learn new styles. (It also incorporates background from Coca-Cola’s 400-page brand guidelines, via Adobe Firefly.) From there, Fizzion sits atop a global production pipeline that allows partners to tweak the visual formula without breaking it. How teams across Coca-Cola use FizzionBuilding a marketing campaign in Fizzion can start with a prompt to generate—something like “Coca-Cola polar bears on the ocean”—or with a blank canvas as Fizzion watches along. At the very top of the stack, the Coca-Cola design team has full access to build or alter anything across the brand that it wants. Partner agencies that Coke hires to make ads have more limitations. They can generate a new aspect ratio for a campaign on demand, and the AI will piece it all together. But if they want to stretch the logo—real bad—Fizzion won’t let them. However, they can send that change as a request to Coca-Cola proper through the platform to get approval (saving a meeting). As design teams go down the chain from America to local markets, more and more of the design process becomes about localization. These teams have the least amount of access to tweak a campaign—certain assets and layers may be locked—though they can still make requests up the chain. This might sound controlling (and of course to an extent Coca-Cola is very much controlling its brand). But the design team argues that having these brand guidelines integrated into design tools is ultimately more freeing for design partners. “One thing that we speak a lot internally about this global system is that we need to help designers and creatives downstream do the right thing, right. So it cannot be a burden for them to try to be compliant with the brand,” Abreu says. “We need to make this as easy as possible.” However, with kerning off the table, Coca-Cola argues that it leaves time for creatives to focus on everything else about a campaign: “storytelling, having ideas, making sure cultural nuance is applied, and [focusing on] emotional resonance,” Abreu says. Indeed, despite all of the checks and balances in the system, Coca-Cola’s designers are hoping that their creative partners continue to push back. In fact, they are depending on it, as that’s the only way they believe a brand can grow and evolve. “If everybody builds on the same LLM, it just follows the same kind of way of interacting with an AI. We will just get a lot of the same,” says Heinrich. “We believe that designers need to be more in charge. . . . [They need to] be more creative in order to push the AI to the next level. The better you are at your job and the better you push, the better the outputs are and the more uniqueness comes from them.” For now, Coca-Cola is all-in with Fizzion. Since March of this year, every partner agency that’s building a campaign is required to create it with a Fizzion Style ID. And the Coca-Cola team believes Fizzion is so efficient at handling design standards that its 400-page PDF guidelines will fall out of use. As for Adobe, it’s built a powerful design tool that, no doubt, many companies using its platform would benefit from. However, it’s also been designed to meet the gargantuan needs of Coca-Cola, meaning it’s probably too big and multitiered for many teams to adopt efficiently. “Few companies are thinking on the scale as Coke is right now. So we need to take a future-forward look at this and figure out how it’s best applied,” says King. “We like to start with the use cases. We like to have something very concrete that a customer wants to do and then build backwards into what we’re [shipping].” View the full article

In order to power Meta’s massive AI data center being built in northeastern Louisiana, the local utility company has proposed building three new natural gas power plants. It’s a move that “flies in the face of Meta’s climate commitments,” Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, ranking member of the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works, wrote in a letter sent to Meta on Wednesday and shared exclusively with Fast Company. The Senate committee is launching an inquiry into Facebook and Instagram’s parent company over this fossil fuel expansion, seeking information about how the move squares with Meta’s claims that it is currently net zero across its global operations, and its aim to reach net zero emissions across its value chain by 2030. “Meta’s decision to power its data centers with fossil fuels while claiming net zero status is deeply troubling. This isn’t leadership—it’s greenwashing. Families are already paying the price for climate inaction through higher insurance costs,” Whitehouse said in a statement to Fast Company. “Meta’s backslide from its own climate pledges risks triggering broader economic harm at a time when we urgently need corporate responsibility.” Meta’s mega AI data center Meta’s forthcoming data center will be the company’s largest, a $10 billion, four million square foot facility in Richland Parish, Louisiana. Meta expects construction to be complete in 2030, and has said it will “play a vital role in accelerating our AI progress.” Meta is working on the project with the local utility provider, New Orleans-based Entergy—which has requested expedited state approval to build three combustion-turbine gas plants in order to generate 2,300 megawatts of electricity. In a statement to Fast Company, Entergy said natural gas “is the lowest reasonable cost option available that can support the 24/7 electrical demands of a large data center like Meta,” and that neither solar or wind would provide enough reliable, around-the-clock energy. The site is also near Haynesville Shale, “one of the most abundant natural gas shale plays in the United States.” The Louisiana Public Service Commission is still reviewing Entergy’s proposal for the new gas plants. Meta’s data center climate promises As part of Meta’s climate commitments, the company has invested in both carbon removal and clean energy projects. It says it will continue this work amid the Louisiana data center project and its need for three new natural gas plants. Entergy’s new natural gas generators are expected to come online between 2028 and 2029. Entergy says future upgrades to those generators could incorporate carbon capture. Meta says it’s exploring carbon capture technology at an Entergy power plant in Lake Charles, Louisiana, and that it’s working with Entergy to bring at least 1,500 megawatts of new renewables to the grid. In 2024, Meta announced a solar farm project in Louisiana with electricity company RWE that will provide 374 megawatts of power. The company says that since 2020, it has offset its global electricity use by buying renewable energy portfolios to “match” its own electricity consumption, and that it will do the same with the new Louisiana data center. The EPW Committee’s concerns The Environment and Public Works (EPW) committee’s inquiry says these moves are vague and “offer little reassurance” about the data center’s climate impact. “Meta has not shown that the planned generation from its solar plant will match its data center electricity load and displace equivalent fossil fuel generation. Neither Entergy nor Meta have disclosed details about the carbon capture project or the amount of Meta’s financial contribution, raising doubt as to whether Meta is meaningfully offsetting its emissions,” Whitehouse’s letter reads. “And Meta’s construction of new gas plants risks locking in future fossil fuel assets; a responsible corporate actor would show how these plants will be soon phased out or equipped with carbon capture.” These gaps, he adds, “raise concerns that Meta’s commitment to achieving net zero emissions is not genuine.” Through its inquiry, the EPW is requesting various documents from Meta, including analyses and calculations about the data center’s expected energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions; Meta’s intended carbon capture funding (and whether it’s contributing to a new carbon capture project or an existing one); details on how much carbon the company will remove from the atmosphere; and if Meta will install carbon capture at these new gas-fired plants. It’s also seeking data to support Entergy’s assertion that natural gas is the only power option, and justifications for why renewables with battery storage weren’t a feasible alternative. The inquiry also asks for analysis to show whether all of Meta’s actions—the new gas plants, solar capacity, and carbon capture—align with the company’s net zero goals. Whitehouse has requested responses by May 28, and though Meta is not legally required to reply, the inquiry puts added public pressure on the data center project—which has already received scrutiny from environmental and consumer protection advocates. The broad impact of AI data centers Though coal is considered the dirtiest fossil fuel, natural gas comes with its own environmental harms. Burning natural gas emits carbon dioxide, and, when it leaks out of pipes before it’s burned, it emits methane, an especially potent greenhouse gas. In 2022, burning natural gas for energy accounted for 35% of the country’s total energy-related CO2 emissions, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. Scientists and environmental experts have urged the U.S. to reduce its reliance on natural gas, even as demand for it has grown in recent years. The increasing use of AI, which will require new energy sources, is only adding to that demand. The surge in AI also poses a risk to the energy grid, and could raise Americans’ energy bills. Entergy’s planned fossil fuel expansion for Meta’s Louisiana data center could put local utility customers at risk of absorbing “hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, of additional costs,” one energy consultant told Business Insider. AI requires massive amounts of energy to operate, and if those energy demands outstrip what the grid can provide, residents will likely see both higher energy costs and more risks of outages. Utility customers across the country have already seen these impacts, as well as increased demands on the grid. In Oregon, residential rates have increased 50% in the past five years in part because the state is the fifth largest market for data centers in the nation. Some say the lack of renewable energy exacerbates this issue. Entergy Louisiana has “almost no renewable power in its system,” per a recent Floodlight article; at the same time, financial consulting firms have projected a 90% increase on electricity prices for Entergy customers between 2018 and 2030. The The President administration has also hampered renewable energy by slashing funding and shutting down projects under development, even though experts say wind and solar are the cheapest and fastest sources of new energy to deploy. (Meta donated $1 million to The President’s inauguration—part of a wave of Big Tech companies appealing to the administration—and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg hosted an inauguration party for the president.) Senator Whitehouse recently introduced legislation, called the Clean Cloud Act, that would set emissions performance standards for data centers, and also use their revenue to help consumers save on utility bills. View the full article

Foreign minister signals Berlin will commit to 3.5% in ‘hard’ military spending and 1.5% for infrastructure by 2032View the full article

Why relying on referral traffic may create an SEO weakness that can undermine long-term growth. The post How Referral Traffic Undermines Long-Term Brand Growth appeared first on Search Engine Journal. View the full article

Like other famous structures of similar dimensions, the 48-story Transamerica Pyramid, a revolutionary ‘70s modernist skyscraper and San Francisco icon, has a bit of history buried beneath its ground floor. Unsplash A recently unearthed time capsule, buried in 1974 and discovered during a recent round of renovations, offers a picture of San Francisco’s past. The site of the structure—then a parking lot—was initially part of the original shoreline of the city that reeked of historical significance, from the city’s growth as a shipping and banking capital. The capsule even contains a recipe for Pisco Punch, a cocktail that was invented at the nearby Bank Exchange Saloon, site of the city’s original stock exchange. Part of an exhibit in the building lobby opening May 18, the time capsule’s contents are timeless: pictures of the building’s steel frame beginning to stretch skyward, or vintage news clippings and images of the city after its last ’60s flowering. But within the cylindrical steel capsule, which looks a bit like a large propane tank, there’s also a narrative about building in America, and how that’s radically changed in the last 50 years. The battle over the permitting and construction of the Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco from 1969 to 1972 offers a flashback to a different time in development, real estate, and construction. The tower was proposed and built in just three years, a sprint compared to the time it takes today to build a signature part of a city skyline. Construction alone for the One World Trade in New York City took eight years; the Comcast Tech Center in Philadelphia, which had issues with cracks in some of the steel frame, took five years; and the St. Regis in Chicago took four years. An analysis of high-rise buildings by Construction Physics found building speeds decreased significantly over the past century, in many cases extending the time it takes to finish by roughly 50%. Buildings are more complex and require more permitting today, including complicated environmental review processes. This time-consuming process of development has led to backlash against what opponents call stifling building regulations. It has also led to more engagement from architects around code reform issues including elevator rules and exit stairs, and the formation of the abundance agenda, a center-left push by pundits like Ezra Klein to get the nation building fast again. “The pace of the approval and the construction here is unbelievable,” says developer Michael Shvo, who paid $650 million to acquire the Transamerica Pyramid in 2020, at the depths of the COVID office freeze.. “The ​​Mayor was very determined to get this thing approved, and Transamerica was very determined to get a building built, and with all the controversy, once they got the green light, they ran as fast as possible. They built it in two years, we couldn’t do that today.” A more humane debate Transamerica was then a massive business conglomerate with interests in banking, financial services, and insurance. According to former public relations staffer John Krizek, who worked for Transamerica during the pyramid’s construction and ultimately created the time capsule, the back-and-forth between protestors and developers at the time was more humane, more respectable, and more amusing. The conversation around the Transamerica Pyramid was, at the time, a larger debate about images, architecture, and aesthetics. The tower was not just a unique shape, but would tower above the skyline. It was to be the city’s tallest building, and wouldn’t be surpassed until 2018’s Salesforce Tower. Artists and community members protested the building for aesthetic reasons, and general distrust of large corporations. Posters passed around the city at the time proclaimed “San Francisco Gets the Shaft” or “Artists Against the Icicle.” The city’s then planning director called the pyramid, designed by architect William Pereira, “inhumane.” During early street protests in front of the company’s office, Transamerica execs sent secretaries to bring ice tea to the protestors lining up outside. During another protest, Krizek and his colleagues printed up fake fortune cookies at a nearby Chinatown bakery, frantically stuffing messages like “Transamerica–Not a square outfit” or “People who protest pyramid seek Che-ops publicity.” Krizek recalled that the company was determined to break ground in December 1969. The building plan was announced in January of that year, and there was a tax break worth approximately $750,000 expiring at the end of December. Since Krizek and his coworkers knew that as soon as the company was given approval to build, there would be an appeal, they planned to move fast and break ground before paperwork was filed. To head off any challenges, they staged a tractor and truck near the site and sent someone to pick up the approval during the midday lunch break; they were able to get a time-stamped photo of someone digging at site while those opposing the project saw their appeal delayed as staffer enjoyed their lunch. “The emotions around this building, I’ve never seen this for any other building in the world,” says Shvo. “The debates today are more practical; this structure will block my view or cast a shadow. You can’t say that about this building, it was a pyramid designed to let the light down to the street level. It didn’t block views, the only thing people could complain about was this idea of the Manhattanization of San Francisco.” Originally, Pereira’s design was meant for a new building for ABC in New York City. The network passed on the project, deeming the design too futuristic, and went with another architect’s vision. Today, the Transamerica Pyramid stands as an icon in San Francisco, with 80% of the space leased in a challenging office market. The building ABC picked instead? It’s since been demolished. View the full article

A meta description is what you‘re reading right now—a page description that can appear in search results. View the full article

Students are still setting fire to their Chromebooks for TikTok—and now they’re facing the consequences. Fast Company first reported on the #ChromebookChallenge trend last week, following a series of school evacuations caused by students igniting laptop fires. The fires are started by inserting items such as pencils, paper clips, and pushpins into the charging ports of school-issued Chromebooks. This can cause the battery to overheat, potentially sparking a fire or explosion that releases toxic fumes. The #ChromebookChallenge reportedly began in Connecticut and has since spread rapidly. Newington High School was the first to evacuate students on May 1 after a laptop caught fire and the fire department was called. Since then, two students at Southington High School were arrested in connection with a separate laptop fire on May 7. The teens were charged with reckless burning, reckless endangerment, criminal mischief, and second-degree breach of peace. On May 8, a Plainville middle school student was hospitalized for smoke inhalation and is now facing criminal charges for deliberately causing the incident. That same day, Belleville High School in New Jersey was evacuated after a laptop fire started outside a classroom. Responding officers and firefighters found a charred Chromebook just outside the building. A 15-year-old student has since been charged with arson and criminal mischief. The trend has spread westward: As of late last week, Denver Public Schools had received 30 reports of students attempting to ignite their laptops, according to Axios. The Colorado Springs Fire Department has reported at least 16 similar incidents. With no sign of the trend slowing, schools across the country—including in California, Colorado, Michigan, Minnesota, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, and Washington—have issued warnings about the reckless challenge. Parents and guardians are also being urged to talk to their children about fire safety and the dangers of blindly following social media trends. A TikTok spokesperson tells Fast Company that it takes down content that violates the platform’s Dangerous Activities and Challenges policy. The company is currently working closely with the National PTA to fund programs in high schools about online safety and civility. In addition, searching for the term “Chromebook challenge” on TikTok brings up a safety warning: “Some online challenges can be dangerous, disturbing, or even fabricated,” it reads. “Learn how to recognize harmful challenges so you can protect your health and well-being.” However, the trend is still circulating under other hashtags, such as #ChromebookDurabilityTest and #FStudent. Many of these videos go viral, garnering thousands of views and comments from fellow students and baffled adults. The clips often feature a sound bite from fitness podcaster Ben Azoulay: “The F students are inventors,” Azoulay says. “They’re so creative that they couldn’t sit in class.” Now they’re sitting in jail cells. View the full article

Want to enjoy your job a little more? Maybe you need a BFF at work. According to Gallup, having a best friend at work increases job satisfaction, innovation, engagement, and productivity, and it decreases your chances of leaving the company. But can that friend ever be your boss? “You may think, If I’m going to have a friend at work, shouldn’t it be the CEO? Why not go for the top and get the most benefits from the friendship?” says Steve McClatchy, author of Leading Relationships: Build Meaningful Connections, Eliminate Conflict, and Radically Improve Engagement. “Gallup is telling us that we should have a best friend at work, but it doesn’t say that best friend should be your boss.” Being friends with the boss is more complex than being buddies with a colleague. To understand the difference, McClatchy says you need to understand the definition of friendship. “Friendship is always working in each other’s best interest,” he says. “In that case, I would not ask my boss for an extra weekend vacation, because that wouldn’t be in the boss’s best interest. No matter how they walk that thin line with an employee who reports to them, they can always be accused of playing favorites, whether it’s true or not.” Being friends with an employee is a slippery slope for the boss, too. McClatchy compares it to the best player on the sports team being the coach’s favorite. “The benefit of that friendship is a commitment to excellence, never letting that person down, and always having their back,” he explains. “But how do the rest of the teammates perform when one player is the favorite? You get extreme output from that one player, but if the output from the other players goes down, does it warrant that?” To determine the type of relationship you can have with your boss, McClatchy says it’s important to understand the levels of maturity within friendships. Level 1: Acknowledging Each Other The first level of friendship is acknowledging each other. This is the most basic stage of friendship, where we recognize being in the presence of someone we know. It’s about making eye contact, greeting each other in an appropriate way, and responding to communication as expected. While level one seems easy, McClatchy says your ego can get in the way. “When you’re competing, your ego is your greatest asset,” he says. “It’s your greatest liability in relationships. If you’ve ever won or lost in a relationship, you don’t have one. The ego loves power, because it ensures survival.” When the ego feels bruised, microaggressions can get in the way at this level, such as withholding recognition, being passive-aggressive, or ignoring someone. If you can’t achieve level one, the friendship has ended before it even began. Level 2: Exchanging Facts and Honoring Agreements The second level of maturity involves exchanging facts and honoring agreements. To be successful, you need to share information without twisting it to fit your agenda. You also need to do what you say you are going to do. In an employee-employer relationship, the employee needs to live up to their agreements, which is their job description. If you fail to follow through, you need to acknowledge it and apologize. McClatchy calls this level trust in action, and it can get tricky with boss friendships. In addition, bosses sometimes need to break agreements, and they may not feel a need to apologize because they’re used to having power. Before you call somebody a friend, make sure they follow through on what they say they’re going to do. And if they break their commitments, they should be able to swallow their ego and apologize. If the relationship fails at level two, McClatchy says it is not an essential relationship, and you should revert to having only level-one interactions. Level 3: Sharing Opinions The third level is where you can lose a relationship if you or the other person are not mature enough to see the world from a different perspective, says McClatchy. “Maturity is understanding that other people don’t see the world the same way you do,” he says. “It’s understanding that opinions come from information and experience. I have opinions today that I didn’t have 10 years ago.” Friendships at this level mean you can disagree with someone and still respect them as a person. It also means you can seek to understand their opinion, explain your own opinion, and discuss how the difference could impact your relationship. This can be problematic if your boss has a my-way-or-the-highway approach to leading. If the relationship fails at level three, McClatchy recommends keeping interactions to level two: sticking to small talk and avoiding triggering topics. Level 4: Strengths and Weaknesses People like to play to their strengths and work around their weaknesses. In friendship, that means being willing to do that for another person, says McClatchy. “No one likes to be criticized or have their weaknesses pointed out,” he says. “Admitting mistakes is uncomfortable and puts the ego on high alert. The ego’s job is to meet your needs. The problem is when someone can’t admit when they need help or input. If you can’t learn from the people around you, you will not achieve the fourth level of friendship maturity.” Failure at level four includes denying or blaming someone else for your mistakes, not apologizing when you should, or withholding positive feedback. If level four cannot be achieved, McClatchy says you’ll need to stick to the previous levels. Level 5: Understanding Motivations The fifth level of interaction is when you understand what motivates and demotivates another person and you use this information in their best interest. “I understand your goals, your aspirations, your values, and I use that information to help you to benefit from you,” says McClatchy. “This is what a best friend is all about. This is somebody who’s going out of their way, and they care as much about your success as they do their own.” You cannot get to level five with somebody and not consider them a friend; it’ll happen by default, says McClatchy. However, it’s difficult to get to level-five maturity with your boss because you have to navigate a direct-reporting relationship. “The power structure can’t be ignored,” says McClatchy. “When I’m the boss, I determine your raise and pay promotions. Right now, when I say something funny, you laugh a little harder. You’re getting a paycheck. I don’t know where the friendship begins and where the power structure ends.” If you somehow get to level five and a strong friendship emerges with your boss, McClatchy says it’s best to figure out a way to get rid of the power structure so you can enjoy your friendship and the business benefits from you not reporting to each other. “We rarely get to 100% trust, confidence, and maturity at work,” says McClatchy. “But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t know what it is. As you explore your relationships, think about acknowledgment and recognition, facts and agreements, opinions, strengths and weaknesses, and motivation. The key is that they’re all about treating others with respect and dignity, whether you’re best friends or not.” View the full article

Around a decade ago, Chad Dale watched as some of his friends started to leave Seattle. “They wanted to stay in an urban environment, but the city was too expensive for them to have all the things that they wanted to have,” Dale says. His friends who were beginning to have kids wanted backyards and guest rooms for visiting in-laws; they looked for single-family houses in the suburbs. But Dale, a developer, wondered whether there could be a different solution. What if he and several friends joined together to build their own apartment building—and all lived in the same place? Some friends had already bought a vacation home together on nearby Whidbey Island, and they liked the sense of community there. That house, with a single bathroom used by eight people, wasn’t designed for communal living. But Dale realized that it would be possible to construct a new building based on the values that they shared. He and his wife, along with 10 other families—including two from the Whidbey Island project—started plotting what the development could look like. They decided to build apartments in a range of sizes, from 500 square feet to 2,000 square feet, based on what each family needed. They also wanted to include 24 units that could be rented out to others. And the development would be filled with shared space. When they found a lot for sale in Seattle’s Phinney Ridge neighborhood, they also bought a full-size lot next door to use as a huge yard for all of their children. “Everybody shares in the cost of that through rents,” Dale says. “But more importantly, there’s a betterment that happens because there are other kids there. You’re not bummed that you’re sharing, you’re happy—the experience is improved.” The building, completed in 2023, has several other shared spaces that go beyond what a typical apartment building offers. A huge rooftop deck includes a large greenhouse with dining tables inside and a firepit outside. (The building, appropriately, is named Shared Roof.) There’s a guest suite that residents can use for visitors. A soundproof room is designed for kids to practice drums or play in bands. An on-site gym goes beyond a standard shared fitness room to include the best equipment; the building financed that effort by renting the space to personal trainers, so it’s used by the outside community as well as residents. Residents also share resources like tools. “The goal is to live together and then determine what else we want to share,” says Dale. “We’ve talked about everything from electric bikes to a pickup truck. If you use the pickup truck three times a year, it’s not worth it. And it’s annoying when you have to go rent from U-Haul. But if you have 35 groups using it three times a year, then maybe it makes sense.” The friends wanted to make the building as sustainable as possible, and it’s now on track to get LEED Platinum certification, the highest rating from the green building platform. Solar panels mounted over the roof double as a canopy for the deck space. The building has heat pumps and ventilation systems that recover energy, along with energy-saving electric heat pump dryers. On the ground floor, Dale worked to find new businesses that would add to the neighborhood—a bakery, a tap room for a brewery, a wine shop, and an Italian restaurant. The retail space surrounds a courtyard that’s open to the public. From the outside, it looks like a fairly standard apartment building. Inside, it’s clearly different: The friends who invested in the project each made their own choices about how they wanted their own apartment to look. “None of the units stack,” says David Fuchs, principal at Johnston Architects, which designed the building. “They’re all different shapes and sizes.” Inside, everyone got to choose from several different finishes, so the apartments are unique. The financial arrangement is also unique. “We realized very early that if you’re going to ask people who could otherwise be purchasing their own piece of property to live in an environment like this, then you also need to provide a way for them to be an investor, because oftentimes that’s a significant component of their retirement income or of their nest egg,” Dale says. “So we came up with the solution to allow folks to be investors as well as tenants.” They calculated that the return from the investment could potentially be similar to the return from owning and selling a single-family home. Three outside investors also joined the project without planning to live on-site. Each of the original families had the option to invest as much as they wanted in the project; the final investments ranged from $50,000 to millions. Because of that, it made sense to have the families pay market-rate rent and then separately earn investment income from the building. (Twenty percent of the other units are offered at a more affordable rate to moderate-income tenants, through a city program that offers a tax break to developers who include affordable apartments.) Initially, the concept was a tough sell to banks. “When we started, I was so excited about the idea that I’d go out and tell everybody, ‘Look, we’ve got this crazy idea where we’re going to have tenants who are also owners,’” Dale says. “And for the most part, I just got blank stares from the groups that I was trying to get financing from, like, ‘What the hell are you talking about?'” He realized that he needed to explain it differently: An LLC owns the building, and the LLC has members, as in most apartment buildings. The difference is that some of the members are also tenants. Starting with a core group of longtime friends as tenants transformed the feeling of the building. “The people who live here now treat each other wildly differently than in a typical apartment building,” he says. “They treat the building differently. And then that all rubs off to the people who aren’t [investors] as well. Walking around in this space, people are happier. They’re engaged with each other.” Apartment living is underrated, Dale says. If someone wants social interaction, it’s immediately available. If something breaks, the building manager can deal with it instead of the tenant. “In the U.S., we’ve got a funny way of idolizing single-family homeownership,” he says. “Apartment living is pretty incredible. In terms of function and livability, it’s actually maybe the best way to live, particularly when you’re in an environment where there are other people that you enjoy being around.” View the full article

Knowing the calorie content of foods does not help people understand which foods are healthier, according to a study I recently coauthored in the Journal of Retailing. When study participants considered calorie information, they rated unhealthy food as less unhealthy and healthy food as less healthy. They were also less sure in their judgments. In other words, calorie labeling didn’t help participants judge foods more accurately. It made them second-guess themselves. Across nine experiments with more than 2,000 participants, my colleague and I tested how people use calorie information to evaluate food. For example, participants viewed food items that are generally deemed healthier, such as a salad, or ones that tend to be less healthy, such as a cheeseburger, and were asked to rate how healthy each item was. When people did not consider calorie information, participants correctly saw a big gap between the healthy and unhealthy foods. But when they considered calorie information, those judgments became more moderate. In another experiment in the study, we found that asking people to estimate the calorie content of food items reduced self-reported confidence in their ability to judge how healthy those foods were—and that drop in confidence is what led them to rate these food items more moderately. We observed this effect for calories but not for other nutrition metrics such as fat or carbohydrates, which consumers tend to view as less familiar. This pattern repeated across our experiments. Instead of helping people sharpen their evaluations, calorie information seemed to create what researchers call metacognitive uncertainty, or a feeling of “I thought I understood this, but now I’m not so sure.” When people aren’t confident in their understanding, they tend to avoid extreme judgments. Because people see calorie information so often, they believe they know how to use it effectively. But these findings suggest that the very familiarity of calorie counts can backfire, creating a false sense of understanding that leads to more confusion, not less. My coauthor and I call this the illusion of calorie fluency. When people are asked to judge how healthy a food item is based on calorie data, that confidence quickly unravels and their healthiness judgments become less accurate. Why it matters These findings have important implications for public health and for the businesses that are investing in calorie transparency. Public health policies assume that providing calorie information will drive more informed choices. But our research suggests that visibility isn’t enough, and that calorie information alone may not help. In some cases, it might even lead people to make less-healthy choices. This does not mean that calorie information should be removed. Rather, it needs to be supported with more context and clarity. One possible approach is pairing calorie numbers with decision aids such as a traffic light indicator or an overall nutrition score, which both exist in some European countries. Alternatively, calorie information about an item could be accompanied by clear reference points explaining how much of a person’s recommended daily calories it contains (though this may be challenging because of how widely daily calorie needs vary). Our study highlights a broader issue in health communication: Just because information is available doesn’t mean it’s useful. Realizing that calorie information can seem easier to understand than it actually is can help consumers make more informed, confident decisions about what they eat. What still isn’t known In our studies, we found that calorie information is especially prone to creating an illusion of understanding. But key questions remain. For example, researchers don’t yet know how this illusion interacts with the growing use of health and wellness apps, personalized nutrition tools, or AI-based food recommendations. Future research could look at whether these tools actually help people feel more sure of their choices—or just make them feel confident without truly understanding the information. Deidre Popovich is an associate professor of marketing at Texas Tech University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work. View the full article

Graduate students interested in an academic career after graduation day have often been told they need to be open to moving somewhere they may not want to live. This advice is because of how hard it is to get a tenure-track professor position. These days, this advice may be less relevant as graduate students are increasingly pursuing and ending up in careers outside of academia. Where graduate students want to settle post-graduation has potential consequences for communities and states across the country that depend more and more on a steady stream of skilled workers to power their economies. Locations seen as undesirable may struggle to attract and retain the next generation of scientists, engineers, professors, and other professions filled by today’s graduate students. We are sociologists who are examining some of the factors that influence graduate students’ educational and career paths as part of a research project supported by the National Science Foundation. In March 2025 we distributed a survey to a sample of U.S.-based graduate students in five natural and social science disciplines: physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, and sociology. As part of our survey, we asked students to identify states they would prefer to live in and places where they would be unwilling to go. To some extent, our findings match some past anecdotes and evidence about the varying number of applications received for academic positions across different states or regions. But little data has directly assessed students’ preferences, and our survey also provides some evidence that some states’ policies are having a negative impact on their ability to attract highly educated people. Most preferred, most unwilling For our study, we built our sample from the top 60 graduate programs for each of the five disciplines based on rankings from U.S. News & World Report. We received responses from nearly 2,000 students. Almost all of these students—98%, specifically—are pursuing PhDs in their respective fields. As part of our survey, we asked students to identify locations where they would “prefer” to live and also those where they would be “unwilling” to live after finishing their graduate program. For each of these questions, we presented students with a list of all states along with the option of “outside of the United States.” Just looking at the overall percentages, California tops the list of preferred places, with 49% of all survey-takers stating a preference to live there, followed by New York at 45% and Massachusetts with 41%. On the other hand, Alabama was selected most often as a state students said they’d be unwilling to move to, with 58% declaring they wouldn’t want to live there. This was followed by Mississippi and Arkansas, both with just above 50% saying they’d be unwilling to move to either state. Clusters of preference While the two lists in many respects appear like inversions of one another, there are some exceptions to that. Looking beyond the overall percentages for each survey question, we used statistical analysis to identify underlying groups or clusters of states that are more similar to each other across both the “prefer” and “unwilling” questions. One cluster, represented by California, New York, and Massachusetts, is characterized by a very high level of preference and a low level of unwillingness. About 35% to 50% of students expressed a preference for living in these places, while only 5% to 10% said they would be unwilling to live in them. The response of “outside of the United States” is also in this category, which is noteworthy given recent concerns about the current generation of PhD students looking to leave the country and efforts by other nations to recruit them. A second cluster represents states where the preference levels are a bit lower, 20% to 30%, and the unwillingness levels are a bit higher, 7% to 15%. Still, these are states for which graduate students hold generally favorable opinions about living in after finishing their programs. This cluster includes states such as Colorado, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and New Jersey. A third group of states represents locations for which the rate of preference is similar to the rate of unwillingness, in the range of 10% to 20%. This cluster includes states such as Minnesota, Delaware, and Virginia. The fourth and fifth clusters consist of states where the rate of unwillingness exceeds the rate of preference, with the size of the gap distinguishing the two clusters. In the fourth cluster, at least some students—5% to 10%—express a preference for living in them, while around 30% to 40% say they are unwilling to live in them. This cluster includes Florida, Montana, South Carolina, and Utah. Almost no students express a preference for living in the states contained in the fifth cluster, while the highest percentages—40% to 60%—express an unwillingness to live in them. This cluster includes Alabama, Kansas, Oklahoma, and South Dakota. Signs of current politics Many factors influence our preferences for where we want to live, including family, weather, and how urban, rural, or suburban it is. The politics of a community can also influence our perceptions of a place’s desirability. Indeed, political factors may be of particular concern to graduate students. In recent years, some states have taken a more hostile stance toward specific academic disciplines, institutions of higher education in general, or professions that are of interest to graduate students. While states such as Florida and Texas have been leading such efforts, many others have followed. Interestingly, our statistical grouping of states finds that students’ unwillingness to live in states such as Texas, Florida, Georgia, and Ohio is higher than we would expect given those states’ corresponding preference levels. For example, about 10% of students selected Texas as a place they would prefer to live in after graduation. Looking at other states with similar preference levels, we would expect about 10% to 20% of students to say they are unwilling to live in Texas. Instead, this percentage is actually 37%. Similarly, 5% of students say they would prefer to live in Florida. Other states with this preference rate have an unwillingness rate of around 35%, but Florida’s is 45%. Although our data does not tell us for sure, these gaps could be a function of these states’ own policies or alignment with federal policies seen as hostile to graduate students and their future employers. These findings suggest that communities and employers in some states might continue to face particularly steep hurdles in recruiting graduate students for employment once they finish their degrees. Christopher P. Scheitle is an associate professor of sociology at West Virginia University. Katie Corcoran is a professor of sociology at West Virginia University. Taylor Remsburg is a graduate research assistant in sociology at West Virginia University. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. View the full article

Drop comes as US president says ‘serious negotiations’ are under way with TehranView the full article

Site Kit by Google is a free WordPress plugin that connects your site to important tools like Analytics, Search Console, and Ads. After installing, it’s easy to verify your accounts, after which you see data in your dashboard. That data is nice to have, but it has limits, especially if you need detailed reports. Table of contents What is Site Kit by Google and why use it? What does it look like? What Google services can you connect? Managing Analytics in Site Kit by Google What’s Enhanced Conversion tracking? Key Metrics widget for quick performance insights Is Site Kit by Google enough for your goals? Should you use Site Kit by Google? What is Site Kit by Google and why use it? Site Kit by Google is a fundamental analytics tool that helps you answer questions like: How many people are visiting your site? What page do they land on first? Which keywords did they search to find you? Are your ads earning clicks? With Site Kit, Google puts the data right into WordPress, so you don’t need to go digging around different platforms to seek your data. The tool gets its data straight from each service, and shows the most important data in clear graphs, tables, and a flexible, customizable Key Metrics widget. Who is it for? (and when it’s not enough) But Site Kit is not the analytics tool to rule them all in WordPress land. It covers the basics well, but it won’t work for everyone’s goals. What it does do is make it incredibly easy to set up and run various Google Analytics accounts. Site Kit by Google works well for: WordPress users who want to track basic performance People who prefer not to use extra plugins or code Site owners who manage everything themselves But it may feel limited if you: Run ads at scale and need conversion-level insight Use custom events or eCommerce tracking Want to control every aspect of your website’s scripts and tags It covers the basics well, but it’s not built for advanced setups. What does it look like? After installing and connecting Site Kit, you’ll find a new menu item in your WordPress dashboard. Clicking this will lead you to the dashboard where most of the statistics and settings live. You’ll also notice a new drop-down menu when you visit posts on your site. Thanks to this drop-down, you can quickly see statistics for this specific article without having to open Analytics. Overview dashboard The Dashboard gives you an overview of how your site is performing. Of course, depending on what services you connect your site to, you might see something like this: Traffic and engagement insights from Google Analytics Clicks and impressions from search traffic provided by Search Console An overview of the top-performing pages Earnings from Ads or AdSense, if you run ads, that is Site speed performance powered by PageSpeed Insights An overview of how different groups compare, for instance, new vs. returning visitors Some sections also show trend indicators like arrows or percentage changes compared to the previous period. This will help you spot trends and act upon them. Click on any source to open a more detailed view in the corresponding Google tool. Key Metrics widget You can set up the Key Metrics section the way you want. Site Kit will ask you a couple of questions about your site’s goals and what you want to focus on. Then, it will suggest metrics to show at the top of the dashboard. You can choose which blocks you want to see, such as top converting traffic sources, new visitors, recent trending pages, and much more. Admin bar stats After Site Kit is active, you’ll also see a small dropdown at the top of your WordPress admin bar when you’re viewing your site. Click it, and you’ll get a mini-report showing page-specific stats, including search impressions, clicks, and traffic over time. What Google services can you connect? Once installed, you can connect the following tools. Two of them — Search Console and Google Analytics 4 — are enabled during the initial setup. You can connect: Google Analytics 4 Search Console AdSense Reader Revenue Manager Google Ads Tag Manager Google Analytics 4 (GA4) Site Kit will add your GA4 tag automatically, after which it shows data such as: The number of visitors Sources of sessions (organic search, direct, referral) Average engagement rate Session durations The data shown is summarized, so if you want custom reports or event tracking, you need to open GA4. Google Search Console After installing and connecting, you’ll get some key data from Search Console right inside your WordPress dashboard: The queries people searched to find your site Number of clicks and impressions Unique visitors from search Page-level performance in search This kind of data is very helpful for content optimization purposes and to inform your SEO strategy. AdSense/Ads (monetization) If you use Google’s systems to run ads, Site Kit can show data on ad impressions, top-earning pages, and estimated revenue from auto ads, for instance. Simply connect the services to see the data. Remember that it doesn’t replace the AdSense dashboards, but it does give you quick insights. Reader Revenue Manager Reader Revenue Manager is a Google tool for adding subscription and contribution options to your website. It’s designed for publishers and content creators who want to monetize their content through reader support, such as recurring memberships or one-time donations. With Site Kit, you can connect Reader Revenue Manager to your WordPress site in just a few clicks. Once linked, it adds the necessary code to your site automatically, so you don’t need to add tags or install it manually. This feature is optional in Site Kit and is mostly used by publishers offering paywalled or premium content. PageSpeed Insights Site Kit runs a PageSpeed test directly inside WordPress. In the PageSpeed Insights section, you’ll see both lab data and field data. Lab data is based on simulated testing in a controlled environment and helps you identify performance issues during development. Field data, on the other hand, reflects how real users experience your site across different devices and network conditions. Together, they provide a balanced view of how your pages perform. The report shows load performance scores, data on Core Web Vitals (like LCP and CLS). It also gives suggestions for improving speed. But it only tests your homepage and doesn’t include custom settings. For full reports, you can still visit PageSpeed Insights separately. Tag Manager You can link a Google Tag Manager container through Site Kit. This lets you manage third-party scripts (like Facebook Pixel or custom tracking tags) from one place. The plugin doesn’t give you a full interface for editing tags — you’ll do that inside the Tag Manager platform. Managing Analytics in Site Kit by Google For most site owners or managers, Analytics and Search Console are the most important Google tools. Site Kit makes it easy to set those two services up properly. Of course, you can also use existing accounts. Enhanced measurement support GA4 also has Enhanced Measurement, which tracks scrolls, outbound links, file downloads, and other actions automatically. If you activate these in your GA4 property, Site Kit can track them. Unfortunately, it’s not possible to choose which ones to turn on from inside WordPress; you need to go into your GA4 settings for that. Event tracking and tag insertion Site Kit doesn’t support event setup or tracking reports inside the WordPress dashboard. If you need full control over events, you have to use GA4 directly or use Tag Manager to set up the custom events. Limitations of Analytics in Site Kit You’ll probably understand by now that Site Kit is not a replacement for GA4 — it’s a neat tool that gives quick insights and nothing more. You don’t get access to funnel reports, attribution models, or filters. You can’t edit events or see predictive metrics, and there’s no support for GA4 audiences or Google Analytics 360. What’s Enhanced Conversion tracking? With Enhanced Conversions, you can connect Google Ads clicks to leads or form submissions. This improves the reporting of these events when users are on different devices or block cookies. After setting this up, Site Kit will detect form submissions and pass the data to Google Ads. Site Kit currently supports some of the most popular WordPress contact form plugins, such as Contact Form 7, WPForms, and Ninja Forms. However, if you use an unsupported custom form, Site Kit can’t automatically add enhanced conversions. Again, Site Kit has many limitations in this area. For instance, it doesn’t support purchase-based eCommerce conversions or offline conversions. It also doesn’t support pixel-level tracking, third-party forms, popups, and embedded forms. So, it’s specifically designed for simple lead form submissions. Key Metrics widget for quick performance insights Key Metrics are a very valuable addition as they give quick insights into data of your choosing. They’re quick to understand but not very in-depth. For key strategy decisions, you’re going to need more data. This widget pulls together important GA4 and Search Console data into a block on your dashboard. You can choose which metrics to show and reorder them. To change your selection, click the Change metrics button in the corner of the Key Metrics section. You can also rerun the question from the Site Kit admin settings. Each metric includes a figure and a trend comparison from the previous period. For example, you may see engagement is “up 6%” compared to the last 28 days. Click any of them to open the full source report in GA4 or Search Console. The widget has limitations. It doesn’t show custom events or real-time reporting, campaign attribution breakdowns, or GA4-specific collections like audiences or conversions. The widget and Site Kit, in general, are for broad insights, not advanced analytics. Is Site Kit by Google enough for your goals? Site Kit is a good starting point for most WordPress users. It brings together valuable Google data without having to do much work. But whether it’s enough depends on whether you need to get from your analytics and tracking tools. SEO and content insights Site Kit is not an SEO plugin like Yoast SEO. However, you can get data from Search Console that will help you understand how people find your website in the search results. With this, you’ll form an understanding of which content works well and how your site performs in the search results. However, as mentioned, it’s not an SEO plugin, so you need to install a tool like Yoast SEO to do much of the heavy lifting. Plugins like these help with most SEO tasks, like fixing technical issues, adding structured data, and improving your content. Monetization If you’re running ads, Site Kit shows basic ad metrics like impressions, estimated earnings, and top-earning pages. It helps you monitor your ads without having to log into another app. It doesn’t support advanced ad setups, and you can’t manually place ads. It’s also not possible to optimize layouts based on behavior or run A/B tests to find the best ad format. If you’re working with multiple ad networks, you’ll need a tool that can do a lot more than Site Kit. Marketing analytics For reporting basics, Site Kit will do just fine. You can see trends in users, sessions, referral sources, and engagement time — all brought to you by Google Analytics 4. However, Site Kit doesn’t give access to campaign statistics, UTM tracking, or event-based funnels. It also doesn’t offer the option to set goals or segment traffic by behavior. For these kinds of insights, you need to dive straight into GA4 or use a more in-depth reporting tool. If you run marketing campaigns, track conversions, or use CRM tools, Site Kit won’t provide enough data. eCommerce and advanced use cases For eCommerce, Site Kit won’t cut it. It doesn’t integrate with WooCommerce and doesn’t offer a revenue tracking option. It also doesn’t have access to carts, products, transactions, or customer behavior. There’s no way to measure things like average order value or conversion rates. For advanced eCommerce tracking, you need to set this up in GA4 directly or use other methods to access this data. Site Kit doesn’t support this at all. Should you use Site Kit by Google? Site Kit is a good option if you want a free tool to view traffic, search, and performance statistics without having to set up a bunch of tools. It’s very easy to use and useful enough for small websites. If you’re running a huge publication or an online store, need to track custom campaigns, or manage a large number of ad accounts, Site Kit won’t cut it. That’s not to say it’s useless for those cases. One of its biggest draws is that it makes setting up GA4, Search Console, Ads, and Tag Manager accounts incredibly easy. It’s a great starting point to build your analytic toolkit upon. The post What is Site Kit by Google? A guide for WordPress users appeared first on Yoast. View the full article

Companies complain of uncertainty around trade deal and the plan to reduce levies on metals and cars View the full article

Figures come as economy faces impact from Donald The President’s tariffs View the full article

It’s five answers to five questions. Here we go… 1. Do I need to rush to buy a new car for my job? I have a long-term job where I didn’t need a car until a few months ago, when I began transporting stuff for a new project about 2-3 times a week. Unfortunately, my car recently broke down beyond repair. Fortunately for me, I live in a bike-friendly area and can also easily take public transit to work. Because of where I live and personal finance goals, I do not want to buy a new car right away. But now there’s this dilemma about who is going to transport project stuff. I have asked about a courier service and really hope one can be set up soon (but sometimes things take a while). In the meantime, my colleagues are stuck transporting stuff and are being inconvenienced. I truly value my job and colleagues, and work hard to make sure things run smoothly at our workplace. So, am I in the wrong for my decision to put off buying a car? I don’t want my lack of car to be everyone else’s problem … but I also don’t want to rush into a financial decision because I’m worried about this task at work. I’ve felt really embarrassed by this whole situation! Ideally, no one would know how I get to and from work and whether or not I feel it’s an appropriate time to purchase a new vehicle. More context: Having a car was not in my official job description so unless it was in other paperwork, I don’t think it’s technically a requirement for my position. And the “stuff” named above cannot be transported via public transit or a bike. Nope, you don’t need to rush to buy a car, or even buy one at all if you decide you prefer not to. Having a car doesn’t sound like a requirement of your job; you happened to be able to do this task because you had one, but now you don’t. Just lay out the situation for your boss if you haven’t already, so they aren’t thinking this is about to resolve itself in a week or two: “I was happy to do this when I had a car, but I want to make sure it’s clear that I’m not going to have one for the foreseeable future, so this isn’t something I’ll be able to resume doing unless I can somehow expense transportation.” The fact that it’s falling on coworkers meanwhile is something they’ll each need to work out themselves, but it doesn’t obligate you to do anything differently. After all, if you hadn’t had a car when this first came up, I doubt you would have felt obligated to run out and buy one. This can get handled now however it would have if that had been the situation all along. 2. What should be handled by HR versus managers? What falls within what an HR department should do, and what falls within the regular duties of managers? I’m the sole HR person at a smallish (66-person) company that is fully remote. I recently heard that one of our managers, Kurt, had proposed requiring his team to have their cameras on at all times. This is ridiculous, impractical, and at odds with our company culture. Fortunately, his team pushed back hard, and it was dropped. I mentioned to Kurt’s boss that I wanted to talk to Kurt, since not only did he appear not to understand our company culture but I also had some serious concerns about their team that need to be addressed. I am extremely qualified to help with both of those. Kurt’s boss, Melissa, was offended. From her perspective, this is a management issue and HR has nothing to do with it. Melissa said she would handle it, and it was definitely not an HR issue. From my perspective, it is an HR issue. It’s against our company norms, and it suggests deeper issues with Kurt and his team. But maybe that really is a purely management issue? Should HR normally be involved in coaching and training, or is that the purview of the manager? For background, Melissa and I have both been with the company for many years, and are on the same level. I come from a corporate background, but Melissa hasn’t worked in management anywhere except here. Which is to say, neither of us really knows what’s considered normal! This is not the first time we have butted heads about issues. Staff will often come to me directly with interpersonal issues, because I am more approachable than Melissa. She gets frustrated that staff go to me for guidance. From my perspective, that’s just part of my job. And to be honest, it’s something that I really enjoy. An awful lot of HR is paperwork, it’s nice to deal with actual humans sometimes. But Melissa is somewhat territorial. So, am I wildly out of my lane? Should I steer people back to their managers when they have a problem, or is it normal and appropriate for me to get involved? In an ideal world, this kind of stuff would be handled by managers, who would consult HR for guidance if needed. Only if a manager wasn’t handling it effectively on their own should HR get involved. If Melissa wants to handle it herself and appears to be doing it effectively, you should let her. As HR, you’re there as a resource for managers (and their teams) if they need you — you can flag issues, offer coaching and guidance when needed, ensure laws are being followed, etc. — but the goal should be for managers to manage their own teams unless there’s some specific reason why they can’t or aren’t (and if that’s the case, you might step in, but even then part of the goal would be for you to work with the manager to equip them to better handle that stuff themselves in the future). You can certainly talk with Melissa about how she’s handling things with Kurt and about what the outcomes are, and you have some leeway to poke around to ensure the result is indeed that Kurt gets better aligned with your company culture. But it makes sense for Melissa, his manager, to take the lead on handling it. 3. What should I say in peer evaluations? My org always seems to be updating their annual review practices. I’m glad they’re always aiming to improve this process, but we seem to have new guidelines about what feedback they want every year and I’m not sure what they’re really looking for. Last year I could just email my boss a few sentences about my experience working with a team member. This year there’s a structured form with four sections and three empty bullet points under each. The sections are: 1. What is your colleague doing well? 2. How can your colleague’s strengths be maximized? 3. What would you like to see more or less of from your colleague? 4. What advice do you have for your colleague? The first section is no problem, my team is functional and we have a kind, thoughtful manager who gives us autonomy so there are plenty of examples of team members doing good work. But the other three sections feel murkier to me. For #2, if I don’t have any new ideas, is it okay to say, “I think my colleague’s skills are being well deployed”? For #3 I imagine diplomacy is the way to go, not “I wish my colleague didn’t ‘think out loud’ so much but I just tune it out for the most part.” Same vibe for #4? I don’t assume that my approach to work is the only good/valid way, so unless there are real issues or the employee themselves has asked me for advice on a specific matter I’m inclined to just write, “Keep up the good work!” Is it helpful to get replies like this as the manager? Is there another way I should be thinking about or approaching these questions? Yeah, this is too much to ask of peers. #1 and #3 would be fine, but the rest of this gets into asking for assessment and feedback that managers should be the ones providing (which they can do in part by assessing and synthesizing the feedback received from #1 and #3). I’d think about what feedback you want to offer, regardless of what the specific questions are, and then offer that and only that. You’re not locked into the framing of their questions just because they’ve presented them this way. If you want to mention that you’d prefer your colleague not think out loud so much, feel free to — but you don’t need to say it just because question #3 is there. In some companies, you could count on a skilled manager to relay that feedback appropriately — including deciding if it was even necessary to relay at all — while in others it would get relayed in a way you didn’t intend (“Jane says you think out loud too much”). So say only as much as you want to say, and go vague for the rest of it (like “nothing comes to mind” or “nothing additional to add,” or so forth). 4. Can I use an offer to try to get a second offer? I worked for a company focusing on federal contracts until all the contracts were terminated and I was laid off in March. For the last six weeks or so, I’ve been consulting with Company A for 10 hours per week, doing work almost identical to what I was doing before I was laid off (just not on federal contracts). After a few rounds of interviews, I feel fairly confident I’m about to get a job offer for a full-time position with the local city government. I’d much rather work full-time for Company A, mostly because it’s work I want to do, while the job with the city is only tangentially related to work I want to do. Can I use the offer from the city to see if Company A wants to hire me full-time? During my consulting interview with Company A, they asked if I would be interested in a full-time role as they were thinking they might need to hire full-time in the future. If this is something worth trying, what should I say to them? If they say no, I will take the job with the city and finish out my current project with Company A, but I wouldn’t be able to continue consulting with them. Yes! Be straightforward: “I’ve had a full-time offer that I’m considering, but I know you’d mentioned that you might hire full-time at some point. My strong preference would be to work for you if a full-time role became available. I need to respond to the offer by (date) but I wanted to first check with you about whether full-time work is a possibility.” 5. Salary negotiation success story After a feedback session last month with my new grand-boss, I screwed up my courage and asked if I could say one more thing. I told her that the main reason people leave our company is offers of more money with less work, and that I was paid so little compared to the area cost of living that I was just approved for a government low income mortgage program. She took it seriously and said she’d talk to HR. A week later, she told me HR had done their market analysis and claimed we were paid in line with the area. However! She disagreed and she asked for my input on her email pushing back against them, because my team does a lot more than normal for our title/role. Today, grandboss and great grandboss called me in and told me I was getting a 5% bump — and I am still eligible for the annual percentage-based merit raise next month. I know my teammate got called in before I did, too. I guess pushing back against HR worked! Thank you for all your advice. I’ve never advocated for a salary adjustment like this and didn’t think it would work in my company. I’m so happy! The post do I need to buy a new car for my job, what should be handled by HR versus managers, and more appeared first on Ask a Manager. View the full article