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With genetically modified organisms (GMOs), there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle. Since their commercial introduction in 1996, bioengineered crops have become a commercial juggernaut, utterly dominating the marketplace in the U.S. and around the world. Even the European Union—long a hotbed of anti-GMO sentiment and regulatory activity—is warming to biotech, and significantly expanding the number of GMO crops accepted for import. Now, as the technology is maturing and costs have decreased significantly, a new wave of biotech innovation—call it GMO 2.0—is in the offing. Emerging startups and established companies alike are using breakthrough technologies to drive GMOs in exciting new directions. A diverse range of new technologies promise to make agriculture more efficient and sustainable, and our food tastier and more nutritious. It also promises to help address the pressing but unanswered question of how to produce the 56% additional calories needed to feed the 10 billion people expected to populate the world in 2050, with little land left to expand cultivation and a changing climate making agriculture more challenging. Not everyone is thrilled about the new wave of bioengineered crops. Like it or not, though, GMO 2.0 is going to see an adoption curve that will rival that of first-gen biotech seeds. The potential benefits—nutritional, environmental, and above all, agronomical—will simply be too great to ignore. Avoid missteps Before we get to that point, however, we have a window of opportunity to shape the course of GMO 2.0—and avoid some of the missteps that marked the rollout of first-gen biotech crops. The core technologies behind GMO 1.0 were safe, effective, and heavily regulated—but too many breakthrough products were controlled by a few large corporations that were eager to muscle rivals aside, shout down skeptics, and amass huge profits while ignoring any potential harm caused by their products. The rise of GMO 2.0 offers us a chance to hit the reset button and ensure that the next wave of biotechnologies is developed and commercialized more transparently, more responsibly, and more equitably. If we get this right, we can make a powerful positive case for the biotech revolution—reducing the potential for a backlash, and ensuring that consumers, regulators, and other stakeholders around the world benefit from the enormous potential of GMO 2.0 crops. The 5 principles of GMO 2.0 To achieve that goal, we need to start by recognizing that GMO 2.0 isn’t fundamentally a technological breakthrough. Yes, new technologies—and the maturation of existing technologies—are making bioengineering far more accessible, and dramatically expanding and accelerating our ability to innovate. But GMO 2.0 is defined, at its core, by a shift in the values and priorities that guide us as we bring bioengineered products to market. That breaks down to five key principles: Safety: I don’t want to overstate this. The reality, after all, is that the science around whether GMOs are safe for humans is conclusively settled with broad scientific consensus. Still, next-gen innovators need to do a much better job of communicating around biotech safety, forthrightly engaging with consumers and regulators, and finding ways to win over skeptics instead of ignoring or silencing them. That means making a positive case for our technologies, frankly acknowledging any shortcomings, and clearly explaining how we’ll mitigate or manage potential risks. Transparency: GMO 2.0 advocates must seek transparency in three key areas. First, we need to explain our technology and make sure everyone understands what we’re doing and how it works. Second, we need to explain our purpose and show how bioengineering can unlock desirable traits that deliver results across the value chain. And third, we need to explain our potential impact and show how GMO 2.0 will drive resilience, growth, and improve food quality for everyone. Efficiency: To ensure that GMO 2.0 technologies meet the actual needs and wants of customers, we need efficient markets. In agriculture, that means empowering farmers and consumers to choose the traits they want in their crops and their food. First-gen biotech was largely a top-down process dictated by Big Ag, but GMO 2.0 will be powered by end users, with a host of startups, academics, and innovators using agile technologies to respond to changing demand and rapidly bring new crops and new traits to market. Deconsolidation/choice: Most GMO 1.0 products offered one-size-fits-all solutions, consolidating multiple traits into a single seed. In the GMO 2.0 era, farmers will be able to pick and choose from many different seeds, each with different traits and capabilities—or opt-out altogether—to optimize for their own unique needs. This matters at the ecosystem level all the way to the consumer. Instead of trying to dominate the marketplace, GMO 2.0 leaders will embrace transparency, build partnerships, and create solutions that dovetail with and support one another in additive ways. Optimism: To usher in a new era of GMO 2.0 technologies, we need to stop being apologetic or mealy-mouthed about what we’re trying to achieve. Climate change is real, and hunger never went away—instead of waiting for disaster to strike, we’re building technologies that will safeguard the future. It’s time to embrace the scale of our ambition and explain how important biotech will be in the years to come. Some next-wave biotech products—like purple tomatoes that contain extra antioxidants and taste great in a salad—are designed to appeal to consumers. Others are important on a global scale: drought-tolerant wheat could help secure food supplies in an era of global heating, while non-browning avocados have the potential to reduce food waste by extending shelf life and enhancing flavor and texture for consumers. By hitting the reset button now, and clearly explaining how GMO 2.0 differs from earlier iterations of biotech crops, we have a chance to redefine how farmers, regulators, and consumers think about biotechnology. Now it’s time to communicate that effectively and build a vibrant and equitable biotech marketplace where GMO 2.0 technologies can showcase their value—and deliver the benefits we need for farmers, consumers, and society as a whole. Shely Aronov is cofounder and CEO of InnerPlant. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
Futureproofing your business requires an ability to embrace change, not just to react to it. Change is a constant, so companies that thrive in today’s landscape must be continuously adapting and innovating—changing as consumers change. Brands that truly stand the test of time understand that the core ingredients for long-term success are relevance, ease, and distinctiveness. Relevance No business, regardless of its size or sector, can consistently thrive without remaining in sync with consumers’ wants and needs, and keeping a pulse on the cultural nuances across their markets. At KFC, we have driven brand recognition and global growth by prioritizing relevance since 1952, and that starts with knowing and living our brand purpose. For instance, KFC exists to banish the bland and dial up the fingerlickin’, which to us means being bold in everything we do—adapting our menus, restaurant design, and guest experiences to deliver what consumers are craving. We use consumer insights about food formats and flavors to ensure we’re bringing bold innovation to our menus and leading food trends. KFC also builds relevance in culture wherever it’s happening—within the gaming community through PUBG or The Legend of Zelda, in partnership with celebrities like Trevor Noah and Chrissy Teigen, or through an NBA courtside appearance by Colonel Sanders. Beyond menu and culture, KFC leverages restaurant design to drive relevance, prioritizing things like sustainable furniture and seamless technology that resonate with guests. Relevancy also reaches beyond the restaurant through local initiatives including food donations, youth programs, and employability training. Ease In addition to staying relevant, brands must ensure that consumers can access and engage with the brand on their own terms—when, where, and how they want. Sephora, a premier beauty destination and global retailer, highlights the importance of validating customers and meeting them where they are. Before Sephora opened more than 3,000 locations, beauty products were primarily sold through brand-specific retailers or local drugstores, making high-end options both hard to find and out of reach for most consumers. Sephora offers retail locations in 34 countries around the world, a robust online retail store, and endless content available across social channels. But “ease” doesn’t just apply to accessing their products. Sephora promotes inclusion and aims to make it easy for every person to feel beautiful. It disrupts the prestige of beauty retail by striving to authentically celebrate consumer beauty and invites everyone in, no matter the person’s background, skills, or expertise. Their commitment to access and education makes involvement uncomplicated and effortless, especially as consumers explore new beauty products and routines. Distinctiveness As the world changes, a distinctive brand perpetuates a clear identity, allowing consumers to build familiarity and remain connected. Nike embodies this as one of the most distinctive brands of the past, present, and foreseeable future. If you close your eyes, you can instantly imagine its famed swoosh, distinguishable tagline and portrait-style imagery of iconic athletes—the brand doesn’t even need to be named for you to recognize it. This undeniable identity is one of Nike’s greatest assets, as it builds and retains loyalty, spreads favorable word-of-mouth, and fuels excitement from employees and consumers alike. And it’s so much more than its brand assets. Nike shows up for athletes in a distinct way that inspires an emotional connection to the very heart of its fan base. The brand focuses on grit, competition, resilience, and celebration, distinctively leaning into every facet of what it means to be an athlete while saying that any consumer can “just do it.” Personal evolution Just like brands that stand the test of time, I have embraced a personal growth journey that has been both transforming and evolving. I prioritize growth and learning to ensure that I’m always pushing for the consumer. I welcome change with open arms and am excited about what the future holds. Nivera Wallani is the global chief development officer of KFC. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
Memorable experiences guide us to value the present moment before it becomes only a memory. As the context around us continuously evolves at a rapid pace, the formation of memories comes to life through spatial awareness of the physical environment. The importance of human interaction and shared engagement in the design of immersive entertainment and sports venues, workplaces, and even homes is fundamental to making memories of a lifetime. Georges Duhamel’s 1919 French philosophical essay, The Heart’s Domain, touches on the essence of human experience and the pursuit of meaning in a rapidly changing world. He emphasizes the importance of human connection. Duhamel was a surgeon, poet, and philosopher, and his words translated into English noted, “We do not know the true value of our moments until they have undergone the test of memory. Like the images the photographer plunges into a golden bath, our sentiments take on color; and only then, after that recoil and that transfiguration, do we understand their real meaning and enjoy them in all their tranquil splendor.” Photography has evolved and we now have the ability to memorialize images physically printed or digitally, and saved to a cloud server that can be virtually accessed anytime and anywhere. Shared experiences When faced with the immediate decision to evacuate the Sunset Fire on January 8, the practical and emotional task of deciding what to take tested how we “physically save” memories. Besides our cats, computers, important documents, and overnight bags, the indecision between which physical (pre-digital) photo albums to grab became daunting. That evening it was the small details and stories of our shared experiences at home and in the community that we wanted to imprint in our minds not knowing what, if anything, would survive. We were fortunate that the fires did not ultimately reach our canyon neighborhood, but the unimaginable loss of lives, homes, schools, and businesses as a result of the Palisades and Eaton Fires has been devastating. So as communities rebuild for a resilient future, we honor the memories of the past, and value what we have in the present. Builder of dreams The physical manifestation of bringing stories to life is transformational to healing and moving forward. Walt Disney said, “Times and conditions change so rapidly that we must keep our aim constantly focused on the future.” My first memory of being at Disneyland was captured in a photograph of my family and me posing in front of Sleeping Beauty’s castle. The stone details, colored banners and scents of cotton candy illuminated the storybook backdrop. My mom, sister, and cousin were posing with great attention to my dad and his camera. My head was turned away as I could not take my eyes off the remarkable castle structure that we had just walked through. This magical place that I had only read about or seen in a movie had come to life to immerse me in the story. I had no recollection of the moment until I found this image and wondered if it was my first inspiration to become an architect—a builder of dreams. Memorable experiences transcend the past, present, and curiosity of the future. Design of memorable experiences enables shared human connections that meet people where they are, and how they are inspired to engage. Barbara Bouza is former president of Walt Disney Imagineering. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
Trying to find authentic, consistent joy in the midst of a reality that is relentlessly delivering devastating blows feels akin to finding a needle in an impossibly large haystack. But according to Michelle Obama, it is possible—and the power lies in acknowledging the depth of despair and apathy while still finding reasons for hope. At SXSW this week, the former first lady and her older brother, Craig Robinson, who is executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, took the stage for a live session of their new podcast, IMO. The pair were joined by Laurie Santos, a cognitive scientist, the Yale professor behind the school’s most popular class to date, “The Science of Well-Being,” and host of The Happiness Lab podcast, to discuss how to cultivate a hopeful mindset given the state of the world. On the current climate and drawing from childhood lessons Obama acknowledged the tense political climate, job loss, and growing divisions among Americans. “I worry about folks being out of work, and I worry about how we think about diversity and inclusion. I think about how we treat one another and the voices that we hear, and what that does, what models that’s setting for the next generation,” she said. “Who do we want to be as a country?” she continued. “All of that keeps me up at night, and I know that a lot of people are struggling with some of those things. But I find in those moments that it is better not to try to figure that stuff out alone.” The siblings shared anecdotes from childhood to underscore several themes—the value of in-person interactions, the limiting of social media consumption, and how childhood experiences led them to develop the skills necessary to cope with adversity. They were raised by parents who, Obama pointed out, had many reasons to wallow in despair. Their father was a blue-collar worker raised in desegregation who was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a young man. The two discussed what it was like growing up with a parent with a disability dominating his life, yet rarely missed a day of work and still managed to raise two successful children. “For me and Craig and our families, you know, we always try to step outside of our loneliness and talk as a family and as a community to share those concerns,” Obama shared. “And I hope that our listeners are pushed to do some of the same things too.” On tackling apathy and negative emotions An audience member posed the question to panelists: “How do we plan for a future that looks different from the one that we were promised, without feeling apathetic?” To Santos, a crucial piece of it is acknowledging that these times are not normal, and so feelings of apathy and disconnect are normal. “All too often we can get into this, like, toxic positivity bag, where it’s like, I’m feeling kind of embarrassed that I’m so upset and frustrated and overwhelmed and sad about what’s going on in the world,” she said. “We’re supposed to feel that! Negative emotions are normal in an abnormal world.” All three speakers agreed that social media and technology play an active role in exacerbating unhappiness. To combat this, Santos urged the audience to consider the impact scrolling on a timeline can have on the psyche and be deliberate in how we spend our time. “Social media companies wouldn’t have the algorithms if all our eyeballs weren’t on phones anymore. And we actually have more agency than we often remember in that fight,” she said. On finding hope A recurring theme in the conversation was rooted in finding ways to help others, even in small ways. Impacting the people around us and our loved ones, was a surefire way to find joy. “Our mom used to say, ‘You’re responsible for your own passion.’ And that was some of the most empowering advice she ever gave us,” said Robinson. “How can we help those out there who don’t have a Marian Robinson or a social group? How can we help them work through making themselves happy?” For Santos, hope did not mean toxic positivity or simply remaining optimistic. “Hope says things are not fine, but I can actually see at least a few paths for things to get better,” she said.
As we enter spring, the days may be getting longer, but the average workday seems to be contracting. Corporate employees in the U.S. now seem to be ending their day at 4:39 p.m., according to a new report by the workforce analytics platform ActivTrak. That’s more than 40 minutes earlier than when workers clocked out just two years prior. While employees still start their day on average just before 8 a.m., the average length of the workday has dropped to about eight hours and 44 minutes. The report, which looked at data from nearly 220,000 workers at 777 companies, indicates that productivity has actually increased by 2% despite the slight reduction in time worked. Some employees seem to be embracing tactics like the Pomodoro technique and working in short bursts of time: ActivTrak found that the average “productive session” had jumped by 20%, from 20 to 24 minutes. (A productive session is defined as the time spent working without disruption.) There’s also some seasonal variability in working hours, according to ActivTrak. People tend to work more during the months of August and December, when they might be playing catchup after a vacation or hustling to meet end-of-year deadlines. Given the productivity figures and the prevalence of hybrid work, however, it’s possible that the workday has actually shifted more than shortened. People may be logging off earlier but then finishing up their work later or during weekends. (Since the workday timings are an average, some people could be working longer hours than what the report captures.) The report’s findings seem to support this idea: Employees are logging nearly 12 hours of work during the weekend, up from about 10 hours and 35 minutes. On average, about 5% of employees worked on the weekend in 2024, a 9% increase from the year prior. This was most common at larger companies with between 1,000 and 5,000 employees, where 12% of people worked on weekends. While U.S. employees may appear to be working less, it seems more likely that they’re leaning into the flexibility enabled by hybrid work. Long before the pandemic, many parents and others with caregiving responsibilities said they logged back on after hours to stay on top of their work. With more people now working remotely at least part of the week, it’s possible their days are truncated by doctors’ appointments and bedtime routines, leaving them to play catchup on weekends—or earlier in the morning. The report also found that on average, hybrid employees actually had longer workdays than people who were entirely remote or worked in the office full-time, which could be explained by greater variability in their schedules. The promise of a more flexible workday has driven much of the pushback to return-to-office mandates—and for good reason, if this report is any indicator. Employees seem to want the flexibility to set their own schedule, even if that means working during off-hours, and the variability in the average workday has not caused a dip in productivity. (In other surveys, workers repeatedly list a “flexible schedule” and the “ability to work remotely” as the top perks they seek in a job.) The ActivTrak report suggests that RTO policies don’t necessarily have a clear impact on output: In a case study of five companies, some saw an increase in productivity after implementing strict in-office mandates, while others saw a decline. While CEOs continue to extol the benefits of in-person collaboration, there’s little evidence that employees need to be in the office—or clock longer hours—to be effective in the workplace.
The US Postal Service (USPS) will begin working with Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) to cut costs. On Thursday, US Postmaster General Louis DeJoy signed an agreement with the Trump era organization, welcoming the agency’s infiltration, which other federal organizations have railed against in recent weeks. In a letter sent to Congress, DeJoy explained that DOGE will “assist” USPS “in identifying and achieving further efficiencies” within the operation. DeJoy praised DOGE by saying, the “team was gracious enough to ask for the big problems they can help us with. It has long been known that the Postal Service has a broken business model that was not financially sustainable without critically necessary and fundamental core change.” DeJoy was hired by President Trump in 2020 to head USPS as Postmaster General as it struggled financially through the pandemic. Under DeJoy’s leadership, USPS has already been slashing jobs since 2021. In the past four years, it has cut 30,000 jobs, and plans to make another drastic round of layoffs, cutting 10,000 more employees over the next month. Last month, DeJoy announced plans to step down from his role, as Trump announced he would make sweeping changes to USPS. He mused about firing the board and allowing the Commerce Department to seize control. “We want to have a post office that works well and doesn’t lose massive amounts of money. And we’re thinking about doing that,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office at the time. Doing so would be a step towards privatizing the postal service, something Trump has previously talked about. But, despite the call for massive changes, USPS is the federal agency Americans view most favorably, second only to the National Parks Service. A 2024 Pew Research Center survey found that 72% had a favorable view of the postal service. In his letter, DeJoy pressed that USPS retirement assets and the Workers’ Compensation Program have been “mismanaged” and the Postal Regulatory Commission, an agency which helps ensure the Postal Service operates transparently, abides by the law, and sets fair rates “unnecessary”. The agency “has inflicted over $50 billion in damage to the Postal Service by administering defective pricing models and decades old bureaucratic processes that encumber the Postal Service,” DeJoy said. Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), the ranking member of the Oversight and Government Reform Committee, was quick to push back on the move, issuing a statement that sharply criticised DeJoy’s decision to work with DOGE. “The only thing worse for the Postal Service than DeJoy’s ‘Delivering for America’ plan is turning the service over to Elon Musk and DOGE so they can undermine it, privatize it, and then profit off Americans’ loss,” Connolly said. He continued, “This capitulation will have catastrophic consequences for all Americans – especially those in rural and hard to reach areas – who rely on the Postal Service every day to deliver mail, medications, ballots, and more.” DeJoy’s agreement with DOGE comes as the agency moved to dismantle the department of education this week. On Tuesday, more than 1,300 workers were told they would be losing their jobs, halving the number of employees working for the department and sparking fears that school lunch programs will be likely to disappear amid the cuts. “With research showing school meals are the healthiest meals Americans eat, Congress needs to invest in underfunded school meal programs rather than cut services critical to student achievement and health,” said SNA President Shannon Gleave, RDN, SNS, in a statement this week. Gleave continued, “These proposals would cause millions of children to lose access to free school meals at a time when working families are struggling with rising food costs. Meanwhile, short-staffed school nutrition teams, striving to improve menus and expand scratch-cooking, would be saddled with time-consuming and costly paperwork created by new government inefficiencies.”
Between rising tariffs, an increased cost of living, and extensive federal layoffs, February felt pretty abysmal for lots of American workers. Now, there’s data to show that it might have been one of the worst months in recent history for employee sentiment. That’s according to Glassdoor’s monthly Employee Confidence Index, a report that uses Glassdoor’s database of millions of employees’ reviews to get a “real-time pulse on employee confidence in their company’s six-month business outlook,” according to the company’s website. Last month, the share of employees reporting a positive six-month business outlook fell to 44.4%—its lowest point since Glassdoor began publishing the index in 2016 (for context, the average outlook hovers around 50% positive). Sentiments were low across the board, but some industries were hit harder than others. These are the sectors where workers felt the most pessimistic about the coming months: Government and Public Administration Over the past several weeks, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has been on a mission to “reduce waste” by slashing tens of thousands of federal jobs, including gutting the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), halving the Department of Education, and laying off 10% of the workers at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Not surprisingly, these massive cuts have resulted in rising job security fears among government employees. Employee confidence in the government and public administration sector plummeted by 4.9% month-over-month, bringing the total decline to 7.3% year-over-year. “Cuts to the government workforce initiated by DOGE have thrown the future of the federal workforce into disarray, resulting in weakening sentiment,” the report reads. “Only 38.1% of government workers had a positive [six-month] outlook.” Retail Dissatisfaction among government employees was matched only by retail workers. Similarly, only 38.1% of retail employees reported feeling positive about the future—though, to be fair, that’s only a 0.1% drop from this time last year. The retail industry has seen a barrage of headwinds in recent months. As the cost of living continues to rise, many consumers are opting to spend less, with major retailers including Walmart, Target, and Costco reporting noticeable dips in consumer spending last month. Meanwhile, the ongoing retail apocalypse has seen thousands of stores close across the nation, with companies like Joann fabrics and Party City going out of business entirely. Restaurants and Food Service Behind government employees and retail workers, food industry employees were the third-most dissatisfied sector in the new report. The restaurant industry is currently facing down a number of potential tariffs that could make products like coffee, tea, fruit, and vegetables much more expensive, and in some cases, inaccessible. Meanwhile, some of the nation’s largest fast food chains—like McDonald’s—are struggling to attract customers in an era of frugal spenders, who increasingly view meals on-the-go as a luxury.
Shares of Docusign Inc. (NASDAQ: DOCU) surged nearly 18% on Friday, after the electronic signature service reported strong fourth-quarter earnings that beat expectations, partially driven by its new artificial intelligence-enabled platform, which it introduced last year. The e-signature company reported earnings of 86 cents per share, beating forecasts of 85 cents, with revenue coming in at $776 million, $15 million over forecasts for the fourth quarter of fiscal 2025, ending January 31. “Fiscal 2025 was a transformative year for Docusign,” CEO Allan Thygesen said in an earnings statement. “We launched Docusign IAM, our AI-powered agreement management platform, which is driving rapid traction with customers . . . We’re well positioned to pursue the significant opportunity ahead.” Docusign’s Intelligent Agreement Management (IAM) is an AI-powered platform that enables businesses to create, manage, and gain insights from their agreements in a full-suite, end-to-end platform, resulting in faster workflows and minimized risks. DocuSign AI uses both traditional AI to analyze existing data and content, and generative AI to create new content, such as text, based on patterns learned from existing data. In his earnings remarks, Thygesen said IAM has quickly become the fastest-growing new product in Docusign’s history, and the company expects IAM to account for low double-digits of the company’s total growth by Q4. “It’s tremendously valuable,” he told CNBC on Friday. “It’s opening a treasure trove of data . . . We’re seeing excellent pickup.” Another good sign for the company: Docusign is collaborating with Microsoft and Google, which are two of its biggest partners. Both integrate Docusign deeply into their office suites. Docusign’s customers number 1.6 million, and 1 billion people have used the service in over 180 countries, including 95% of Fortune 500 companies. The service is available in 44 languages for document signers and 14 languages for those sending documents, according to the company’s website.
A U.S. influencer has united Australia—and much of the world—in outrage after filming and filming herself snatching a baby wombat from its mother and posting the clip online. The Montana-based content creator, known as “Sam Jones”, calls herself a “wildlife biologist and environmental scientist” on her now-private Instagram account. In a since-deleted video, shot in Australia, Jones is seen grabbing a baby wombat from its mother near a remote road at night. She runs back to her vehicle, holding the animal up to the camera, as the mother wombat runs after them. “I caught a baby wombat,” Jones exclaimed in the video. The animal appeared to be distressed in the clip, wriggling and hissing. A man behind the camera can be heard laughing: “Look at the mother,” he said, “it’s chasing after her!” The baby appears to be a common wombat, which is a protected marsupial found only in Australia. According to BBC news, the caption of the now-deleted post read: “My dream of holding a wombat has been realised! Baby and mom slowly waddled back off together into the bush.” Responding to early criticism, Jones defended her actions in the video’s comments. “The baby was carefully held for one minute in total and then released back to mom,” she wrote. “They wandered back off into the bush together completely unharmed. I don’t ever capture wildlife that will be harmed by my doing so.” That didn’t stop the user backlash and Jones, who has more than 92,000 followers on Instagram, made her account private. But the video—and other posts allegedly from her account, including images of her holding an echidna and a “little shark”—continue to circulate online. On Friday morning, ABC Australia sent out a news alert saying the influencer had left Australia voluntarily, as a petition calling for her deportation amassed over 39,000 signatures. “There’s never been a better day to be a baby wombat in Australia,” Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke responded to news of her departure, according to the Associated Press. Earlier that day, Burke confirmed that authorities were reviewing Jones’s visa conditions for potential breaches of immigration law. “I can’t wait for Australia to see the back of this individual, I don’t expect she will return,” he said in the statement received by the Associated Press. Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also weighed in. “I suggest to this so-called influencer, maybe she might try some other Australian animals, take a baby crocodile from its mother and see how you go there,” he said. “Take another animal that can actually fight back, rather than stealing a baby wombat from its mother. See how you go there.”
President Donald Trump’s escalating trade wars with the European Union, Canada, and other international markets has led American whiskey producers like Cedar Ridge Distillery to rethink their export strategies. “We don’t know what the rules are going to be,” says Jeff Quint, founder and CEO of Cedar Ridge, in an interview with Fast Company. “It makes you divert your attention to a more stable environment.” The Iowa-based distillery sells about 80,000 cases of whiskey annually in more than 30 U.S. states and markets abroad including Canada, the EU, and Australia. But craving stability in a turbulent world, Quint says he may completely shut down his export business and exclusively focus on his home turf to avoid the tariff war. “You don’t just pop into Canada one year and then pop back out,” says Quint. “These are long-term decisions, what markets you are going to play in.” [Photo: Cedar Ridge] The liquor industry was rattled after the EU announced it would impose a 50% tax on American whiskey in April, causing Trump to retaliate and threaten a 200% tariff on wine, champagne, and spirits made in Europe. The news rattled the stock prices of Europe’s liquor giants including Johnnie Walker Scotch maker Diageo and Absolut vodka owner Pernod Ricard, who have already warned Wall Street that if tariffs on Mexico and Canada went into effect, they would stand to see a hit of tens of millions of dollars to their operating profits. Chris Swonger, the president and CEO of trade association Distilled Spirits Council, says he was in Brussels a few weeks ago pleading with Europeans not to move forward with a tariff on American whiskey. “Our industry should not be involved,” says Swonger, whose organization represents producers and marketers of spirits sold in the U.S. “We are the model for the benefits of fair and reciprocal trade.” The group is an advocate for zero-for-zero tariffs, which the European and U.S. markets enjoyed between 1997 and 2018, resulting in a 450% increase in spirits trade that benefited Scotch whisky, bourbon, cognac, and European-made liqueurs. Swonger also praised Trump’s efforts earlier this year to negotiate a lower tariff on American goods in India, including whiskey. India is the top selling market for whiskey globally. In 2018, the EU enacted a 25% tariff on American whiskey in a retaliatory response to steel and aluminum tariffs during the first Trump administration. The Distilled Spirits Council estimates that led to a 20% plunge in whiskey exports to the EU over a three year period. Those tariffs were suspended a couple years ago and trade flows normalized. Nationalism tends to run high during a tariff war and that makes liquor brands, which are often intrinsically linked to their country of origin, an easy target. After Canadian retailers pulled U.S. alcohol from their shelves, Jack Daniel’s maker Brown-Forman lamented that these actions would be even more financially devastating than the tariffs themselves. “Sometimes these trade disputes drive a lot of emotion,” says Swonger. “And emotion doesn’t create smart and appropriate trade policy.” Swonger says the tariff war presents a unique challenge to many spirits producers because legally, they cannot move production to local domestic markets to avoid paying a tariff. Tequila must come from Mexico, bourbon is only produced by the U.S., and cognac is distinctively French. Some liquor giants, including tequila producer Jose Cuervo, have shipped additional products to foreign markets to get ahead of tariffs before they go into effect. “Today, everything is under control for us,” says Lander Otegui, SVP of marketing at Jose Cuervo’s owner Proximo Spirits. “Long term, we’ll see how the conversation evolves to see what actions we take.” Jose Cuervo previously warned of a $80 million impact in 2025 due to tariffs, though Trump delayed them earlier this month. [Photo: Santo Spirits] If tariffs do become a reality, brands may ask wholesalers and retailers to help absorb the cost of the tax, perhaps each cutting their profit by about 8% to avoid passing along the price increase to customers. “The larger producers have much more leverage,” says Dan Butkus, CEO and president of tequila producer Santo Spirits. “It is much more difficult for a smaller tequila producer to negotiate.” That puts pressure on new entrepreneurs like Alana Abbitt, who in February launched Santa Almagia Mezcal, a small batch brand that she co-founded with her mother. “The timing is not great,” says Abbitt. “Do I take a hit on those margins because it’s not the customer’s fault, or do I have to pass along [the cost] to the customer to be a viable business?” Mitigation strategies to pre-ship products or attempt to share the pain across the liquor industry supply chain are only expected to help in the short- to medium-term. If tariffs are implemented over a long period of time, most experts say prices for tequila, Scotch, and other liquors made abroad will increase for Americans. “Tariffs are a tax on the consumer,” says Butkus, noting that a $50 bottle of booze would sell for $62.50 if a 25% tariff is imposed. Higher prices will likely change behaviors in a few different, yet equally harmful ways. Tequila lovers may switch to vodka that can be made domestically or lower-priced spirits, resulting in fewer choices on the shelf and less innovation coming into the market. But conversely, if more distillers employ Cedar Ridge’s all-in strategy on selling domestically, prices may fall because the market is flooded with too much bourbon that was initially meant to be sold in Canada or the EU. “This is all paralyzing,” says Quint. “I don’t think anybody knows how this all nets out.”
From the Three Graces in ancient Greek and Roman mythology to the Three Wise Men in the Bible, the number three has been revered throughout history as a symbol of balance and harmony. Jackie and Shadow, the internet-famous bald eagles of Big Bear, California, would probably agree—their last egg has officially hatched, bringing their final chick count this season to three. These little fluffs might not have names yet but that hasn’t stopped 1.73 million people and counting from following their journey. Let’s break down the numbers and timeline of Chick 3’s arrival in the nest. The webcam that captured the attention of the world The bald eagle live streams are run by a nonprofit called Friends of Big Bear Valley (FOBBV). Little did this small-but-mighty group of staff and volunteers know how many people their efforts would reach. According to Jenny Voisard, FOBBV’s media and website manager, a record-breaking 100,000 people concurrently tuned into the camera’s live stream at one point this year to cheer on the expecting parents. FOBBV’s website received 950,000 unique visitors in a week, causing it to crash a couple of times. It now has a dedicated server to handle all the love. Meanwhile, all this attention also translates to social media followers. Across all channels, the organization has a whopping 1.73 million followers. Its Instagram just launched and already has more than 46,000 fans. The public Facebook page has close to one million followers, with some posts being shared 15,000 times. And let’s not forget the YouTube channel, with almost 500,000 subscribers. It’s fair to say if you love these bald eagles, you are in good company. The hatching journey of chick No. 3 The third and final egg was laid on January 28. The average incubation period for a bald eagle is around 35 days, so fans had to be patient. On March 6 at 10:21 a.m., a snowy cold morning in Big Bear, the first pip, or crack, was spotted. By 10:53 a.m. it had grown. It’s normal for the hatching process to take a couple of days and this was no exception. Additionally, the snowy conditions forced Jackie to stay firmly on the nest to keep her babies warm and out of sight. At 2:11 a.m. on March 8, the chick was visible, dry, but not quite of the shell. By 6:13 a.m. Chick 3 completed its journey into the world and was present for the early morning feeding. Since its birth, Chick 3 has received multiple feedings from its parents. Its eyesight is still developing, so sometimes it takes a moment to get situated. It has also experienced some danger: Ravens have attempted to infiltrate the nest, but Jackie called out to Shadow, and the parents worked together to scare the intruders away. The neighborhood flying squirrel Fiona also tried to visit, but Jackie’s wing slaps got her to mind her own business. Chick 3 will have to learn to get along with its siblings. It is normal to see some jostling around as one chick emerges as the dominant sibling. They will also bonk each other on the head but soon find their rhythm and pecking order. At around 10 to 12 weeks, these eaglets will fledge or leave the nest for the first time. They typically hang out close to home for a couple months before they completely strike out on their own. To catch them before then, watch the webcam embedded below.
2025 has not been a good year for retail store closures so far. High-profile chains, including Joann fabrics, Walgreens, and Big Lots, have shuttered locations across the country. And now Dollar General is joining them. Here’s what you need to know. Dollar General Corporation to close 141 stores Dollar General Corporation is the owner of the popular chain of Dollar General discount stores and the PopShelf retail chain. The company has now announced it will shutter 141 stores across both brands. Dollar General Corporation made the store closure announcement yesterday in its fourth-quarter and fiscal-year 2024 earnings report. As part of that report, the company said it has chosen to close a number of locations after evaluating the individual stores’ performance, operating conditions, and expected future performance. That review has led Dollar General Corporation to decide to close the following: 96 Dollar General stores 45 Popshelf stores “As a result of this review, the Company plans to close 96 Dollar General stores and 45 pOpshelf stores, and convert an additional six pOpshelf stores to Dollar General stores in the first quarter of the 52-week fiscal year ending January 30, 2026 (‘fiscal 2025’),” the company stated. Which Dollar General and Popshelf locations are closing? While Dollar General Corporation announced the closure of 141 locations across the two brands, the company did not immediately provide a list of which locations would close. Fast Company has reached out to Dollar General Corporation for a list of locations that will be closing. Currently, Popshelf’s store locator shows the company has over 220 stores spread across 20 states. A closure of 45 of those stores means Dollar General Corporation will be reducing Popshelf’s store count by roughly 20%. In its earnings release, Dollar General Corporation also noted that it will “convert an additional six pOpshelf stores to Dollar General stores in the first quarter of the 52-week fiscal year ending January 30, 2026 (‘fiscal 2025’).” As for the Dollar General closures, Dollar General Corporation says it currently has more than 20,000 Dollar General stores across 48 states. A closure of 96 locations is roughly around a minuscule 0.5% of all Dollar General stores. “While the number of closings represents less than one percent of our overall store base, we believe this decision better positions us to serve our customers and communities,” Todd Vasos, Dollar General’s CEO, said. Dollar General Corporation did not address what would happen to the employees at the closing locations—whether they would be let go or given the opportunity to move to other stores. The company says it currently employs more than 194,000 employees. Thousands of retail stores expected to close in 2025 Dollar General Corporation made the store closure announcement while reporting that its fiscal year 2024 saw a net income of $1.1 billion—a decrease of 32.3% from fiscal year 2023. However, net sales for fiscal 2024 increased to $40.6 billion—5% higher than in 2023. Still, regarding the announced closures, Vasos said, “we believe this review was appropriate to further strengthen the foundation of our business.” As Fast Company previously reported, Coresight Research released a report earlier this year in which it says it expects to see up to 15,000 retail locations close across the United States in 2025. The closures, in part, are the result of decreasing foot traffic to many retailers as consumers look to rein in discretionary spending among inflationary pressures. Those same consumers are also increasingly turning to online shopping instead of making the journey to brick-and-mortar stores—and that online competition isn’t just coming from U.S. online retail giant Amazon. “We expect general-merchandise retailers across a wide range of categories, from automotive to home and pet, to be threatened by the further growth of Temu and the scaling of Shein’s non-clothing offering,” the report stated.
You don’t need tickets to see Metallica in concert anymore—just a $3,499 Apple Vision Pro headset. Starting today, Apple Vision Pro users can experience Metallica’s 2024 Mexico City concert as an immersive, ultra-high resolution experience complete with 180-degree video and Spatial Audio. The concert, filmed on September 29 as part of the sold-out finale of Metallica’s M72 World Tour, includes fan-favorites like “One” and “Enter Sandman.” “With Metallica on Apple Vision Pro, you feel like you’re right there: front row, backstage, and even on stage with one of the biggest bands of all time,” Tor Myhren, Apple’s vice president of Marketing Communications, said in a statement. The Vision Pro launched at the beginning of 2024 to lukewarm sales and has, generally speaking, failed to find success on the level of its phone and laptop counterparts. Some of that was to be expected, though. When the Vision Pro first released, Apple mainly courted developers, hoping they’d be impressed enough to build apps for the product. Apple engaged these developers in a series of “test labs” leading up to the product’s release. But recently, Apple has begun to roll out consumer-oriented features that make the hardware more appealing to everyday consumers—and has been using its best technology to do so. When it comes to the Metallica concert, Apple utilized high-end video technology in order to capture multiple perspectives and a view of over 65,000 enthusiastic concertgoers. This custom-made filming setup included 14 Apple Immersive Video cameras using a mix of stabilized cameras, cable-suspended cameras, and remote-controlled camera dolly systems that moved around the stage. At South by Southwest in Austin, Metallica drummer and founder Lars Ulrich discussed the experience of having his own show turned into an augmented reality experience, calling it “pretty overwhelming, sort of surreal.” If metalheads—or any interested customer—wants to see the immersive experience for themselves, Apple Stores are offering Vision Pro demos complete with an excerpt from the concert including a full performance of the song “Whiplash.” And if you prefer pop to rock, Alicia Keys and Raye both also have performances that have been exclusively shown on the Vision Pro. The Weeknd also has a similar immersive concert experience called “The Weeknd: Open Hearts.”
The Trump administration announced on March 12, 2025, that it is “reconsidering” more than 30 air pollution regulations in a series of moves that could impact air quality across the United States. “Reconsideration” is a term used to review or modify a government regulation. While Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin provided few details, the breadth of the regulations being reconsidered affects all Americans. They include rules that set limits for pollutants that can harm human health, such as ozone, particulate matter and volatile organic carbon. Zeldin wrote that his deregulation moves would “roll back trillions in regulatory costs and hidden ‘taxes’ on U.S. families.” But that’s only part of the story. What Zeldin didn’t say is that the economic and health benefits from decades of federal clean air regulations have far outweighed their costs. Some estimates suggest every $1 spent meeting clean air rules has returned $10 in health and economic benefits. How far America has come, because of regulations In the early 1970s, thick smog blanketed American cities and acid rain stripped forests bare from the Northeast to the Midwest. Air pollution wasn’t just a nuisance—it was a public health emergency. But in the decades since, the United States has engineered one of the most successful environmental turnarounds in history. Thanks to stronger air-quality regulations, pollution levels have plummeted, preventing hundreds of thousands of deaths annually. And despite early predictions that these regulations would cripple the economy, the opposite has proven true: The U.S. economy more than doubled in size while pollution fell, showing that clean air and economic growth can—and do—go hand in hand. The numbers are eye-popping. An Environmental Protection Agency analysis of the first 20 years of the Clean Air Act, from 1970 to 1990, found the economic benefits of the regulations were about 42 times greater than the costs. The EPA later estimated that the cost of air-quality regulations in the U.S. would be about US$65 billion in 2020, and the benefits, primarily in improved health and increased worker productivity, would be around $2 trillion. Other studies have found similar benefits. That’s a return of more than 30 to 1, making clean air one of the best investments the country has ever made. Science-based regulations even the playing field The turning point came with the passage of the Clean Air Act of 1970, which put in place strict rules on pollutants from industry, vehicles, and power plants. These rules targeted key culprits: lead, ozone, sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter—substances that contribute to asthma, heart disease, and premature deaths. An example was the removal of lead, which can harm the brain and other organs, from gasoline. That single change resulted in far lower levels of lead in people’s blood, including a 70% drop in U.S. children’s blood-lead levels. The results have been extraordinary. Since 1980, emissions of six major air pollutants have dropped by 78%, even as the U.S. economy has more than doubled in size. Cities that were once notorious for their thick, choking smog—such as Los Angeles, Houston, and Pittsburgh—now see far cleaner air, while lakes and forests devastated by acid rain in the Northeast have rebounded. And most importantly, lives have been saved. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to periodically estimate the costs and benefits of air-quality regulations. In the most recent estimate, released in 2011, the EPA projected that air-quality improvements would prevent over 230,000 premature deaths in 2020. That means fewer heart attacks, fewer emergency room visits for asthma, and more years of healthy life for millions of Americans. The economic payoff Critics of air-quality regulations have long argued that the regulations are too expensive for businesses and consumers. But the data tells a very different story. EPA studies have confirmed that clean air regulations improve air quality over time. Other studies have shown that the health benefits greatly outweigh the costs. That pays off for the economy. Fewer illnesses mean lower healthcare costs, and healthier workers mean higher productivity and fewer missed workdays. The EPA estimated that for every $1 spent on meeting air-quality regulations, the United States received $9 in benefits. A separate study by the nonpartisan National Bureau of Economic Research in 2024 estimated that each $1 spent on air pollution regulation brought the U.S. economy at least $10 in benefits. And when considering the long-term impact on human health and climate stability, the return is even greater. The next chapter in clean air The air Americans breathe today is cleaner, much healthier, and safer than it was just a few decades ago. Yet, despite this remarkable progress, air pollution remains a challenge in some parts of the country. Some urban neighborhoods remain stubbornly polluted because of vehicle emissions and industrial pollution. While urban pollution has declined, wildfire smoke has become a larger influence on poor air quality across the nation. That means the EPA still has work to do. If the agency works with environmental scientists, public health experts, and industry, and fosters honest scientific consensus, it can continue to protect public health while supporting economic growth. At the same time, it can ensure that future generations enjoy the same clean air and prosperity that regulations have made possible. By instead considering retracting clean air rules, the EPA is calling into question the expertise of countless scientists who have provided their objective advice over decades to set standards designed to protect human lives. In many cases, industries won’t want to go back to past polluting ways, but lifting clean air rules means future investment might not be as protective. And it increases future regulatory uncertainty for industries. The past offers a clear lesson: Investing in clean air is not just good for public health—it’s good for the economy. With a track record of saving lives and delivering trillion-dollar benefits, air-quality regulations remain one of the greatest policy success stories in American history. Richard E. Peltier is a professor of environmental health sciences at UMass Amherst. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Qatar will provide natural gas supplies to Syria with the aim of generating 400 megawatts of electricity a day, in a measure to help address the war-battered country’s severe electricity shortages, Syrian state-run news agency SANA reported Friday. Syria’s interim Minister of Electricity Omar Shaqrouq said the Qatari supplies are expected to increase the daily state-provided electricity supply from two to four hours per day. Under the deal, Qatar will send two million cubic meters of natural gas a day to the Deir Ali power station, south of Damascus, via a pipeline passing through Jordan. Qatar’s state-run news agency said that the initiative was part of an agreement between the Qatar Fund for Development and the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources of Jordan in collaboration with the United Nations Development Program and “aims to address the country’s severe shortage in electricity production and enhance its infrastructure.” Syria’s economy and infrastructure, including electricity production, has been devastated by nearly 14 years of civil war and crushing Western sanctions imposed on the government of former President Bashar Assad. Those who can afford it rely on solar power and private generators to make up for the meager state power supply, while others remain most of the day without power. Since Assad was ousted in a lightning rebel offensive in December, the country’s new rulers have struggled to consolidate control over territory that was divided into de facto ministates during the war and to begin the process of reconstruction. The United Nations in 2017 estimated that it would cost at least $250 billion to rebuild Syria, while experts say that number could reach at least $400 billion. The United States remains circumspect about the interim government and current President Ahmad al-Sharaa, the former leader of the Islamist insurgent group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. Washington designates HTS as a terrorist organization and has been reluctant to lift sanctions. In January, however, the U.S. eased some restrictions, issuing a six-month general license that authorizes certain transactions with the Syrian government, including some energy sales and incidental transactions.
We all know influencing can pay well—but just how well? Philadelphia-based influencer Brandon Edelman, known online as @bran_flakezz, recently went viral on TikTok after revealing he made $768,000 last year, primarily from brand partnerships and creator funds. After taxes and expenses, he pocketed net earnings of just over $300,000. Known for his self-described “feral party content,” Edelman discussed his TikTok career on Your Rich BFF, a finance podcast hosted by Vivian Tu. “So $768,000 is the top number, 20 percent of that goes to management, so we’re down to, like, what $550k? From $550k, $200,000 of that goes to taxes,” Edelman said. “Just the way it goes. Now we’re down to $330k. After the $330k, you have your expenses. I have a team now, so it’s like, lawyer, accountant, therapist . . . it’s insane.” After doing the math, the 28-year-old revealed he wound up pocketing, “probably about $300,000”—still a far cry from his previous $40,000 salary working in the fashion industry. “I grew up, literally, dirt poor, so this is insane,” he told Tu. “My parents made enough money to put food on the table, but they didn’t have savings. We lived paycheck to paycheck. I knew when I grew up, I wanted to be more financially secure.” (Fast Company has reached out to Edelman for comment.) Edelman’s transparency has encouraged a wave of salary disclosures across social media. Still, Edelman is the exception—not the rule. In 2023, 48% of creator-earners made $15,000 or less, according to a 2024 report by the Wall Street Journal, pointing to figures from NeoReach, an influencer marketing agency. Just 13% made upwards of $100,000. There’s also the racial pay gap to account for. Influencers like @aliyahsinterlude and @claaaarke joined the conversation on TikTok, addressing pay disparities and the different expectations put upon creators of color in the industry. A 2024 report from SevenSix Agency, a British influencer marketing and talent management agency, revealed stark pay disparities based on ethnicity, with white influencers earning up to 50% more than their BAME counterparts. For example, when it comes to Instagram Reels, white influencers earn an average of £1,637.62 ($2,100.92) per post, while Black influencers make £1,080.41 ($1,386.07). South Asian influencers average £1,135.00 ($1,456.10), Southeast Asian influencers £700.63 ($898.85), and East Asian influencers £1,009.55 ($1,295.16). Edelman acknowledged this pay disparity in a follow-up video on his TikTok page. “This is why salary transparency is important,” he explained. “In every industry, in every walk of life. We don’t know what we don’t know. For us to be able to have open conversations about what we are making gives us the edge to then negotiate what we are actually worth.”
Life these days is expensive. The lingering effects of the pandemic, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, higher fuel and energy prices, and extreme weather shocks throttling the supply chain have conspired to make many everyday necessities much less affordable. Rising food costs in particular have become a source of financial stress for millions of U.S. households. Though overall inflation has cooled from a record peak in 2022, food prices increased nearly a quarter over the past four years and are expected to continue to climb. So far this year, Americans have faced a nationwide bird flu outbreak, propelling the cost of eggs to record levels, while rising temperatures and erratic rainfall across Western Africa are escalating chocolate prices to new highs. Years of drought in the U.S. have also contributed to historically low levels of cattle inventories, hiking up beef prices. The result is skyrocketing supermarket bills, tighter household budgets, and dwindling access to food. President Donald Trump’s latest trade decisions aren’t likely to help the situation. Amid a flood of announcements about federal funding freezes, food program terminations, and mass government layoffs, the president has been issuing on-again, off-again sanctions aimed at the United States’s biggest trading partners. In the span of a single week, he enacted blanket tariffs against goods from Mexico, Canada, and China, exempted some products under the United States-Mexico-Canada trade agreement, and then doubled tariffs on China before threatening a new set of taxes on Canadian products. On Tuesday, he ordered his administration to double duties on Canadian steel and aluminum imports, which he subsequently walked back to 25% before those snapped into effect Wednesday morning, prompting immediate retaliation levies from Canada and the European Union. The pendulum-like nature of Trump’s trade policies, economists told Grist, almost certainly means higher grocery store prices. It has already spooked financial markets and prompted major retailers like Target CEO Brian Cornell to warn that if some of the promised tariffs go into effect, customers could see sticker shock for fresh produce “within days.” “When it comes to extreme weather shocks, which are destroying our supply chains, climate change is increasing prices and creating food inflation,” said Seungki Lee, an agricultural economist at Ohio State University. If policymakers don’t fully account for that by adjusting trade policies, he said, then to some degree, “we will see the compounding impacts of tariffs and climate change-related shocks on the supply chain.” Tariffs, or taxes charged on goods imported from other countries, are typically a negotiation tactic waged by governments in a game of international trade, with consumers and producers caught in the crosshairs. When goods enter a country, tariffs are calculated as a percentage of their value and paid by the importer. The importer may then choose to pass on the cost to consumers, which, in the case of something like fresh fruit grown in Mexico, often ends up being everyday people. Given the extent of the United States’s dependence on Canada, Mexico, and China for agricultural trade, farmers, analysts, business leaders, policymakers, and the general public have all raised concerns over the effect of tariffs on grocery store prices and the possibility of trade wars slowing economic growth. During the first Trump term, levies on China triggered retaliatory tariffs that decimated agricultural exports and commodity prices, costing the U.S. agricultural industry more than $27 billion, which the government then had to cover with subsidy payouts. To date, the U.S. has not fully recovered its loss in market share of soybean exports to China, its biggest agricultural export market. An analysis by the National Bureau of Economic Research, a nonprofit organization, found that the 2018 trade war with China was largely passed through as increases in U.S. prices, reducing consumers’ income by about $1.4 billion per month. Rural agricultural sectors in the Midwest and the mountain west were hit harder by China’s retaliatory tariffs than most others, the analysis found. This time around, Trump appears to have doubled down on the tactic, though the demands and messaging of his tariff policy have remained wildly unpredictable, with economists dubbing the president an “agent of chaos and confusion.” All told, China, Canada, and Mexico supplied roughly 40% of the goods the U.S. imported last year. In 2023, Mexico alone was the source of about two-thirds of vegetables imported to the U.S., nearly half fruit and nut imports, and about 90% of avocados consumed nationwide. Without factoring in any retaliatory tariffs, estimates suggest that the levies imposed by Trump last week could amount to an average tax increase of anywhere between $830 and $1,072 a year per U.S. household. “I’m a little nervous about the increase in tension,” said Lee. “It could lead to an immediate shock in supermarket prices.” Canada and China have since responded with tariffs of their own. Canada’s tariffs imposed last week amounted to nearly $21 billion on U.S. goods, including orange juice, peanut butter, and coffee. China imposed 15% levies on wheat, corn, and chicken produced by U.S. farmers, in addition to 10% tariffs on products including soybeans, pork, beef, and fruit that went into effect on Monday. Meanwhile, Mexico planned to announce retaliatory tariffs but instead celebrated Trump’s decision to postpone. On Wednesday, in response to Trump’s steel and aluminum tariff hike, Canadian officials announced a second $20.7 billion wave of duties and the European Union declared it would begin retaliatory trade action next month for a range of U.S. industrial and farm goods that includes sugar, beef, eggs, poultry, peanut butter, and bourbon. With Trump’s planned tariffs, Americans can expect to see fresh produce shipped from Mexico—such as tomatoes, strawberries, avocados, limes, mangos, and papayas, as well as types of tequila and beer—become more expensive. Other agricultural products sourced from Canada, including fertilizer, chocolate, canola oil, maple syrup, and pork are also likely to see cost hikes. New duties on potash, a key ingredient in fertilizer, and steel used in agricultural machinery coming from Canada could also indirectly elevate food prices. Many of these products, such as avocados, vegetable oils, cocoa, and mangoes, are already seeing surging price tags in part because of rising temperatures. Though there’s no shortage of questions surrounding Trump’s tariff policy right now, James Sayre, an agricultural economist at the University of California, Davis, said that even this current state of international trade uncertainty will lead to a higher grocery cost burden for consumers. “All of this uncertainty is really bad for businesses hoping to import, or establish new supply chains abroad, or for any large-scale investment,” said Sayre. “Just this degree of uncertainty will increase prices for consumers and reduce consumer choice at the supermarket . . . even more than tariffs themselves.” All the while, climate change continues to fuel food inflation, leaving American consumers to foot the bill of a warming world and the cascading effects of an administration seemingly set on upending global trade relations. “It is actually a little bit hard to anticipate what we can expect from the current administration when we are seeing the burden of food inflation by tariffs or trade, and also at the same time, we have climate-related shocks on the supply chain,” said Lee. “Hopefully we will not see an unexpected compounding effect by these two very different animals.” — Ayurella Horn-Muller, Grist This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. 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China has ordered banks and other financial institutions to encourage more consumer financing and use of credit cards as part of a campaign to get people to spend more. The order Friday from the country’s financial regulator is part of the ruling Communist Party’s latest push to build more confidence among consumers who are opting to save rather than spend, worried over jobs and the outlook for the economy. It said banks should lend more and also find ways to help borrowers who run into difficulties. Share prices in China surged following the notice from the National Financial Regulatory Administration. Officials are due to hold a briefing on Monday on efforts to increase spending and investment, factors considered crucial for keeping the economy on track following the setbacks of the COVID-19 pandemic, when millions of people lost jobs and many companies went out of business. The Chinese economy, the world’s second-largest, has been growing recently at about a 5% pace, according to official statistics. But worries over jobs and the burden of healthcare and education have left many Chinese unwilling to spend much, hobbling a major driver of business activity. A prolonged downturn in the property market triggered by government efforts to rein in excessive borrowing by real estate developers has also weighed on consumer sentiment, leaving many families feeling worse off than in the past. Last year, a surge in exports helped to make up for the persisting weakness in domestic demand, which is fueled by spending and investment. But U.S. President Donald Trump‘s orders to sharply raise tariffs on imports of Chinese goods may dent exports in coming months, raising risks for many types of businesses. Apart from expanding use of consumer credit, the government is spending tens of billions of dollars on car and appliance trade-in programs meant to encourage the use of more energy-efficient products, but also to soak up excess inventories due to weak demand. The level of consumer financing and other personal borrowing in China has tended to be much lower than in the U.S. and many other countries, although it has surged in recent years. Nearly nine in 10 Chinese families own their homes, while fewer than half of homeowners have mortgages. Use of cash and online apps and other forms of digital payments are more common than use of credit cards. —Elaine Kurtenbach, AP business writer
As a crucial climate lawsuit heads to trial in Germany next week, experts say the case brought by Peruvian farmer Saul Luciano Lliuya against German energy giant RWE could set a significant precedent in the fight to hold major polluters accountable for climate change. “This is one of the first cases of its kind—a case brought by someone directly affected by climate change against a major greenhouse gas emitter—that has made it all the way to trial,” said Noah Walker-Crawford, a research fellow at the London School of Economics and an adviser to the non-profit Germanwatch, which has been advising Lliuya. Lliuya’s lawsuit against RWE argues that the company’s historical greenhouse gas emissions have fueled global warming, accelerating glacial melt above his hometown of Huaraz, Peru. As a result, Lake Palcacocha has swelled to dangerous levels, threatening the community with the risk of catastrophic flooding. RWE, which has never operated in Peru, denies legal responsibility, arguing that climate change is a global issue caused by many contributors. Concern over melting glaciers “It’s very sad and painful to see the glaciers melting,” Lliuya, 45, told the Associated Press in a video call from Germany. “There is a lot of concern from people in my community about the future, about the issue of water, because all the rivers that come down from the mountains are used for farming.” Walker-Crawford said of all these cases around the world, this is the one that’s gone the furthest. “It has already set a partial precedent in that the courts found it admissible in 2017, which means that the judges said the case is solid in legal terms,” he said. “Now, the court is hearing evidence, and we’ll see whether the company’s responsibility can be proven in this specific case.” Sebastien Duyck, a senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law, says the reason why the case is so significant is not the decision itself or the amount of damages sought, but the precedent it would set. “If we could use tort law to say that any fossil fuel corporation that has contributed significantly to climate change can be held liable for climate-related costs in proportion to their emissions, it could open the door for many similar cases worldwide,” he said. Case could be a ‘game changer’ The case could be “a game changer,” according to Murray Worthy, from Zero Carbon Analytics, a research group on climate change. “This case is absolutely crucial,” Worthy said. “While this is just one case focused on this one place in Peru, the wider implications are huge. The costs and damages from climate change could run to tens of trillions of dollars a year, and if fossil fuel companies at large are found to be responsible for those and need to pay those costs, it would completely change the finances and outlook for the entire fossil fuel industry.” RWE is one of Germany’s largest energy companies, historically recognized as a major producer of electricity from fossil fuels. RWE says the lawsuit is legally inadmissible and that it sets a dangerous precedent by holding individual emitters accountable for global climate change. “In our view, there is no legal basis for holding individual issuers liable for global phenomena such as climate change. Due to the large number of global emissions of greenhouse gases from both natural and human sources, as well as the complexity of the climate, it is not possible, in our opinion, to legally attribute specific effects of climate change to a single issuer,” the company said in response to questions posed by the AP. The company insists climate solutions should be addressed through state and international policies, not the courts. Walker-Crawford said the court is entering the evidence-gathering phase, examining whether Lliuya’s home actually faces a significant risk of flooding. “If the court decides that the risk is high enough, it will then assess whether RWE’s emissions can be scientifically linked to that risk,” he said. Regardless of the case’s final outcome, Walker-Crawford said it’s likely to reinforce the legal foundation for future lawsuits. “Even if the specific risk in this case isn’t deemed high enough, the precedent that companies can be held liable for their climate impacts would still stand,” he said. The case’s outcome could also have financial repercussions. Climate litigation could impact financial markets “We’re already starting to see the impact of climate litigation on financial markets,” Walker-Crawford said. “Research has shown that when climate cases against corporations move past major hurdles, it negatively affects the stock market value of the companies being sued. Investors are starting to take note of the significant financial liability climate litigation can pose.” Lliuya, who also works as a mountain guide for tourists, said he started the lawsuit with little hope. Ten years on, that hope has grown. “When the German judges visited my home and the lake in 2022, it gave me hope—hope that our voices were being heard and that justice might be possible,” he said. “Whatever the outcome, we have come a long way and I feel good about that,” he said. The hearing will begin Monday. Franklin Briceno in Lima, Peru, contributed to this report. The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org. —Steven Grattan, Associated Press
Poppers have always operated in a legal gray zone. Now the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is cracking down on their production. This week, many major poppers brands began wiping their websites and social media presences. On Friday, Double Scorpio, a popular isobutyl nitrite brand, posted a statement on its website. “Double Scorpio has stopped all operations following a search and seizure at our offices by the FDA,” it wrote. Poppers, which are packaged in liquid form and inhaled for a brief euphoric effect, generally need to be prescribed. Still, many manufacturers skirt the law by using alternate chemical formulas and advertising as nail polish remover and leather cleaner. The drug is most popular with LGBTQ+ consumers, something Robert F. Kennedy Jr., current head of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has taken aim at. In his 2021 book, Kennedy spread the lie that poppers caused AIDS. Now his department oversees the FDA, which is part of HHS. ‘We don’t have a lot of information to share’ In its statement, Double Scorpio signaled an industry-wide crackdown. “We don’t have a lot of information to share but we believe that the FDA has performed similar actions towards other companies recently,” the brand wrote. Two merchants who spoke with Fast Company anonymously to discuss information that wasn’t public confirmed that additional producers have also been affected by the apparent crackdown. “As a matter of policy, the FDA does not comment on possible criminal investigations,” an FDA spokesperson wrote to Fast Company. Meanwhile, other brands have gone entirely silent or wiped their web presence. Pac-West Distributing (PWD), one of the producers of Rush, has replaced its website with a single graphic. It also shut down its phone number. Nitro-Solv, an online poppers retailer that advertised on PWD’s site, has also since shut down. AFAB Industrial, another producer of Rush, has been the most public-facing of these producers. Its owner, Everett Farr, sat for an interview with BuzzFeed News in 2021, even as business associates worried about an FDA warning. (“Why bring attention to yourself?” one asked the outlet.) But AFAB has gone radio silent, too, shutting down its email and denying a request for comment over the phone. Are poppers legal? Once prescribed for chest pain to increase blood flow, poppers grew popular with LGBTQ+ people starting in the 1960s. Since then, their influence has ballooned, also becoming a popular party drug. While the United States has some rules about the production and distribution of poppers, they are rarely enforced. In the late 1960s, the FDA classified amyl nitrites as a prescription drug after observing recreational use. Many producers pivoted to producing butyl nitrites, which were banned over a decade later in the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988. Isopropyl nitrites were banned two years later, but with an exception for commercial purposes, hence why many sellers masquerade as VCR cleaners or liquid incenses. But the FDA has been sparse with its crackdowns, save for a few advisories. In 2021, the FDA posted a warning for consumers not to ingest or inhale poppers. Two years later, it launched a social media campaign advising consumers on the difference between Rush and 5-Hour Energy bottles. This lack of enforcement has led many poppers brands, like Rush, Double Scorpio, and Jungle Juice, to create yearslong market dominance. What has RFK said about poppers? Robert F. Kennedy Jr. now runs the Department of Health and Human Services, which the FDA sits under. But Kennedy has long been spreading scientific misinformation about LGBTQ+ people, including that chemicals in the water are affecting children’s sexualities. Some of these falsehoods also concerned poppers. In his 2021 book The Real Anthony Fauci, Kennedy cited Peter Duesberg, a leader in AIDS denialism. Duesberg theorized that “heavy recreational drug use” caused immune deficiency in gay men, specifically linking the spread of AIDS to the usage of poppers. This theory has long been discredited; in 2008, Françoise Barré-Sinoussi and Luc Montagnier won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering that HIV causes AIDS.
In his February 2025 cover story for The Atlantic, journalist Derek Thompson dubbed our current era “the anti-social century.” He isn’t wrong. According to our recent research, the U.S. is becoming a nation of homebodies. Using data from the American Time Use Survey, we studied how people in the U.S. spent their time before, during, and after the pandemic. The COVID-19 pandemic did spur more Americans to stay home. But this trend didn’t start or end with the pandemic. We found that Americans were already spending more and more time at home and less and less time engaged in activities away from home stretching all the way back to at least 2003. And if you thought the end of lockdowns and the spread of vaccines led to a revival of partying and playing sports and dining out, you would be mistaken. The pandemic, it turns out, mostly accelerated ongoing trends. All of this has major implications for traffic, public transit, real estate, the workplace, socializing, and mental health. Life inside The trend of staying home is not new. There was a steady decline in out-of-home activities in the two decades leading up to the pandemic. Compared with 2003, Americans in 2019 spent nearly 30 minutes less per day on out-of-home activities and eight fewer minutes a day traveling. There could be any number of reasons for this shift, but advances in technology, whether it’s smartphones, streaming services, or social media, are likely culprits. You can video chat with a friend rather than meeting them for coffee; order groceries through an app instead of venturing to the supermarket; and stream a movie instead of seeing it in a theater. Of course, there was a sharp decline in out-of-home activities during the pandemic, which dramatically accelerated many of these stay-at-home trends. Outside of travel, time spent on out-of-home activities fell by over an hour per day, on average, from 332 minutes in 2019 to 271 minutes in 2021. Travel, excluding air travel, fell from 69 to 54 minutes per day over the same period. But even after the pandemic lockdowns were lifted, out-of-home activities and travel through 2023 remained substantially depressed, far below 2019 levels. There was a dramatic increase in remote work, online shopping, time spent using digital entertainment, such as streaming and gaming, and even time spent sleeping. Time spent outside of the home has rebounded since the pandemic, but only slightly. There was hardly any recovery of out-of-home activities from 2022 to 2023, meaning 2023 out-of-home activities and travel were still far below 2019 levels. On the whole, Americans are spending nearly 1.5 hours less outside their homes in 2023 than they did in 2003. While hours worked from home in 2022 were less than half of what they were in 2021, they’re still about five times what they were ahead of the pandemic. Despite this, only about one-quarter of the overall travel time reduction is due to less commuting. The rest reflects other kinds of travel, for activities such as shopping and socializing. Ripple effects This shift has already had consequences. With Americans spending more time working, playing, and shopping from home, demand for office and retail space has fallen. While there have been some calls by major employers for workers to spend more time in the office, research suggests that working from home in the U.S. held steady between early 2023 and early 2025 at about 25% of paid work days. As a result, surplus office space may need to be repurposed as housing and for other uses. There are advantages to working and playing at home, such as avoiding travel stress and expenses. But it has also boosted demand for extra space in apartments and houses, as people spend more time under their own roof. It has changed travel during the traditional morning—and, especially, afternoon—peak periods, spreading traffic more evenly throughout the day but contributing to significant public transit ridership losses. Meanwhile, more package and food delivery drivers are competing with parked cars and bus and bike lanes for curb space. Perhaps most importantly, spending less time out and about in the world has sobering implications for Americans well beyond real estate and transportation systems. Research we’re currently conducting suggests that more time spent at home has dovetailed with more time spent alone. Suffice it to say, this makes loneliness, which stems from a lack of meaningful connections, a more common occurrence. Loneliness and social isolation are associated with increased risk for early mortality. Because hunkering down appears to be the new norm, we think it’s all the more important for policymakers and everyday people to find ways to cultivate connections and community in the shrinking time they do spend outside of the home. Brian D. Taylor is a professor of urban planning and public policy at the University of California, Los Angeles; Eric Morris is a professor of city and regional planning at Clemson University, and Sam Speroni is a PhD student in urban planning at the University of California, Los Angeles. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Iran increasingly relies on electronic surveillance and the public to inform on women refusing to wear the country’s mandatory headscarf in public, even as hard-liners push for harsher penalties for those protesting the law, a United Nations report released Friday found. The findings of the Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on the Islamic Republic of Iran come after it determined last year that the country’s theocracy was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to the death of Mahsa Amini. Her death led to nationwide protests against the country’s mandatory hijab laws and the public disobedience against them that continues even today, despite the threat of violent arrest and imprisonment. “Two and a half years after the protests began in September 2022, women and girls in Iran continue to face systematic discrimination, in law and in practice, that permeates all aspects of their lives, particularly with respect to the enforcement of the mandatory hijab,” the report said. “The state is increasingly reliant on state-sponsored vigilantism in an apparent effort to enlist businesses and private individuals in hijab compliance, portraying it as a civic responsibility.” Iran’s mission to the U.N. in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the findings of the 20-page report. Drones, surveillance cameras monitor women In it, U.N. investigators outline how Iran increasingly relies on electronic surveillance. Among the efforts include Iranian officials deploying “aerial drone surveillance” to monitor women in public places. At Tehran’s Amirkabir University, authorities installed facial recognition software at its entrance gate to also find women not wearing the hijab, it said. Surveillance cameras on Iran’s major roadways also are believed to be involved in searching for uncovered women. U.N. investigators said they obtained the “Nazer” mobile phone app offered by Iranian police, which allows the public to report on uncovered women in vehicles, including ambulances, buses, metro cars and taxis. “Users may add the location, date, time and the license plate number of the vehicle in which the alleged mandatory hijab infraction occurred, which then ‘flags’ the vehicle online, alerting the police,” the report said. “It then triggers a text message (in real-time) to the registered owner of the vehicle, warning them that they had been found in violation of the mandatory hijab laws, and that their vehicles would be impounded for ignoring these warnings.” Those text messages have led to dangerous situations. In July 2024, police officers shot and paralyzed a woman who activists say had received such a message and was fleeing a checkpoint near the Caspian Sea. Tensions remain after 2022 death of Mahsa Amini Amini’s death sparked months of protests and a security crackdown that killed more than 500 people and led to the detention of more than 22,000. After the mass demonstrations, police dialed down enforcement of hijab laws, but it ramped up again in April 2024 under what authorities called the Noor — or “Light” — Plan. At least 618 women have been arrested under the Noor Plan, the U.N. investigators said, citing a local human rights activist group in Iran. Meanwhile, Iran executed at least 938 people last year, a threefold increase from 2021, the U.N. said. While many were convicted of drug charges, the report said the executions “indicate a nexus with the overall repression of dissent in this period.” As Iran continues its crackdown over the hijab, it also faces an economic crisis over U.S. sanctions due to its rapidly advancing nuclear program. While U.S. President Donald Trump has called for new negotiations, Iran has yet to respond to a letter he sent to its 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Social unrest, coupled with the economic woes, remain a concern for Iran’s theocracy. Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. —Jamey Keaten and Jon Gambrell, Associated Press
Gucci announced Thursday that the Balenciaga artistic director Demna will take over the creative direction of the Italian luxury fashion house, starting in July. Gucci and its French parent Kering said in a statement that Demna “has redefined modern luxury, earning global recognition and cementing his authority on the industry.” Demna, who goes by one name, has been at Kering-owned Balenciaga for a decade. He brings with him the title of artistic director. “I am truly excited to join the Gucci family,” he said in a statement. “It is an honor to contribute to a house that I deeply respect and have long admired.” Demna showed his latest and last Balenciaga ready-to-wear collection four days ago in Paris, dialing down the theatrics for a more saleable vision. The announcement ends speculation about Gucci’s creative future after Sabato De Sarno’s sudden exit just 2 1/2 weeks before the presentation of the Fall-Winter 2025-26 collection during Milan Fashion Week last month. De Sarno took over from Alessandro Michele, who revolutionized Gucci with gender-fluid, eclectic and romantic collections that rewrote the brand’s codes. De Sarno’s more essential collections failed to excite consumers.
Twelve people were taken to hospitals after an American Airlines plane landed at Denver International Airport on Thursday and caught fire, prompting slides to be deployed so passengers could evacuate quickly. All of the people transported to hospitals had minor injuries, according to a post on the social platform X by Denver International Airport. Flight 1006, which was headed from the Colorado Springs Airport to Dallas Fort Worth, diverted to Denver and landed safely around 5:15 p.m. after the crew reported engine vibrations, the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. While taxiing to the gate, an engine on the Boeing 737-800 caught fire, the FAA added. Photos and videos posted by news outlets showed passengers standing on a plane’s wing as smoke surrounded the aircraft. The FAA said passengers exited using the slides. American said in a statement that the flight experienced an engine-related issue after taxiing to the gate. There was no immediate clarification on exactly when the plane caught fire. The 172 passengers and six crew members were taken to the terminal, airline officials said. “We thank our crew members, DEN team and first responders for their quick and decisive action with the safety of everyone on board and on the ground as the priority,” American said. Firefighters put out the blaze by the evening, an airport spokesperson told media outlets. The FAA said it will investigate. The country has seen a recent spate of aviation disasters and close calls stoking fears about air travel, though flying remains a very safe mode of transport. Recent on-the-ground incidents have included a plane that crashed and flipped over upon landing in Toronto and a Japan Airlines plane that clipped a parked Delta plane while it was taxiing at the Seattle airport.
As Trevor Murphy pulls up to his dad’s 20-acre (8-hectare) grove in one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States, he points to the cookie-cutter, one-story homes encroaching on the orange trees from all sides. “At some point, this isn’t going to be an orange grove anymore,” Murphy, a third-generation grower, says as he gazes at the rows of trees in Lake Wales, Florida. “You look around here, and it’s all houses, and that’s going to happen here.” Polk County, which includes Lake Wales, contains more acres of citrus than any other county in Florida. And in 2023, more people moved to Polk County than any other county in the country. Hit in recent years by hurricanes and citrus greening disease, which slowly kills the trees, many growers are making the difficult decision to sell orange groves that have been in their families for generations to developers building homes to house the growing population. Others, like Murphy, are sticking it out, hoping to survive until a bug-free tree or other options arrive to repel the disease or treat the trees. Mounting concerns When Hurricane Irma blasted through the state’s orange belt in 2017, Florida’s signature crop already had been on a downward spiral for two decades because of the greening disease. Next came a major freeze and two more hurricanes in 2022, followed by two hurricanes last year. A tree that loses branches and foliage in a hurricane can take three years to recover, Murphy said. Those catastrophes contributed to a 90% decline in orange production over the past two decades. Citrus groves in Florida, which covered more than 832,00 acres (336,698 hectares) at the turn of the century, populated scarcely 275,000 acres (111,288 hectares) last year, and California has eclipsed Florida as the nation’s leading citrus producer. “Losing the citrus industry is not an option. This industry is . . . so ingrained in Florida. Citrus is synonymous with Florida,” Matt Joyner, CEO of trade association Florida Citrus Mutual, told Florida lawmakers recently. Nevertheless, Alico Inc., one of Florida’s biggest growers, announced this year that it plans to wind down its citrus operations on more than 53,000 acres (21,000 hectares), saying its production has declined by almost three-quarters in a decade. That decision hurts processors, including Tropicana, which rely on Alico’s fruit to produce orange juice and must now operate at reduced capacity. Orange juice consumption in the U.S. has been declining for the past two decades, despite a small bump during the COVID-19 pandemic. A prominent growers group, the Gulf Citrus Growers Association, closed its doors last year. Location, location, location Pressure on citrus farming is also growing from one of the state’s other biggest industries: real estate. Florida expanded by more than 467,000 people last year to 23 million people, making it the third largest state in the nation. And more homes must be built to house that ever-growing population. Some prominent, multigenerational citrus families each have been putting hundreds of acres (hectares) of groves up for sale for millions of dollars, or as much as $25,000 an acre. Murphy owns several hundred acres (hectares) of groves and says he has no plans to abandon the industry, though last year he closed a citrus grove caretaking business that managed thousands of acres for other owners. However, he also has a real estate license, which is useful given the amount of land that is changing hands. He recently sold off acres in Polk County to a home developer, and has used that money to pay off debt and develop plans to replant thousands of trees in more productive groves. “I would like to think that we’re at the bottom, and we’re starting to climb back up that hill,” Murphy says. A bug-free tree A whole ecosystem of businesses dependent on Florida citrus is at risk if the crops fail, including 33,000 full-time and part-time jobs and an economic impact of $6.8 billion in Florida alone. Besides growers, there are juice processors, grove caretakers, fertilizer sellers, packing houses, nurseries, and candy manufacturers, all hoping for a fix for citrus greening disease. Tom Davidson, whose parents founded Davidson of Dundee Citrus Candy and Jelly Factory in Lake Wales in 1966, says the drop in citrus production has impacted what flavor jellies the business is able to produce and the prices it charges to customers. “We’re really hoping that the scientists can get this figured out so we can we can get back to what we did,” Davidson says. Researchers have been working for eight years on a genetically modified tree that can kill the tiny insects responsible for citrus greening. The process involves inserting a gene into a citrus tree that produces a protein that can kill baby Asian citrus psyllids by making holes in their guts, according to Lukasz Stelinski, an entomology professor at the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences’ Citrus Research and Education Center. It could be at least three years before bug-resistant trees can be planted, leaving Florida growers looking for help from other technologies. They include planting trees inside protective screens and covering young trees with white bags to keep out the bugs, injecting trees with an antibiotic, and finding trees that have become resistant to greening through natural mutation and distributing them to other groves. “It’s kind of like being a Lions fan before the Detroit Lions started to win games,” Stelinski says. “I’m hoping that we are making that turnaround.” Follow Mike Schneider on the social platform X: @MikeSchneiderAP. —Mike Schneider, Associated Press
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has issued a warning that more than a million taxpayers are still eligible to receive a share of more than $1 billion in refunds—but they need to act quickly. Here’s what you need to know. Over $1 billion in refunds still to be claimed The refunds are due to people who have yet to file their 2021 tax return. The IRS says the total potential value of the refunds still to be claimed is estimated to be $1,025,336,800. As many as 1,142,000 taxpayers are eligible for part of that payout and the median refund amount is estimated to be $781 per taxpayer, the agency says. That means half of the people who are due refunds will receive more than that amount and half less. The 2021 tax season was an especially chaotic one, as the COVID-19 pandemic had hindered both IRS operations and people’s ability file their taxes on time. The increased burden of pandemic-era stimulus checks, which fell on the IRS to distribute, added to the chaos. April 15 deadline to claim refund is fast approaching The average taxpayer’s 2021 tax return was due in 2022, but as of the IRS’s notification earlier this week, 1.1 million taxpayers still need to file that return. However, if they file the return later than three years after it is due, they will lose their right to claim any tax refunds due to them. “Under the law, taxpayers usually have three years to file and claim their tax refunds,” the IRS notes. “If they don’t file within three years, the money becomes the property of the U.S. Treasury.” And the three-year deadline for claiming tax refunds associated with a 2021 return is about to pass. That deadline is April 15, 2025—just one month and one day away from the time of this writing. The IRS also notes that these people may be missing out on more than just a refund of taxes paid or withheld during 2021. By not having filed their tax returns, they could also be missing out on other refunds, including the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), which could be worth as much as $6,728 for those taxpayers with qualifying children. Refunds due across all 50 states The estimated $1.1 billion pot of refunds still due to taxpayers for the 2021 tax year includes people in every state, according to the IRS. The agency has broken down the estimated number of individuals still due the refund per state as well as the estimated median potential refund due. Full list: State-by-state breakdown of tax refunds still owed The state with the highest estimated number of individuals due a refund is Texas, with 102,200 individuals thought to be due for the refund. The median potential refund in Texas is $810. The state with the highest median potential refund due is New York, which has a potential refund due of $995 per individual. In New York, it is estimated that as many as 73,000 individuals are still due the refund. You can read the IRS’s full advice for claiming the refund due here.
If you’ve bought bottled water from Trader Joe’s, you’ll want to be aware of a recent recall published by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). That’s because the recall involves water in glass bottles that present a laceration risk. In total, about 61,500 bottles are included in the recall. Here’s what you need to know. What is being recalled? The recall involves select lots of Gerolsteiner brand sparkling water sold at Trader Joe’s. The water was manufactured by Gerolsteiner Brunnen GmbH & Co. KG in Germany. Here are the details of the recalled product: Product name: Gerolsteiner 750ml Sparkling Water Bottles Lot numbers: 11/28/2024 L or 11/27/2024 L According to the CPSC notice, the recalled units were sold individually for about $3 per bottle and also sold in cases of 15 bottles. Around 61,500 bottles are thought to be impacted. The large glass bottles can be identified by the white, blue, and red label with the name “Gerolsteiner” on the front of it. The lot number of the bottle can be viewed on the lower part of the label. According to a separate notice on the Gerolsteiner website, the best-before dates on the products are December 2027. Why is the bottled water being recalled? The reason for the bottled water recall doesn’t have to do with the water itself. Instead the recall has been issued because there is a defect with the glass water bottle the sparkling water comes in. That bottle can crack, leading to a laceration hazard. While there is a risk to individuals handling the recalled bottles, the CPSC says that so far, no incidents or injuries have been reported. Where and when were the recalled bottled waters sold? The recalled bottled waters were sold at Trader Joe’s stores in 12 states between December 2024 and January 2025. Individual bottles retailed for about $3. The 12 states where the bottled water was sold are: Alabama Arkansas Colorado Florida Georgia Kansas Louisiana New Mexico Oklahoma South Carolina Tennessee Texas What do I do if I have the recalled bottled water? If you have the recalled bottled water, you should immediately stop using the bottles, says the CPSC. Instead, you should return the bottles to their place of purchase. The CPSC notice notes that you will not need to have your proof of purchase but that the bottle of the product is required in order to receive a refund, which may be in the form of credit or cash.
State officials are warning Americans not to respond to a surge of scam road toll collection texts. The texts impersonating state road toll collection agencies attempt to get phone users to reveal financial information, such as credit or debit cards or bank accounts. They’re so-called smishing scams — a form of phishing that relies on SMS texts to trick people into sending money or share sensitive information. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said she received one purporting to be from the statewide GeauxPass toll system. “It is a SCAM,” Murrill posted on Facebook this week. “If you ever receive a text that looks suspicious, be sure to never click on it. You don’t want your private information stolen by scammers.” Even states that don’t charge drivers tolls have noticed an uptick. “We do not have tolls roads in Vermont but travelers may mistake these scams for actual toll operators in other states,” Vermont Attorney General Charity Clark said in a video public service announcement posted on Instagram. Cybersecurity firm Palo Alto Networks said last week that a threat actor has registered over 10,000 domains for the scams. The scams are impersonating toll services and package delivery services in at least 10 U.S. states and the Canadian province of Ontario. While Apple bans links in iPhone messages received from unknown senders, the scam attempts to bypass that protection by inviting users to reply with “Y” and reopen the text. A warning last April from the FBI said the texts used nearly identical language falsely claiming that recipients have an unpaid or outstanding toll. Some threaten fines or suspended driving privileges if recipients don’t pay up. The FBI at the time asked those who received the scams to file a complaint with its IC3 internet crime complaint center and to also delete the texts. The FBI didn’t immediately respond to a request for updated guidance Thursday. ————————— The story has been corrected to reflect that the FBI did not issue a fresh warning this week on road toll text scams. The FBI warning was issued in April 2024.
Before I go any further, a programming note: On Thursday, March 27 at 1 p.m. ET, my colleague Max Ufberg and I will host “The AI Tools We Love Right Now—and What’s Next,” an online event exclusively for Fast Company Premium subscribers. We’ll discuss the AI-assisted productivity products that are actually helping us get our jobs done, and where we’d like to see the whole category go. Fast Company Premium subscribers can RSVP here. And if you aren’t yet a subscriber, here’s where you can become one. Hope to see you there! When I first got excited by Siri, it wasn’t part of Apple, let alone the iPhone. At the time—February 2010—it was just promising a stand-alone iPhone app from a startup that had been spun out of Silicon Valley R&D icon SRI, drawing on its research collaboration with the U.S. Department of Defense’s DARPA lab. Almost three months elapsed before Apple acquired Siri, and another year and a half until the company built it into iOS, starting with a beta version on the iPhone 4s. I was excited about that, too, calling it “breathtaking for a beta” and adding, ”If voice-activated assistants are all around us in five or ten years, we’ll look back and say it all started here.” They were, and we did. Screenshots I took of Siri in February 2010, well before it was a standard iPhone feature. (It still can’t help book flights.) But long before Siri celebrated its fifth birthday, its reputation foundered. Even early on, much analysis of the voice assistant deemed it a disappointment, often expressing the hope that Apple would eventually give it a transformative upgrade. Over time, oceans of wordage were dedicated to the topic. More than 15 years after I first gave Siri a try, it’s still waiting for its big, game-changing update. In this case, the update in question is the more “natural, relevant, personal” version that Apple previewed last June as part of “Apple Intelligence” during its WWDC keynote. It still hasn’t shipped. And on Friday, the company announced that work on the update was taking “longer than we thought” and the release wouldn’t happen until sometime in “the coming year.” The most logical guess: It will be rolled into iOS 19 and MacOS 16, which should ship this fall. Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber has a long and acidic account of the delay and its implications. In brief: Apple seems to have repeatedly shown off stuff so far from completion that it wasn’t even ready for live demos. Eventually, the company concluded that it was in over its head—for reasons it hasn’t explained, and won’t—and pushed the release off to some unspecified date. There’s a name for products like that: vaporware. The tech industry is rife with examples. Apple, in its modern history, has been atypically disciplined about avoiding them—which makes this incident only more striking. Now, it’s easy to understand how Apple bit off a more ambitious upgrade than it could chew its way through as quickly as expected. The new Siri is designed to respond to free-form requests such as “Send Erica the photos from Saturday’s barbecue,” a big leap from the assistant’s history of only understanding a limited set of instructions expressed in a precise way. Along with requiring greater language skills, the new Siri will sift through your email, calendar, contacts, notes, photos, and other information stored on your device in ways that haven’t been done before. All this is the most interesting use of AI that Apple has announced, and also the most ambitious. It’s literally something only Apple could do. No other company has enough access to iOS to dream of building it—though as my colleague Jared Newman explained last June, it also held the potential to make third-party apps way more Siri-friendly than in the past. But for all of the new Siri’s potential, it also feels like something that Apple was scrambling to release as proof it isn’t behind in AI. The generative AI boom unleashed more than two years ago by ChatGPT has left the company in an unusually reactive mode, as it plays catch-up in areas such as image generation. A much better Siri might have taken Apple far beyond me-too territory. It still could. With the delay, however, the company only looks more like it doesn’t yet have a handle on AI and how to make the most of it in Apple products. I can’t help but think, though, that Apple’s failure to get the new Siri out the door isn’t just about the challenge of doing AI in a way that’s useful, reliable, and safe. It’s part of the much larger, longer story of Siri being full of promise and only sporadically living up to it. I see two other specific factors at play. Part of Apple’s 2024 preview of the “new era for Siri.” [Screenshot: Apple] Factor one: Apple may be overwhelmed by the sheer quantity of software updates it tries to pump out each year. In the pre-iPhone era, the company had only one operating system to wrangle—MacOS, then known as OS X—and didn’t attempt to update it on a set timetable. Now it’s put itself on a yearly schedule and must juggle upgrades for MacOS, iOS, iPadOS, WatchOS, tvOS, and VisionOS. Of course that’s tough. It’s no shocker that certain elements might suffer from insufficient resource allocation: More often than not, for instance, my beloved iPad feels neglected from a software standpoint. And Apple TV—theoretically a core Apple product in the streaming age—remains a little-changing hobby. Artificial intelligence must be the furthest thing from an area Apple feels it can safely deprioritize. But it’s also among the most demanding. The company may simply have had too many things going on at once to adequately focus on Siri, even after bragging about the new version during its WWDC and iPhone 16 keynotes. Factor two: On some level I don’t quite understand, Apple may never quite have emotionally bonded with Siri. How else to explain the company’s failure to do all that much with it over all these years? Acquiring Siri in 2010 was prescient. So was building it into the iPhone. If Apple had pushed ahead with the feature as ambitiously as possible, iOS might look quite different today. Apple might even have a reputation for being ahead in AI. But maybe Siri simply took it out of its comfort zone of polished visuals, touch input, consistent experiences, and the other elements that made the iPhone such a landmark. Declaring that Siri was headed for “a new era,” showing it off in splashy canned presentations, and then kicking the can down the road is one of the more embarrassing predicaments Apple has created for itself in recent years. Despite that, I think the delay was sensible. It’s more important that Siri be great than that it arrive on time. And having waited for it to be great since 2011, we can surely wait a little longer. You’ve been reading Plugged In, Fast Company’s weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to you—or if you’re reading it on FastCompany.com—you can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads. 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In Beyond Anxiety: Curiosity, Creativity, and Finding Your Life’s Purpose, Martha Beck, PhD, writes that “anxiety always lies.” When I asked her why, she highlighted one of the book’s central teachings: When you seek the truth beneath your anxious thoughts, you discover that many of them aren’t real. This newfound awareness is transformative. It dismantles anxiety’s prevailing narrative that in order to be safe, you must live in fear. “So many people tell me: But, the world is in bad shape right now,” Beck shares. “I say: Yes, and doesn’t that require us to show up as our calmest, most committed, and competent selves?” “Anxiety does not do that, it just tells lies that say: Be in a defensive posture. Never think you’re safe. Don’t tell anyone the truth,” she says. “Scare someone and watch them behave. You’ll see that they’re not reacting to reality.” As a bestselling author and Harvard trained sociologist, Beck is often described as “the best known life coach in America.” Her latest book is a comprehensive guide to liberate yourself from anxiety and rediscover your creativity. In our conversation, Beck discusses how to calm your nervous system, reignite your joy, and discover your purpose. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. What do we get wrong about anxiety and how can we adopt a new perspective? It’s this very materialist viewpoint that is dominant in the left hemisphere [of the brain]. It not only says that matter is all that we are. But, also that nothing else exists. When you see a person that way, you start to treat the body and mind like machines that are broken. That’s where the medical model goes. You cut something up and see what makes it tick. You have to kill it to do that. So, you never understand what makes it alive, but you can see how it fits together. We try to pin down the mechanisms and intervene with chemicals or new habit forming—All of it is an attempt to adjust, fix, or alter the machine. We don’t give credit to our anxiety for being sentient. It feels. It’s not mechanical. When you say to something that is a feeling, living, being—I’m going to cut you up, drug you into insensibility, and work against you in every way I can until you’re gone—the very mechanism of life says: I’m going to ramp up my defenses. I’m going to get more frightened. We attack everything about ourselves that we don’t like. It just makes us more frightened. You explain that our brain interprets our thoughts about the past and future as if they are actually happening. How does this impact our mind and body and how can we decrease its potency? It means that we’re in a constant fight-or-flight state—Actually fight, flight, fawn, faint, or freeze. It revs up a system that is meant to be an emergencies-only system. It’s like you have a little firefighter that comes running out, puts out fires, and then goes back to sleep. But, instead of letting them sleep, you’re constantly screaming: Fire, fire, fire! The fear response is running around inside your head going: Where’s the danger? But, since there is no local danger (there’s just a thought), it can’t find the thing to fight. So, it keeps running around in fear, which means that you are constantly secreting stress hormones. We know that when you continuously bathe the inside of your body with stress hormones—that are only supposed to be little bursts of energy when you’re in danger—it leads to all kinds of degenerative illnesses, from cancer to heart disease to autoimmune diseases. The imagination of danger is the primary source of our stress. How can we approach these situations with a more generative response? The first step is always to notice what is happening around you, because this stress response is only meant to deal with physical danger that is present in your environment. When you look around the room and say: In this place right now, there is no bear or murderer. You take a deep breath and a long exhale, because that’s something almost every animal does when it has escaped danger. Then, you come back to the present and start noticing the objects around you, especially if you can appreciate them. The moment that I start to think about that, I start to become preoccupied with what’s around me. Since I’m safe, what fires up is curiosity, connection, and gratitude. Suddenly, I’m in a safe, wealthy environment, no matter where I am; Instead of a terrifying place filled with monsters and constant scarcity. Presence, presence, presence. Come back to where you are. Tell us about the relationship between anxiety and purpose. What do we get wrong about purpose that keeps us from discovering it? The relationship between anxiety and purpose in our culture is that anxiety becomes a very dominant force; something that we culturally believe is going to make us safer. We are going to hang on to whatever makes us feel safe—but also whatever makes us feel anxious—because that is anxiety’s ultimate lie: Without fear, you won’t be safe. So, in order to feel safe, you have to feel afraid. You get in this tight anxiety spiral. If you’re going down a tight anxiety spiral, there’s no way you can move toward anything purposeful. The left hemisphere of the brain creates the anxiety spiral. If you move into the right hemisphere by doing things that are creative, sensory, and proprioceptive, then you turn toward activities that spark your creativity, curiosity, connection, and compassion. Suddenly, instead of running away from everything, you’re moving toward things. There’s aversion and attraction. You will not find your sense of purpose by avoiding things that frighten you. You will find it by moving toward things that give you joy and the experience of abundance. You share research from child psychologist Karyn Purvis that it takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synapse in the brain with regular practice and only 10–20 if we’re learning through play. How does dedicated play accelerate mastery? We learn through play. It’s the same for adults as it is for kids. It’s just that kids are given a bit more room to frolic. One study they did for different groups in the 1960s identified 2% of the adults they surveyed as creative geniuses. They gave the same test to 4- and 5-year-olds—98% of them scored as creative geniuses. What is happening in the meantime? A big part of it is that we’re forced not to play. We’re forced to learn a way of learning that is rigid, boring, and monotonous. We can learn that way, but there’s no fun to it. If there’s no fun to it, you can’t remember it. When we’re trying to solve a challenge, you explain that we tend to zoom in and follow instructions; whereas you propose “creating the conditions that are most likely to wake up the sleeping magician in your right hemisphere. The magician will then solve problems for you in ways that will leave your left hemisphere agape in disbelief.” What are those conditions and how can we create them? It’s always by going towards something that is kind to the self and creates comfort, joy, and a sense of gratitude. People used to come to me for coaching and I’d say: Let’s find your joy. But, they were so exhausted from living in a world of joylessness, that the first thing is usually rest; Giving yourself permission to rest is a massive step toward creating this life that you’re going to love. It’s so scary for people. They haven’t yet touched the fertility of the creative state. Getting people to rest is the single most challenging thing that I do as a coach, because the culture does not provide for rest. Once you rest, then you start naturally getting curious about things. You start playing, solving problems, and making things happen. Steve Jobs was obsessed with making insanely great things out of machinery. People like that, whose creativity is fully loosened, they’re the ones who everybody thinks are doing something inaccessible and impossible. It’s possible for all of us. You write: “I know that the most important creative project you’ll undertake—the one you were born to complete—is the shaping of your whole life. As you become more creative than our society deems prudent, you’ll make the choices that will lead to your own greatest happiness, and your best contribution to the world.” What wisdom might you leave us with to begin realizing that vision? Sit down and imagine what you expect as a road going forward, which is probably some blend of what movies, culture, and living with your family has taught you. Think of it as having walls on each side. It may be wide or very narrow. But, see what’s there. What do you expect? Do you expect marriage, children, a job—whatever it is, what is it? Now, imagine that the walls are suddenly gone. You’re in this broad field of nature and history. All these resources are available to you, if you wander off the pathways. Suddenly, people go from—I feel so trapped—to—Holy crap, what am I going to do? This is too much opportunity. But, the biggest mistake that you can make is when people say: I’m going to take life as it comes. I’m not going to make anything up. No, you’re making it up. You’re making your expectations based on your experience. Make up something that makes you happy.
Nothing strikes fear in a leader’s heart more than an upcoming announcement. Yet big changes and announcements are the turning point for many organizations. Whether its layoffs, acquisitions, launches, or reorganizations, the pressure to “get it right” is real. Company performance, team morale, retention, and public image are all on the line. Unfortunately, most leaders rely on advisers and experts when it comes to how, when, and what to communicate. Well-meaning attorneys, publicists, or CFOs typically water down the message, and the company ends up with something that is factual but uninspiring. Oftentimes, that message is also ambiguous with no plan, next steps, or information on how. This isn’t helpful for building morale, or to arm employees with the right information to move forward. To do so, leaders need to strike the right balance of information and inspiration. Here’s how. Step 1: start with the information When change is underway, humans fill a void of information with any number of presumptions and speculation. As our head of culture reminds me often, “People just want to know how it affects them.” She’s right. It’s critical for leaders to share as much information as possible, as soon as possible. Our agency navigated this recently. A longtime client, partner, and friend acquired our business. It was a great acquisition situation, and one we had worked on for years. Yet, we knew for most of our team it would come as a big surprise—and surprise can turn negative in our minds. “This is probably bad. I’m losing my job. This is going to be terrible.” To prepare and help ensure that they understood how this would affect them, we created a list of questions we knew would be top of mind and tried our best to answer them in our initial announcement. We were also upfront about questions we knew we couldn’t answer yet. Lastly, we told them when they could expect more information. Step 2: share ‘why’ with care to build confidence Everyone wants to work for an inspirational leader. In seasons of change, inspiration comes from understanding the “why.” It also comes from leaders who truly care and are able to share their decision-making process with vulnerability and understanding. At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, I always tried to explain what we were doing and why. We came back to the office sooner than some would have liked and later than others could understand. I knew we had to acknowledge that. Here’s what I had said to our team: “We know some are wondering why the office is still closed and it may feel too cautious to you. Others are still concerned with safety. We’re trying to make the right decision for everyone and for our business. We also know we need to stay at maximum capacity right now because so many of our changemaker clients are in need of our support. So here’s what we’re going to do. . . . ” Acknowledging that I understood how it might feel and that I took their concerns into account allowed me to build confidence and trust with the team. It also helped everyone understand why. Step 3: Tailor the message to your people In communications, we talk at length about tailoring the message to your audience—to your people. The same principle applies when you’re communicating change to your employees. Those in creative industries often lean more into inspiration while those in technical fields typically need more information. I was speaking with a marketing director for a biotech company about our mutual experiences introducing employee ownership to our teams. Her experience with a company of scientists was very different from mine at a creative agency. I told her that we took our team to Disney World for our announcement, while she noted that her team would have considered that “fluff” and preferred a different approach. There is no right or wrong here. The key is knowing your people and what they need to navigate a transition successfully. Your employee’s response is also highly dependent on organizational culture—which comes from day-to-day interactions and operations. Consistent, candid, clear information builds trust. Once you’ve established that, you can lean into more and more inspirational messaging. Without trust, deeply inspirational messaging can seem manipulative and inauthentic. Step 4: Don’t be afraid to showcase vulnerability While you should never make a company announcement about you, a dose of honesty can go a long way. Shortly after our acquisition, I was speaking privately with our team and they wanted to know how I felt. I could hear leadership experts in my mind: “Instill confidence.” But we all know nothing is 100% wonderful or perfect. So instead I told them, “I’m 95% sure this is a great decision.” And I laughed as I said, “The other 5% is just because you can never know.” I watched as they smiled and knew they really believed me, because it was true. We’re all looking for truth and can smell talking points from a mile away. Step 5: know when to mix Information and inspiration Great leaders inform and inspire, but exceptional leaders know just how to mix the two. I remember a leader of a billion-dollar global organization who stood in front of her large team. “This year we are going to double revenue,” she said. Her team cheered. They were highly engaged in the global good their work provided for others, and they respected their leader. She fed into the enthusiasm and continued her pep talk. As the meeting time wrapped up, everyone anxiously awaited for details, but got none. She ended with, “Alright, let’s do this!” No plan or next steps, no information, no how. She lost credibility that day in a big way. Instead of the start of a new level of growth, it became the end of trust and ultimately her role in the organization. Exceptional leaders know that people need both the why and the how—the inspiration and the information—and mix both to meet the needs of their teams. These are the leaders that we love to follow, and work hard for.
If optimizing your social media privacy settings feels important but overwhelming, a company called Block Party may be able to help. Founder and CEO Tracy Chou has long been known for advocating for diversity in the tech industry. And like many diversity advocates, and women and people of color in technology, she’s experienced plenty of harassment online, along with outright stalking. She founded Block Party after realizing that tech platforms themselves didn’t make it particularly easy to optimize settings for privacy and security. The initial Block Party product focused on the platform then called Twitter, helping users easily filter out spam, harassment, and other unwanted content, while easily blocking other users based on their on-site behavior. [Image: Block Party] “It completely changed my experience on Twitter,” Chou says. “I felt like I could just use the platform and not feel like there might be an unpleasant surprise every time I checked my mentions.” But while Block Party is still highlighted as a “success story” on X’s developer site, Chou says her company was forced to put that version of the product on hold after the social network imposed new API restrictions after Elon Musk took ownership. The company then pivoted to a new approach, developing a browser extension compatible with Chrome, Firefox, and Edge that lets users automatically update their account settings across 11 platforms, including X, Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat, Venmo, and Strava. [Image: Block Party] Similar to virus scanning software, Block Party can automatically go through settings on the various platforms, presenting users with a checklist of potential risk factors and offering the opportunity to change them. That could mean activating two-factor authentication on particular platforms, removing location information from LinkedIn profiles, or making Venmo transactions and Strava run maps more private. “As a user, you don’t have to go dig through a million menus and find the right setting to go change,” Chou says. The tool can also help users scrub their social profiles of old material and connections that can impact privacy, including untagging photos, deleting old posts, and bulk unfriending long-forgotten acquaintances on Facebook. Chou says in the current political climate she’s seen interest from current and former federal employees concerned about doxxing, as well as people who plan to make political statements and want to reduce the risk their family members will be found through their social media and targeted for harassment. But, she says, Block Party is designed to be useful to people with a wide variety of threat models and concerns, letting them reap the benefits of using big online platforms while mitigating some of the privacy risks. Chou and her colleagues regularly look at guides to social media privacy, including those published in the popular press and those targeting people with particular needs, like members of the military, to ensure they’re automations can help people with common issues. “We also are scanning through all the settings ourselves, just to stay on top of all the changes and anything happening,” she says. Since the Block Party browser extension essentially automates navigating and clicking through configuration settings, it can develop issues as platforms adjust their own menus. But, Chou says, the company can usually quickly fix any bugs as they pop up—sometimes within a single day—and the tool is designed to be robust enough to gracefully work around malfunctions. [Image: Block Party] Using a browser extension also means Block Party doesn’t require API support from any of the platforms and that it doesn’t need to store user credentials like passwords, since it relies on users logging in as they ordinarily would through their browsers. The service doesn’t store user data unnecessarily and doesn’t access accounts without permission, Chou says. For individual users, Block Party subscriptions start at $25 per year after a seven-day free trial. But the company has also begun offering enterprise plans that include integration with single sign-on platforms and reporting on use within an organization, as employers try to keep workers protected from harassment and potential phishing attacks and internet users in general become increasingly cognizant of security concerns involving social media. “It’s not just the data that’s getting trafficked from marketing brokers,” Chou says. “It’s also just the stuff that we’re putting online ourselves.”
As the 30th season of Major League Soccer (MLS) kicked off last month, the league unveiled an interesting new design addition: Each of its 30 teams sported a custom Apple TV logo on the left sleeve of its uniform featuring the colors and graphic elements of the team’s identity incorporated within the familiar Apple icon. For example, the Chicago Fire version includes the six-pointed star from the city’s flag and the team’s crest, while Atlanta United’s is filled with the characteristic five red and black stripes that adorn the club’s shirt. This effort, part of MLS’s 10-year deal with Apple to stream the league’s matches, represents an innovative step forward in its approach to co-branding. Branding has come a long way from the days of the corporate identity manual strictly dictating how a logo could be used. Although today’s brand guidelines, such as the set released earlier this year by Cash App, often still admonish “Do not alter the logo” and “Do not use with unapproved colors,” there are now caveats: As the Cash App document puts it, “All of the above rules can be disregarded when creating illustrative treatments of the logo for marketing/promotional purposes. In this context, we encourage experimentation and favor expression over restraint.” [Images: Apple] So it’s not surprising that Apple might allow for so many new variations of its logo. But unlike the flexible logo approach pioneered by MTV, or even the identity systems used by MLS and Major League Baseball, in which each team gets a version of the league logo in its own colors (the MLS version sits right above the Apple TV logo on the left sleeve), these latest co-branded little apples are notable in that they represent the outcome of a sort of logo alchemy in which the design components of altogether separate organizations have been recombined into new forms, in a novel way of visually denoting partnerships between brands. They are like the fanciful and unofficial “logo mash-ups” that one can find online suddenly made real. Over history, various sorts of graphically symbolic expressions of partnership or collaboration between different entities have been employed. A friendship between two nations, for example, might simply be represented by a depiction of their two flags crossed at the staffs. In European heraldry, alliances between families through marriage could be expressed by “quartering” a heraldic shield—dividing it into four parts, with the symbols of each family occupying two parts apiece. This explains why the state flag of Maryland is such a glorious mess; it is the banner of arms of Lord Baltimore, with the colors of the Calvert family in the first and fourth quarters, and those of the Crossland family in the second and third. Recent years have seen the emergence of collaborations between brands that are frequently expressed by placing an “x” between the two brand names or logos, as in “Nike x Supreme,” with the “x” often standing for the word “by.” The “x” not only recalls the alliance implied by crossed flagstaffs, but it levels up from mere addition to the more synergistically powerful mathematical operation of multiplication. Other contemporary brand collabs, though, employ division, displaying the logos of the partners separated by a thin vertical line (as Apple Watch did with Nike). Sometimes, though, certain brands and logos are not suited well to sitting next to each other. For instance, when the University of Utah, whose school color is red, named Pepsi its “official beverage provider” in 2017, it came with the stipulation that Pepsi downplay its signature blue color, which is similar to that of Utah’s rival, Brigham Young University. It’s this sort of graphic discrepancy that undermines to some degree Apple’s audacious co-branding with MLS. The relatively small size of the teams’ Apple TV logos and the resulting limitations on the graphic imagery that can be used with them—as well as the fact that they are often the same color as the shirt on which they appear—can make them difficult to see. But, perhaps as with the Maryland flag, the point is ultimately not aesthetic but relational. By creating these 30 junior versions of its logo, Apple is signaling camaraderie with MLS fans in hopes of engendering their goodwill.
Building a high-growth business is all about timing and making the right moves at the right moments. Whether it’s knowing when to expand into new retail spaces or recognizing a buzzy product that can skyrocket your brand, the journey is full of strategic decisions and challenges. As founders scale their businesses, they must navigate everything from cash flow management to mastering social media. Each of these elements plays a crucial role in determining how a business can not only grow but thrive in a competitive market. This past weekend at the Fast Company Grill at SXSW, Danielle Guizio, owner and designer of Guizio; Kat Hantas, cofounder of tequila brand 21Seeds; and Stacey Tank, CEO of Bespoke Beauty Brands (owner of KimChi Chic Beauty and Jason Wu Beauty) shared their secrets behind their fast-growing companies. Leverage social media smartly Guizio emphasized the transformative power of social media. “I look at social media as if it’s our new age billboard and our resume,” she said. “So anything you’re putting on social media, it’s who you want to present to the viewers and to the consumers and also in a business sense as well.” Hantas agreed, highlighting how 21Seeds strategically used Pinterest to connect with their target consumer. “We wanted to find [the consumer] where she was to discover us and then make sure that we were available in distribution in retail,” Hantas said. “We also had the benefit of other women. The beauty of women is when they find something they like, they want to tell people about it. Jessica Alba found the brand; Katie Couric found the brand—and then they started posting about us on social media.” Tank further supported this idea, pointing to the growing influence of social commerce platforms. “My confidence to transact as a consumer is so much higher because I can also be entertained by that content,” Tank said. “TikTok Shop went from nothing [when it launched in September 2023] to tens of billions of dollars in 18 to 24 months. It’s bigger than Nordstrom. It’s bigger than Ikea. It’s bigger than Kohl’s in the U.S. And I think there’s no turning back now.” Think about Cash Management and Customer Satisfaction Tank stressed the critical role of cash flow management in growing a business. “I say cash is queen,” she said. “We all want to retain equity and not take on debt. So you have to know how much cash you have.” Beyond financials, Tank explained the need for businesses to stay customer-focused. “You have to keep your customer right at the center and make things they’re going to love,” she said. “There’s a creative tension with startups where they say you have to put things out into the world before they’re ready. And I hear that, but whatever you put in the market, it has to delight your consumers if they’re willing to spend their hard earned money and try your product.” Take your time to grow fast Guizio provided insight into managing production and understanding factory capabilities. For example, the factory she uses to make her corsets isn’t the same as the one that makes her spandex stretch skirts. It may take more of an effort in managing production, but to Guizio it’s all about making that investment for long-term growth. What’s also key is taking the time to understand your consumer. “I put in the work this past year traveling to China to Japan to Alabama to Dallas, really understanding [my customer] from top to bottom, understanding her essence, her aura,” Guizio said. “We’re living in a generation where, especially on Instagram, we’re seeing brands come to life and succeed extremely fast, even within two years,” added Guizio who started her company 10 years ago. “But I took my time and I did everything very strategically. I do feel like there is an aspect, an element of just taking your time and understanding your business and really understanding your consumer.” Be your own PR Hantas shared her advice on the importance of being your own brand advocate. “As founders of small companies that are scaling quickly, you have got to connect all the dots,” Hantas said. “You get a placement in a magazine or anything, you got to send it around everywhere. Send it to your buyers, your prospective buyers, your retail partners. You got to send it to potential investors, actual investors. You have to be your own PR agent and connect all those dots. It’s fake it till you make it, make everything seem bigger than it is.”
On the morning of January 14, 2025, just hours before my stress test during an annual physical, I received devastating news from a colleague at a global financial institution. A 45-year-old Black man, a highly respected managing director at our firm, had unexpectedly died from a heart ailment. While texts of grief poured in from mourning colleagues throughout the day, I was struck by a sobering realization. I had become disturbingly accustomed to hearing such tragic news about successful Black men in professional circles. Just a few months earlier, another industry peer—the first Black chief information officer of a major U.S. bank—suffered a debilitating stroke that left him paralyzed on the left side of his body. Thankfully, his wife was nearby and rushed him to the hospital in time to save his life. He was only 48 at the time of the stroke. In late February, another good friend of mine—a fit, strapping young Black man in his late 30s who works as a creative for an NBA team—suffered a stroke. He’s had to endure multiple surgeries since then to stop bleeding in his brain. A similar tragedy struck my family 23 years ago when my uncle, Juan Simpson died suddenly of a heart attack during the Christmas holidays. He was 48 years old and had been a senior executive at Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc., Johnson & Johnson’s surgical device division. At the time of his death, my uncle was flying high in lonely, rarified, high-pressure air. Back then, white men held 95% of all executive-level positions in corporate America. Each of these men is a shining example of what people of color can achieve in the corporate world through education, hard work, connections, and a bit of luck. Yet their tragic experiences raise some pressing questions for Black corporate men and their families. Is climbing the corporate ladder riskier for Black men? And what steps must Black men take to safeguard their physical and mental health while working in high-pressure environments? Black men’s experience in corporate America Today, Black men have the second-lowest life expectancy of all racial groups in the United States, with only Native American/Alaska Native men living shorter lives, according to research by KFF. And while studies show that education and higher socioeconomic status improve health outcomes for other groups, (including Black women) the opposite is true for Black men. In fact, the more successful Black men become, the greater the likelihood they’ll experience anxiety and depression. Both of these often serve as triggers for negative health outcomes. I can personally attest to this after suffering from both anxiety and gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) due to the stresses of trying to succeed in my first job as a stock market reporter for Thomson Reuters. Corporate America offers many advantages—six-figure salaries, generous health benefits, and a means to a comfortable retirement. If you’re fortunate, you can do intellectually satisfying work while forging deep friendships along the way. But in exchange for these benefits, there are potentially deadly stressors that may affect Black men’s bodies differently than their non-Black peers. Everyone who works in corporate America is faced with the challenge of managing stress in a sustainable way. It’s part of the game. But for Black people, especially Black men, it can be a matter of life and death. How Black men can safeguard their health while working in the corporate world 1. Find the right doctor An alarming 2011 study by the University of Michigan found that a majority of Black men don’t go to the doctor. The reasons why so Black men avoid the doctor, the research notes, is that we often find doctor’s visits stressful. There’s also a widespread belief that doctors don’t provide adequate information on how to make the right lifestyle changes to improve our health. We also put off routine doctor’s visits due to distrust of the American healthcare system. This is due to well-documented historical reasons. It’s also because many Black people in this country report enduring at least one negative experience with doctors, like having to speak up to get proper care. Many also find that their medical provider doesn’t take their pain seriously. But it’s imperative that Black professional men do their homework to find a doctor they’re comfortable with. Blackdoctor.org, Blackdoctorsusa.com, and Findablackdoctor.com are all helpful resources. 2. Therapy is a big help For those of us who’ve managed to get our foot in the door and establish careers in corporate America, the people in our lives may see us as Superman. But while Superman can rejuvenate himself in his fortress of solitude, we can’t always solve our emotional challenges by ourselves. We can benefit from seeking psychological counseling, which can prevent the development—or worsening—of mental health issues. 3. Prioritize time with friends My closest friends were the center of my world throughout my 20s. Little did I know back then how hard it would be to sustain all those relationships as the demands of corporate and family life came calling. We’re in the midst of a loneliness epidemic in our country. A former U.S. Surgeon General has said that loneliness is as damaging to our health as smoking. Men are especially vulnerable to the dangers of loneliness. This is because many of us struggle to express our feelings or forge genuine connections with others. But it’s important to remember that we’re social creatures. True friends are a key component to living a healthy, well-rounded life. To maintain my relationships, I’ve begun to prioritize them just as I do other important aspects of life. My hangouts, which used to happen spontaneously, are now planned, and logged onto my Outlook and shared family calendar. The demands of climbing the corporate ladder as a Black man in America can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to come at the expense of our health and well-being. By acknowledging the unique pressures we face and taking proactive steps to prioritize our mental and physical health, we can create a sustainable and fulfilling career. Seeking the right healthcare provider, embracing therapy, and nurturing friendships are just a few ways we can start building resilience against the stress that often accompanies success in corporate America. At the end of the day, our lives—both professionally and personally—are far more valuable than any career milestone. It’s time for Black men to take control of our health, foster a supportive community, and redefine what success truly means.
A cute new electric hatchback from Volkswagen, out next year, will cost €25,000, or around $27,000. Another tiny VW model coming in 2027, with Rivian software inside, will start at only €20,000. But neither will be available in the U.S. The number of small cars on the American market shrank significantly over the past several years—and that’s one reason that cars are also more expensive, with the average price jumping to nearly $50,000 last month. In 2019, there were 45 models on the U.S. market that cost less than $25,000. By 2024, there were only 11. Trump’s new tariffs could add another $12,000 to new car prices. ID Every1 [Image: Volkswagen] Size is especially relevant to the cost of EVs, since the battery is the most expensive part of the vehicle, and smaller cars can use smaller batteries. If more options existed for cheap EVs, making them accessible to more people, the drivers who bought them would get another financial benefit: EVs are also cheaper to operate, both because it’s cheaper to charge with electricity than fuel with gas and because EVs have fewer parts, so they need less maintenance. The ID EVERY1, VW’s new €20,000 car, was designed to cost as little as possible to make. “The car is super minimalistic—we have no decoration,” says Lorenzo Oujeili, a designer at Volkswagen who worked on the concept for the new model. “The car has been [envisioned] since day one to be a car for everyone, and really cheap to build.” ID Every1 [Image: Volkswagen] For Volkswagen, it’s a return to the company’s roots of making simple, affordable cars like the Beetle. And part of achieving affordability meant making cars tinier. In Europe, there’s still clear demand for small cars. One obvious reason is the infrastructure: Tiny roads in centuries-old cities aren’t designed for massive SUVs and trucks. European consumers also appreciate the practicality of smaller cars. The ID 2all, VW’s hatchback that will come out in 2026, is meant as a commuter car. “It’s optimized in size and usability,” says designer Stefan Wallberg. “You have a lot of space inside. When you go to work, you don’t need more than this for daily use.” The cost also matters to consumers. “We want to give the maximum that they can get for their money,” he says. (The low cost doesn’t mean that designers didn’t carefully consider what drivers really want, including a return to physical knobs instead of touchscreens.) ID 2all [Image: Volkswagen] Automakers say American consumers don’t want small cars—and it’s true that the new VW models would probably be a harder sell to people who are used to much larger SUVs or trucks. (The battery range of the new ID Every1 is also small, at only around 155 miles—again, more than enough for a daily commute, but a challenge to sell to Americans.) Still, sales of smaller vehicles started to grow in the U.S. last year, as car buyers aimed for smaller monthly payments. By the end of the year, compact car sales had jumped up 16%. If tariffs push car prices higher and possibly trigger a recession, it’s likely that demand for smaller cars could grow more. ID 2all [Image: Volkswagen] Car companies have focused on large cars in the U.S. for decades. “It’s been very difficult for automakers because the argument to make vehicles smaller, which typically is less profitable to some degree, has never been really incentivized unless there’s some type of economic downturn,” says Ivan Drury, an automotive analyst at Edmunds. “That’s really the only time that we see people say, ‘Oh, OK, well, I’m going to compromise,’ and really get down to downsizing.” ID 2all [Image: Volkswagen] On the other hand, if automakers had put effort into designing and marketing desirable small cars for the American market, there might have been more demand. “It’s like chicken and egg: If we build it, will they come? Or, if we give a half-hearted attempt, as we’ve seen in some instances in the past, I guess they’re never going to come, will they?” says Drury. GM, which sells small EVs in China—like the adorable $4,000 Wuling Hongguang Mini EV, through its joint venture SGMW—says it approaches global markets differently. “Europe and South America, for example, have a history of embracing more space-efficient vehicles while China has a younger average new car buyer that places high importance in second row roominess,” says Sigal Cordeiro, VP, Global Planning & Customer Research at GM. “U.S. customers seek flexibility, including space for people and things, as well as longer range and safety and convenience features. GM is focused on meeting customer needs globally, while making EVs more affordable.” (The brand offers the Chevrolet Equinox EV at $30,000, but ended production of the smaller and cheaper Bolt EV in 2023; a new version of the Bolt is coming back this year because there was demand for it.) Beyond cost, there are other advantages to small cars. They’re safer for pedestrians. They take up less room in cities. The environmental impact of manufacturing them is smaller. Because they weigh less, they create less tire pollution when they drive. But federal and state incentives for EVs haven’t given any priority to smaller sizes. For automakers, small cars are actually harder to design than larger ones. “All of the engineering design is really tricky to condense everything you need into something compact,” says Oujeili. That’s true both aesthetically—how to handle the proportions, for example—and in terms of function, including how to squeeze the maximum amount of storage space into a tiny footprint. Even after companies invest in a new car design for one market, like Europe or China, it’s not simple to bring the same car to the U.S., says Drury. Setting up everything else—from marketing and training dealers to making sure that repair people have the right tools—is another major expense. Tariffs—both those that existed before Trump’s current term, and those that are being added now—are another factor (and why Americans can’t buy $10,000 electric cars from China). In some cases, cars designed for another market might also need to make changes to meet American safety regulations. All of this means that automakers aren’t likely to bring their small EVs to the American market unless they’re certain that they’ll sell well—and if you want to drive one of the new VW cars, you’ll have to move to Europe.
France just unveiled its charming new TGV Inoui trains, and they’re a jealousy-inducing reminder that America’s rail travel renaissance can’t come fast enough. The TGV Inoui is a high-speed rail system, running at around 200 miles per hour, that connects France’s major cities as well as providing connections into Italy, Spain, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. This Tuesday, the manufacturing company Alstom and the TGV’s operator, SNCF Voyageurs, revealed the brand-new fifth generation TGV Inoui interior design at Paris’s Gare de Lyon. [Photo: Alstom] The new train, which is slated to hit the rails in 2026, includes a delightfully colorful aesthetic, an ultra-sleek bar car, and expanded accommodations for wheelchair users—and its further proof that, for now, America’s rail system might as well be in the dark ages. [Photo: Alstom] An interior fit for a ’70s space age mood board According to Alstom, a team of more than 2,000 designers started entirely from scratch to create the new TGV Inoui cars, which are constructed in a modular format that allows them to be reconfigured in less than a day to suit the particular needs of each trip. The trains are made from 97% recyclable materials, have a 20% higher seating capacity than previous iterations (up to 740 passengers), and are 20% more energy-efficient than the fourth generation trains. [Photo: Alstom] While most trains tend to incorporate a monochromatic palette of gray or blue, the TGV Inoui cars are a fun experiment in color and shape. Designed by the French agency AREP and Japanese design firm Nendo, the cars feature a soft palette of primary red, blue, and yellow hues accented by rounded shapes. The combination of these comforting colors with the train’s sleek metallic fixtures lends the whole interior a kind of ‘70s space-age aesthetic. According to a press release, the designers used the concept of “flow” as a guiding principle, looking to water currents in nature to inform the placement of furniture and colors. [Photo: Alstom] “[The train] makes its way through the landscape, rather like the flow of a river,” the release reads. “The designers played with the idea of depth inside, with a strong horizon line running through all the elements and giving the impression of the surface of water. The flow is inspired by the soft shapes of pebbles and objects polished by water, which can be seen in the details of the seats and the lamp, as well as the use of darker materials in the lower section and lighter ones above.” [Photo: Alstom] One of those polished details—the table lamp—has been a constant fixture in all past TGV train designs, but AREP and Nendo have taken it up a notch. In the new cars, the lamps are the brightest element of the whole interior, rendered in a crisp canary yellow that’s meant to serve as “a touch of humor” in every room. [Photo: Alstom] The bathrooms have been enlarged and touched up with a frosted window that lets in natural light. Shockingly large stairwells allow passengers to pass easily from the first to second floor. The bar car has been expanded to take up two stories, with a self-service grocery section (including full-size drink coolers) on the bottom floor, and an upstairs bistro space with booth-like seats for passengers to enjoy their meals. [Photo: Alstom] And, for the first time ever, the train now incorporates a boarding platform that allows wheelchair users to enter the space autonomously, as well as adding more accessible seating options and signage. It’s a design approach that goes beyond maximizing square footage to consider the travel experience of all riders. [Photo: Alstom] Why can’t we have this in the U.S.? While French citizens are enjoying the new TGV designs, American Twitter is busy lamenting the lack of similar transit options in the U.S. Under a tweet showcasing the new train cars, one user wrote, “Trains would be the elite form of public transit in the US if they were fast,” to which the original poster responded, “sad state of things for the country that was literally built by railroad.” [Photo: Alstom] As France moves on to its fifth generation of high-speed trains and, Japan has also added yet another innovative bullet train to its already advanced arsenal. The U.S. has yet to truly embark on building high-speed rail infrastructure. The closest we’ve come is Amtrak’s Acela route in the Northeast, which still travels at only 160 miles per hour. Most other Amtrak trains don’t move much faster than the average car. To be fair, we are getting a bit closer to embracing passenger rail travel. Amtrak had a record-breaking year in 2024, moving an all-time high of 32.8 million riders between October 2023 and September 2024. The company is aiming to double its ridership to 66 million by 2024 through building new routes, updating some of its fleet with faster trains, and modernizing its amenities. Meanwhile, the private rail service Brightline has gained popularity in Florida and is currently constructing a line between Las Vegas and L.A., which is slated to become the country’s first truly high speed railway. Even with these advances, the U.S. is still light-years behind countries like France, Japan, Switzerland, and China. For now, we’ll have to content ourselves with gazing longingly at the TGV Inoui and dreaming of a cross-country train trip that doesn’t take 96 hours.
Getting invited to a first-round interview is exciting. It’s a chance to highlight your interpersonal skills, tell your story, and share how you would be an asset to their team. “The first interview is your chance to make a great first impression—but more importantly, it’s where you can build a genuine connection,” says Niki Jorgensen, general manager of client implementation at Insperity. To make the most of your first interview, experts recommend researching the company, practicing common interview questions so that you allow your personality to shine through, and create a connection with your interviewer. But here are some other ways to give yourself an extra edge—and make it to the next round: 1. Find your magic hour Before scheduling an interview with a recruiter or hiring manager, consider when you naturally perform at your best, Jorgensen recommends. Are you most energized and clear-headed in the morning, or does your creativity peak in the afternoon? Once you identify your magic hour, she suggests working to secure that time slot for a more effective conversation. “Aligning with your natural rhythm ensures you’re poised to perform at your best,” says Jorgensen. 2. Create your logistics plan in advance We all know that GPS directions aren’t foolproof and that offices can be difficult to find, so if you have an in-person interview, make sure you know how to get to the interview location in advance, says April Brasher, HR knowledge adviser with the Society for Human Resource Management. “It’s helpful to do a test-drive beforehand to estimate travel time, then add an additional 30 minutes on the day of the interview to account for traffic, accidents, or parking,” she explains. Planning exercises like this are indeed part of interview prep. “Arriving early gives you extra time to prepare,” she also notes. However, don’t arrive to the interview more than 15–20 minutes before the scheduled time to avoid making the interviewer feel rushed, Brasher cautions. 3. Tailor your attire with a subtle message Try and incorporate a hint of the brand or company you’re interviewing with through a well-chosen accessory or a color that aligns with its brand identity, says Jorgensen with Insperity. This gesture subtly shows enthusiasm. “It’s less about wearing head-to-toe branded gear, but more about signaling subtly that you understand and appreciate the company ethos,” she says. Plus, as an added benefit, it can also serve as an icebreaker. “For example, if you were interviewing for a job at Wilson Sporting Goods, you may throw on your branded Wilson pullover, while still looking professionally put together,” says Jorgensen. 4. Articulate how you can improve a company on day one Employers aren’t just looking for skills on a résumé; they’re seeking problem-solvers, good communicators, and individuals who can help drive the business forward, says Joe Galvin, chief research officer with Vistage. “The best candidates walk into an interview already proving their value—not just talking about it—and they rise to the top by successfully connecting the dots between their experience and the company’s challenges,” Galvin says. These candidates research the company, understand its competitive landscape, and are ready to discuss how they can contribute from day one, he says. 5. Lean into AI Touting your AI skills in a job interview is necessary these days, says Galvin. “AI proficiency is a competitive advantage today, but will be a must-have requirement tomorrow,” he says. In your interview prep, weave in your AI expertise to show you are at the forefront of technology and innovation. 6. Practice and dig deeper Job seekers should role-play and practice interview exchanges to hone their craft and boost communication skills. “Candidates should find a mentor, friend, or even use AI to rehearse their answers until they’re fully polished,” says Galvin. Plus, be ready to respond to out-of-the box questions and be well-versed to answer queries about the company, its services, and mission. “The job market is competitive. However, the candidates who do their research, communicate with impact, and demonstrate real business value will stand ahead of the pack,” says Galvin. 7. Prepare your interview exit strategy As you research both the company culture and the person who is interviewing you, a vital component of interview prep is to plan how you’re going to leave your interviewer with a strong closing impression. “Prepare thoughtful questions for the end of the interview that show genuine interest in the company culture, the responsibilities of the role, the future trajectory of the position, and any other topics not yet addressed,” says Brasher. In a pool of competitive candidates, experts say such preparation can distinguish you and leave a positive final impression with your interviewer.
Soon, when residents of a village in Florida’s Miami-Dade County drop off their egg shells, banana peels, and other kitchen scraps for composting, they’ll be helping restore the Everglades—and benefit a community garden run by the local Miccosukee Tribe. The Everglades are a massive wetland ecosystem crucial for the environment: It’s the largest subtropical wilderness in the United States, is home to multiple threatened and endangered species, and is a significant carbon sink. The Everglades directly benefit people, too; the watershed provides drinking water for more than eight million Floridians, and Indigenous tribes live in that region. But that vital ecosystem is being threatened by soil loss, agricultural runoff, and encroaching development. [Photo: courtesy Fertile Earth Worm Farm] Pinecrest, which has a population of around 18,000 people, has had a free residential composting program for about two years—the first in Miami-Dade County—through a partnership with the Fertile Earth Worm Farm. Now, the village and the farm are working with the Miccosukee Tribe of Indians of Florida and the Love The Everglades Movement to use that compost to rejuvenate the wetlands. Through the first phase of the program, compost will go to the Miccosukee’s Swampy Meadows Community Garden, which grows vegetables right in the Everglades. [Photo: courtesy Fertile Earth Worm Farm] The project is made possible thanks to a $400,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded at the end of December, before the Trump administration was in place and started attacking funding and programs that use climate change terms. (There’s also additional funding from Pinecrest village and others.) Though the Everglades are crucial to Florida, locals can feel a sort of distance, physical or mental, from its ecosystem, which “helps to make people feel separate from it,” says Reverend Houston Cypress, a Miccosukee Tribe member, artist, and cofounder of the Love the Everglades Movement. “We’re trying to encourage people [to remember] we’re a part of it. Let’s take a little bit more responsibility for our impacts on the place and use better practices, and walk softer and more in harmony with these lands and waters.” [Photo: courtesy Fertile Earth Worm Farm] Adding more healthy soil to the Everglades could counter some of those threats, particularly agricultural pollution. Fertilizers from nearby farms run off into the Everglades, saturating the land with nitrogen and phosphorus that impedes the flow of water, chokes out native vegetation, and causes harmful algae blooms that end up killing fish. [Photo: courtesy Fertile Earth Worm Farm] But compost makes the soil healthier, which helps it hold onto nutrients so they don’t wash into the water. “If you have something toxic, you don’t give it to the water. You give it to the soil, because the soil cleans,” says Lanette Sobel, founder of Fertile Earth Worm Farm. “It makes perfect sense that we’re giving this back to the Everglades, and giving this back to the Miccosukee, the stewards of the Everglades.” The USDA grant will add compost drop-off bins throughout the village, and go towards community outreach, to educate and inform residents about this option. The hope is also to divert food waste from landfills, where it becomes a significant source of planet-warming methane, and from incinerators, which release harmful pollutants. [Photo: courtesy Fertile Earth Worm Farm] “Why would you consider incinerating food?” Sobel asks. Miami-Dade County’s incinerator burned down in 2023, but the county is considering building a new one—though no one really wants it. Sobel hopes this program can show residents about some alternatives for our waste: Instead of using intense amounts of energy to burn food, which also releases pollution, that food can be a resource for the soil. The program could also save locals, including businesses, money on other waste hauling options. (Compost drop-off is free for individuals, and local businesses can get a discount on hauling rates.) The organizations estimate that the USDA grant will have an economic impact of more than $8 million to the Everglades community as a whole, when considering impacts like the savings on waste hauling, the worth of the compost, how much it would cost to remove those nutrients from the watershed, and more. [Photo: courtesy Fertile Earth Worm Farm] Already, Pinecrest’s compost program has diverted more than 90,000 pounds of food waste from landfills and incinerators in about a year and a half—an amount equivalent to the weight of 12 Land Rovers. With the expanded drop-off centers and outreach, this project could divert around 390,000 pounds of food scraps per year—and help the Everglades in the process. Cypress hopes the projects also brings the community together. “Hearing from and supporting the Miccosukee efforts on protecting the Everglades, we’re always learning about teamwork, about coalition building, about partnerships and friendships,” he says. “And so I think that that’s one of the cool things about this project, that we’re being good neighbors. Sometimes you want to invite your neighbor over for a potluck, and then sometimes you want to bring some soil for the next potluck.”
From the White House to the local police department, TikTok trends are now part of the cultural conversation—for better or worse. But don’t expect to see the latest dance craze in the West Virginia football team’s locker room. Asked whether he had a social media policy for his program, Mountaineers coach Rich Rodriguez didn’t mince words: “We try to have a hard edge, whatever. And you’re in there in your tights, dancing on TikTok? That ain’t quite the image of our program I want.” Rodriguez clarified he wasn’t banning players from the platform entirely—just dancing on it. “Twenty years from now, if they want to be sitting in their pajamas in the basement eatin’ Cheetos and watching TikTok or whatever the hell, they can go at it. Smokin’ cannabis or whatever? Knock yourself out,” he said, via The Athletic‘s David Ubben. “Hopefully the focus can be on winning football games. How about we win the football game and not worry about winning the TikTok?” While many sports fans agreed with Rodriguez’s no-nonsense stance, others felt he might be stifling his athletes’ futures. “Rich Rod is antiquated, but he isn’t obtuse,” one person posted on X. “So he delegitimizes a pathway for his athletes to carve out a brand for their own financial futures. He creates a chilling effect on self-determination and remains undoubtedly in control.” Just cut to the root of this: Control. Rich Rod is antiquated, but he isn’t obtuse. So he delegitimizes a pathway for his athletes to carve out a brand for their own financial futures. He creates a chilling effect on self-determination and remains undoubtedly in control. https://t.co/npoQdBAV8x — Brad Friedman (@BradFriedman713) March 12, 2025 Another added, “Not only is RichRod banning his players from dancing on TikTok (a string of words I never thought I’d write together) a potential employment issue but it also likely violates the athletes’ First Amendment rights.” Regardless of Rodriguez’s take, plenty of players seem to have no problem juggling TikTok and football. Travis Hunter, who played college ball for Jackson State and Colorado, regularly posts dance videos to his 1.9 million TikTok followers. A video from August 2024—featuring Hunter in a tiger-print onesie—has racked up 5.4 million views. It didn’t stop him from winning the Heisman Trophy, college football’s highest honor. @_travishunter 6 more days until game day #football #travishunter #dance ♬ original sound – DjBigChris305 Even Heisman runner-up Ashton Jeanty is still posting. His latest dance video, uploaded this week, has already topped two million views. @__bigduece.2x I was dancing at every family gathering😂 #fyp #viral ♬ Bad (feat. Tiara Thomas) – Wale Turns out, you can win the football game—and win “the TikTok.”
An experiment is underway in Ann Arbor, Michigan, that could change how communities generate and distribute power in the future. The city, with voters’ strong support, is launching its own sustainable energy utility. This new utility won’t replace DTE Energy, the local investor-owned power company, or even use DTE’s wires. Instead, Ann Arbor will slowly build out a whole new modern power system, starting with installing rooftop solar and battery storage and reducing energy usage in individual homes and businesses whose owners opt in. The city then plans to expand by connecting homes and neighborhoods into microgrids and by using community solar and networked geothermal to allow broader access to clean energy. If it works as planned, a sustainable energy utility like this could quickly build the clean energy grid of the future by shedding outdated infrastructure while creating a reliable, clean, and resilient model. I am an environmental policy analyst at the University of Michigan and an Ann Arbor resident who has long engaged in local energy work. I believe that the lessons from Ann Arbor’s energy experiment will have major implications as more communities strive to control their own energy future. An explosion of interest in local power Communities frustrated with investor-owned utilities’ high rates and sometimes unreliable and polluting power are increasingly trying to shift to public ownership and delivery of energy services, much like municipal water systems. So far, Nebraska is the only state with fully public power. A ballot initiative in Maine that would have required all power to be publicly owned and distributed failed amid heavy industry opposition. But campaigns to localize control of energy are flourishing. However, creating new public utilities that take over all power delivery is difficult legally, politically, and financially. Hence, the idea for Ann Arbor’s sustainable energy utility, or SEU, which can function alongside the investor-owned utility. Subscribers to the SEU still have service from DTE if they need more power, and they can sell excess generation back to the grid. But they would generate and use their own power first while also reducing energy consumption through conservation and efficiency measures. Voters in November 2024 approved the creation of this sustainable energy utility in Ann Arbor with nearly 80% of the vote. What is a sustainable energy utility? An SEU has three distinguishing features. First, an SEU can function at almost any scale. A city like Ann Arbor can provide energy and services directly to homes and businesses that opt in and build out new distribution lines with each microgrid or community solar project. Only the residents who opt in pay for the service, allowing it to expand as more homes join. Moreover, customers do not need to leave their incumbent investor-owned utility to also use the SEU. Perhaps that’s why DTE so far has not publicly opposed Ann Arbor’s startup. Instead, the company said after the vote that it would invest US$215 million in infrastructure improvements in the city over the next five years. How Ann Arbor’s SEU would interact with the local utility, DTE, to help keep power flowing. [Photo: City of Ann Arbor] Second, an SEU is created for the express purpose of providing clean energy, whether through renewable energy generation or reducing power demand. For example, Ann Arbor’s SEU plans to begin by providing solar installations with battery backup. In addition, it will provide energy efficiency and conservation services such as weatherization, upgraded lighting, and more efficient appliances. It later plans to create microgrids, which connect groups of homes and buildings, allowing them to share solar power and storage among themselves. In addition, community solar projects would allow residents to buy electricity from nearby homes, businesses, or public areas that generate excess solar power. And the city is planning networked geothermal power for a low-income community. All of these options would be difficult if not impossible under the current utility structure. That’s because they run counter to a business model based on centralized power distribution and maximizing short-term profit. Five ways Ann Arbor’s SEU would provide power. SEUs created in other parts of the U.S., including Delaware and Washington, D.C., have so far focused on energy efficiency. [Image: City of Ann Arbor] Third, SEUs provide small-scale, decentralized, more resilient infrastructure. One common problem with investor-owned utilities is that their largest profit margins come from building new power sources rather than maintaining and repairing existing wires, poles, and other infrastructure that keep power flowing. This is one key reason why public utilities, which are directly responsible to voters and taxpayers, have a better track record of keeping the power flowing. Reliability is particularly important and challenging as the impacts of climate change accelerate, with more frequent catastrophic weather events straining energy infrastructure. When power goes out in a centralized system, everyone is left in the dark if they don’t have generators or battery backup. But increased solar power with battery storage and microgrids can allow groups of buildings to return to power quickly. Local communities will step up again My colleague Andrew Buchsbaum and I recently worked with a team of graduate students to compare the potential performance of various types of power governance systems. We found that an SEU had the highest potential to lower prices, increase reliability, lower pollution, and benefit underserved communities compared with fully jettisoning the private utility in favor of only public power, increasing the number of municipal public utilities, or tightening regulation on existing utilities. Ann Arbor’s experiment to launch the first full-scale SEU will test this. It also comes at a critical time. During the first Trump administration, as the federal government prioritized fossil fuels, cities and states stepped up their expansion of clean energy. The second Trump administration is again promoting polluting power sources while pulling back support for renewable energy development. Yet, wind, solar, and energy efficiency are the cheapest sources of electricity. Given the increasing urgency to reduce climate pollution and the clear financial and reliability benefits of clean energy, I expect the trend of increasing focus on clean energy at the local level to not just continue but accelerate. Mike Shriberg is a professor of practice & engagement at the School for Environment & Sustainability at the University of Michigan. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Consider a self-employed entrepreneur who racked up thousands of dollars in medical bills after a visit to the emergency department due to lack of employer-sponsored health insurance. Or the entrepreneur whose business never got off the ground—not because they lacked skill or demand, but because the burden of complicated taxes or owing money they didn’t expect made them walk away before they could even get started. This sentiment underscores how current policies can deter potential entrepreneurs from leaving traditional employment. Despite all of this, in recent years, solopreneurship—the practice of running a business without a team or employees—has grown drastically, alongside general entrepreneurship. The U.S. averaged 430,000 business applications per month in 2024. That’s 50% more than in 2019. And according to the Small Business Administration, the number of non-employer businesses has grown 84% since 1997. There are 28.5 million non-employer businesses in the U.S., representing roughly 82% of all small businesses in the country. This includes freelance writers, designers, consultants, e-commerce entrepreneurs, influencers, virtual assistants, and photographers. Despite having no employees, solopreneurs face many of the same challenges as small business owners: funding, healthcare, taxes, and compliance. Here are three policy areas and practices they can put into place to ensure their long-term success. 1. Access to capital Solopreneurs are more likely to use personal capital to start and sustain their business. Unlike larger companies that can attract investors, solopreneurs often struggle to secure significant external funding due to their smaller scale. And in many cases, they are simply unaware of the resources available to them. There are a few possible solutions to addressing this challenge. First, government can increase the support for and awareness of tax-deductible business loans, which allow solopreneurs to deduct interest on personal loans used for business expenses. This includes traditional business loans like SBA loans, equipment financing, and business lines of credit. It also includes personal loans and home equity loans used for business, such as a solopreneur taking out a $20,000 personal loan to buy equipment and cover marketing costs. If the annual interest paid on the loan is $2,000 and the entire loan is used for business, the full interest payment can be deducted from taxable income, reducing overall taxes owed. Another option is a phased reduction of the self-employment tax. One of the biggest financial burdens for new solopreneurs is the self-employment tax, which is 15.3% (covering Social Security and Medicare) on net earnings. The government could implement a phased reduction of self-employment taxes for new solopreneurs, gradually lowering the self-employment tax burden for individuals just starting their own business. This approach could provide financial relief and additional capital during the crucial early stages of business growth. It also gives solopreneurs time to establish consistent earnings before facing full tax liability. 2. Healthcare and social safety net security Healthcare, retirement savings, parental leave—these are all benefits currently tied to a person’s job. This has been described as “job lock” as it suppresses entrepreneurship, innovation, and ultimately economic growth. Despite this, we are still seeing a massive rise in solopreneurship— meaning there is a large segment of the workforce that has to navigate these critical social safety net programs on their own. The first solution is to reform the current health reimbursement arrangement (HRA), including an individual coverage HRA (ICHRA) and a qualified small employer HRA (QSEHRA). While they were designed as a flexible way for small businesses to help employees access health insurance, the system has major flaws—one is that they are not currently available for self-employed individuals. These individuals struggle to deduct healthcare costs because they lack employer-sponsored insurance. HRA reform could allow them to use pre-tax dollars for health expenses, reducing their taxable income. HRA reform could be a game-changer for solopreneurs and S-corps, making healthcare more accessible, affordable, and tax efficient. Another potential solution is to exempt health insurance premiums and retirement savings contributions from self-employment tax calculations. Right now, solopreneurs pay self-employment tax on all earnings, including money used for health insurance and retirement. Creating this exemption would lower the overall tax burdens on these individuals without reducing the benefits. 3. Compliance and tax support Running a business as a solopreneur is extremely rewarding when it comes to flexibility, being your own boss, and doing what you love. But it also comes with its own set of compliance and tax challenges. And while there are some tax advantages to working for yourself that are not available to those who work for others, it can get complex. Business owners need to be aware of different tax deadlines, eligible deductions, and how to efficiently structure their finances to benefit from lower tax rates. This will always be important, but there are proposals making their way through Washington to make it easier on solopreneurs. Right now, anyone who works for themselves faces the burden of directly paying their estimated taxes on a quarterly basis and managing a lot of the calculations on their own. There are also long-term economic security implications of not remitting payroll taxes, which reduces the Social Security benefit, plus Medicare, to a certain extent. Because of this, many self-employed workers—solopreneurs, freelancers, etc.—would prefer to have taxes withheld from their earnings instead. This would reduce the risk of calculation errors and help them avoid penalties. Businesses that pay self-employed individuals for their work could withhold the taxes by adding their withholding to the taxes they already pay for their employees. This would allow solopreneurs to better manage their cash flow and alleviate the frustration of having to estimate withholdings, save for future tax payments, and navigate those payments four times a year. The rise in solopreneurship and self-employment isn’t just a trend; it’s a fundamental shift in how people choose to work these days. Supporting entrepreneurs in their business endeavors and reducing complexities for them would encourage more small business creation, which ultimately strengthens and lifts the overall economy. Tomer London is cofounder and chief product officer of Gusto. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
The AI industry is growing up fast. New model releases are now a regular event and premium AI features are quickly overtaken by free or freemium alternatives. Exhibit A: OpenAI unveiled its Deep Research tool, which can write reports on complex topics in minutes, as part of its $200-a-month Pro package, but rival Perplexity gives non-subscribers some access to its Deep Research assistant free of charge. (Yes, Google Gemini’s agentic research assistant is also called Deep Research.) With fewer fundamental breakthroughs, the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, and xAI are slugging it out over incremental improvements in search and reasoning performance. As AI pricing falls and performance gaps close, the focus has shifted from novelty applications to finding real business value. It’s a new era for AI Agentic AI is the game-changer. Gartner forecasts that 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI by 2028, a drastic increase from less than 1% in 2024. Some 15% of day-to-day work decisions could be made autonomously by AI agents, hiking business productivity and freeing up workers for more strategic tasks. It’s probably no surprise, then, that OpenAI—which famously took 4.5 years to launch ChatGPT “without any idea of who our customer was going to be,” according to CEO Sam Altman—is releasing its first-ever product roadmap. Nothing says “maturing market” like a product roadmap. As Finn Murphy, a founder and venture capitalist, posted on X from the AI Action Summit in Paris, where the EU said it would “mobilize” €200 billion for AI investment: “It really feels like the era of interesting technical breakthroughs being announced is over and the era of policy, partnerships, and money announcements is here.” Security matters Growing up brings responsibilities, of course, especially at the enterprise level. Among the 1,803 C-suite executives surveyed for the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) AI Radar, published in January, 76% recognized that their AI cybersecurity measures need further improvement. If anything, that number should be closer to 100%. Execs ranked data privacy and security as the top AI risk. Regulatory challenges and compliance also featured strongly. Their fears are not unfounded: AI applications open up a new attack surface for threat actors and security researchers have already succeeded in “breaking” all of the world-class AI models to some extent. Still, it took the shock arrival of China’s DeepSeek to properly push AI security into the mainstream. It is notable that consumers and corporates have concerns about a Chinese entity having their data but seem content that U.S. and Europe-based entities—which impose almost identical terms and conditions—will keep it secure. Security must be a key consideration for all AI models, not just those built (or hosted) outside the US. History shows us that bad actors are often the earliest adopters of new technology, from wire fraud to phone, text and email phishing scams. In an agentic world, where AI agents have been given access to critical business information and in-house applications, the blast radius from any attack may be exponential. Think like an attacker It’s often said that the best defense is to think like an attacker. Today, that means using Agentic Warfare to comprehensively test AI-driven systems for vulnerabilities long before they see the light of day. Automated red-teaming is the new standard in testing AI with speed, complexity, and scale. At every step, security has to sit alongside performance in choosing AI, rather than coming as an afterthought when something goes wrong. As much as cost, security-to-performance will be a key metric in model and app selection; this is a one-way-door decision for safe and successful AI implementations. Interestingly, the BCG survey reports that “the intuitive, friendly feel of GenAI masks the discipline, commitment, and hard work required” to introduce AI in the workplace. It is hard work but the rewards should be significant. Just as software led to era-defining leaps in innovation and productivity, agentic AI promises great advances in all sectors—as long as security is baked in from the beginning. Donnchadh Casey is CEO of CalypsoAI. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
In today’s whiplash business environment of change and uncertainty, there are a few simple, timeless strategies that consistently rank among the best for accelerating growth. No reinventing the wheel required. One such strategy is test-to-scale—close cousin of the venerable test-and-learn approach that’s long been a startup staple. Both can play a key role, depending on the stage of your company, industry, size, growth curve, and—importantly—internal culture. Basically, test-and-learn uses small scale, iterative experiments to see what works best. Testing different messaging in a marketing campaign, for example, or perhaps different product features. The idea is to gather data, analyze the results, and learn quickly what works…or doesn’t. Test-to-scale ups the ante by taking things to another level. These tests aim to discover whether a product, system, or process can withstand the “stress test” of large-scale rollout or production. This might include manufacturing capacity, supply chains, distribution channels, sales transactions, user adoption, and data collection. The benefits of making test-to-scale part of your go-to strategic arsenal will accrue from multiple directions, including: Faster time to market: By testing concepts early, you can identify solutions and innovations most likely to succeed, and launch them quickly and confidently. Data trove: Experimentation generates valuable real-time customer data that is super helpful for making quick scaling decisions. Innovation and agility: Testing fosters an entrepreneurial mindset that enables continuous improvement, better informed decisions, and rapid adjustments. Risk reduction: Experiments also lower risk by identifying possible pitfalls and pointing to alternative solutions early. Entrepreneurial DNA In a hypergrowth environment—like the one Liquid I.V. has been navigating for years—things must happen quickly. The entrepreneurial spirit baked into our rapidly growing company’s DNA is a major factor in helping us achieve the kind of growth and expansion we could scarcely have imagined 5 years ago. For us, one way this entrepreneurial spirit plays out is how we choose to invest and what we prioritize. This is where test-to-scale enters the picture. We follow the 80/20 rule. While about 80% of our investments are proven and measurable, the other 20% goes to experimentation. You never know where that experimental fifth will take you. In our case, the answer has been “A long, long way!” Our experimentation with TikTok Shop, for example, resulted in a wealth of e-commerce knowledge and data that helped our team open a new, high-potential channel. Experimentation with gaming yielded Twitch as a high ROI media channel for us. Those are just two among many mainstream Liquid I.V. products, processes, sales channels, and marketing tactics that began as tests, but are now integral to our success. Learn from test-to-scale Below are three key learnings, ingredients, and benefits of test-to-scale that can help any company use this simple strategy to supercharge growth: 1. Commitment to learning: The means and ability to test are, of course, a requirement. But more importantly, you must also be willing and able to learn from the results. This is more difficult than it sounds. There’s a natural tendency to bury failure rather than learn from it. The learning side of the equation is valuable payoff. Remember, finding out that something doesn’t work is just as important as learning that something does. 2. Relentlessly prioritize: At Liquid I.V., we invest considerable time and effort into prioritizing our chosen experiments and potential lessons. There’s an endless list of things we could test, but only a few we truly should. Areas we prioritize include go-to-market capabilities and capacity, customer relationship management (CRM) engagement and personalization, R&D and innovation in new product development, omni-channel demand generation, and different combinations of in-house/outsourced resourcing that prioritize speed and expertise. The areas you choose may be totally different. The important thing is to make the hard choices. 3. JTBD: The “jobs-to-be-done” way of approaching experimentation is based on research showing that people buy products and services mainly to get some type of “job” done. Jobs-to-be-done might include staying properly hydrated, booking travel, building a deck, or thousands of other tasks that consumers need to regularly accomplish. Centering your test-to-scale approach around JTBD helps make innovation more predictable and marketing more effective. At Liquid I.V., it’s been one of the key drivers helping our brand awareness and household penetration numbers skyrocket. There’s no such thing as failure in a culture that values experimentation. There is only feedback. Your odds of success will directly corollate with your ability to embrace that feedback. Mike Keech is CEO of Liquid I.V. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
It’s the dynamic pulse that surges through our electrical lines, the unseen force that illuminates the dark, and the silent but commanding engine propelling the future of artificial intelligence. Though intangible, its influence is omnipresent in our daily lives. This invisible force is power. As the world shifts from fossil fuels to embrace renewable energy, power is emerging as an ultimate finite resource. The ever-growing demands on our electrical grid, driven by the explosion of data centers, electric vehicles, and the proliferation of AI are creating a race against time where needs outpace supply. Consequently, our insistence on tech innovation may be hindering efforts to combat climate change, as it forces us to continue relying on fossil fuels to meet the rising energy requirements. Power system innovation Solving this energy crisis is essential for next-generation economies to successfully adopt AI and electrification. Innovation in power systems is essential to achieving this, enabling smarter, more sustainable energy solutions. Integrating AI data centers with advanced power systems can drastically reduce energy consumption and costs while meeting growing energy demands. As AI continues to expand, power system innovation will play a crucial role in reducing its environmental impact to foster a more sustainable future. Supporting a sustainable future by adopting energy-efficient technologies and practices has become crucial over the last decade. Customers are increasingly demanding that enterprises and their supply chains meet stringent sustainability benchmarks, underscoring the importance of these technologies and practices. From a marketing perspective, companies that work to innovate and prioritize sustainable solutions not only contribute to a greener planet but also gain a competitive edge by aligning their brand values to the values of environmentally conscious consumers and partners. In fact, Deloitte research indicates that a major shift is happening in consumption patterns, where sustainability is considered a baseline requirement for purchase rather than a “nice-to-have.” Technological progress advances AI’s surge began nearly 4 years ago, with headlines predicting its potential impact. AI has continued to evolve and its capabilities have become increasingly fine-tuned. It is now seen as a transformative force, anticipated to revolutionize global economies and industries, specifically in sectors like healthcare and manufacturing. For example, regions such as the United Kingdom are planning to leverage AI’s capabilities across its public and private sectors to cut costs and spur economic growth. However, harnessing this advanced technology’s power brings considerable challenges, specifically in energy consumption and its environmental impact. AI’s computational requirements are increasingly energy-intensive, especially as data centers—which power all AI functions—require more power to manage the boundless amounts of data flowing in. This surge in energy demand strains the electrical grid, creating a tipping point for power that risks progress made over the last decade in reducing our carbon footprint. As we look toward the future, energy efficiency is the key to ensuring that this technological progress doesn’t advance at the expense of our environment. Power system innovation, for example, can significantly reduce energy consumption and operational costs while still meeting the growing AI demands. Additionally, integrating renewable energy sources and improving energy management systems can help mitigate AI’s overall environmental impact. The sustainable path forward We stand at a pivotal moment where innovation and collaboration are essential to improving efficiency through new technologies, all while maintaining a strong focus on the common sustainability theme. To overcome today’s challenges and achieve a sustainable future, we must explore and cooperate across various industries. It’s crucial that we support AI’s continued growth without compromising the significant progress individuals and enterprises have made in reducing carbon emissions for more sustainable supply chains and a more sustainable world. Felicity Carson is SVP and chief marketing officer at onsemi. The Fast Company Impact Council is a private membership community of influential leaders, experts, executives, and entrepreneurs who share their insights with our audience. Members pay annual membership dues for access to peer learning and thought leadership opportunities, events and more.
President Donald Trump said in his inauguration address that he planned to utilize the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 as part of his sweeping crackdown on immigration. Now, the Trump administration could go ahead with its plan to use the little-known wartime law to detain and deport undocumented immigrants, possibly as early as Friday, according to multiple sources including CBS News. Critics worry it would give the president expanded authority to target and remove undocumented workers. The 227-year-old law could give Trump the power to arrest, detain, and deport non-U.S. citizens over the age of 14 who were staging an “invasion or predatory incursion,” which this administration would have to prove, despite that most immigrants come to the U.S. for better economic opportunities, to escape violence, and to provide a better future for their children. Legal experts predict the courts would ultimately strike down the measure if the country isn’t being attacked by a foreign government. Nevertheless, a number of federal agencies are looking at ways to implement the law, according to CNN’s sources, who said one target are Venezuelans in Aurora, Colorado, who the Trump administration have accused of being members of the Tren de Aragua gang, although those claims have been fact-checked and disputed. Most Americans (64%) polled by the Pew Research Center said undocumented immigrants should have a way to stay in the country legally if they meet certain requirements. However, Americans have mixed feelings about the issue, with three-quarters saying they are at least somewhat concerned about the number of immigrants entering the country illegally, and a majority supporting the enforcement of mass deportations. The U.S. immigrant population, both legal and illegal, has grown over the decades, from 9.6 million in 1970 to almost 48 million as of 2023.
If you’ve got a smartphone, you probably spend too much time on it — checking Instagram, watching silly TikTok videos, messaging on WhatsApp or doomscrolling on X. It can be hard to curb excessive use of smartphones and social media, which are addictive by design. Reducing your screen time is often more than just a matter of willpower, especially for younger people whose brains and impulse control are still developing. If you’re a phone addict who wants to cut down on the hours a day spent looking at your device, here are some techniques you can try to free up more IRL time: Delete apps An easy first step is getting rid of any apps you’ve been wasting time on. Over the past year, I’ve deleted Facebook, Instagram and Twitter from my phone because I wanted to use them less. Now and then I’ll have to go the app store and reinstall one because I need to do something like post a photo I took on my phone. (Sometimes I’ll transfer the photo to my laptop and then post it to the web from there, but usually, it’s too much hassle.) The danger with this approach is that if you do reinstall the app, you won’t bother deleting it again. Use built-in controls Both iPhones and Android devices have onboard controls to help regulate screen time. They can also be used by parents to regulate children’s phone usage. Apple’s Screen Time controls are found in the iPhone’s settings menu. Users can set overall Downtime, which shuts off all phone activity during a set period. If you want a phone-free evening, then you could set it to kick in from, say, 7 p.m. until 7 a.m. The controls also let users put a blanket restriction on certain categories of apps, such as social, games or entertainment or zero in on a specific app, by limiting the time that can be spent on it. Too distracted by Instagram? Then set it so that you can only use it for a daily total of 20 minutes. The downside is that the limits aren’t hard to get around. It’s more of a nudge than a red line that you can’t cross. If you try to open an app with a limit, you’ll get a screen menu offering one more minute, a reminder after 15 minutes, or to completely ignore it. Android users can use turn to their Digital Wellbeing settings, which include widgets to remind users how much screen time they’ve had. There’s also the option to create separate work and personal profiles, so you can hide your social media apps and their notifications when you’re at the office. Don’t be distracted There are other little tricks to make your phone less distracting. I use the Focus mode on my iPhone to silence notifications. For example, If I’m in a meeting somewhere, I mute it until I leave that location. Android also has a Focus mode to pause distracting apps. Change your phone display to grayscale from color so that it doesn’t look so exciting. On iPhones, adjust the color filter in your settings. For Android, turn on Bedtime Mode, or tweak the color correction setting. Android phones can also nag users not to look at their phones while walking, by activating the Heads Up feature in Digital Wellbeing. Block those apps If the built-in controls aren’t enough, there are many third-party apps, like Jomo, Opal, Forest, Roots and LockMeOut that are designed to cut down screen time. Many of these apps have both free and premium versions with more features, and strongly push you toward signing up for a subscription by minimizing the option to “skip for now” on the payment screen. I tested out a few on my iPhone for this story. To try out Opal, I reinstalled Facebook so I could block it. Whenever I tapped the Facebook icon, Opal intervened to give me various inspirational messages, like “Gain Wisdom, Lose Facebook,” and tallied how many times I tried to open it. To get around the block, I had to open Opal and wait through a six-second timeout before requesting up to 15 minutes to look at Facebook. There’s an option to up the difficulty by increasing the delay before you can look again. Jomo, which I used to restrict my phone’s Reddit app, worked in a similar way: tap the Unlock button, which took me to the Jomo app, where I had to wait 20 seconds before I could tap the button to unlock Reddit for up to 10 minutes. The OneSec app takes a different approach by reminding users to first take a pause. The installation, which involves setting up an automation on the iPhone’s Shortcuts, can be confusing. When I eventually installed it for my Bluesky app, it gave me a prompt to run a shortcut that wiped my screen with a soothing purple-blue and reminded me to take a deep breath before letting me choose to open the app — but in practice it was too easy to just skip the prompt. The Android-only LockMeOut can freeze you out of designated apps based on criteria like your location, how many times you’ve opened an app, or how long you’ve used it. The obvious way to defeat these apps is simply to delete them, although some advise users to follow the proper uninstall procedure or else apps could remain blocked. Use external hardware Digital blockers might not be for everyone. Some startups, figuring that people might prefer a tangible barrier, offer hardware solutions that introduce physical friction between you and an app. Unpluq is a yellow tag that you have to hold up to your phone in order to access blocked apps. Brick and Blok are two different products that work along the same lines — they’re squarish pieces of plastic that you have to tap or scan with your phone to unlock an app. The makers of these devices say that software solutions are too easy to bypass, but a physical object that you can put somewhere out of reach or leave behind if you’re going somewhere is a more effective way to get rid of distractions. What about stashing the phone away entirely? There are various phone lockboxes and cases available, some of them designed so parents can lock up their teenagers’ phones when they’re supposed to be sleeping. Yondr, which makes portable phone locking pouches used at concerts or in schools, also sells a home phone box. See a therapist Perhaps there are deeper reasons for your smartphone compulsion. Maybe it’s a symptom of underlying problems like anxiety, stress, loneliness, depression or low self-esteem. If you think that’s the case, it could be worth exploring therapy that is becoming more widely available. One London hospital treats “technology addiction” with a plan that includes dealing with “discomfort in face-to-face time” with other people, and exploring your relationship with technology. Another clinic boasts that its social media addiction treatment also includes working on a patient’s technology management skills, such as “setting boundaries for device usage, finding alternative activities to fill the void of reduced online interaction, and learning how to engage more with the physical world.” Downgrade your phone Why not trade your smartphone for a more basic one? It’s an extreme option but there’s a thriving subculture of cellphones with only basic features, catering to both retro enthusiasts and people, including parents, worried about screen time. They range from cheap old-school brick-and-flip phones by faded brands like Nokia to stylish but pricier devices from boutique manufacturers like Punkt. The tradeoff, of course, is that you’ll also have to do without essential apps like Google Maps or your bank. —Kelvin Chan, AP business writer
President Donald Trump threatened on Thursday to impose a 200% tariff on European alcoholic beverages in response to the European Union’s retaliation on his aluminum and steel tariffs. In a Truth Social post, Trump warned that his administration would enforce the tariff unless the EU rescinds the 50% tariff it imposed on American-made spirits on Wednesday. “If this Tariff is not removed immediately, the U.S. will shortly place a 200% Tariff on all WINES, CHAMPAGNES, & ALCOHOLIC PRODUCTS COMING OUT OF FRANCE AND OTHER E.U. REPRESENTED COUNTRIES. This will be great for the Wine and Champagne businesses in the U.S.,” Trump stated. The EU’s move came in retaliation to Trump’s 25% tariffs on aluminum and steel, which took effect at midnight Wednesday. The European Commission labeled the measure an “unjustified” trade action and swiftly implemented countermeasures, raising tariffs on $28 billion worth of U.S. goods, including motorcycles, bourbon, peanut butter, and jeans. The EU plans to roll out additional trade penalties in two phases: On April 1, it will reinstate “rebalancing measures” that had been in place between 2018 and 2020 but were suspended under the Biden administration. Then, on April 13, the EU will introduce further duties targeting $19.6 billion in American exports to the bloc. Stocks react and not in a good way Following the tariff announcements, U.S. markets fell. The S&P 500 was down 1.4% in late-day trading on Thursday, continuing a slide of roughly 3.49% over the last five days. The United States is world’s largest importer of both wine and champagne, according to NBC, but ranks fifth in wine exports and 12th in exports of sparkling wine. For the past three years, the EU’s 25% tariff on American whiskey had been suspended as part of the ongoing steel and aluminum dispute, allowing U.S. distillers to regain ground in their largest export market. The EU’s decision to reinstate tariffs has concerned industry leaders. “The EU’s announcement to reimpose these tariffs on American Whiskey at 50% on April 1 is deeply disappointing and will severely undercut the successful efforts to rebuild U.S. spirits exports in EU countries,” Chris Swonger, president and CEO of Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, said in a statement. “We urge the U.S. and EU governments to come to a resolution that gets our spirits industry back to zero-for-zero tariffs.”
At least 112 North American bird species have lost more than half their populations in the past 50 years, according to a new report published Thursday. Among the birds showing the steepest declines are Allen’s hummingbirds, Florida scrub jays, golden-cheeked warblers, tricolored blackbirds and yellow-billed magpies. “These are the very real consequences if we are unable to conserve and protect the crucial habitats that birds need,” said study co-author Mike Brasher, a senior scientist at the nonprofit Ducks Unlimited. For several decades, waterfowl stood out as a conservation bright spot with duck populations growing nationwide even as many other groups of birds declined in the U.S. But that trend has reversed, the new data shows. The total number of dabbling and diving ducks is down about 30% from 2017, said Brasher. Loss of grasslands habitat and a prolonged drought affecting the wetlands of the Great Plains’ prairie pothole region have taken a toll. Among all waterfowl, numbers are down 20% since 2014, the report found. The latest report is a collaboration between several groups including Cornell University, Ducks Unlimited, American Bird Conservancy, National Audubon Society and the American Ornithological Society. The work draws on survey data from the U.S. Geological Survey, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and citizen projects such as Cornell’s eBird. There are some 2,000 bird species in North America. A third of the species examined are rated as high or moderate concern for conservation due to declining numbers, habitat loss or other threats. These birds “need urgent conservation attention,” said Amanda Rodewald, a study co-author from Cornell, adding that bird survey trends also reveal the health of their habitats. The report focuses on birds that must breed and feed in specific habitats such as forests, grasslands and coastal regions. Grassland birds including the Bobolink are most at risk. “For each species that we’re in danger of losing, it’s like pulling an individual thread out of the complex tapestry of life,” said Georgetown University biologist Peter Marra, who was not involved in the new report. Marra pointed to key past conservation successes in the U.S. – such as the comebacks of bald eagles, egrets and osprey. “We know that we can bend the curve back with targeted conservation plans. But we can’t just close our eyes and hope,” he said. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. —Christina Larson, AP science writer
It may be winter and there may be a biting chill in the air, but the dozen men and women who have packed this small sauna room in east London are happily sweating away in their swimwear. It’s more than 90 degrees Celcius (194 Fahrenheit) in here — and it’s about to get even hotter. As ice blocks infused with lavender oil melt over sizzling hot stones, releasing fragrant steam, “sauna master” Oliver Beryl turns on some ambient music and starts to vigorously wave a towel in a circular motion above his head to spread overpowering waves of dry heat around the room. “Now try finding someone and sit back to back with them,” Beryl suggests. “Or, if you want, maintain eye contact with the person sitting next to you.” A brief hesitation, but most gamely oblige for a few minutes. Sauna-bathing has taken London and the rest of the U.K. by storm, particularly among trendy 20- and 30-somethings interested in trying a new pastime that’s healthier than nights out in pubs and bars. Sweating it out in communal spaces for relaxation, physical or mental therapy and socializing has long been a staple of many cultures around the world, from Scandinavia’s saunas and Native American sweat lodges to Japan’s onsens and Turkish baths. But the most popular saunas now are those that emphasize community and “connectedness,” or offer something novel alongside sitting in a heated box. Think sauna club nights featuring DJs, saunas combined with a poetry workshop, or “aufguss” (meaning “infusion” in German) rituals like the one hosted by Beryl — an intense session blending heat therapy, music and scent. Many sites also offer open-air ice baths next to the saunas so people can cycle between hot and cold. ‘It’s exhilarating’ “I loved the feeling of losing yourself. It’s a 15-minute detachment from normal life,” said Jess Carmichael as she emerged from her first “aufguss” at Community Sauna Baths in Stratford, east London. She likened the exhilaration she felt to the experience of running into the freezing sea with hundreds of others on New Year’s Day. “I think people need this right now — this warmth coming from the outside and feeling that you’re sharing an experience with others,” she added. Charlie Duckworth, a co-founder of Community Sauna Baths, said it all started in 2022 when he and fellow “sauna nutters” installed two small saunas — including one in a horse box — in a disused parking lot in the trendy neighborhood of Hackney. The not-for-profit social enterprise proved so popular that it has since expanded to four sites across the capital, with two more opening soon. A large part of the appeal for many fans is that saunas serve as “a place of communion,” much like a pub or a church, Duckworth said. “Sauna lowers inhibitions and also gives you a feeling of mild euphoria,” not unlike the effects of social drinking, he said. “I think it’s an excellent place to socialize.” Around the U.K., the number of public sauna sites has jumped from 45 in 2023 to 147 so far this year, according to the British Sauna Society. ‘Have a bit more fun with it’ Compared to countries where the practice is steeped in tradition, one benefit of the U.K.’s sauna culture being so new is that providers can “have a bit more fun with it and be more creative,” Duckworth said. At Peckham Sauna Social in south London, weekends feature relaxed ambient sauna nights with resident DJs and a non-alcoholic cocktail bar. One of its most popular monthly sessions is the “creative writing sauna”: a short poetry reading followed by a chai tea and writing workshop afterward in the lounge. “Reading in the sauna was something I’d never done before — just being hot and sweaty and dripping onto the page was challenging at first,” said Caroline Druitt, a writer who leads the workshops. Something about sharing a chat with other semi-clothed strangers in the sauna seemed to encourage participants to be more open about sharing their ideas and writings, Druitt said. “Besides, I know that many of my best ideas have come out of the bath,” she added. Reported health benefits Besides reducing stress and getting ideas flowing, some swear by saunas and cold plunges for soothing joint inflammation and improving heart health and sleep. Some studies go further, with one suggesting a link between going to the sauna at least four times a week and a reduction in the risk of psychosis among middle-aged Finnish men. “Authentic sauna done well should be as regular as the gym, and doing it regularly is what offers the reported health benefits,” said Gabrielle Reason, secretary at the British Sauna Society. While those health benefits aren’t yet well established — and those with high blood pressure or heart conditions should check with their doctors before going to a sauna and ice bath — many converts return regularly for the mood boost. “It just resets your brain in a really lovely way,” said Callum Heinrich, submerged in a barrel of frigid water, his skin still steaming from the sauna. He says he attends twice a week when he can. “For your mental health, it is the best thing in the world.” —Sylvia Hui, Associated Press
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