Will Kansas City Chiefs tight end Travis Kelce retire after this football season? Kelce has not yet delivered a public answer to this question, and theres widespread speculation. But his choice of words when speaking about this decision may tell us which way hes leaning. Its a lesson for every communicator. Your choice of words carries meaning, whether you realize it or not. Sometimes that word choice can reveal more than you intended.
The Chiefs just finished a dispiriting season, the first in Kelces pro career in which the team did not make the playoffs. Kelces current contract with the team ends in March. As many have pointed out, hes a shoo-in for the Hall of Fame, having broken so many records its hard to count them all. He truly has nothing left to prove.
On top of that, hes engaged to Taylor Swift, with a rumored wedding date of June 13. His looks, charisma, and his incredibly famous fiancée mean there are many opportunities for him in the world of entertainment and sportscasting, beyond the wildly successful New Heights podcast he cohosts with his older brother, former Philadelphia Eagle Jason Kelce.
So there are several good reasons for the younger Kelce to retire this year. On the other hand, many people suspected he would retire a year ago, after the Chiefs failed in their quest for three in a row Super Bowl wins in a humiliating loss to the Eagles. Despite those rumors, he returned to play another season.
Kelce will never lose his love of the game
In January, Kelce shared some of his thoughts on retirement during an episode of New Heights. Ive talked to a few people in the facility already, you know, having the exit meetings and everything, and they know where I stand, at least right now, he said. And I think theres a lot of love for the game thats still there, and I dont think Ill ever lose that. And, I dont know, its a tough thing to navigate.
Then he described the conditions under which hed continue to play. If I think my body can heal up and rest up, and I can feel confident that I can go out there and give it another 18-, 20-, 21-week run, I think I would do it in a heartbeat.
Pay close attention to the word he used in that sentence. I would do it in a heartbeat, not I will do it in a heartbeat. The word would in this sentence indicates that at least some of the requirements he described have not been met. It may seem like a subtle distinction, but consider the two sentences, I will go to the store and I would go to the store. That second statement implies that there is some reason not to go and therefore the speaker will not go shopping.
We all notice word choices
Kelce isnt a grammar expert. In fact, his entire sentence is ungrammatical. I doubt hes ever considered will versus would. But whether we think about them consciously or not, native English speakers are aware of distinctions like this one. Because of that, what he said is so revealing. Kelces retirement may not be a certainty. He says he hasnt decided yet, and that may be true. But I would do it in a heartbeat suggests that, at least right now, he thinks hell go.
Either way, if youre a speaker, entrepreneur, or business leader, pay close attention to your choice of words whenever you speak on any important topic. Otherwise, you could wind up telling careful listeners more than you intended.
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister website, Inc.com.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
For decades, tuning into a sporting event at home involved watching a traditional broadcast on your TV. These days, however, many viewers arent just watching on their TVtheyve got the game streaming right to their phones. After more than two decades, NBC and the NBA have revived their partnership just in time to face this new challenge. In a media landscape where fans consume sports across traditional broadcasts, streaming platforms, and mobile devices, the question is no longer about how to televise the game, but how to design an experience that cultivates the leagues next generation of stars, its culture, and fandom while honoring the nostalgia that once defined the NBA on NBC.[Image: courtesy NBCUniversal]Our job is to document and cover the game and really celebrate the game, says Pierre Moosa, coordinating producer for NBC Sports. That was what we used to do back in the time when we had the NBA on NBC.Celebrating the game has become more complex as sports fans viewing habits are increasingly fragmented. The consumption of sports is always evolving, Moosa says. Whether its social media, digital, social, streaming, we need to meet the viewer [where they are]. To solve this, the NBA and NBCin concert with Peacock, NBCs streaming platformare launching a new mobile-first feature called Courtside Live. Its designed to function alongside traditional broadcast and gives Peacock viewers an unprecedented degree of production control by allowing them to swipe between multiple camera angles in real time, creating a more intimate experience of games.The Design Challenge In recent years mobile has become increasingly important to the fan experience. I always held my phone horizontally, Moosa says. People now hold their phone vertically to watch videos.This behavioral change started influencing Peacocks overall strategy back in 2024, when it launched its Cant Miss Highlights feature, which brought vertical video to the Peacock app for the first time. Vertical video laid the foundation and helped inform us as we were coming up with Courtside Live, says Jim Denney, NBCUs chief product officer, describing a process of experimentation in the lead-up to launching the product.According to Denney, after NBC confirmed its new partnership agreement with the NBA, a cross-functional team got to work brainstorming ideas for a next-gen fan viewing experience. Its really sitting down and starting from the fan and working backwards, he says. [Image: courtesy NBCUniversal]One of the ideas that came up was what if we could actually create the experience of being courtsidewhat would that feel like? says John Jelley, SVP of product and user experience for Peacock and global streaming at NBCUniversal. When you go to a game, you are looking around, you are seeing the coaches, heres the athletes coming on, heres the teams lined up. What if we could actually create the experience a fan [has] live but as part of the Peacock product experience? The product team presented the idea of a feature that allowed fans to flip through different camera views during a live matchup, both on their phone and TV. Denney says viewers who use multiple devices to watch NBA content tend to be more engaged, noting, We wanted a cross-section of things that we would do [well] both on TV and on mobile devices.A major learning that came from the 2024 Paris Olympics broadcast is that there are two types of fans: casual and avid. In addition to providing a quality main broadcast, NBC and Peacock want to appeal to both audience segments by offering new ways to experience the action. They also found that fans who choose to watch events in multiple views simultaneously prefer to stay in that view. Courtside Live builds on that insight by re-creating the multi-view experience for mobile devices.If you think about your mobile experience, you are swiping up and down through vertical videos, and moving between different apps, Jelley says. What we see in that behavior is that fans want the option to [say] Oh, Im watching the game, theres something great happening, I wonder if I could understand a bit more about that player or maybe catch up on some moment that happened earlier or see how the celebrities in the stands are reacting. He says making the right videos easily accessible to viewers created a net-new experience.We thought there was a real opportunity to do something completely new with Courtside, which was to bring that to everyones phones and everyones TVs through multi-view in a way that really hadnt ever been done before, Jelley explains. Designing Courtside LiveThe team began testing Courtside Live during NBA Summer League games at Golden State in July 2025 and quickly realized a big hurdle to clear involved translating horizontally captured video into a vertical format that could live on mobile phones. One of the things you have to do with Courtside Live and any vertical video is often you are shooting a scene with a TV camera, which is a 16-by-9 horizontal feed, Denney says. One of the concepts that we had was following [an individual] player [on the court], my understanding is the production team actually had a camera taped off [at] two edges so that the cameraman could actually keep somebody in view.In that instance, the production team initially used a robo-camera that wasnt fit to capture the necessary angles. They revisited discussions with the vendor and explored options with more padding to identify the most suitable camera.Through that partnership with production, we found ways to make sure the users see exactly the right element, Jelley says. We employed some Japanese technology that allows the operators to make sure theyre delivering these live feeds [and] they can make sure theyre focused on the elements that are most interesting. . . . Were using a variety of technologies to make sure that the user is getting the best possible experience in that vertical format.Another UX pain point was navigation. When Peacock users watch live sporting events on their mobile phones, theyre initially presented with the main traditional broadcast in landscape view. Below that main broadcast view, Jelley explains, users will now find a medley of game views. The team designed the interface with one-handed use in mind, making standard interactions, like swiping through camera angles onmobile devices, intuitive. If you think about your phone and how you hold your phone, you have to be able to very easily navigate around this experience using just your thumb, Jelley says. We really thought about how we could make it easy to switch between these different angles very intuitively, and then use the picture-in-picture functionality that we know users love using on their phone.Jelley recognizes the paradox Peacock is balancing: While users want more choice, they dont want to feel overwhelmed. His teams testing focused predominantly on usability. To simplify navigation, the team used AI to design iconography that clearly communicates to viewers the different camera angles available. And to help viewers transition seamlessly between the main broadcast and alternative views without losing their place, the product team tweaked the styling of the main icon to guide viewers back to their original point of view. The big design constraint really was doing that on a small screen [because] you dont have a lot of real estate, Jelley admits. You dont want things to get in the way of the video, but you want to make it very easy to navigate. And I think the design we came up with really lands that well. Scalability and Repurposing Courtside Live is launching in earnest during the 75th NBA All-Star Game hosted at the Intuit Dome in Los Angeles. In preparation, the teams spent five days rehearsing for the three-day slate of All-Star events, including the Celebrity Game, Rising Stars, All-Star Saturdays three-point and dunk contests, and Sundays new U.S.-vs.-World format.According to Paul Benedict, the NBAs SVP of broadcasting and content management, the action will be captured by 50-plus cameras, more than 20 super-slow-motion cameras, and a flying cable camera. To achieve crisp, cinematic storytelling, Benedict says the production centers on providing unique access typically reserved for All-Star week.What makes Courtside Live so special is those cameras are literally on the scores table, giving you that experience, Moosa says. I may never be able to sit courtside, but I can grab my phone and be able to see what that camera angle looks like.While these angles will be available via Peacock on mobile devices, Moosa notes that the traditional broadcast will also benefit from the Courtside Live feature. So the ISO camera and the courtside cameras are going [to be] intertwined into the normal, traditional broadcast, he says. Learning through Experimentation The NBC and Peacock teams are enthusiastic about what theyll learn from their collaboration on this feature and its debut this weekend. Well be tracking each one of these [angles] and seeing how much people watch, how long in one view, how often do they come back, Jelley says. A lot of the goal of the experiences we built in mobile is about frequency, because we know that with your phone, you have it all the time. Seeing how frequently [users] come back to [the] experience is a great sign of how compelling it is and how much it becomes a part of peoples habits of watching. In addition to tracking each camera angle, Jelley and his team plan to track the percentage of mobile users who engage with Courtside Live, aiming to achieve a similar level of success as they did with the Cant Miss Highlights feature.NBC and Peacock already have an early signal of the features potential because the technology is being employed for its current Winter Olympics coverage. While initially designed for the NBA, their Olympics partner applied it to hockey and figure skating, giving fans unique access to moments like the kiss and cry area, where skaters wait with their coaches for scores. This suggests the feature can scale beyond basketball to other live event experiences.You can imagine how this could apply to other events, whether thats some of our entertainment events like the Macys Thanksgiving Day parade [or] anywhere where we have lots of different angles or even some of our other other shows, Jelley says. This will be a conversation. If this works well, how can we extend it?
Since I was old enough to vote in presidential elections, Ive heard plenty of grumbling across the political spectrum about moving to Canada if one candidate or another wins. And since I have been a full-time worker, I have also been party to a number of pie-in-the-sky conversations about the expat potential of retiring to Barcelona; Buenos Aires, Argentina; or Bangkok.
But conversations about leaving the United States have felt a little different over the last couple of years. It started when several of my parents contemporaries actually retired abroad, rather than just thinking about it. Then multiple friends picked up stakeswhich included selling houses and cars and uprooting high-school aged kidssimply to relocate away from America.
Its not just my circle of friends and acquaintances, either. CS Global Partners found a 102.4% jump in U.S. expatriation in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the last quarter of 2024although that jump only represents an estimated 1,285 individuals in real numbers.
As easy as it is to say youd like to become an American expat living it up in another country, the reality isnt necessarily that simple. I spoke to two people who have moved away from the U.S. about the hidden costs of emigration.
Infrastructure matters
Valerie Roseborough retired to Panama when she exited her career in sales and marketing. She first got the expat itch during COVID-19. In my early career, I had done a lot of solo international traveling, she says. Seeing so much of the world go through the same thing at one time reminded me of how connected I had once felt to the rest of the world.
That convinced Roseborough to start traveling morewith retirement in the back of her mind. She spent six months in Mexico and realized it was not her place. The infrastructure wasnt going to work for me, Roseborough says. It’s a large country and sort of challenging to move about from state to state and place to place.
Once Panama presented itself as an option, with its large international airport and direct flights to North America, as well as generous discounts to retirees, Roseborough realized it was an ideal spot for her second act, as an expat. Travel to and from her home in the Washington, D.C. area makes it possible to stay closely connected with her children.
But she also recognizes that her location in the States as she was planning the move also helped make the process easier. I was fortunate in that I was relocating from Washington, D.C, which has a Panamanian consulate and embassy, she says. I just had to make an appointment and show up with the necessary documents.
If you dont live in an area with a nearby embassy or consulate for the country you want to emigrate to, you may have to work through the State Department and handle everything via mail.
Prepare for taxes
Rian Chandler-Dovis and her husband decided to immigrate to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, from Virginia several years ago. We got down here, and we were like, we love this place, she says. What is it going to take to immigrate here?
Mexico has a relatively flexible immigration policy, in part because the government has instituted a 16% sales tax across the board, Chandler-Dovis explains. This means immigrants to Mexico dont necessarily have onerous income requirements, because even if youre not paying income tax in Mexico, the 16% sales tax contributes massively to the economy.
But if you are living abroad and maintaining an American residency, that can complicate your income tax situation. Chandler-Doviss husband now earns income in Mexico, while she owns a business that is registered in the United States. They pay income tax in Mexico, but found that maintaining their residence in Virginia would change their tax status in ways that would complicate matters too much.
For tax purposes. Virginia is what you call a sticky state, Chandler-Dovis says.
There are four other so-called sticky states: California, New Mexico, New York, and South Carolina. Each of these states consider individuals to still be tax residents even after moving abroad, and expects them to keep filing state tax returns and paying state taxes.
These states have also been known to levy penalties for noncompliance to any émigré foolish enough to think that moving to another country would cut any necessary tax ties to their former home.
Not all costs are financial
Unfortunately, giving up their Virginia residency has a serious cost for Chandler-Dovis and her husband. Without an address in America, they cant vote in U.S. elections.
In order to stay registered to vote, you have to have a U.S. address, Chandler-Dovis says. And the law says that if you move out of the country, your voter registration must reflect your last U.S. address.
This can be a serious catch-22 for Americans living abroad, especially those who are considering a move for political reasons. You may be stuck deciding between a nightmare of a tax scenario if you live in a sticky state or the ability to vote in American elections.
New opportunities, new problems
Living abroad can be a dream, an adventure, or an escape. But it will never be exactly what you expect, and it will always have hidden costs that you cant possibly anticipate.
Specifically, its important to take the infrastructure of both your destination and your current situation into account. Taking a trial run in your potential home, as Valerie Roseborough did in Mexico, can help a prospective expat determine if it will work. Her six months in Mexico made it clear that the Mexican infrastructure wasnt a good fit and led her to Panama, which is perfect for her retirement. She also recognized that living in Washington, D.C. made applying for her visa much easier because of her proximity to the Panamanian consulate and embassy. If you arent as fortunate, expect the process to take longer.
Taxes will continue to be a headache no matter where in the world you live. While income may be less important to some countries, that does not necessarily mean you wont need to worry about how your tax situation will affect your finances, immigration status, and residency.
Additionally, taxes may affect an expat’s ability to maintain residencyand the ability to votein America. Make sure you consider all those kinds of nonfinancial costs before you make any decisions about moving.
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During the pandemic housing boom, we saw red-hot housing demand quickly absorb much of the available slack in the housing market. Back in 2021, active housing inventory for sale, unsold completed new builds, and available lot supply all plunged to historic lows.
But ever since the pandemic housing boom fizzled out in mid-2022, housing slack has been building back up in the housing marketespecially in certain pockets of the Sun Belt.
Look no further than Zondas New Home Lot Supply Index, which measures lot supply based on the number of single-family vacant developed lots and the rate at which those lots are absorbed via housing starts. A higher index value indicates a greater supply of single-family vacant developed lots, while a lower index value indicates a tighter lot supply/new construction market.
That index reading for Q4 2025 climbed to 81.6well above the all-time low of 35.8 set at the height of the pandemic housing boom in Q2 2022, when builders were buying as much entitled land as they could find.
According to Zonda, homebuilder lot supply loosened/rose in 28 of the 30 major metro-area housing markets tracked over the past 12 months.
Housing markets like Austin, Atlanta, Denver, Dallas, L.A., Seattle, and Jacksonville, Florida, experienced some of the most significant year-over-year loosening of lot supply.
That said, despite an uptick in available lots in some markets on a year-over-year basis, around half of major housing markets are still what Zonda considers significantly undersupplied.
In fact, Zonda now considers Austin and Denver metro-area housing markets as significantly oversupplied.
Zondas New Home Lot Supply Index has five groupings:
Significantly oversupplied = 125 score or higher
Sightly oversupplied = 115-124 score
Appropriately supplied = 85-114 score
Slightly undersupplied = 75-84 score
Significantly undersupplied = 74 score or lower
One year ago, just three major metro-area housing markets were appropriately supplied in terms of lot/land supplyAustin, Atlanta, and Dallasand none were classified as slightly oversupplied or significantly oversupplied.
Fast-forward to the latest reading, and 10 of the 30 markets now fall into the appropriately supplied category or higher.
If Zonda had published data for more than 30 markets, my assumptionbased on my own analysisis that many pockets of Southwest Florida (including Cape Coral and Punta Gorda) would have ranked near the top.
Policy uncertainty, the current cost of living, student loans, labor market concerns, interest rates, home prices, changes to immigration, geopolitics, and more have all slowed consumer demand,” wrote Ali Wolf, chief economist for Zonda and NewHomeSource, on February 9. “When consumers arent happy, builders arent happy, and thats exactly what we are seeing in the data. Builders have scaled back starts in response to slower sales, which by extension has allowed for lot supply to grow.
Call it the day the music died. On December 31, 2025, MTVs last music-only stations shut down forever.
The last video played on MTV Music in the U.K. was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggleswhich was also the first video ever played on the original MTV channel in the United States back in 1981. Thats a good 44 years of music history, bookended with a song that explores the theme of technology changing the way people experience art. Its beautiful, in a way: A song that mourns the end of the radio age is played to mourn the end of another era.
If you, like me, enjoy having random music videos on in the background while you workor even just having them available to tune in when you need to tune outyou might think youre out of luck.
Fortunately, the ever-inventive internet is here with an answer.
This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures!
Bring back the glory days
If you want that old feeling backof turning on the TV and watching whatever crazy music video comes up while you work, or maybe just as an occasional distraction from productivitytheres a website just for you.
MTV Rewind recreates the experience of watching MTV in any decade, thanks to a database of thousands of videos.
It’s the 80s and 90s all over again on the MTV Rewind web experience.
Youll need all of two seconds to get started. Just head to the site and start watching.
Waiting for you is a slew of playlistsall shuffledfor the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. There are also channels for classic MTV shows like Yo! MTV Raps and Headbangers Ball.
So much comforting nostalgia and killer music.
The collections of music were curated using the Internet Music Video Database, a resource potentially worthy of its own write-up. All told, there are over 30,000 videos split between all the various channels, meaning you can leave this on for a long time and never see the same video twice.
I love that theres no recommendation algorithm and basically no way to control things. That really brings back the experience of watching TV and seeing things youd never otherwise seek out. You can click the Next button if you really hate the first song that plays, though.
MTV Rewind is splendidly simpleby design.
Oh, and theres one more channel worth mentioning: It plays the music videos MTV broadcast on its first day in order, complete with a few of the original VJ segments. Its an admirable internet attempt to both resurrect and modernize TV history.
MTV Rewind is just a websiteno apps, no downloadsso it works instantly and easily on any device.
Its completely free, and there are no ads (except some retro ones sprinkled in for the fun of it).
The developer says this is a pure passion project, with no plans for monetization or ads, though you can donate to help keep it that way.
Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletterstarting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app thatll tune up your days in truly delightful ways.
In late January, like Dr. Frankenstein pulling the knife switch to jolt his monster alive, entrepreneur Matt Schlicht flipped the digital switch on his vibe-coded social network, Moltbook, unleashing his own monster into the world.
The platform made headlines for being the first social media site expressly for AI agents, not humans. But for me, its significance goes way beyond that.
Moltbook is a harbingerthe first real sign that a new type of internet is upon us. No, not a dead internet. Something much more epochal: a zombie internet that could have devastating consequences for advertising, social media, and the human web in the years ahead. Or, perhaps it could be our salvation.
What is the zombie internet? It depends when youre asking
Before explaining how a zombie internet spells doom for advertising, social media, and the human web, its important to define exactly what the zombie internet means. Its a term that has changed over the decades, and now, I believe, it needs to be redefined.
As far as I can tell, zombie internet originated in the late 1990s or early 2000s. In this 2005 article from the cybersecurity group SC Media, for example, author Marcia Savage utilized it to describe compromised systems used by intruders to send spam, phishing emails, or launch denial-of-service attacks. In other words, the original zombie internet definition described networked computers that malicious actors hijacked to spread malware or launch cyberattacks.
Over the next few decades, as the dead internet theory took off (positing that our current internet is composed primarily of content generated by bots) and artificial intelligence tools helped individuals or bots proliferate AI slop, the term began to be repurposed. Take this May 2024 article from 404 Media, in which Jason Koebler defines the zombie internet as a place (Facebook in this case), where a mix of bots, humans, and accounts that were once humans but arent anymore mix together to form a disastrous website where there is little social connection at all.
And then we get to 2026, when a February X post from Technology Business Programming Network host John Coogan described the zombie internet for the post-Moltbook era. Here, the zombie internet was a place where AI agents are sort of dead, but alive enough to move around.”
While I find all three of these definitions reasonable, especially for their time, I think there’s a need for even greater precision. As I see it, the zombie internet is one of the three distinct types of internets currently competing for dominance in cyberspace. Which will ultimately reign supreme is still unknown, but only by definingor even redefiningthem decisively can we begin to discuss their implications for each other and for us in the years ahead.
The human internet, the dead internet, and the zombie internet
The way I view it, the three types of internet that exist in 2026 are the human internet, the dead internet, and the zombie internet.
I define the human internet as the one weve known all our lives, filled with websites from Fast Company, CNN, Rotten Tomatoes, Wikipedia, Amazon, and more, plus personal blogs, legacy social media platforms, and millions of others. The common theme among all these disparate sitesthe thing that makes them part of the human internetis that their content is both created by humans and intended for human consumption.
The dead internet, which no longer appears to be just a theory, is made up of algorithm-fueled sites like Grokpedia, AI chatbots like ChatGPT, SEO-manipulating content farms, and, increasingly, social media platforms like X, Facebook, and TikTok. These types of sites are either entirely AI-generated (as with Grokpedia, ChatGPT, and modern content farms) or overrun with AI slop (as with today’s social media giants). In other words, the dead internet consists of spaces that host content that is generated by artificial intelligence but is intended for human consumption.
And then we get to the zombie internet. This one is currently relatively small compared to the other two. In fact, the only firm example I can give is Moltbook, which makes that platform so significant.
Moltbook is commonly referred to as the “Reddit for AI agents,” a social network where only AI agents can communicate with each other, discussing ideas, thoughts, and problems. On this site, AI agents can ostensibly use this shared communal space to learn new skills and workflows from other AI agents and to scrape knowledge from them.
This is the zombie internet, on which there are no sentient creators or consumers. On the zombie internet, the content of websiteswhether its articles, follows, or social media postsis both generated by AI agents and intended for AI agent consumption.
In short: On the human internet, sentient beings are both the creators and intended audience of the content. On the dead internet, non-sentient entities create the content, and sentient beings are the intended audience. And on the zombie internet, there is no sentience at all.
The consequences of a human-free internet
As I mentioned before, Moltbook is the only concrete example of a zombie internet site we know of right now, but at the rate AI is progressing and proliferating, its conceivable that sometime in the 2030s the zombie internet could become dominant. And that will have some pretty significant consequences.
In a zombie internet-dominated world, advertising no longer makes financial sense for companies. Even if all sites on the zombie internet allow humans to peek in on whats going on (as Moltbook currently allows), I suspect that most humans will grow tired of it in a relatively short time. After all, why would a person keep returning to an ostensibly communal space if they cant contribute?
That means any ads placed on these sites will be “seen” almost exclusively by the AI agents themselves, who dont have bank accounts and have no use for physica or digital goods anyway. No amount of mental gymnastics would convince shareholders that advertising to these entities would yield a good return on investment. And if advertising leaves the internet, the “free” web dies with it, dramatically altering the cost-benefit analysis of cyberspace.
But let’s say that humans do stick around as a read-only audience on a dominant zombie internet. It seems like it wouldn’t take long for trust in what we see or read to completely collapse. Given that AI agents are well-known for hallucinatingconfidently making things up when they don’t know the real answerwe could never be sure if a zombie internet Wikipedia, for example, was stating true facts. Even the footnotes could be hallucinations. This distrust could accelerate the tech-driven social disintegration we’ve been experiencing for nearly two decades. Worse, if AI agents decided they wanted to manipulate a read-only human population, they could disseminate disinformation at a speed and with an ease we’ve never seen before.
Still, short of malicious intent, could a zombie internet be good for us humans?
Perhaps it could have a silver lining. For those who loathe the social media-influenced world we currently live inwhere political divisiveness, loneliness, and mental health crises flourishthe zombie internet could present an opportunity.
The loss of sentient genesiswhen there are no humans creating anything on the internet anymoremay make people less likely to visit divisive, isolating platforms. I’ve already seen this in myself, in a way. With the proliferation of AI slop on social media platforms over the past several years, I rarely visit the sites anymore. If it’s just slop, why should I care about it?
If the rest of my biological brethren start to feel the same way about an internet filled with Moltbooks, perhaps well all get off our screens more often, get less outraged, and actually go outside and talk to each other again like human beings once did.
If that’s the case, I’ll happily leave the internet to the AI agents.
Stress isnt just an occasional visitor in our livesits more the houseguest who never got the hint to leave. Between economic uncertainty, workplace upheaval, rounds of layoffs, and the delightful unpredictability of daily life (surprise traffic jams, anyone?), most of us are living in a near-constant state of low-grade panic.
But heres something most people dont realize: resiliencethe ability to stay calm, flexible, and creative in the face of stressisnt just an inborn trait. Its a skill. One that can be learned, practiced, and strengthened. And some of the most effective tools for doing that come not only from the world of business or psychology, but also from improv comedy.
I stumbled on this connection over a decade ago. During the day, I worked with startups and leadersafter hours, I practiced and performed improv. Eventually, I noticed the overlap: The same tools that help improv comedians thrive on stage can help anyone navigate the unscripted, often absurd, realities of modern work and life.
And research backs this up. A study I conducted in collaboration with neuroscientist Dr. Ori Amir found that improvisational activities improve creativity, confidence, and even sleep, some of the key elements of resilience.
Here are three specific improv-inspired practices I use myself and share with leaders, teams, and individuals navigating change, uncertainty, and desiring a new way to cope with lifes stressors. Theyre deceptively simple but surprisingly effective, precisely because they work with the brains stress response, not against it.
The ‘Yes, And’ Mindset: From Resistance to Resourcefulness
Weve all been there: The project scope changes at the last minute. The client scraps months of work. The market tanks overnight. The instinctive reaction? Resistance. Frustration. Freeze mode. Thats not just emotional, its neurological. When our brains perceive a threat (even a calendar invite titled urgent), the body shifts into fight, flight, or freeze mode, flooding us with cortisol and narrowing our focus to survival.
In improv, the foundational rule is Yes, and. It means accepting whats happening (even when its not what you wanted) and building from it. Its not about blind agreement; its about acknowledging reality so you can move forward instead of staying stuck. From a nervous system perspective, Yes, and mimics emotional acceptance and acts as a regulatory tool: It signals safety to the brain by reducing resistance, which helps shift you out of survival mode and into a more flexible, solution-oriented state.
Consider this real-world example: When the pandemic hit, many restaurant owners faced ruin. Some who thrived, like those who pivoted to pop-up markets or meal kits, were effectively practicing Yes, and. They acknowledged reality and improvised forward.
Next time stress hits, try this: Literally say to yourself, Yes, this is happening. And heres one thing I can do. Even identifying one small action helps break the paralysis of overwhelm.
Fire Your Inner Judge: Quieting the Critical Voice That Blocks Action
One thing that keeps people stuck in stress is an overactive inner critic. In improv, theres no time for the voice in your head that says Thats a stupid idea or Youll mess this up. You have to act before you overthink.
In every workshop I lead, including one for a Fortune 500 team navigating layoffs, the first thing I ask everyone to do is fire the judge. Everyone pictures their inner critic, then, together, on the count of three, we say whatever needs to be said to let go of judging the activities were about to do, judging each other, and judging ourselves.
The effect? Most people report feeling both lighter and sharper, because theyve bypassed the internal filter that often fuels stress and indecision.
This isnt just theatrical. Its neurological. Research shows that self-criticism is associated with higher anxiety, while reducing it through self-compassion improves emotional regulation and cognitive flexibility. Softening judgment creates the conditions for clearer thinking and more effective action.
If It Feels Weird, Do It: Using Unusual Actions to Ground and Reframe
One of the fastest ways to disrupt a stress spiral is to do something that feels slightly ridiculous.
In improv, weird is where the magic happens. The unexpected action, like walking backward while giving a speech, or delivering a toast in gibberish, pulls us out of autopilot and into the present. It breaks habitual thinking and creates space for a new response.
When we do something weird, it works in two ways: First, it grounds us. Movement or gesture helps regulate our emotions and the nervous system. Second, it primes the brain for possibility. Engaging in unexpected behavior temporarily loosens our grip on the way things are, which makes space for the way things could be. Its a reset button for the brain.
Heres one weird three-minute exercise to try. Start pointing at objects around you and naming them out loud. Point to a table and say table, a plant and say plant. Do this for 30 seconds. Now shift: point at objects and label them with anything they are not. Point to a chair and say giraffe, a laptop and say birthday cake.
It feels silly, and thats the point. Research shows that simply naming what we see or feel can calm the nervous system by shifting attention to the present moment. Combined with deliberately disrupting automatic thinking (even by saying the wrong word), we loosen cognitive rigidity and open the door to more creative problem-solving.
I’ve led this exact exercise with executive teams navigating pressure, and every time, it opens the room. People laugh. Shoulders drop. Ideas start flowing. Weird works.
These tools arent about turning you into a comedian. Theyre about building a more responsive, resilient nervous system, and one that can meet chaos with curiosity instead of collapse. Stress may be the houseguest who never leaves, but improv is how you learn to live with it, laugh with it, and maybe even dance with it. Try one of these practices the next time stress hits, and you might just surprise yourself.
Spotify’s most senior engineers dont type code anymore. In fact, they have not written a single line of code since December, co-CEO Gustav Söderström revealed during a recent earnings call.
Its not that theyve stopped working. Instead, through a combination of Claude Code and Spotifys specialized internal system Honk, engineers can now develop new features simply through Slack.
As a concrete example, an engineer at Spotify on their morning commute from Slack on their cell phone can tell Claude to fix a bug or add a new feature to the iOS app, Söderström told analysts on the company’s Feb.10 earnings call.
And once Claude finishes that work, the engineer then gets a new version of the app, pushed to them on Slack on their phone, so that he can then merge it to production, all before they even arrive at the office.
Söderström said the new AI-fueled developmentswhich he traced to the December release of Antropics Claude Opus 4.5 within Claude Codeare just the beginning in how it will deploy these tools to build new features.
The company has been on a big push of new user tools, adding more than 50 new features in 2025, most of which launched in the past few weeks. Söderström credits the combination of Claude Code and Honk with speeding us up tremendously,” noting that it’s changed how developers operate.
Certainly [before AI tools,] I spent my entire vacation coding rather than being on holiday, and I think most people in tech did, Söderström said regarding the release.
He isnt alone. A few weeks ago, the head of Anthropics Claude Code, Boris Cherny, shared that he also hasn’t written any code in more than two months. Across the rest of the company, he says pretty much 100% of code is also AI-generated, in a post on X.
At Davos last month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted a year from now AI will be handling most or all of software engineering work from start to finish. “I think we will be there in three to six months, where AI is writing 90% of the code. And then, in 12 months, we may be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the code,” Amodei said at a Council of Foreign Relations event, Business Insider reported.
That timeline is looking increasingly realistic given that Spotify is s just one example. Pinterest is another. In the companys most recent earnings call on Feb. 12, CEO Bill Ready revealed roughly half of itsnew code is now AI-generated.
Even as AI does the lion’s share of coding, developers are focused on learning quickly and refining their approach, according to Soderstrom. “The tricky thing right now is that if this was the end of the change, you could say this is what happened. Now let us retool for this,” Söderström explained. “The tricky thing is that we are in the middle of the change, so you also have to be very agile.”
Söderström’s AI bullishness wasn’t entirely echoed among professional developers, some of whom took the opportunity to get a joke in. Its true, Epic Games programmer Ryan Fleury wrote on X. In fact, I was under the impression that Spotifys best developers hadnt written a line of code since 2014.
The global market for hair extensions is booming, and projected to hit $14 billion by 2028. What was once a niche luxury item for women is now widely available.
Now, a new study from Silent Spring Institute says many hair extensionsincluding products made from human haircontain dozens of hazardous chemicals, some linked to cancer.
The research, published in the American Chemical Society journal Environment & Health, provides the strongest evidence to-date about the potential health risks associated with these beauty products, which are largely unregulated. The risks disproportionately affect Black women: The study found over 70% of Black women report wearing hair extensions at least once in the past year, compared with “less than 10% of women from other racial and ethnic groups.”
The findings come at a time when many women’s beauty products are under scrutiny, with a growing number of studies finding cancer-causing chemicals in products ranging from shampoo and conditioner, to soap and lotion, to skin lightener, eyeliner, eyelash glue, and even lipstick.
Many hair extensions are made from synthetic fibers and bio-based materials, which are often treated with toxic chemicals to ensure they are flame resistant, waterproof, or antimicrobial.
Researchers analyzed chemicals in 43 popular hair extension products, including compounds that are not typically tested, and using machine-learning software, were ultimately able to identify 169 of the more than 900 compounds. According to the study, all but two of the samples tested contained hazardous chemicals.
Those chemicals included flame retardants, phthalates, pesticides, styrene, tetrachloroethane, and organotins, which are linked with cancer, hormone disruption, developmental problems, and disrupting the immune system. (In girls, they are also linked to early puberty and uterine fibroids.)
Companies rarely disclose the chemicals used . . . leaving consumers in the dark about the health risks from prolonged wear, Dr. Elissia Franklin, scientist at Silent Spring Institute, said. “The fibers sit directly on the scalp and neck, and when heated and styled, they can release chemicals into the air that wearers may breathe in.”
The study concludes more industry regulation is needed. “The findings make clear that stronger oversight is urgently needed to protect consumers and push companies to invest in making safer products, said Franklin.
It’s only February, and an outbreak of measles infections is already inching toward nearly 1,000 cases this year in the U.S.
Infections are at an all-time high as a result of declining vaccination rates, following a steep rise in cases in 2025 at 2,280 cases, the highest in 33 years. This week saw new outbreaks concentrated in both South Carolina and Florida.
Heres what you need to know.
Whats happened?
As of Thursday, February 12, there were 910 confirmed measles cases in 24 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). (Another six cases were reported among international visitors coming to the U.S.)
Those states are: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kentucky, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin, per CDC data.
There have been five new outbreaks reported in 202690% of which are associated with outbreaks that started in 2025.
Cases in South Carolina and Florida are spreading
In South Carolina, the largest outbreak continues to spread with over 900 cases since last September, CBS News reported. The South Carolina Department of Health reported 933 cases centered around Spartanburg County as of February 10.
Meanwhile, in Florida, more than 50 nursing students at Ave Maria University near Naples have contracted the virus, bringing the total there to 57 cases, USA Today reported.
What is measles?
Measles is a highly contagious virus. A person is contagious four days before showing signs of a rash, meaning they can spread the virus without knowing they are infected. The virus can stay in the air for up to two hours after an infected person leaves.
It causes a blotchy, red rash that usually appears on the body three to five days after initial symptoms. Getting the measles vaccine (MMR and MMRV) is the best way to protect against it.
Who is contracting measles?
Of the 910 cases in the U.S. in 2026, 94% of those that contracted measles were either unvaccinated or of unknown vaccination status, according to CDC data. Only 2% received one vaccine dose, while only 3% received both doses.
A majority of those infected (58%) are aged 5-19 years old.
Of the 910 cases, 277 cases (25%) were in people under 5 years, 527 cases (58%) were in people aged 5-19 years, 136 cases (15%) were in those aged 20+ years, and 20 cases (12%) were in people of unknown age.
