How would a school shooting affect your employees? Its something that most employers never want to think about, but its a horrifyingly real threat to any communityand the companies and organizations that do business there. Following the death of my youngest son, Dylan, in the 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting, I can tell you first-hand about the lasting trauma that occurs when your child is injured or killed in this type of tragedyand how that ripples through the entire community.
In October, we held Americas Safe Schools Week, a national initiative to raise awareness about school violence and promote safety. Its also a time for companies to recognize they have a major role to play in preventing school violenceand a lot to gain by doing so. When we invest in the safety and well-being of our children, we are also investing in our workforce, and in turn, the long-term health of our businesses.
WHY THIS MATTERS FOR CEOS
Our employees dont leave their lives at the office door. Their childrens safety directly impacts their focus, mental health, and productivity. A tragedy in a school can create anxiety and shake an entire companybecause our companies are made up of parents, caregivers, neighbors, and friends.
Taking a role in vioence prevention isnt just an act of compassion or show of goodwill and support. Its a sound business strategy that strengthens your workforce, your brand, and your reach into communities.
KNOW THE WARNING SIGNS
People intending to harm themselves or others will often exhibit a range of telling behaviors. This might include expressing threats or a plan, bragging about access to weapons, becoming socially withdrawn, or experiencing chronic social isolation, among other signals.
In most mass shootings and school shootings, someone knew something was off before it happened. Often, a peer, a friend, or a parent are among the first to notice a problem. The same is true for youth suicides, which are the second-leading cause of death for children and teens in the United States.
Getting proactive about violence prevention begins with learning to recognize the warning signs that lead to violence and self-harm. For parents and caregivers, these signals offer some of our best opportunities to intervene and save a child.
The ability for you and your employees to recognize warning signs will go far beyond your company’s walls. Ultimately, this type of impact will create safer schools, homes, and communities, leading to a stronger business environment where your company can thrive.
Thats why its essential to learn these warning signs and know how to get help.
THE PROTECT OUR KIDS PLEDGE
One impactful way to take action is by signing the Protect Our Kids Pledge, a first-of-its-kind corporate initiative developed by Sandy Hook Promise. The pledge provides actionable training and tools to employees and their families to recognize warning signs of potential violence and self-harm, and knowledge of what to do next.
Lessons from the Protect Our Kids Pledge will not only keep employees and their children safer, they will also help companies stand out in their industries by taking an active stand against youth violence and self-harm, prioritizing safety in innovative ways. It shows that a company cares about people, and signals to employees and customers alike that it values safety and social responsibility.
OTHER IMPORTANT RESOURCES FOR EMPLOYERS
In the last few years, legislation has provided additional violence prevention resources for companies and school communities. The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA), passed in 2022, included many nationwide investments that have been creating a positive impact.
The Act included funding for states to implement crisis intervention programs and extreme risk protection orderssometimes referred to as red flag or temporary transfer laws. These laws allow family members, law enforcement, and others to petition courts to temporarily remove firearms from a home when an individual is deemed a threat to themselves or others.
The BSCA also expanded access to community health clinics that provide mental health crisis services and substance abuse treatment. This gives more employees and their families, particularly in rural areas, options to access the care they need.
These resources are designed to save lives while protecting rights. Companies should ensure they understand the laws in their states, help educate their employees, and connect them to local resources when needed.
TAKE ACTION TODAY
Since the Sandy Hook tragedy, Ive worked alongside leading experts and business leaders who understand that ending the epidemic of gun violence requires a holistic, public health approach focused on prevention. And when we make prevention a priority, we can also create safe, healthy communities that allow our businesses to thrive.
Business leaders can demonstrate their commitment by signing on to the Protect Our Kids Pledge and encouraging other leaders to do the same. Share that prevention is possible, and its both a moral and business imperative to deliver that for our communities, our employees, andmost importantlyour children.
Nicole Hockley is cofounder and CEO of Sandy Hook Promise.
Every C-suite executive I meet asks the same question: Why is our AI investment stuck in pilot purgatory?
After surveying over 200 AI practitioners for our latest research, I have a sobering answer: Only 22% of organizations have moved beyond experimentation to strategic AI deployment. The rest are trapped in what I call the messy middleburning resources on scattered pilots that never reach production scale.
In my 20-plus years helping companies solve complex problems with open-source AI and machine learning, I’ve watched this pattern repeat across industries. Companies get excited about AI’s potential. They fund pilots. They hire data scientists.
But when it comes to production deployment and measurable ROI, they hit the same wall: over 57% take more than a month to move from development to production. That’s not innovation velocitythat’s friction eating your competitive advantage.
The problem isn’t enthusiasm or investment. The problem is they’re building on quicksand. Without shared standards, every team reinvents the wheel. Tools fragment. Governance gaps widen. Trust erodes. What should take days stretches into months.
Here’s what business leaders need to understand: The companies escaping this trap aren’t using better AI models. They’re using better foundations by using open-source software.
Standards create a competitive advantage
Standards might sound like bureaucracy, but in AI they separate companies that scale from companies that stall.
Our research reveals the real barriers: 45% of teams cite data quality and pipeline consistency as their top production obstacle. Another 40% point to security and compliance challenges. These aren’t technical problemsthey’re coordination problems. When every team speaks a different technical language, you can’t share work, build trust, or scale effectively.
Think about it this way: Imagine if every department in your company used different email systems that couldn’t talk to each other. That’s essentially what’s happening with AI tools today.
Open standards solve this by creating shared languages for AI development. When everyone uses compatible tools and formats, collaboration becomes automatic. Integration that used to take months happens in days.
The result? Faster deployment cycles and measurable ROI.
Companies are starting to get the message: 92% of AI practitioners use open-source tools, and 76% say their organization has increased its open-source priority this year, according to our research.
Three standards that drive results
Not all standards matter equally. Based on what I’ve seen transform organizations, here are three that deliver immediate impact:
Ways to move AI models between systems without rebuilding. Standards like Open Neural Network Exchange prevent vendor lock-in and eliminate reworkthe silent killer of innovation velocity. When teams can deploy the same model across different environments, development speeds up dramatically.
Protocols that let AI services communicate seamlessly. Instead of building custom integrations for every new tool, teams can assemble complex AI systems from standard components. This turns months of integration work into days of configuration.
Frameworks for responsible AI governance. With 53% of organizations lacking comprehensive AI policies, standardized approaches to model documentation and validation turn governance from a blocker into an accelerator. Teams move faster because they know exactly what compliance looks like.
The pattern I see repeatedly is this: Each standard reduces friction. Together, they create an ecosystem where innovation compounds instead of fragmenting.
Open source is your competitive edge
Some executives worry that open source means chaos. They think standards need central authority. But AI moves too fast for traditional standardization. By the time a formal standards body publishes specifications, the technology has evolved.
Open source solves this through evolutionary design. Standards emerge from real-world use, spread through community adoption, and adapt at market speed. This keeps them relevant in ways top-down standards can’t match.
There’s another crucial factor: Transparency builds trust. Our research shows less than half of AI practitioners feel confident explaining model decisions to executives or regulators. When standards are open, you can inspect how they work, verify their claims, and adapt them to your needs. This transparency accelerates adoption and regulatory approval.
What surprised me most in our research was the community insight: People distinguish between using open-source software and building on open-source foundations. True acceleration requires shared standards that let teams move independently while still moving together.
Escaping the messy middle
Here’s my core advice for C-suite leaders: Stop treating AI as a technology problem and start treating it as a systems problem.
The messy middle exists because organizations approach AI as isolated projects. Teams pick different tools, build separate pipelines, and create individual governance processes. This works for pilots but kills scalability.
Strategic AI requires a foundation built on compatibility. Here are three ways to achieve it:
1. Simplify your toolchain around core platforms that work together. You don’t need 47 different AI tools. You need a unified approach where teams can share models, data pipelines, and deployment processes without starting from scratch.
2. Choose solutions you can inspect and verify. This reduces risk and builds stakeholder confidence. Trust accelerates adoption, and adoption accelerates value creation.
3. Measure deployment cycles, not just model accuracy. Track time from prototype to production. Track how many AI projects deliver measurable business outcomes. These metrics reveal whether your foundation is working.
Our work with large corporations shows that organizations moving from fragmented approaches to unified platforms see dramatic improvements: faster deployment, higher success rates, and clearer ROI measurement.
Standardization and innovation are partners
The gap between strategic AI deployers and pilot-trapped organizations will only widen. The winners won’t be those with the most experiments; they’ll be the ones who turn experiments into value fastest. According to McKinsey research, organizations are seeing material benefits from AI deployment, with a majority reporting cost reductions and revenue increases in busines units using the technology.
The good news? The foundations you need are being built right now by the open-source community. Your job as a leader is recognizing their strategic value and committing to building on them.
This means making architectural decisions that prioritize compatibility over proprietary lock-in. It means investing in platforms that combine the innovation velocity of open source with the governance requirements of enterprise deployment.
Most importantly, it means understanding that in AI, standardization and innovation aren’t oppositesthey’re partners. Standards create the stable foundation that lets innovation flourish at speed.
Start with one diagnostic question: Can your teams share AI models and data pipelines across projects without rebuilding them? If not, you’re building on quicksand. The companies that can answer yes will set the competitive pace for the next decade.
Peter Wang is cofounder and chief AI and innovation officer at Anaconda.
Is this the beginning of the end for Bitcoin?
A Bitcoin (BTC) sell-off on Thursday is sending the cryptocurrency down again today by 3% to $86,410.50 in midday afternoon trading, after a rally had it above $93,000 earlier in the day. It’s now hit its lowest level since April.
It’s part of an overall decline in the crypto market that also saw closely watched digital asset XRP (XRP-USD) falling below $2.00 per token during the day, while Ethereum (ETH-USD) shed nearly 3% and was trading at $2,832 in the late afternoon at the time of this writing.
Both stock market and Bitcoin investors were briefly riding high on chip maker Nvidia’s third-quarter earnings report, which came in after Wednesday’s market close and beat the street’s expectations. Revenue came in at $57.01 billion, and adjusted earnings per share (EPS) at $1.30, both well above Wall Street analyst estimates.
But as the day progressed, stock markets turned negative again, and Nvidia (Nasdaq: NVDA) found its own stock falling down over 2% as investors remain spooked at the prospect of an AI bubble. Some experts, including Wall Street oracle Michael Burry, head of hedge fund Scion Asset Management, predict the bubble resulting from inflated valuations and inflated earnings.
Burry, who both predicted and then shorted the 2008 housing bubble, has suggested that massive spending by tech companies like Meta, Nvidia, and OpenAI, which are pouring record-amounts of money into artificial intelligence (AI) while also laying off scores of employees, are overstating their profits by artificially boosting earnings through aggressive accounting practices.
NBC recently debuted a new show: Stumble, a comedy about a former cheer coach leading a team of misfits.
Some earlier reviews of the show, which premiered on November 7, called it “hilarious” and “full of sharp writing.” But the new sitcom, starring Kristin Chenoweth, Jenn Lyon, and Taran Killam, has audiences chuckling at more than just cheer squad antics. It also makes narcolepsy, a serious neurological disorder, into a recurring joke.
Narcolepsy, a chronic condition that can lead to major challenges for sufferers, takes center stage in the show as a character named Madonna (Arianna Davis) has the condition. Due to the disorder, Madonna collapses without warning, sometimes even mid-routine, casting her as a talented-yet-awkward misfit due to the illness.
The dramatic and tough-to-miss depiction may be similar to what many who know little about the condition believe it looks like.
Per Johns Hopkins Medicine, a person with narcolepsy may experience symptoms like excessive daytime sleepiness, sleep paralysis, disrupted sleep, and sometimes, cataplexy (sudden muscle weakness). It can also lead to memory loss, difficulty concentrating, and depression.
But according to experts, it doesn’t look at all the way it often is depicted onscreenand thats problematic for a number of reasons, they say.
[Photo: Jocelyn Prescod/NBC]
Julie Flygare, the founder of Project Sleep, is a leading narcolepsy spokesperson and award-winning author who also has been diagnosed with the condition. In an online petition to NBC, Flygare wrote that narcolepsy is not what Hollywood so often makes it out to be.
“In reality, during an episode of sleepiness, a person with narcolepsy feels sleepy, has an urge to sleep, similar to an urge to use the bathroom,” Flygare wrote. “This sensation of sleepiness generally allows individuals some amount of time (from several to 30 minutes) to find a place to nap. Even in extreme moments, a person with narcolepsy would lay down, sit down, or support their head and body to avoid injury.”
While the moments when Madonna collapses onscreen make for a laugh-out-lough character quirk, Flygare tells Fast Company that those very inaccurate depictions of neurological conditions can be dangerous, given they can lead to delays in real diagnoses, “by showing someone experiencing symptoms that are so other-worldly or not biologically possible.”
Flygare says that depiction is part of the reason why it can take around eight to 15 years to get an accurate diagnosis.
A missed opportunity for Hollywood
As a person with narcolepsy, Flygare says NBC is missing an opportunity to show people what the condition actually looks like.
“I believe Hollywood is our biggest public health educator, yet it’s not a role they always seem to want to take on,” says Flygare. “If you’re going to use a real condition name that impacts 200,000 Americans and 3 million people worldwide (including many children), I think it’s important to do your homework and work with medical experts and leading community groups.”
That’s why Flygare’s petition calls on NBC to take a few steps to do better, like collaborating with the narcolepsy community to represent the real symptoms of narcolepsy, and even provide educational resources for viewers.
Fast Company reached out to NBC to ask if it had seen the petition or had plans to address the concerns, but did not hear back by the time of publication.
Flygare says that knowledge is massively important when it comes to living a productive life with the condition. According to the online petition, “Once diagnosed, people with narcolepsy manage their symptoms with medical treatments, lifestyle adjustments, naps, and social support.” But currently, she says, widespread misconceptions promoted in the mainstream canand dostand in the way.
Verizon is laying off more than 13,000 employees in mass job reductions that arrive as the telecommunications giant says it must reorient its entire company.
The job cuts began on Thursday, per to a staff memo from Verizon CEO Dan Schulman. In the letter, which was seen by The Associated Press, Schulman said Verizon’s current cost structure limits the company’s ability to investpointing particularly to customer experiences.
We must reorient our entire company around delivering for and delighting our customers, Schulman wrote. He added that the company needed to simplify its operations to address the complexity and friction that slow us down and frustrate our customers.
Verizon had nearly 100,000 full-time employees as of the end of last year, according to securities filings. A spokesperson confirmed that the layoffs announced Thursday account for about 20% of the company’s management workforce, which isn’t unionized.
Verizon has faced rising competition in both the wireless phone and home internet spaceparticularly from AT&T, T-Mobile, and other big market players. New leadership at the company has stressed the need to right the company’s direction.
Schulman took the CEO seat just last month. In the company’s most recent earnings, he stated that Verizons trajectory was at a critical inflection point”and said, rather than incremental changes, Verizon would aggressively transform its operations.
For its third quarter of 2025, Verizon posted earnings of $4.95 billion and $33.82 billion in revenue. The carrier reported continued subscriber growth for its prepaid wireless services, but it lost a net 7,000 postpaid connections.
News of coming layoffs at Verizon was reported last week by The Wall Street Journal. The outlet says that the 13,000 job cuts mark the largest-ever round of layoffs at the company.
Beyond the cuts across Verizons workforce, Schulman said that the New York company would also significantly reduce its outsourced and other outside labor expenses.
Its a tough time for the job market overalland Verizon isnt the only company to announce sizeable workforce reductions recently. More and more layoffs have piled up at companies like Amazon, UPS, Nestlé, and more.
Some companies have pointed to rising operational costs spanning from U.S. President Donald Trumps barrage of new tariffs and shifts in consumer spending. Others cite corporate restructuring more broadlyor are redirecting money to artificial intelligence. Regardless, such cuts have raised worker anxieties across sectors.
Schulman on Thursday recognized that changes in technology and in the economy are impacting the workforce across all industries. He said that Verizon had established a $20 million Reskilling and Career Transition Fund for workers departing the company.
Shares of Verizon were essentially flat Thursday.
Wyatte Grantham-Philips, AP business writer
This week, chips were on the menu in the White House. When you ask about AI and chips, Saudi Arabia has a huge need for computing power, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) said at a press conference on Tuesday with President Trump, where he floated a potential $50-billion purchase of American microchips.
Trumps Commerce Department signed off on exporting 70,000 such advanced microchips made by Nvidia to state-owned AI firms in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia. Little wonder why Jensen Huang, Nvidias high-flying CEO, joined a gaggle of tech moguls including Elon Musk, Tim Cook, and Michael Dell at a dinner honoring the Saudi royal.
By the time MBS was on his flight back to Riyadh, he could tout a new data-center partnership with Musks xAI and fleshed-out joint ventures with firms like Amazon and Cisco. Silicon Valleys bevy of deals with the oil-rich Gulf states are central to so-called AI diplomacy: a policy bet that the United States can leverage access to select tech to compete with Chinas broader economic influence.
Were leading by a lot on AI, Trump chimed in during the press conference. China would be in second place, but were leading by a lot. In his administration, this has been a constant refrain. David Sacks, his AI czar and a venture capitalist, has argued that chip sales could shift the balance of power in the region, as the White Houses AI diplomacy boxes China out of the Middle East.
Yet the reality is that theres no amount of chips that the United States can throw at Saudi Arabia, the UAE or other Gulf states, to persuade them to decouple from China. China-Gulf relations are already deeply entrenched, with Gulf rulers relying on Chinese supply chains to pursue ambitious visions of domestic economic transformation. So while offering access to Nvidia chips might be useful for securing Gulf-state investments in the United States, they are by no means a killer app that can easily re-establish U.S. market share — or geopolitical influence — in the region.
Chips-based diplomacy
Its easy to see why the oil-rich Arab monarchies have emerged as the key test case for AI diplomacy.
Saudi, Emirati, and other Gulf rulers want to transform their current resource wealth into post-oil sources of income and influence, amping up their strategic value to global powers by routing the flow of global data not just oil through the Persian Gulf.
Washington, in turn, wants to capture that strategic value and use the Gulf as a beachhead for pushing back against Chinas growing global influence, ensuring that American tech companies build out Gulf compute infrastructure and that Gulf capital, in turn, flows into U.S. markets. Withholding chips from the Gulf states, Sacks argues, would drive [these states] into the arms of China, helping to create a Huawei Belt and Road in the Gulf, a reference to the tech firm.
China ties
Theres a glaring problem with this argument, though: The building blocks of Gulf rulers AI visions are overwhelmingly manufactured in China. While the Gulf monarchies might downplay economic cooperation with China out of respect for American sensitivities, they are unlikely to go all-in on a second American century short of a monumental shift in what the United States can offer them.
Since 2010, the Gulf states Chinese imports have nearly tripled, even as imports from the United States have barely increased with little reason to expect these trends to reverse in the near future, owing to the fallout from Trumps tariffs and Chinas continued manufacturing growth. This extends beyond cheap commercial goods, encompassing important pieces of digital or electrical infrastructure like cell-phone networks and solar panels.
The Gulf states have ramped up imports of semi-conductors as part of investments in knowledge-economy industries, data centers, and government e-services. Semiconductor imports to the UAE, for example, grew from around $500 million in annual spending from 2015 to 2019 to over $730 million from 2020 to 2023, with over two-thirds of imports in the latter years sourced from Chinese firms. The UAE also expanded its annual imports of higher-end graphics chips to nearly $1 billion in 2023, with Chinese firms providing over half of that value.
Geopolitical annoyance
It’s little wonder, then, that the Gulf states have resisted pressure from Washington to pivot from China on matters of economic or even security cooperation.
The UAE, for one, has repeatedly annoyed Washington through the closeness of its ties to China, facing allegations of leaking sensitive information about U.S. national-security capabilities to Chinese firms. While state-run AI firm G42 committed to severing ties with Chinese entity Huawei as a condition of partnering with Microsoft in 2024, it did so by selling off its Chinese holdings to yet another state-run Emirati firm overseen by the same Emirati royal.
Saudi Arabia, generally more sensitive to U.S. policymakers views on China, has likewise kept its options open with respect to Beijing. Saudi entities continue to partner with Hong Kong-based SenseTime in AI development and deployment, even as the company remains under U.S. sanctions for its role in surveillance of Chinese Uyghurs.
This hedging also reflects Gulf rulers concerns about the staying power of present-day U.S. technological advantages. At a time when the United States is floating new restrictions on Chinese students and scholars, the UAE is welcoming them to its Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence.
The Gulf states will do what they need to keep the door open to U.S. technology including outright bribery but theyll be building compute in partnership with China no matter what the United States does.
Can they even build it?
Set aside the strategic-competition framing, and more practical questions come up like whether the Gulf states can even build and power these projects. While the UAE has pulled off complex projects before, its proposed 5 GW Stargate campus would be larger than the largest AI data center in the United States and around 50 times larger than the largest such in-country installation. Saudi Arabias proposed 500 MW data-center partnership with Elon Musks xAI is larger than the countrys entire installed capacity at present, and comes even as the monarchy is quietly abandoning its failed megaprojects of yester-year.
To be sure, Silicon Valley firms will want these deals all the same, and properly structured such partnerships might shore up U.S. influence alongside Chinas economic influence in the region. But at least for now, theres no level of U.S. direct investment or degree of technology sharing that will get the Gulf states to pivot back away from China.
And that means asking hard questions about how much the United States can afford to place critical digital infrastructure on a geopolitical fault line for generations to come.
While President Donald Trump has struggled to settle on a way to address Americans concerns about high costs, Vice President JD Vance on Thursday offered a more direct and empathetic message, saying, We hear you and theres a lot more work to do.
But the American people need to have a little bit of patience, Vance said in remarks at an event hosted by Breitbart News.
The vice presidents remarks come as the White House grapples with how to speak to voters about the cost of living, an issue that emerged as a vulnerability for Republicans in this months off-year elections in New Jersey and Virginia gubernatorial races.
Vance said the Trump administration has made incredible progress in tackling cost-of-living concerns as they worked to undo policies from former President Joe Biden.
As much progress as weve made, its going to take a little bit of time for every American to feel that economic boom, which we really do believe is coming. We believe that were on the front end of it, Vance said.
Trump, whose tariffs have contributed to higher prices for many goods, has insisted that prices are down, pointing to gas and egg prices specifically. The president has said Democrats’ arguments about affordability during the election were a con job, and saying, I dont want to hear about the affordability, because right now, were much less. However, in recent days he has shifted his response, acknowledging that there is room for consumer prices to drop further.
Vance addresses Republican infighting
Vance was asked about recent high-profile rifts within Trump’s Make America Great Again coalition. Trump broke with one of his most loyal backers, Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, over her complaints he was spending too much time on foreign policy and had dragged his feet on releasing files related to Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump also has been reluctant to disavow white nationalist Nick Fuentes and conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, who recently hosted Fuentes for a friendly interview, touching off turmoil on the right.
Vance did not directly address the recent infighting, but said he thinks the debates within the party are healthy. Its totally reasonable for the people who make up this coalition to argue, about issues, said Vance, who often publicly engages in online debates on his X account.
But Trump’s MAGA coalition needs to remember, that we have a lot more in common than we do not in common and that supporters are up against a radical leftist movement.
Have our debates but focus on the enemy, so that we can win victories that matter for the American people, Vance said.
The vice president and former senator said Republicans have to keep their coalition united, especially heading into next year’s midterm elections that determine control of Congress.
He said the working class voters who elected Trump to the White House don’t necessarily turn out to vote in midterm elections and said Republicans need to motivate them.
I think thats one of the lessons that we learned in Virginia and New Jersey is that when Donald Trump is not on the ballot, youve got to give people something to actually believe in, something to be inspired by, to get out there and vote, Vance said. Theyre not going to vote just because you have an R next to your name.
Michelle L. Price, Associated Press
If the football games, boxing matches, and comedy specials werent indication enough that Netflix is making a bold move for the live television market, heres another: Beginning in 2026, it will air live baseball for the first time.
Major League Baseball announced a new three-year media rights agreement on Wednesday with NBC, ESPN, and Netflix that could see baseball fans channel surfing to find their games.
The shakeups in the agreement mostly see NBC and its parent company, NBCUniversal, commanding a larger share of baseball coverage, picking up several key games and events previously aired by ESPN, including Sunday Night Baseball. And, for the first time in 26 years, NBC will once again air baseball games on its broadcast network.
ESPN, meanwhile, opted out of its $550 million rights to Sunday Night Baseball games earlier this year, which it has aired since 1990. But the sports network will continue a nearly-four decade partnership with MLB as it will instead receive rights to a national midweek game package, along with MLB.TV.
Finally, streaming giant Netflix is now up to bat with a limited number of special event games, including the T-Mobile Home Run Derby and an Opening Night exclusive.
Our new media rights agreements with ESPN, NBCUniversal, and Netflix provide us with a great opportunity to expand our reach to fans through three powerful destinations for live sports, entertainment, and marquee events, MLB Commissioner Robert D. Manfred, Jr. said in a statement.
INSIDE BASEBALL
If all of this sounds like some inside baseball, it kind-of is: While diehard baseball fans arent likely to be so impacted, the new agreements may help the league expand its reach. But these rights do come at a price, according to reporting by CNBC: MLB is losing about $300 million for the rights to the same games previously paid for by ESPN.
Still, the league says that much of its national broadcast rights remain unchanged, as Fox, TBS, and Apple TV will continue to air other games. But the MLB is trying to raise TV revenue at the end of the 2028 season, when the rights agreements announced this week expire, according to CNBC.
Theres some optimism about keeping the momentum going in the wake of the World Series last month, which saw an average of 51 million viewers globally when the Los Angeles Dodgers ousted the Toronto Blue Jays, according to the league. And finding new ways to reach potential fans is key, especially as baseball is appealing to a younger demographic. The MLB saw double-digit increases in audiences this year among fans under the age of 17 and between the ages of 18 and 34, it reported..
For consumers who are heavy on savings and light on credit history, a new partnership in the world of credit scores could help them lock down a loan. FICO, the company basically synonymous with the credit score, is teaming up with Plaid to bring real-time data showing how much cash someone has on hand to lenders.
Plaid, a fintech company that links bank accounts with financial apps, has a lot of visibility into how its customers move cash between bank accounts, payments apps, investment platforms, and just about everything else. Plaids technology runs under the hood across a huge network of 12,000 financial institutions that partner with the fintech startup, which has grown into a key part of the webs financial infrastructure since its founding in 2013.
All of those connections make Plaid a no-brainer as a partner for Fair Isaac Corp. (FICO), creator of the gold standard credit score used by most lenders. By partnering with Plaid, FICO will be able to offer a historical picture of money flowing into and out of a consumer’s transaction accounts through Plaids network of finance data, which consumers opt in to through their accounts, the company said in a press release.
By bringing together FICOs trusted credit score intelligence with Plaids cash flow data, were creating the foundation for more comprehensive lending decisions, said Julie May, FICO vice president and general manager of B2B scores. This is the beginning of a new chapter in responsible and inclusive lending.
The credit score slog
Credit scores notoriously require consumers to build up a credit history and demonstrate that they can make timely loan paymentsfactors that outweigh other aspects of a persons financial health, like savings and income.
While the system is good business for companies that evaluate and track credit scores, it creates some weird incentives on the consumer side. Its not uncommon for credit score-conscious consumers, in order to build up a credit history, to open a credit card and regularly use it for payments even if they have more than enough cash to handle their expenses.
To capture a more complete financial picture for both borrowers and lenders, FICO has been building up an alternative to the traditional credit score for years now. That score, called an UltraFICO, was introduced in 2018. The company frames the UltraFICO score as a more inclusive approach that includes checking, savings, and money market accounts to help borrowers show lenders that they can afford a loan, even without a stellar credit history.
FICO describes the UltraFICO score as part of a layered strategy that can help borrowers secure a loan and lenders find new customers beyond the people who would normally qualify. Plaids data will slot naturally into that strategy, offering a broader picture of financial health. The new UltraFICO option will be available through Plaids consumer reporting agency, Plaid Check.
Last month, Plaid launched its own alternative credit score, LendScore, which also aims to paint a fuller financial picture for borrowers and lenders by leveraging cash flow insights, income patterns, and financial account connections to reveal a borrowers real-time financial story. Plaids LendScore system is in beta testing now and collecting names for its wait list.
High-quality cash flow data is becoming essential for lenders who want a more comprehensive view of a consumers financial picture, said Adam Yoxtheimer, Plaid’s head of partnerships. By combining Plaids real-time connectivity and intelligence with FICO in this next-generation credit score, we are helping lenders make more confident, inclusive credit decisions through a simple and scalable solution.
In our consumer-driven culture, when the cost of goods is soaring, one of the most radical things you can do is not to buy anything on Black Friday. That’s the message from “Mass Blackout,” a coalition of grassroots groups that are protesting the Trump administration’s policies and urging you not to participate in this year’s extended Black Friday sales.
The “blackout” will start on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving (Thursday, November 26) and end the day after Cyber Monday (Tuesday, December 2).
This is not the only holiday protest, either: There’s also a second boycott underway targeting Amazon, Target, and Home Depot. It’s called “We Ain’t Buying It,” and it is happening around the same time.
In fact, it’s been a big year for boycotts, and some of them have been quite effective. For example, Target just reported another lackluster quarter and declining sales that are partially due to backlash and a boycott from customers after a rollback of its diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
And it’s not just the U.S. Many Canadians have started to forgo American products and are only buying “locally,” as the “Buy Canadian” movement has drawn record participation as a reaction to President Trump’s high tariffs on their country’s goods.
Here’s what to know about the upcoming “Mass Blackout” and “We Ain’t Buying It” boycotts.
What’s happening with the “Mass Blackout” protest?
The Mass Blackout, a nationwide economic action organized by a coalition of grassroots organizations, is calling Americans to:
Stop online or in-store shopping (except for small businesses)
Stop streaming, cancel subscriptions, and make no digital purchases
Stop work (if you can)
If you must spend: Support small, local businesses, and pay in cash
“No spending. No work. No surrender. The system isn’t broken. It’s working exactly as designedfor the wealthy,” reads the movement’s website. “Were not targeting small businesses or communitieswere targeting the corporate systems that profit from injustice, fuel authoritarianism, and crush worker power.”
The boycott also includes avoiding nonessential travel, restaurants, and normal consumer behavior; staying off ad-driven platforms unless organizing; halting spending; logging off entertainment platforms; and donating to Feeding America to support those refusing to work.
What’s happening with the “We Ain’t Buying It” boycott?
The “We Aint Buying It campaign is made up of a coalition of progressive groups including the No Kings Alliance and Indivisible, which were behind other anti-Trump protests earlier this year. It targets three companies: Target, Home Depot, and Amazon.
It is asking Americans “to withhold their purchasing power from Thanksgiving through Cyber Monday” (November 27 to December 1) to protest the three retailers who, they allege, are cooperating directly with the Trump administration in these ways:
Target, for its rollback on DEI
Home Depot, for working with ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement), which has been arresting, detaining, and deporting immigrants
Amazon, for allegedly funding the Trump administration to secure corporate tax cuts
When corporations align with cruelty and authoritarianism, they must understand that our purchasing power matters, LaTosha Brown, co-founder of Black Voters Matter Fund, a member of the “We Aint Buying It” coalition, said in a statement. Economic noncooperation is a powerful, nonviolent tool for a free people, and we plan to use it to make America better for all of usnot just the wealthy few.
Why are these Black Friday boycotts happening now?
The boycotts come as the gap between the richest and poorest Americans is widening in an increasingly bifurcated economy.
They target billionaires and businesses supporting the Trump administration, which they argue is eroding civil rights; labor protections; diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives; and weakening the United States’ democratic institutions. In that sense, they are both political and economic boycotts.
