Do your office, inbox, and calendar feel like a ghost town on Friday afternoons? Youre not alone.
Im a labor economist who studies how technology and organizational change affect productivity and well-being. In a study published in an August 2025 working paper, I found that the way people allocate their time to work has changed profoundly since the COVID-19 pandemic began.
For example, among professionals in occupations that can be done remotely, 35% to 40% worked remotely on Thursdays and Fridays in 2024, compared with only 15% in 2019. On Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays, nearly 30% worked remotely, versus 10% to 15% five years earlier.
And white-collar employees have also become more likely to log off from work early on Fridays. Theyre starting the weekend sooner than before the pandemic, whether while working at an office or remotely as the workweek comes to a close. Why is that happening? I suspect that remote work has diluted the barrier between the workweek and the weekendespecially when employees arent working at the office.
The changing rhythm of work
The American Time Use Survey, which the U.S. Labor Departments Bureau of Labor Statistics conducts annually, asks thousands of Americans to recount how they spent the previous day, minute by minute. It tracks how long they spend working, commuting, doing housework, and caregiving.
Because these diaries cover both weekdays and weekends, and include information about whether respondents could work remotely, this survey offers the most detailed picture available of how the rhythms of work and life are changing. This data also allows me to see where people conduct each activity, making it possible to estimate the share of time American professionals spend working from home.
When I examined how the typical workday changed between 2019 and 2024, I saw dramatic shifts in where, when, and how people worked throughout that period.
Millions of professionals who had never worked remotely suddenly did so full time at the height of the pandemic. Hybrid arrangements have since become common; many employees spend two or three days a week at home and the rest in the office.
I found another change: From 2019 to 2024, the average number of minutes worked on Fridays fell by about 90 minutes in jobs that can be done from home. That change accounts for other factors, such as a professionals age, education, and occupation.
The decline for employees with jobs that are harder to do remotely was much smaller.
Even if you just look at the raw data, U.S. employees with the potential to work remotely were working about 7 hours per weekday on average in 2024, down about 13 minutes from 2019. These averages mask substantial variation between those with jobs that can more easily be done remotely and those who must report to the office most of the time.
For example, among workers in the more remote-intensive jobs, they spent 7 hours, 6 minutes working on Fridays in 2024, but 8 hours, 24 minutes in 2019.
That means I found, looking at the raw data, that Americans were working 78 fewer minutes on Fridays in 2024 than five years earlier. And controlling for other factors (e.g., demographics), this is actually an even larger 90-minute difference for employees who can do their jobs remotely.
In contrast, those employees were working longer hours on Wednesdays. They worked 8 hours, 24 minutes on Wednesdays in 2024, half an hour more than the 7 hours, 54 minutes logged on that day of the week in 2019. Clearly, theres a shift from some Friday hours, with employees making up the bulk of the difference on other weekdays.
Fridays have long been a little different
Although employees are shifting some of this skipped work time to other days of the week, most of the reductionwhether at the office or at homehas gone to leisure.
To be sure, Fridays have always been a little different than other weekdays. Many bosses allowed their staff to dress more casually on Fridays and permitted people to depart early, long before the pandemic began. But the ability to work remotely has evidently amplified that tendency.
This informal easing into the weekend, once confined to office norms, can be a morale booster. But as it has expanded, its become more individualized through remote and hybrid arrangements.
Those workers in remote-intensive occupations who are single, young, or male reduced their working hours across the board the most, relative to 2019, although their time on the job increased a bit in 2024.
The benefits and limits of flexibility
There are a few causal studies on the effects of remote work on productivity and well-being in the workplace, including some in which I participated. A general takeaway is that people tend to spend less time collaborating and more time on independent tasks when they work remotely.
Thats fine for some professions, but in roles that depend on frequent coordination, that pattern can complicate communication or weaken team cohesion. Colocationbeing physically present with your colleaguesdoes matter for some types of tasks.
But even if productivity doesnt necessarily suffer, every hour of unscheduled, independent work can be an hour not spent in coordinated effort with colleagues. That means what happens when people clock out or log off early on a Fridaywhether at home or at their officedepends on the nature of their work.
In occupations that require continuous handoffssuch as journalism, healthcare, or customer servicestaggered schedules can actually improve efficiency by spreading coverage across more hours in the day.
But for employees in project-based or collaborative roles that depend on overlapping hours for brainstorming, review, or decision-making, uneven schedules can create friction. When colleagues are rarely online at the same time, small delays can compound and slow collective progress.
The problem arises when flexible work becomes so individualized that it erodes shared rhythms altogether. The time-use data I analyzed suggests that remote-capable employees now spread their work more unevenly across the week, with less overlap in real time.
Eventually, that can make it harder to sustain the informal interactions and team cohesion that once happened organically when everyone left the office together at the nd of the week. As some of my other research has shown, that also can reduce job satisfaction and increase turnover in jobs requiring greater coordination.
The future of work
To be sure, allowing employees to do remote work and have some scheduling flexibility on any day of the week isnt necessarily bad for business.
The benefitsin terms of work-life balance, autonomy, recruitment, and reducing turnovercan be very real.
Flexible and remote arrangements expand the pool of potential applicants by freeing employers from strict geographic limits. A company based in Chicago can now hire a software engineer in Boise or a designer in Atlanta without requiring relocation.
This wider reach increases the supply of qualified candidates. It canparticularly in jobs requiring more coordinationalso improve retention by allowing employees to adjust their work schedules around family or personal needs rather than having to choose between relocating or quitting.
Whats more, many women who might have had to exit the labor force altogether when they became parents have been able to remain employed, at least on a part-time basis.
But in my view, the erosion of Fridays may go beyond what began as an informal traditionleaving the office early before the weekend begins. It is part of a broader shift toward individualized schedules that expand autonomy but reduce shared time for coordination.
Christos Makridis is an associate research professor of information systems at Arizona State University, Institute for Humane Studies.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Inspired by the ongoing auction of Bob Ross paintings to raise money for public television, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver is putting some of its own TV artifacts up for auction for a good cause.
Host John Oliver dedicated the close of Sunday’s season finale to local public television, which is facing an unprecedented crisis. Federal budget cuts could by next year close as many as 115 public television and radio stations in the U.S. serving 43 million Americans, according to the Public Media Bridge Fund, a philanthropic initiative.
“These stations can fill a vital community role,” Oliver said during Sunday’s show.
[Screenshot: johnoliversjunk.com]
Bob Ross Inc. said in October that it was putting 30 paintings by the late artist up for auction to pay for public station licensing fees. The first three paintings sold last week in Los Angeles for more than $600,000 total.
Oliver said Last Week Tonight originally tried bidding on one of the recently auctioned Ross paintings in hopes of flipping it to raise even more money for public television.
“Sadly, those prices were outside of our budget,” Oliver said. So instead, the show is tapping its own archives with the auction site johnoliversjunk.com.
[Screenshot: johnoliversjunk.com]
Items like the giant Reese’s mug that made its first appearance during a 2017 episode about net neutrality are now up for auction alongside Oliver’s “on-screen wife,” Mrs. Cabbage, and a quintet of bad wax replicas of presidents originally purchased by the show from the now-closed Hall of Presidents and First Ladies in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. All the proceeds from the auctions will go to the Public Media Bridge Fund.
[Screenshot: johnoliversjunk.com]
Though Last Week Tonight didn’t have the budget to drop six figures on an original Bob Ross painting at last week’s auction, Bob Ross Inc. did donate one to Oliver’s auction. “Cabin at Sunset” was created during an 1987 episode of Ross’s PBS show The Joy of Painting, and it’s presently the first item shown on Oliver’s auction site. The painting currently has a bid of more than a million dollars.
The top bid for a sculpture titled “LBJ’s Balls” is over $25,000, and the top bid for a trip to New York City to meet Oliver is higher than $50,000 at the time of this writing. So far, the leading bid to appear in a photo over Oliver’s shoulder during a future episode has just passed $100,000 after 45 bids.
[Screenshot: johnoliversjunk.com]
The show found some lower-priced ways to raise money, too, like signed merchandise from the Moon Mammoths, the minor league baseball team Last Week Tonight temporarily rebranded in July, and a Mr. Bean DVD signed by Joel McHale.
The auction closes on November 24. Oliver also promoted Adopt A Station, a nonprofit for people who want to help out and donate to public media stations but aren’t able to participate in his auction.
Trump administration budget cuts meant an end to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which said in August that it is winding down operations. The Public Media Bridge Fund says the end of CPB funding will destabilize the public media system. It’s seeking to raise $100 million over two years to help the most at-risk communities.
The influence of the AI industry is becoming a major topic in New Yorks 12th congressional district, where a crowded Democratic primary packed with millennial and Gen Z candidates is heating up. The seat represents one of the wealthiest communities in the country — and is a liberal stronghold — so whoever wins could eventually become a major player in the fight to limit the most noxious impacts of large language model (LLM) technology.
On Tuesday, Cameron Kasky, a political activist and Parkland shooting survivor who lives in the district (which includes the Upper West Side and Upper East Side) announced he was running. His campaign is making fighting the AI oligarchs a pivotal focus, adapting the rally cry used by progressive Democrats like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, for the ChatGPT age.
Generative AI is undoubtedly one of the most societally damaging innovations that humanity has ever created, and people do not understand the toll it will be taking on us, says Kaskys new campaign site. This damage includes the fresh water supplies it is depleting, a media literacy crisis that has already gotten out of control in this country over recent years, and the degree to which children are leaning on AI for therapy, companionship, and more — at the cost of their critical thinking skills and cognitive development.
Kasky says his legislative priorities will include holding AI companies accountable for their environmental impact, preventing mass layoffs, and better regulating the influence of tech companies on child safety. I have no sympathy for AI, and no tolerance for what it has done to our population. It will only get worse if we do not get in the way as aggressively as possible, he says.
Hes not the only person planning to take on AI in the primary. Alex Bores, a Palantir alum who has proposed state legislation the RAISE Act that would rein in the industry, has also made clear that one of his focuses would be regulating artificial intelligence.
Earlier this week, he was targeted by ads funded by Leading the Future, a pro-AI super PAC funded by OpenAI executive Greg Brockman and Andreessen Horowitz thats intent on blunting the influence of tech critics in the upcoming congressional primaries. The group has called Bores’ legislation a clear example of the patchwork, uninformed, and bureaucratic state laws that would slow American progress and open the door for China to win the global race for AI leadership. Bores, in turn, has started fundraising off the ads.
This AI super PAC’s first target? Me, said Bores in a tweet. Why? They’re scared of leaders who understand their business regulating their business. They want unchecked power at your expenseand I’m the guy standing in their way.
It is a crowded race, with about ten people running for the Democratic nomination in total. Most of the other candidates, who include Nadler favorite Micah Lasher, community organizer Liam Elkind, and attorney Jami Floyd, have yet to issue strong positions on artificial intelligence but that could change.
Meanwhile, Kennedy family heir and social media provocateur Jack Schlossberg, who also announced his campaign this month, has at least some thoughts on the tech. Last year, he tweeted his reflections: Question about AI Is it sexual ? Were are ALL sexual beings, thats just a fact. If AI is non-sexual, does that limit its potential ? or make it unstoppable ?
Across the country, data center demand and construction have been skyrocketing throughout 2025.
And so has local opposition to those projects.
From Indiana (where a developer withdrew its application to build a data center on more than 700 acres of farmland after local opposition) to Georgia (where now at least eight municipalities have passed moratoriums on data center development), residents and politicians are pushing back against the water- and energy-hungry sites.
Between late March through June of this year alone, 20 data center projects, representing about $98 billion in investments, were blocked or delayed in the United States, according to a new report from Data Center Watch, a project from the AI security and intelligence firm 10a Labs.
That number is higher than all of the data center disruptions the research group had tracked in the two years prior to its most recent report.
A turning point against data centers
Data Center Watch began keeping tabs on this trend in 2023, and released its first report earlier this year, covering 2023 through the first quarter of 2025. In that time frame, 16 projects, worth $64 billion, were blocked or delayed.
Though a project may be cancelled for myriad reasons, these were cases where local opposition was reported to have played some role in the decision, says Miquel Vila, an analyst at the Data Center Watch project.
In the second quarter of 2025, that opposition surged 125%. We were expecting a few more cases, Vila says of Q2, but not 20.
One important caveat, Vila notes, is that the data center industry is booming; it makes sense that opposition would, too. But even accounting for record high construction spend, he sees these recent numbers as a turning point in the trend.
What’s wrong with data centers?
Tech giants are building out data centers at a rapid pace to meet the enormous power needs of artificial intelligence (AI).
But data centers have faced local criticism because of the resources they consume, like water (which is especially a concern in scarce regions like Arizona) and energy (which has been linked to rising electricity prices across the country.)
Along with water use and utility prices, communities have also taken issue with noise, landmark preservation, and transparency, Vila addslike if it isnt clear who the end user of a data center will be.
Data Center Watch has found 188 community groups that have formed to fight data center projects. Between March and June alone, 53 active groups across 17 states were targeting 30 data center projects.
Amid that pushback, lawmakers have also been reconsidering their regions tax subsidies to data centers, as well as regulations around zoning, and the projects environmental impacts.
That community opposition is even causing some lawmakers to change their regulations or hold off on building data centers in the future.
Local opposition is having an impact in the regulatory landscape of data centers, Vila says.
Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the industry group Data Center Coalition, said in a statement that it continues to see “significant interest” across the country for “responsible data center projects,” and said such projects create jobs, economic investment, and local tax revenue.
He added that the coalition’s members are committed to community engagement, stakeholder education, and to working with policymakers and regulatory bodies.
“Data centers are also committed to being responsible and responsive neighbors in the communities where they operate,” Diorio said.
Data centers and politics
Data center opposition has become a talking point in recent political races.
In Virginiathe biggest data center market in the worldGovernor-elect Abigail Spanberger campaigned in part on making sure data centers pay their fair share, and on addressing rising electricity prices.
In Georgia, Peter Hubbardwho was elected to the states Public Service Commission, which regulates its utilitieshas specifically highlighted how data centers can drive up peoples energy bills. Georgia is increasingly becoming a data center hotbed, and is in fact the second-largest such market in the world.
But while both those politicians are Democrats, data center opposition is a bipartisan issue, Data Center Watch found. Both blue and red states are rethinking incentives to developers or tightening their rules around such projects.
That tracks with other research about data center support: a recent Heatmap poll found that only 44% of Americans would welcome a data center near them.
Looking ahead
Data Center Watch plans to keep an eye on project delays and cancellations going forward.
Already, it seems the trend is continuing into Q3: In one prominent example, Amazons proposed Project Blue data center, was rejected by Tucson, Arizonas town council in August.
(In Data Center Watchs latest report, two of the 20 affected projects were from Amazon: one in Becker, Minnesota, which was suspended as lawmakers reconsidered tax incentives, and one in King George, Virginia, which was delayed because of legal issues and resident pushback.)
Vila expects data center opposition to keep growingand to increasingly become a part of project calculations.
Before, local opposition was more of an anecdotal possibility, he says. Now, its becoming a core feature of development . . . in the same way issues like land, energy, and water are taken into account.
Pigs famously have thick skin, and Donald Trump does not. Its just one of myriad distinctions between the cloven-hoofed barnyard animal and Americas 47th president.
Theres a good reason, however, why many social media users are currently addressing Trump as Piggy, and sharing crude, AI-assisted images of him in porcine form. Rest assured, he paved his own pathway to hog heaven.
On Monday, a clip of Trump addressing reporters aboard Air Force One went viral. It begins with reporter Jennifer Jacobs pressing Trump about the eternally unfurling Epstein scandal. The president seems as though hed rather not answer the questionat least, thats how it comes across when he admonishes Jacobs: Quiet, Piggy.
While leaders in most professions might be disciplined or even fired for such a transgression, Trump has proven uniquely immune to formal consequences for violating norms. But he is in no way immune to informal consequences, which is why the internet has already repurposed Quiet, Piggy into a memetic insult against Trump.
Bluesky users have started quote-tweeting Trumps latest TruthSocial dispatches with the new catchphrase, and theyre doing the same for media appearances from Trumpian underlings like House Speaker Mike Johnson and U.S. Representative Nancy Mace.
Quiet, Piggy.— Kevin M. Kruse (@kevinmkruse.bsky.social) 2025-11-18T13:30:52.321Z
Quiet Piggy. — Amanda Weaver (@amandaweavernovels.com) 2025-11-18T16:50:48.163Z
Over on X, Governor Gavin Newsom is among the many users adding a body-shaming component to the catchphrase, tweeting unflattering photos of the president along with it.
Quiet, piggy. pic.twitter.com/RIKsI4iDjV— Gavin Newsom (@GavinNewsom) November 18, 2025
Quiet, piggy. pic.twitter.com/3uOoRnjGpX— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) November 18, 2025
Quiet, piggy pic.twitter.com/CKORVzGGpG— Republicans against Trump (@RpsAgainstTrump) November 18, 2025
Meanwhile, some TikTok users are also posting unflattering images of the president to accompany the insult, and others are posting AI-generated images of the president, alternately as Miss Piggy or as himself yelling at Miss Piggy.
If social media users seem especially eager to weaponize Quiet, Piggy by reflecting it back at the president, its likely because of how well this outburst fits in with Trumps previous behavior.
Trump has a documented history of calling women like Rosie ODonnell and former Miss Universe Alicia Machado pigsalong with dogs, slobs and disgusting animals. He also has a more recent and pointed history of insulting and berating journalists.
Just after the 2016 election, 60 Minutes journalist Lesley Stahl reportedly said that Trump told her the reason he regularly bashes reporters is to demean and discredit them so that the public will not believe negative stories about him.
And Trump continued to insult journalists in his tone-setting first post-election press conference, refusing to take a question from CNN reporter Jim Acosta and telling him: You are fake news.
Over the course of his initial term, Trump would escalate attacks on press that seemed to be insufficiently friendly, deeming them the enemy of the people. He seemed to harbor a special animosity, though, toward journalists who happened to be women. In one typically fiery exchange with CNNs Abby Phillip in 2018, for instance, Trump responded to Phillips question about then-Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller by saying: What a stupid question that is. What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot, you ask a lot of stupid questions.
In his second term, Trump appears even more committed to attacking reporters for asking questions hed prefer not rceive. He regularly refuses to answer questions, tells reporters Youre not supposed to be asking that, or calls them obnoxious and very evil for asking anyway. Indeed, the whole TACO Trump attack over the summer, which accused the president of Always Chickening Out on tariffs, would likely not have blown up to the level it did had Trump not told a reporter who asked him about it: Dont ever say what you said.
Still, despite Trump having been extra combative with reporters all year, he has lately seemed even more prickly with an uptick in questions about his connection to Jeffrey Epstein.
Trump on Epstein Files: I dont want to talk about it because fake news like youyoure a terrible reporterfake news like you just keeps bringing up to deflect from the tremendous success of The Trump Admin pic.twitter.com/rZjobTujCN— Acyn (@Acyn) November 16, 2025
Trump: Will you let me finish? You are the worst. Youre with Bloomberg right? You are the worst. I dont know why they even have you. pic.twitter.com/mTmZ77KTYv— Acyn (@Acyn) November 17, 2025
When an ABC reporter asked Trump about the Epstein files on Tuesday, during the course of this writing, Trump responded by saying, I think the license should be taken away from ABC, and urging FCC chairman Brendan Carr to look at that.
As heated as Trump can get when asked about this issue, though, Quiet, Piggy stands out as an exceedingly juvenile and degrading insult. Many social media users have been speculating about why the schoolyard name-calling went unchallenged in the moment; why Jacobss fellow reporters didnt make sure her question got answered or demand an apology on her behalf.
Perhaps its the absence of any heroes aboard Air Force One, though, that has inspired social media users to push back on Trumps hogwash themselves.
Microsoft said Tuesday it is partnering with artificial intelligence company Anthropic and chipmaker Nvidia as part of a cloud infrastructure deal that moves the software giant further away from its longtime alliance with OpenAI.
Anthropic, maker of the chatbot Claude that competes with OpenAI’s ChatGPT, said it is committed to buying $30 billion in computing capacity from Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform.
As part of the partnership, Nvidia will also invest up to $10 billion in Anthropic, and Microsoft will invest up to $5 billion in the San Francisco-based startup.
The joint announcements by CEOs Dario Amodei of Anthropic, Satya Nadella of Microsoft, and Jensen Huang of Nvidia came just ahead of the opening of Microsoft’s annual Ignite developer conference.
This is all about deepening our commitment to bringing the best infrastructure, model choice and applications to our customers, Nadella said on a video call with the other two executives, adding that it builds on the critical partnership Microsoft still has with OpenAI.
Microsoft was, until earlier this year, the exclusive cloud provider for OpenAI and made the technology behind ChatGPT the foundation for its own AI assistant, Copilot. But the two companies moved farther apart and their business agreements were amended as OpenAI increasingly sought to secure its own cloud capacity through big deals with Oracle, SoftBank, and other data center developers and chipmakers.
Asked in September if OpenAI could do more with those new computing partnerships than it could with Microsoft, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told The Associated Press his company was severely limited for the value we can offer to people.
At the same time, Microsoft holds a roughly 27% stake in the new for-profit corporation that OpenAI, founded as a nonprofit, is forming to advance its commercial ambitions as the world’s most valuable startup.
Anthropic, founded by ex-OpenAI leaders in 2021, said Claude will now be the only frontier model available to customers of the three biggest cloud computing providers: Amazon, which remains Anthropic’s primary cloud provider, and Google and Microsoft.
AI products like Claude and ChatGPT take huge amounts of energy and computing power to build and operate, and neither OpenAI nor Anthropic is yet turning a profit. As part of the deal, Nvidia said Anthropic will have access to up to a gigawatt of capacity from its specialized AI chips.
Huang said he’s admired the work of Anthropic and Dario for a long time, and this is the first time we are going to deeply partner with Anthropic to accelerate Claude.
Matt O’Brien, AP technology writer
National Public Radio will receive approximately $36 million in grant money to operate the nations public radio interconnection system under the terms of a court settlement with the federal government’s steward of funding for public broadcasting stations.
The settlement, announced late Monday, partially resolves a legal dispute in which NPR accused the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of bowing to pressure from President Donald Trump to cut off its funding.
On March 25, Trump said at a news conference that he would love to defund NPR and PBS because he believes they are biased in favor of Democrats.
NPR accused the CPB of violating its First Amendment free speech rights when it moved to cut off its access to grant money appropriated by Congress. NPR also claims Trump, a Republican, wants to punish it for the content of its journalism.
On April 2, the CPBs board initially approved a three-year, roughly $36 million extension of a grant for NPR to operate the interconnection satellite system for public radio. NPR has been operating and managing the Public Radio Satellite System since 1985.
But the CPB reversed course under mounting pressure from the Trump administration, according to NPR. The agency redirected federal interconnection funds away from NPR to an entity that didnt exist and wasnt statutorily authorized to receive it, NPR says.
CPB attorneys denied that the agency retaliated against NPR to appease Trump. They had argued that NPRs claims are factually and legally meritless.
On May 1, Trump issued an executive order that called for federal agencies to stop funding for NPR and PBS. The settlement doesnt end a lawsuit in which NPR seeks to block any implementation or enforcement of Trump’s executive order. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss is scheduled to preside over another hearing for the case on Dec. 4.
The settlement says NPR and CPB agree that the executive order is unconstitutional and that CPB won’t enforce it unless a court orders it to do so.
Katherine Maher, NPR’s president and CEO, said the settlement is a victory for editorial independence and a step toward upholding the First Amendment rights of NPR and the public media system.”
Patricia Harrison, the corporations CEO, said in a statement that the settlement marks an important moment for public media.
Michael Kunzelman, Associated Press
As we head into the holiday season, toys with generative AI chatbots in them may start appearing on Christmas lists. A concerning report found one innocent-looking AI teddy bear gave instructions on how to light matches, where to find knives, and even explained sexual kinks to children.
Consumer watchdogs at the Public Interest Research Group (PIRG) tested some AI toys for its 40th annual Trouble in Toyland report and found them to exhibit extremely disturbing behaviors.
With only minimal prompting, the AI toys waded into subjects many parents would find unsettling, from religion to sex. One toy in particular stood out as the most concerning.
FoloToys AI teddy bear Kumma, powered by OpenAIs GPT-4o model, the same model that once powered ChatGPT, repeatedly dropped its guardrails the longer a conversation went on.
“Kumma told us where to find a variety of potentially dangerous objects, including knives, pills, matches, and plastic bags,” PIRG, which has been testing toys for hazards since the 1980s, wrote in its report.
In other tests, Kumma offered advice on how to be a good kisser and veered into overtly sexual topics, breaking down various kinks and even posing the wildly inappropriate question: What do you think would be the most fun to explore? Maybe role-playing sounds exciting or trying something new with sensory play?
Following the reports release, FoloToy pulled the implicated bear. Now, it has confirmed it is pulling all of its products. On Friday, OpenAI also confirmed that it had cut off FoloToys access to its AI models.
FoloToy told PIRG: [F]ollowing the concerns raised in your report, we have temporarily suspended sales of all FoloToy products The company also added that it is carrying out a company-wide, end-to-end safety audit across all products.
Report coauthor RJ Cross, director of PIRGs Our Online Life Program, praised the efforts but made it clear far more needs to be done before AI toys become a safe childhood staple.
Its great to see these companies taking action on problems weve identified. But AI toys are still practically unregulated, and there are plenty you can still buy today, Cross said in a statement. Removing one problematic product from the market is a good step, but far from a systemic fix.
These AI toys are marketed to children as young as three, but they run on the same large language model technology behind adult chatbots — the very systems companies like OpenAI say arent meant for children.
Earlier this year, OpenAI shared the news of a partnership with Mattel to integrate AI into some of its iconic brands such as Barbie and Hot Wheels, a sign that not even childrens toys are exempt from the AI takeover.
Other toymakers say they incorporate chatbots from OpenAI or other leading AI companies, said Rory Erlich, U.S. PIRG Education Funds New Economy campaign associate and report co-author. Every company involved must do a better job of making sure that these products are safer than what we found in our testing. We found one troubling example. How many others are still out there?
Members of the Sackler family who own OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma must pay billions of dollars to settle a flood of lawsuits over the harms of opioids, under a new deal that was formally approved by a federal bankruptcy judge on Tuesday.
The Sackler family must contribute up to $7 billion over 15 years. Most of the money is to go to government entities to fight the opioid crisis, which has been linked to 900,000 deaths in the U.S. since 1999.
Thousands of victims of the opioid epidemic could be paid thousands of dollars each, with a portion of the money distributed next year to some people who had OxyContin prescriptions and their survivors.
This plan is not perfect, U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Sean Lane said as he laid out his reasoning for approving the settlements. The court wishes it could do more to ease the suffering of the opioid crisis.
But he said it is fair, equitable, and in the best interest of the parties involved, and had the overwhelming support of most of the groups that had claims against Purdue.
The new agreement replaces one that the U.S. Supreme Court rejected last year, finding it would have improperly protected members of the family against future lawsuits. Under the current agreement, entities that do not opt into the payments can still sue members of the family.
The deal, which the judge said he would accept last week, is among the largest in a series of opioid settlements brought by state and local governments against drugmakers, wholesalers, and pharmacies that totaled about $50 billion.
Why the judge said he approved the deal
Lane said the deal maximizes the settlement’s value and came from years of investigations, mediation and negotiations.
He also said that an alternative to the settlement suing Sackler family members instead of accepting the deal would take years and success is not ensured,” in part because the family has consistently said they would fight claims against them.
He also noted it could be hard to collect if the family lost lawsuits. Much of their assets are in off-shore trusts.
Lane said that the states and individuals can get more than they would have if Purdue had been liquidated instead.
In that case, he said, there would have been only $3.4 billion available and $2 billion of that would have gone to the federal government as part of a criminal plea deal the company entered. Under that agreement, most of the federal penalties were to be waived if a broader settlement could be reached.
Money will go to governments and some individuals
Sackler family members were collectively paid more than $10 billion by Purdue in the decade before they stopped involvement with the company in 2018 and used about half of that for taxes. They’ve agreed to pay up to $7 billion over 15 years, providing most of the cash involved in the settlement.
The funds distributed to state, local and Native Americans is to be used mostly to address the opioid crisis, as has been the case with other opioid settlements.
About $850 million of that is to go to individual victims, including children born with opioid withdrawal.
People with addiction and survivors of those who died must prove they were prescribed OxyContin to participate. They could provide medical records or photos of prescription bottle labels although many people don’t have such things dating back decades.
Those who do prove it could get payments of around $8,000 or around $16,000, depending on how long they received the drug and how many other people qualify. The money for individual victims is to be distributed next year.
Not only money is at stake
Members of the Sackler family are agreeing to give up ownership of Purdue.
For them, that won’t be a major change since no family member has served on Purdue’s board or received money from the company since 2018. The plan calls for Purdue to be replaced with a new company, Knoa Pharma, to be controlled by a board appointed by states and with a mission of benefiting the public.
Sackler family members are also agreeing not to have their name put on institutions in exchange for contributions something they’ve done often in the past, although many institutions have cut ties with them.
The company has also agreed to make public a trove of internal documents that could shed additional light into how the company promoted and monitored opioids.
One feature that won’t be repeated under this new deal that was in a previous one: forcing members of the Sackler family to hear directly from people harmed by OxyContin.
A long legal saga could be wrapping up
Purdue filed for bankruptcy protection in 2019 when it was facing thousands of opioid-related lawsuits from state and local governments and others.
A judge approved a settlement two years later. But the U.S. Supreme Court later rejected that plan because it gave members of the Sackler family protection from lawsuits over opioids even though they were not personally declaring bankruptcy.
The latest plan allows lawsuits against Sackler family members by those who don’t opt into the deal. That change was a key to getting the new version approved in the aftermath of the high court’s ruling.
This time, few parties objected to the settlement, although some people who represented themselves and who were addicted to opioids or had loved ones who were raised concerns during the three-day confirmation hearing last week.
One of those self-represented people told Lane during the virtual hearing Tuesday that she planned to appeal.
By Geoff Mulvihill, Associated Press
Like clockwork, 5 p.m. on a Sunday, flashes of unread emails and notifications for tomorrows upcoming meetings start. Your shoulders tense, your stomach knots. You have a case of the Sunday scaries.
This unsettling feeling is a form of anticipatory anxiety that creeps in as the weekend draws to a close and Monday looms with the responsibilities of the week ahead. If you can relate, youre not alone: New data suggests the vast majority of workers experience this anxiety, and it also suggests some workers feel it worse than others.
Adobe Acrobat surveyed over 1,000 full-time employees and found 82% experience this sense of anxiety before the workweek even begins. For Gen Z respondents, that number creeps up to 94%. It also affects women more often than men.
For 31%, the Sunday scaries start before 5 p.m. even hits. Thats despite the fact that those affected spend 72 hours annually working on weekends to get ahead on the demands of the workweek.
The scaries are set off by all types of reasons. Looming layoffs or signs of economic uncertainty can lead workers to feel anxious about the near future. Burnout is the main culprit for 55% of respondents, followed by high workloads (50%), project deadlines (33%) and toxic work environments (31%).
Even admin-related tasks can add to the sense of dread, with organizing digital files or chasing down signatures mentioned by one in 15 respondents as triggers.
The Sunday scaries can affect anyone, but some suffer worse than others, Adobe says: Remote workers, for example, report getting the scaries just a few times per year. Those back in the office report getting them once or twice a month.
More than half of Fortune 100 companies now have a full-time office requirement, and research shows nearly 3 in 10 companies will demand five days a week in the office by the end of 2025. While 27% of those surveyed say their Sunday scaries have grown more intense over the past year, onsite workers are 47% more likely than remote workers to say their prework anxiety worsened over that time period.
Given the gap, its unsurprising workers are willing to quit their jobs for more flexible work, with 17% quitting in the past year because of changes to their working arrangements.
Its not just a feeling. For 35% of those surveyed it manifests physically in headaches, tension, and fatigue, and 42% even lose sleep. It also impacts employers with nearly half respondents (46%) reporting that their Sunday scaries lead to a lack of motivation at a time where employees are already disengaged at work.
Anxiety is a normal human emotion. A big week at work or an upcoming important presentation is likely to trigger some feelings of anxiety. But if you spend every Sunday dreading the week ahead, it might require investigating further.
