It’s become commonplace to message someone a photo, text them an address, and switch to a video chat all in the middle of a phone call.
But 911 systems, largely designed for the era of landlines, don’t typically allow for those luxuries, even when callers are trying to communicate address information from a noisy environment or share a photo of an ongoing emergency.
A startup called Prepared is working to change that, helping emergency call takers communicate more efficiently with people in situations where every second matters by enabling text, photo, and video communication and providing AI tools to transcribe and even translate conversations in real time.
Cofounder and CEO Michael Chime says he had initially focused on providing an app to help schools during emergencies, having grown up near to a school shooting. During the COVID pandemic, when schools were closed, he communicated with school districts about additional features they might want, and several mentioned difficulty sharing detailed data with 911 centers during an emergency.
The company then began to focus on technology allowing livestreaming video to 911 centers and has since expanded to add additional AI-powered features like transcription and live translation. Already, the technology is being used by more than 1,000 emergency call centersknown as public-safety access points, or PSAPsaround the country, including those serving Las Vegas, Nashville, and Baltimore. And the company just announced a new $80 million Series C funding round, led by General Catalyst with participation from Andreessen Horowitz and First Round Capital, bringing their total funding to $125 million.
“Our mission is to make sure every emergency gets the best possible response,” Chime says.
One challenge facing the agencies that handle emergency calls is that while call volume continues to grow in many locations, staffing often doesn’t rise to match it. Prepared’s technology is designed to help call takers handle calls faster and more accurately, getting correct data to dispatchers who in turn send firefighters, police, EMTs, or other responders to emergencies.
[Image: Courtesy of Prepared]
“It takes a tremendous amount of multitasking,” Chime says. “They have to listen, give thoughtful responses, make sure you feel good and safe, while also collecting all the key details.”
Prepared generates automated summaries, which can be visible to both call takers and dispatchers, automatically highlighting key information like addresses and descriptions of people or vehicles involved in an incident. And transcripts can also help call takers verify they heard everything correctlyeven on a noisy lineand let them quickly ensure that they’ve gathered all required information before ending the call.
Prepared’s technology is easy to integrate into existing workflows, letting call takers see the platform’s information alongside their existing software tools. And call centers can easily have their phone systems duplicate calls to Prepared’s system for processing without disturbing their existing routing configurations.
“I actually think it’s helping with our retention too,” says Kari Morrissey, director, emergency communications for Anoka County, Minnesota. “Because there’s a lot to learn as a new telecommunicator.”
The AI can also help prompt call takers to make sure to ask specific questions and otherwise follow specified protocols even in stressful situations. If call centers desire, the AI can also help in quality assurance reviews after the fact, highlighting correct protocol and any areas for improvement.
[Image: Courtesy of Prepared]
Prepared’s software can also transcribe emergency radio communications, helpful to dispatchers who are often required to monitor multiple radio channels at once.
And automatic translation can dramatically cut response times for callers speaking a language not known to call center workers. Instead of trying to identify the language and conference in an appropriate interpreter, call takers can see an automated translation of what they’re hearing and often type in a response, which will be translated back to be read aloud or texted to the caller. That also makes it easy for call takers to simply copy-and-paste typical questions to be translated, though Prepared is working on direct speech translation as well.
[Image: Courtesy of Prepared]
A call that could take 15 minutes, including connecting with an interpreter, can be processed in just three or four minutes with Prepared’s translation in place, says Anthony Mignogna, chief of communications and 911 coordinator for the Delaware County Department of Emergency Services in Pennsylvania.
“It really covers that hurdlethat gapthat we have with the legacy system,” e says.
The system also helps gather health data from callers’ phones if they have the opt-in Medical ID feature on their smartphones, which can automatically route health data to 911 call centers, enabled. And it cleanly highlights caller locations on a map for call takers to see, helping to ease a traditional hurdle of getting accurate location information from callers, Mignogna says.
“We get a lot of supplemental data just by somebody dialing 911, which you wouldn’t get on that traditional 911 phone call,” he says.
Prepared also enables emergency call centers to receive textshelpful in situations where people can’t speak for safety or medical reasonsand to send texts to callers, requesting more information or including links that let callers send photos or stream video of their surroundings to help emergency responders understand the situation.Prepared’s technology can even potentially handle some calls to nonemergency lines on its own, with the AI system collecting information and generating a transcript that can be quickly reviewed by human staff. One human can review multiple calls at once, jumping in if there’s an issue, and the AI can automatically reroute calls describing a potential emergency like chest pain to 911.
But Chime says the company has no plans to replace human call takers altogether, instead using AI to enhance their ability to handle emergency calls.
“Humans have limitations, like I haven’t met anybody who speaks 30 languages,” Chime says. “But the technology can empower them to do that.”
Two compressor stations along Transcos natural gas pipeline in North Carolina would emit more than 935,000 tons of planet-warming greenhouse gases each year, state records show. The expansion would also contaminate nearby communities with harmful air pollutants up to 350% over current levels.
Transco, a division of the Houston-based group Williams, plans to increase the horsepower at the existing compressor stations in Lexington, in Davidson County, and in Mooresville, in Iredell County. The stations would accommodate the companys Southeast Supply Enhancement Project (SSEP), a pipeline expansion that traverses five states: Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama.
A view of Station 155, one of Transcos several compressor stations along the Southeast Supply Enhancement Project pipeline route, in a residential neighborhood of Lexington, N.C. [Photo: Lisa Sorg/Inside Climate News]
Compressor stations use high pressure to force gas through a pipeline; they are located every 50 to 60 miles along a route. They routinely leak methane, a powerful greenhouse gas, and other pollutants through valves, flanges and other connectors. The gas is also sometimes intentionally released directly into the atmosphere, a practice called venting, and sometimes the gas is flared, or burned off, during maintenance, shutdowns and startups. Venting is worse for the climate, while flaring produces more harmful air pollution.
Each compressor station would be powered by natural gas, according to Transcos recent air permit applications to the N.C. Division of Air Quality. Division officials are reviewing the applications and will accept public comment after the evaluations are complete. Meanwhile, environmental advocates are asking local government officials to oppose Transcos entire natural gas expansion.
Transco did not respond to an email requesting comment on the air permit applications.
With increased horsepower comes increased pollution. At the Lexington station, concentrations of carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, sulfur dioxide and hazardous air pollutants, such as cancer-causing formaldehyde, would increase over current levels, by between 175% and 350%, state records show.
Residents in Lexington and Mooresville are already burdened by decades of air pollution from existing Transco infrastructure and deserve to breathe clean air, said Juhi Modi, North Carolina field coordinator at Appalachian Voices. NCDEQ has the power to defend against Transcos proposal to emit more health-compromising pollution into our communities.
EPA data show Davidson County is already afflicted by six types of air pollutants regulated under National Ambient Air Quality Standards.
Davidson County is in compliance with the air quality standards, according to state officials, but they apply to large areas, like a county, and arent necessarily going to be reflective of the reality on the ground for the people who live around these compressor stations, said Deirdre Dlugoleski, a former associate attorney with the Southern Environmental Law Center, now with Defenders of Wildlife. Compliance with the NAAQS isnt enough to ensure that environmental justice communities close to these sites wont be harmed.
[Image: Inside Climate News]
Neighborhoods within a mile radius of the Lexington compressor station rank among the highest in the state in terms of exposure to very fine particulate matter (known as PM 2.5), ozone, and toxic releases to the air, according to the EPAs EJ Screen. Nearly half of the 800 residents in the affected area are low-income.
The potential risks to public safety and the environment prompted the Midway Town Council, by a 4-1 vote, to formally oppose SSEP and the compressor station in Lexington, about 10 miles south of Midway.
Davidson County already has 176 miles of natural gas and liquid petroleum pipelines within its boundaries. Midway officials cited the negative impacts on air and water quality, residents health and property values, in their May 5 resolution, filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC.
Town officials asked FERC to consider a no-build option and, in the event the pipeline is expanded, to require the compressor stations to use the best available control technology to reduce emissions.
At the Mooresville station, Transcos air permit application shows the increases would range from 20% to 37% over current emissions levels, depending on the pollutant.
Like their Lexington counterparts, people living within a mile of the station are exposed to some of the highest levels of PM 2.5, ozone, toxic air releases and diesel pollution. These neighborhoods also flank Interstate 77, one of the main arteries into Charlotte.
[Image: Paul Horn/Inside Climate News]
Both stations would emit toxic air pollutants acrolein, benzene, and formaldehyde at high rates. In Lexington, benzene exceeds federal hourly emission rates by 100 times; in Mooresville, the figure is 61 times.
Thee rates trigger a requirement for the company to conduct air dispersion modeling to measure contaminant levels, if they move off site and how far.
This proposed massive methane gas project would add more pollution and health risks to North Carolina communities already struggling with poor air quality, compared to the rest of the state, said Caroline Hansley, campaign organizing strategist at Sierra Club. NCDEQ must exercise its authority to protect North Carolinians and deny the permit for this unneeded, dirty, and dangerous project.
More Demand From Data Centers
In North Carolina, the SSEP includes the Eden Loop, 4.4 miles in Rockingham County, where the pipeline enters the state from Virginia. The Salem Loop, also part of SSEP, is longer, running roughly 24 miles through Guilford, Forsyth, and Davidson counties.
The SSEP is one of three major pipeline projects in North Carolina. MVP Southgate is proposed for Rockingham County, where it would tie into the T-15, a pipeline which would run east to Duke Energys new natural gas plants in Person County.
All of these projects are estimated to begin operating within the next three to five years, although they often run behind schedule because of permitting issues, litigation or construction delays. There is still a vacancy on the FERC commission, which could also cause backlogs.
Transco officials say the project is necessary to accommodate increased energy demand from data centers. Some energy analysts, like Tyler Norris of Duke University, though, counter that load flexibility could preclude the need for more generation and transmission.
Environmental advocates argue that energy companies are financially incentivized to build pipelines. From 2018 to 2023, Transcos average return on equityearningswas 17%, according to the National Gas Supply Association.
Earlier this spring, Transco updated its project filings with FERC, which reflected minor adjustments to the proposed route. Maps show hundreds of homes and businesses, schools, day cares, even parks and recreational centers within the pipelines 1,114-foot high consequence area. Also known as the blast zone, these areas are where the force of an explosion could kill or injure people, as well as damage or destroy property.
The zone is based on the diameter of the pipelineSSEP is 42 inchesand its maximum allowable pressure. Within these areas, there are different classifications of risk, depending on population density and the number of vulnerable people who couldnt quickly evacuate.
Some homes lie as close as 20 feet from the center of the pipeline, according to Transcos filings with FERC. The pipeline skirts churches; the Oak Ridge Weekday School; a child care center in Guilford County; the VA Medical Center in Kernersville; and U.S. Highway 52, a major thoroughfare. It would burrow under three acres of Triad Park, a 6,000-acre recreational area that straddles Guilford and Forsyth counties.
Farther south in Davidson County, Wallburg Elementary School enrolls more than 720 students in pre-K through Grade 5. It is less than a quarter mile from the pipeline and within the blast zone, as is the Wallburg Recreational Center across the street.
In a recent presentation to Guilford County Commissioners, Transco officials emphasized that safety is the highest priority. The company continuously monitors its pipelines and frequently inspects them, officials said, and uses pressure and temperature sensors to warn of potential problems.
Previous studies of pipeline accidents in Kentucky, Virginia, and New Mexico have shown that blast zones extend farther than originally calculated, according to the Pipeline Safety Trust, a nonprofit based in Washington state.
The trust raised safety concerns about the SSEP in its recent comments to FERC. The SSEP route already contains up to four other pipelines of different types, and FERC should calculate the blast to reflect those co-locations, wrote Erin Sutherland, the trusts policy and program director, and attorney. This is a serious environmental and public health danger that FERC should consider.
Even routine construction will affect communities along the route. Theres a huge gap that is going to fall on local municipalities, Hansley said. Peoples wells could be blasted and impacted in Oak Ridge and other places. The roads could see massive traffic increases from heavy loads, get damaged and then who would end up paying for it?
Lisa Sorg, Inside Climate News
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for its newsletter here.
John Hoke, a 33-year Nike veteran who served as the company’s chief innovation officer, is retiring.
The news comes during a difficult time for the company. While its still the largest sportswear manufacturer with $51 billion in revenue a year, it has lost street cred and running market share under former CEO John Donahoe. Wall Street believes it’s not growing fast enough. Beloved Nike veteran Elliott Hill replaced Donahoe as CEO last year, who rightly warned the turnaround would not happen overnight. Hill informed the Nike staff that Hoke was leaving in a memo sent around the company this week.
Ive spoken to Hoke several times over the years, most recently in 2024 for our profile on the companys Olympic strategy under John Donahoe. Hokes enthusiasm was that of a kid in a candy store, as he was eager to show off the companys new partnership with Hyperice and its use of AI tools to make some of the wildest Nikes Ive ever seen.
Hoke believed deeply in the technological innovations behind sport, which made him a good fit for shifting to the job of chief innovation officer in 2022 from his role as chief design officer for 15 years. And while some of the products launched in his timelike self-tying Adapt BB sneakerswere never articulated enough to scale, his long-view vision of Nike was always inspiring. He imagined our clothing becoming empathetic, symbiotic, and even biologicalliterally feeling our pain to be ever-changing to our needs moment to moment.
Hoke has long viewed his own time at Nike as destiny. At age 12, he imagined the performance benefits of sticking his inflatable pool raft to the bottom of a shoe. That led him to discover Phil Knight and write him a letter. Knight responded, inviting him to come work at the company when he was older.
After graduating from studies in industrial design and architecture and giving a presentation where he discussed Nike Town, Hoke was invited to Nike for a job interview.
I brought that letter in the back of my portfolio. I pulled the letter out, and I said, I’m here to redeem the coupon you sent me in the late ’70s, Hoke recalled. The person he said that to? Mark Parker, who ended up taking over the company as its most beloved designer-CEO. I pinch myself, like I’ve been . . . loving this brand, and thinking about sneakers, and how to make sneakers perform better, and how to make sneakers more magnetic more powerful, for most of my life.
Phil McCartney, EVP and chief innovation, design & product officer at Nike, will be taking over Hoke’s duties. Meanwhile, Hoke will be at Nike through October wrapping up projects. He did not immediately respond for comment.
Google will return to federal court Friday to fend off the U.S. Justice Department’s attempt to topple its internet empire at the same time it’s navigating a pivotal shift to artificial intelligence that could undercut its power.The legal and technological threats facing Google are among the key issues that will be dissected during the closing arguments of a legal proceeding that will determine the changes imposed upon the company in the wake of its dominant search engine being declared as an illegal monopoly by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta last year.Brandishing evidence presented during a recent three-week stretch of hearings, Justice Department lawyers will attempt to persuade Mehta to order a radical shake-up that includes a ban on Google paying to lock its search engine in as the default on smart devices and an order requiring the company to sell its Chrome browser.Google lawyers are expected to assert only minor concessions are needed, especially as the upheaval triggered by advances in artificial intelligence already are reshaping the search landscape, as alternative, conversational search options are rolling out from AI startups that are hoping to use the Department of Justice’s four-and-half-year-old case to gain the upper hand in the next technological frontier.“Over weeks of testimony, we heard from a series of well-funded companies eager to gain access to Google’s technology so they don’t have to innovate themselves,” Lee-Anne Mulholland, Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, wrote in a blog post earlier this month. “What we didn’t hear was how DOJ’s extreme proposals would benefit consumers.”After the day-long closing arguments, Mehta will spend much of the summer mulling a decision that he plans to issue before Labor Day. Google has already vowed to appeal the ruling that branded its search engine as a monopoly, a step it can’t take until the judge orders a remedy.While both sides of this showdown agree that AI is an inflection point for the industry’s future, they have disparate views on how the shift will affect Google.The Justice Department contends that AI technology by itself won’t rein in Google’s power, arguing additional legal restraints must be slapped on a search engine that’s the main reason its parent company, Alphabet Inc., is valued at $2 trillion.Google has already been deploying AI to transform its search engine into an answer engine, an effort that has so far helped maintain its perch as the internet’s main gateway despite inroads being made by alternatives from the likes of OpenAI and Perplexity.The Justice Department contends a divestiture of the Chrome browser that Google CEO Sundar Pichai helped build nearly 20 years ago would be among the most effective countermeasures against Google continuing to amass massive volumes of browser traffic and personal data that could be leveraged to retain its dominance in the AI era. Executives from both OpenAi and Perplexity testified last month that they would be eager bidders for the Chrome browser if Mehta orders its sale.The debate over Google’s fate also has pulled in opinions from Apple, mobile app developers, legal scholars and startups.Apple, which collects more than $20 billion annually to make Google the default search engine on the iPhone and its other devices, filed briefs arguing against the Justice Department’s proposed 10-year ban on such lucrative lock-in agreements. Apple told the judge that prohibiting the contracts would deprive the company of money that it funnels into its own research, and that the ban might even make Google even more powerful because the company would be able to hold onto its money while consumers would end up choosing its search engine anyway. The Cupertino, California, company also told the judge a ban wouldn’t compel it to build its own search engine to compete against Google.In other filings, a group of legal scholars said the Justice Department’s proposed divestiture of Chrome would be an improper penalty that would inject unwarranted government interference in a company’s business. Meanwhile, former Federal Trade Commission officials James Cooper and Andrew Stivers warned that another proposal that would require Google to share its data with rival search engines “does not account for the expectations users have developed over time regarding the privacy, security, and stewardship” of their personal information.The App Association, a group that represents mostly small software developers, also advised Mehta not to adopt the Justice Department’s proposed changes because of the ripple effects they would have across the tech industry.Hobbling Google in the way the Justice Department envisions would make it more difficult for startups to realize their goal of being acquired, the App Association wrote. “Developers will be overcome by uncertainty” if Google is torn apart, the group argues.Buy Y Combinator, an incubator that has helped create hundreds of startups collectively worth about $800 billion filed documents pushing for the dramatic overhaul of Google, whose immense power has discouraged venture capitalists from investing in areas that are considered to be part of the company’s “kill zone.”Startups “also need to be able to get their products into the hands of users, free from restrictive dealing and self-preferencing that locks up important distribution channels. As things stand, Google has locked up the most critical distribution channels, freezing the general search and search text advertising markets into static competition for more than a decade,” Y Combinator told Mehta.
Michael Liedtke, AP Technology Writer
Graduating from high school is a huge rite of passage, but entering the working world, especially in uncertain economic times, can be intimidating. According to a new study, a big chunk of high school graduates say they don’t exactly feel prepared for post-school challenges, especially when it comes to a few necessary life skills. And many feel pressured to lean into influencer culture as a way to make ends meet.
The national survey, which was commissioned by K12, an accredited online K through 12 school, asked 300 recent high school graduates and 200 parents about how confident they were upon entering the real world. Notably, less than a third (32%) of recent grads said they felt their high school years had equipped them.
Teen boys felt less prepared than girls, with 23% rating their “real world” confidence at 3 or below on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most confident. Meanwhile, 16% of female grads said the same.
Questions on where their confidence was lacking highlighted a few areas where recent grads felt most insecure, which, somewhat surprisingly, seemed to be the very rites of passage that young adults once looked forward to: 34% said they didn’t feel confident about managing their own money, 27% didn’t feel ready to live independently, and 26% cited communicating effectively as a concernperhaps a display of how online communication has peaked in recent years in lieu of in-person communication.
Recent grads’ biggest fears echoed those insecurities, with 44% saying that they were worried about becoming financially secure.
In addition to a challenging job market and an uncertain economy, those grads largely felt that their high schools didn’t equip them with some key life skillsmainly, financial skills. A staggering 62% said they wish they’d learned how to do their taxes, 60% said the same of being taught about credit scores and loans, and 51% also noted that they wished they had learned how to invest.
Given many high school grads don’t feel quite ready for the real world, it makes sense that most teens said they plan on attending college after graduation: 90% said college is in their future. However, there was another notable trend that grads are likely to lean into after high school: becoming an influencer.
More than a third, or 34% said they felt pressure from social media to become content creators or entrepreneurs, which is hardly surprising given just how common the side gig, or even full-time career, has become. But interestingly, it’s not just social media that’s steering teens toward content creation. According to the report, 56% said their high school actually encouraged students to “explore alternative career paths.” Those alternatives were things like trades, gig work, and yes, content creation.
Given the lives of young adults today are so broadly shaped by social media and influencer culture, the pull to dive into content creation makes perfect sense. Still, teens are rightly worried about whether or not they have the financial literacy to turn influencing into income.
Xiaomi rolled out its new sports utility vehicle in Beijing on Thursday, as the firm best known for smartphones and consumer electronics gears up to further challenge Tesla in the world’s largest auto market.
Xiaomi launched the YU7 at 13 of its Beijing showrooms and will start taking orders for the vehicle in July. It is keen to repeat the success of the sporty SU7 sedan, which launched last year and has outsold Tesla’s Model 3 on a monthly basis since December.
Analysts have said the YU7 could pose a major threat to Tesla’s best-selling Model Y but its launch comes at a time when Xiaomi, a relative newcomer to China’s highly-competitive EV market, has seen new EV orders fall after a series of controversies.
Chinese authorities have been investigating a fatal highway crash at the end of March involving an SU7 in driving-assistance mode and Xiaomi has apologised for “not clear enough” marketing after customer complaints of false advertising.
Liu Jiaxing, a 34-year-old tech worker, was among the first visitors to Xiaomi’s flagship showroom in Beijing Oriental Plaza on Thursday morning, eager to catch a glimpse of the emerald green YU7.
Liu said he was fond of the styling and colour as well as the fact that Xiaomi vehicles connect with the firm’s personal gadgets and smart home products, which he felt pointed to how local brands understood Chinese consumers better than their foreign counterparts.
“I used to be more prone to U.S., German, and French car marques, but the fast progress of China’s EV sector prompts me to focus more on the products rather than brands,” he said.
Another visitor was Tom van Dillen, managing partner at German management consultancy Greenkern in Beijing, who said he was not a fan of some of the YU7’s intelligent features, which he described as “unnecessary,” but said the YU7 was a formidable challenger to the Model Y.
He cited a “physical ecosystem advantage in the showroom where there is a dedicated area with accessories that only fit into Xiaomi cars” and their competitive price.
Xiaomi has said that it will only announce the YU7’s pricing in July.
HSBC Qianhai estimated in a note last week that the new SUV will be priced between 230,000 yuan and 330,000 yuan ($31,989-$45,898) and that Xiaomi could ship 100,000 YU7 units this year and 249,000 units in 2026.
The Model Y is priced from 263,500 yuan in China.
($1 = 7.1899 Chinese yuan renminbi)
Qiaoyi Li and Alessandro Diviggiano, Reuters
Last weekend, an ugly rumor of a tragic death spread began rocketing around Bluesky. What made it odd was the identity of the dearly departed: Bluesky itself.
Its not entirely clear what prompted this discussion, which ultimately seemed to be dominated by Bluesky fans rejecting the possibility that the social network had died (or at least jumped the shark). According to one theory, a story by Semafors Max Tani ignited the debate by mentioning Democratic congressional staffers whod given up on Bluesky after their bosses kept getting yelled at by Democratic users angry at their impotence. That doesnt sound like evidence of death to me. Another contributing factor might have been slowing user growth after millions of disaffected Twitter users arrived en masse in the wake of the U.S. November presidential election results and Elon Musks Trump boosterism. The service grew from 11 million users to 25 million between late October and mid-December, but has added only about 10 million more since then. Again, not a sign of rigor mortis or even a dreaded vibe shift.
For a social network, being prematurely written off is a rite of passage. Its even a compliment of sortsa sign that people are paying attention and care. Way back in 2014, for instance, when Twitter was still ascendant, I wrote about the fact that cranky users had started predicting its demise less than a year after it launched in 2006. So when I chatted with Bluesky CEO Jay Graber this week, I wasnt surprised that she didnt seem fazed by the debate on her platform and saw the parallels with early-days Twitter.
Reports of our death are greatly exaggerated, she told me. It’s a similar thing, because with social sites, it’s not straight up all the time. [Growth] comes in waves, and at each stage, there’s a new era of communities being established and formed. We’re still seeing a lot of community formation, and one of the most exciting things is how structurally different this is. It’s not just another social site that has to be a singular winner takes all in an ecosystem with existing incumbents.
I spoke with Graber backstage at the Web Summit conference in Vancouver, shortly after shed been interviewed by Wireds Katie Drummond during the events Tuesday night opening session. (I should note that shes also appearing at a Fast Company event next week.) Her assertion that social networkings days of corporatized centralization are over seems manifestly true to me, and its a phenomenon bigger than Bluesky itself.
In November, I stopped posting to Twitter and began using a wonderful multi-network app called OpenVibe to post to three alternatives. Bluesky is one of them. So is Mastodon, an even more grass-roots operation that makes Bluesky, with its 25 employees, look like a tech giant. And the thirdMetas Threadsactually does hail from a tech giant.
Ive had rewarding experiences on all three, though Threads, which has around 10 times as many users as Bluesky, feels too much like a purposefully sterile planned community to me. I prefer havens for wandering conversations and playful weirdness, which Bluesky and Mastodon both provide at their best. All three show every sign of remaining relevant for the long haul, unlike some of the Twitter wannabes that didnt make it (RIP, T2 and Post) or turned out not to matter all that much (hello, Substack Notes).
Like The Atlantics Charlie Warzel, Im surprised that so many reasonable people remain active on Twitter, which has come to resemble a dystopian carnival ride. (Exhibit A, for the moment: The bizarre recent incident in which Musks Grok bot wouldnt shut up about supposed white genocide in South Africa.) But I wouldnt argue that Twitter is dyingjust that its a disfigured shell of its former self.
I dont expect any social network to replace the Twitter of yore as the internets uncontested go-to destination for real-time chatter about current events and pop culture. Bluesky, however, is still making progress in its quest to fill the hole left by Musks dismantling act. A new Pew Research Center study confirms that the presidential election results led to a major influx of news influencers at Bluesky, though even more are still on Twitter. Moreover, Bluesky is beginning to build functionality to cultivate conversations around the days events.
Earlier this month, for example, the service began beta testing a feature that lets the NBA use its Bluesky profile picture as a portal that sends users to live content. The company says the WNBA account will also get the capability, whichif deployed more widelywould be pretty useful for anybody who offers live video, including individuals on YouTube and Twitch.
In a roundabout way, this new Live Now feature reminds me of Twitters pricey 2016 gambit to turn itself into a live-event platform by streaming NFL games. Except all Bluesky is doing is facilitating users leaving the service to consume video elsewhere, which is both infinitely cheaper than buying sporting rights and more in line with its philosophy of knocking down social medias walled gardens. We are a pass-through so that, as a content creator, you can get users onto your site more easily, says Graber.
If Bluesky is still in the process of becoming as conducive to community as Twitter once was, its also avoided some of the problems that have long dogged the older service. The Pew study showed that its news-influencer presence skews to the left, a finding that wont startle anyone whos spent time there. Any broadening of its political spectrum could result in its tenor growing more fraught. Already, it can have a snappish quality, as reflected in the congressional drubbing reported by Semafor and software kingpin Adobes hostile reception after it began posting in April. (Overly brand safe Bluesky is not.)
What happens if Bluesky ever gets overrun with trolls, as Twitter was years before Musk took charge? I asked Graber about its approach to moderation, especially in a period when Meta seems quite proud of its Twitter-like decision to dramatically scale back attempts to keep the conversation on its platforms accurate and civil. We’ve always stayed lean, but we’ve always had human moderators, and we think that humans always need to be in the loop, she told me. Because ultimately, youre dealing with humans. On the other hand, there are automated systems that are constantly attacking social networks and you have to have automated systems to keep up with that. So we use a combination. The company also leverages the work of third parties who use open-source moderation tools to block spammers, she says.
One other challenge that Bluesky has not yet fully confronted is monetizing itself. Onstage at Web Summit, Graber emphasized that its working on subscription services, a healthier revenue source than stuffing feeds with ads, though potentially a tougher one to scale up to sustainability. The company announced a $15 million Series A funding round last October.
Graber isnt the type to declare her intention to crush the competition. In a previous conversation I had with her, she said nice things about Mastodon. Even her digs at Meta are a principled stance against social media being dominated by a few monolithic companies. But neither is she satisfied to operate a social network that may never grow to the size of a Twitter or Threads. In both her onstage interview and our subsequent chat, she was at her most passionate when discussing the companys aspiration to decentralize social networking via its open AT Protocol. It powers Blueskyand variants such as the Pinksky photo-sharing app, which she praised onstagebut could also provide the infrastructure for further-flung social experiences. Maybe even ones catering to folks who have zero interest in participating in the Bluesky community.
The goal is to really get through that this is a choose your own adventure and Bluesky’s just the beginning, she says. The sky’s the limit. Whether shell fulfill her grandest ambitions, Im not sure. But I already like this era of social networking better than the one when a handful of winners really did take all.
Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if you’re reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Friday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. I’m also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads, and you can follow Plugged In on Flipboard.
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Scientists say 4 billion people, about half the world’s population, experienced at least one extra month of extreme heat because of human-caused climate change from May 2024 to May 2025.The extreme heat caused illness, death, crop losses, and strained energy and health care systems, according to the analysis from World Weather Attribution, Climate Central and the Red Cross.“Although floods and cyclones often dominate headlines, heat is arguably the deadliest extreme event,” the report said. Many heat-related deaths are unreported or are mislabeled by other conditions like heart disease or kidney failure.The scientists used peer-reviewed methods to study how much climate change boosted temperatures in an extreme heat event and calculated how much more likely its occurrence was because of climate change. In almost all countries in the world, the number of extreme heat days has at least doubled compared with a world without climate change.Caribbean islands were among the hardest hit by additional extreme heat days. Puerto Rico, a territory of the United States, endured 161 days of extreme heat. Without climate change, only 48 would have occurred.“It makes it feel impossible to be outside,” said Charlotte Gossett Navarro, chief director for Puerto Rico at Hispanic Federation, a nonprofit focused on social and environmental issues in Latino communities, who lives in the San Juan area and was not involved in the report.“Even something as simple as trying to have a day outdoors with family, we weren’t able to do it because the heat was too high,” she said, reporting feeling dizzy and sick last summer.When the power goes out, which happens frequently in Puerto Rico in part because of decades of neglected grid maintenance and damage from Hurricane Maria in 2017, Navarro said it is difficult to sleep. “If you are someone relatively healthy, that is uncomfortable, it’s hard to sleep . . . but if you are someone who has a health condition, now your life is at risk,” Gossett Navarro said.Heat waves are silent killers, said Friederike Otto, associate professor of climate science at Imperial College London, one of the report’s authors. “People don’t fall dead on the street in a heat wave . . . people either die in hospitals or in poorly insulated homes and therefore are just not seen,” he said.Low-income communities and vulnerable populations, such as older adults and people with medical conditions, suffer the most from extreme heat.The high temperatures recorded in the extreme heat events that occurred in Central Asia in March, South Sudan in February and in the Mediterranean last July would have not been possible without climate change, according to the report. At least 21 people died in Morocco after temperatures hit 118 degrees Fahrenheit (48 degrees Celsius) last July. People are noticing temperatures are getting hotter but don’t always know it is being driven by climate change, said Roop Singh, head of urban and attribution at the Red Cross Red Crescent Climate Centre, in a World Weather Attribution statement.“We need to quickly scale our responses to heat through better early warning systems, heat action plans, and long-term planning for heat in urban areas to meet the rising challenge,” Singh said.City-led initiatives to tackle extreme heat are becoming popular in parts of South Asia, North America, Europe and Australia to coordinate resources across governments and other agencies. One example is a tree-planting initiative launched in Marseille, France, to create more shaded areas.The report says strategies to prepare for heat waves include monitoring and reporting systems for extreme temperatures, providing emergency health services, cooling shelters, updated building codes, enforcing heat safety rules at work, and designing cities to be more heat-resilient.But without phasing out fossil fuels, heat waves will continue becoming more severe and frequent and protective measures against the heat will lose their effectiveness, the scientists said.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
Isabella O’Malley, Associated Press
If youre an ice cream fan, theres some bad news: One of Americas most beloved ice cream brands may soon see hundreds of its in-store retail locations vanish just as summer is beginning. Thrifty Ice Cream counters, which are found in hundreds of Rite Aid locations in California and other states, are facing an uncertain future thanks to the pharmacy chains most recent bankruptcy proceedings. Heres what you need to know.
What is Thrifty Ice Cream?
Thrifty Ice Cream is an ice cream brand that is owned by the Rite Aid pharmacy chain. The brand was originally founded in 1940 in Los Angeles, where it was sold from soda fountain counters inside the Thrifty Drug Store chain.
The brand is iconic in Los Angeles and throughout California, where its cylindrical ice cream scoops are a summer staple for people who want to cool down with a sweet treat. As the Los Angeles Times reported in 2018, until 1975, a scoop of Thriftys ice cream cost as little as five cents, and today scoops cost just a few dollars.
In 1996, the Rite Aid pharmacy chain bought Thrifty PayLess, the then-owner of the Thrifty pharmacy store and Thrifty ice cream, for $2.3 billion. After the acquisition, Rite Aid operated over 500 Thrifty Ice Cream counters inside its pharmacies, mainly in California.
But now it is likely these Thrifty Ice Cream counter stores-within-a-store are closing.
What will happen to Thrifty Ice Cream?
Over the past several days, reports have emerged indicating that up to 500 Thrifty Ice Cream stores may close. When these reports mention stores closing, they are referring to the Thrifty Ice Cream counters found in Rite Aid pharmacy locations.
Rite Aid is currently undergoing its second bankruptcy in as many years, and the pharmacy chain has already announced plans to close hundreds of locations.
It’s important to note that this bankruptcy will mark the end of Rite Aid. All of its stores will either close or be sold to other owners. Locations that that ultimately remain open will no longer be Rite Aid stores. (For example, pharmacy giant CVS has said it will take over 64 physical Rite Aid stores in Washington, Idaho, and Oregon.)
In 2018, the Los Angeles Times reported that Rite Aid operated more than 500 Thrifty Ice Cream stations; however, the pharmacy chain has significantly reduced its footprint since then, having gone through its first bankruptcy in 2023.
Meanwhile, Thrifty Ice Creams online store locator tool appears to be only partially functional as of the time of this writing, so the exact number of locations the brand has is unknown.
Fast Company has reached out to Rite Aid for clarity on how many Thrifty Ice Cream counters are still in operation and what their fate will be amid the bankruptcy process.
But just because Rite Aid is closing locations and filing for bankruptcy, that doesnt mean Thrifty Ice Cream is necessarily done for good.
After selling off most of its pharmacy assets this month, Rite Aid is expected to hold an auction in June to sell its remaining assets, including the Thrifty brand and the Thrifty Ice Cream factory in El Monte, California.
It’s possible that a buyer could swoop in to scoop up the Thrifty Ice Cream brand. If so, any buyer may continue to operate Thrifty Ice Cream stores. The counters in the closing Rite Aid stores would no longer be an option, but a new buyer would be free to open Thrifty Ice Cream individual stores, or form partnerships with other pharmacies or retailers to run Thrifty Ice Cream counters in their stores.
Thrifty Ice Cream also currently sells its ice cream at retailers including Vons and Albertsons. A buyer may choose to keep the brand alive through retail outlet sales alone.
But for now, all this is just conjecture. We likely wont know the future of Thrifty Ice Cream until Rite Aids bankruptcy is completed, or until next month’s auction.
What does it mean to be a manager? In todays world, managers need to wear many hats. They have to be a mentor, mediator, communicator, coach, and numerous other roles simultaneously. But at its core, management is about matchmaking. You need to map the talents of your team to the needs of your business. That means making the most of your teams combined talents and unlocking the diversity in your team.
Unfortunately, as managers struggle with limited time and resources, they overlook this critical component. All too often, managers end up assigning tasks on autopilot, matching business challenges to job titles rather than thinking creatively about how to leverage peoples hidden talents or offer growth opportunities.
The shift to hybrid and remote work has also reduced opportunities for the spontaneous discovery of peoples hidden talents. This can end up shrouding peoples true strengths. Collaboration and engagement can also suffer.
Fortunately, unlocking your teams strengths doesnt need to be time-consuming. Over the past three years, Ive helped dozens of teams unlock talents they didnt even know they hadand match those talents to the most pressing challenges they facedthrough this simple, three-step exercise:
Step 1: Self-reflection
Gather your team togetherideally in personand ask everyone to write down their talents and strengths on a flip chart. Emphasize that this isnt a competition to see who can list the most strengths, but rather about identifying the talents that people might take for granted or struggle to recognize in themselves.
Sometimes, were so used to our strengths that we dont even notice them. Encourage them to think about what they find easy to do, or what people come to them for. This short 15-minute period of self-reflection lays the foundation for using the hidden talents for the benefit of the team.
Step 2: Team input
Next, go around the room and ask each person to read their strengths aloud. Resist the urge to discuss or critique the strengths each team member identifies. Simply ask the rest of the team, What talent or strength do you see in this person that they didnt mention themselves?, and have the person write each additional talent on their list. And before moving over to your next team member, ask the team, whats the number-one strength of this colleague that at this moment we should use much more as a team?
As you go around the room, each person will be surprised by the strengths their team sees in them. As their manager, youre likely to be surprised as well at the number of hidden, untapped talents that may surface.
This step is often particularly powerful for more introverted or less confident employees, who might generally be more hesitant to talk about their strengths. Ive found that while teams always have something to add for everyone, its often the quieter members who receive the most additions from their colleagues. The step uncovers underutilized talents and lays the groundwork for deeper appreciation and trust within the team.
Step 3: Match strengths to challenges
The final step is to connect the strengths theyve revealed to the challenges your team currently faces. For example, I worked with a biotech company that struggled to collaborate with another department. The team had identified that Georgina was highly collaborative, and so she became the natural choice to lead cross-functional projects. Pauls talent, on the other hand, was structuring information that could be used to address the challenge of distilling insights from complex data. And Tims talent for visual storytelling could help address challenges in communicating with investors and other stakeholders.
In this way, teams can collaboratively move beyond asking, Whose job is this? Instead, they can ask, What talent could help us address this challenge? It dynamically redefines roles, making full use of often overlooked talents such as:
Spotting talent: The ability to recognize potential in oneself and others.
Offloading: Knowing which initiatives or activities they need to stop (or simplify).
Finishing: The drive to see projects through to completion.
These are not always the talents you see on a résumé. But when you face a challenge, knowing the specific strengths that each team member possesses can be extremely helpful.
Make your matches stick
By design, this 90120 minute exercise is short and simple. However, to drive lasting impact, its important to ensure that your team members continue to have opportunities to flex their talents.
For example, Michael often clashed with senior leader Frank over project approaches, stalling progress. The team recognized that Anna, who excelled in stakeholder management, could bridge the gap. Anna began mentoring Michael, helping him engage Franks input early in the process instead of letting conflicts fester. Michaels projects then moved faster. Both Michael and Frank came to appreciate Annas mentorship, and she continued to assist the team with similar stakeholder challenges.
Embedding this practice into your management style can be as simple as revisiting the exercise during weekly stand-ups, monthly team meetings, or even as part of onboarding new employees. The key is to commit to ongoing self-reflection and feedback. Regularly measure progress, share successful matches, and be willing to adjust the approach as your team evolves.
Being an effective manager today means stepping back from the daily firefight to invest in your people. When you act as a talent matchmaker, connecting individual strengths and organizational challenges, you unlock a powerful resource that drives both team performance and engagement.
