The United States and Pakistan reached a trade agreement expected to allow Washington to help develop Pakistan’s largely untapped oil reserves and lower tariffs for the South Asian country, officials from both nations said Thursday.Officials did not specify where the exploration would take place, but most of Pakistan’s reserves are believed to be in the insurgency-hit southwestern province of Balochistan, where separatists say the province’s natural resources are being exploited by the central government in Islamabad.“We have just concluded a deal with the country of Pakistan, whereby Pakistan and the United States will work together on developing their massive oil reserves,” U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.“We are in the process of choosing the oil company that will lead this partnership,” Trump added. “Who knows, maybe they’ll be selling oil to India someday!”Total U.S. trade with Pakistan was an estimated $7.3 billion in 2024, according to the Office of the United States Representative, which said on its website that U.S. exports to Pakistan in 2024 were $2.1 billion, up 4.4% ($90.9 million) from 2023. U.S. imports from Pakistan totaled $5.1 billion in 2024, up 4.9% ($238.7 million) from 2023, it said.There was no immediate comment from the Baloch nationalists and separatist groups. Balochistan has long been the center of violence mostly blamed on groups including the outlawed Balochistan Liberation Army, or BLA, which the U.S. designated a terrorist organization in 2019.Separatists in Balochistan have opposed the extraction of resources by Pakistani and foreign firms and have targeted Pakistani security forces and Chinese nationals working on multibillion-dollar projects related to the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor.Oil reserves are also thought to exist in the southern Sindh, eastern Punjab and northwestern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif welcomed the “long-awaited” deal and thanked Trump for playing a key role in finalizing it.Pakistan had been pursuing a trade agreement since May, when Trump mediated a ceasefire between Pakistan and India following an escalation triggered by Indian airstrikes on Pakistani territory in response to the killing of 26 tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir.Pakistan’s Finance Ministry said in a statement early Thursday the agreement aims to boost bilateral trade, expand market access, attract investment and foster cooperation in areas of mutual interest.The breakthrough came during a meeting in Washington between Pakistani Finance Minister Muhammad Aurangzeb and senior U.S. officials, including Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Trade Representative Ambassador Jamieson Greer.The deal includes a reduction in reciprocal tariffs, particularly on Pakistani exports to the U.S., the statement from the ministry said.“The agreement enhances Pakistan’s access to the U.S. market and vice versa,” it said. The agreement is also expected to spur increased U.S. investment in Pakistan’s infrastructure and development projects, it added. The ministry said the deal reflects both nations’ commitment to deepening bilateral ties and strengthening trade and investment cooperation.
Munir Ahmed, Associated Press
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) was created in 1914 to protect consumers from corporate overreach. Under Donald Trump, the 110-year-old bipartisan agency is now being converted into a weapon of censorship and repression for the administration to wield against its political enemies.
Last week, the FTC hosted a workshop with the unambiguous goal of spreading disinformation about one of the administrations favorite targets: trans people. The event, which was titled The Dangers of “Gender-Affirming Care” for Minors, brought in a group of professional anti-LGBTQ+ bigots to air conspiracy theories and medical disinformation about trans people, with the stated mission of eliminating gender-affirming care for trans youth. Instead of doing the FTCs actual jobprotecting Americans from the excess of Big Tech companiesthe workshop participants instead spent hours discussing disproven anti-trans talking points that the right continues to present as fact.
Participants called for the FTC to investigate medical providers who offer gender-affirming care to minors, under the claim that these doctors are engaged in unfair or deceptive business practices. Not only would this intrusion clearly overstep the FTCs authority, it also illustrates how Trumps FTC would weaponize proposed internet censorship laws like the Kids Online Safety Act (KOSA) to target queer and trans people and their medical providers.
Activists have repeatedly pointed out how anti-LGBTQ+ censorship would be supercharged under laws like KOSA, the online safety bill that Democrats and Republicans have been trying to push through Congress for years. The bill would allow the government to weaponize the FTC by giving the agency the power to pressure social media companies to remove any content that is determined to be harmful or causing distress to children.
This language is intentionally vague, and organizations like Fight for the Future have warned it could easily be used to censor anything the government doesnt likefrom online LGBTQ+ communities and medical resources to information about abortion. Weve been here before: The Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA) and the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) promised to protect people online, but all it resulted in was sweeping censorship of online communities as social media companies moved to cover their own bottom line, exactly as they would act if KOSA passed.
So, who would get to decide what is harmful or stressful to kids under KOSA?
Under a previous version of the bill, lawmakers proposed allowing state attorneys general to decide what kind of content constitutes harm and should be censoreda green light to any state with laws that already discriminate against queer and trans people. The bills supportersincluding Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tennessee) and the right-wing Heritage Foundationhave explicitly stated it would enable them to protect kids by censoring trans content. This is in line with the anti-LGBTQ+ agenda presented in Project 2025, whose architects describe their quest to criminalize pornography and LGBTQ+ pornography as one in the same, and propose making it a crime to promote transgender ideologyin other words, to erase trans people from public life, and punish anyone who refuses to do so.
KOSAs Democratic supporters nevertheless insisted the new law wouldnt be used to censor LGBTQ+ content. But opponents of the legislation pushed back, leading to the bill being dropped twice since its first introduction in 2022. Human rights and civil rights groups have been clear: The inherent problem with KOSA is the duty of care built into the legislation that would encourage companies to censor content the government might take issue with.
In a newer iteration of the bill, lawmakers tried to remove this roadblock by walking back their proposal to give enforcement powers to state attorneys general. Instead, the bill now proposes giving this power to the FTCthe very same FTC that just ran an hours-long anti-trans propaganda event.
The FTCs sham workshop” made crystal clear that the agency would use these new censorship powers to carry out Trumps anti-LGBTQ+ agenda. Far from being neutral experts, the people invited to the FTC event by the Trump administration represent far-right NGOs like the Heritage Foundation, as well as groups like Moms for Liberty and Do No Harm, which have both been designated as anti-LGBTQ+ hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Many of the participants have been paid to travel around the country giving testimony about the supposed dangers of LGBTQ+ healthcare, and have been directly involved in harassment campaigns against LGBTQ+ people and their allies.
The meetings participants parroted the repeatedly-debunked theory of rapid onset gender dysphoria, cited widely-discredited junk science papers, and described lifesaving medical interventions like puberty blockers, gender-affirming hormones, and surgery with sensationalist terms like sterilization and mutilation. They also repeated a deranged right-wing hoax about a secret plot by hospitals to forcibly transition children. These are the same lies that have been consistently amplified by the Trump administration, with the plainly stated goal of ending trans healthcare in the U.S.not just for minors, but adults too.
In reality, gender-affirming care is supported by every major medical organization in the country, and there is wide scientific consensus that it overwhelmingly improves the lives of trans people. For years, studies have consistently shown that access to hormones and clinical support drastically reduces rates of depression and suicide, particularly for trans youth. The rates of regret for gender-affirming surgical procedures remain extremely small, with some studies recording it as low as 1.7% to 2.1% for minors. Further studies also show, consistently, that the small percentage of people who later de-transition overwhelmingly do so not because they were tricked into gender-affirming care, but because of external pressure and strucural discrimination against trans people.
But like everything in Trumpworld, the purpose of the FTC workshop wasnt to discuss facts or evidence. The administration purposely excluded trans patients, healthcare providers, parents, allies, and anyone else that would challenge its bigotry. At a time when the agency should be pushing back against the countless abuses of monopolistic Big Tech companies companies, the event had nothing to do with the agencys mandate of protecting consumer rightsjust like its use of laws like KOSA will have nothing to do with protecting children. Instead, it shows how Trump has transformed the agency into yet another tool of repression and propaganda to destroy the rights of queer and trans people in the U.S.
Online communities are a lifeline for many LGBTQ+ people, especially for queer and trans youth who are often in desperate search of affirming spaces. Giving the FTC censorship powers with KOSA would allow Trump to destroy these communitiesas well as others used by abortion-seekers, activists, and anyone else the administration has deemed an enemy.
Cigna beat Wall Street estimate for second-quarter profit on Thursday, helped by strength in its pharmacy benefit management business.
It is one of the last health insurers to report quarterly results for the sector, which has been bogged down by persistently high medical costs in government-backed plans.
Cigna, however, is insulated from such cost pressures as it recently sold its Medicare business to Health Care Service Corp. It banks more on its pharmacy benefit management and commercial health insurance businesses.
“Our performance in the second quarter reflects our disciplined execution and the strength of our business mix,” said CEO David Cordani.
Revenue from its Evernorth healthcare services unit, which includes Cigna’s pharmacy benefit management business, rose 17% to $57.83 billion during the quarter.
Pharmacy benefit managers help negotiate drug prices and coverage with manufacturers on behalf of employers and health plan clients.
PBMs’ business practices, however, have drawn increasing scrutiny in recent years from U.S. lawmakers looking to lower drug prices, state attorneys generals and from the Federal Trade Commission, which released a report earlier this year accusing PBMs of inflating drug costs.
Cigna’s adjusted profit of $7.20 per share topped analysts’ average estimate of $7.15 per share, according to data compiled by LSEG.
The company maintained its annual adjusted profit forecast of at least $29.60 per share, while analysts expect $29.68 per share.
For the quarter, it reported a medical care ratio the percentage of premiums spent on medical care of 83.2%, up from 82.3% a year earlier, but in line with analysts’ estimate.
The company said the increase was due to higher stop-loss medical costs. Stop-loss insurance plans help protect health plan sponsors, typically an employer, when medical claims pass a pre-designated threshold.
Sneha S K, Reuters
President Donald Trump signed an executive order Wednesday to impose his threatened 50% tariffs on Brazil, setting a legal rationale that Brazil’s policies and criminal prosecution of former President Jair Bolsonaro constitute an economic emergency under a 1977 law.Trump had threatened the tariffs July 9 in a letter to President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. But the legal basis of that threat was an earlier executive order premised on trade imbalances being a threat to the U.S. economy. But America ran a $6.8 billion trade surplus last year with Brazil, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.A statement by the White House said Brazil’s judiciary had tried to coerce social media companies and block their users, though it did not name the companies involved, X and Rumble.Trump appears to identify with Bolsonaro, who attempted to overturn the results of his 2022 loss to Lula. Similarly, Trump was indicted in 2023 for his efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election.Lula left an event about animal rights early on Wednesday after Trump’s move, saying he needed to defend “the sovereignty of the Brazilian people in light of the measures announced by the President of the United States.”The order would apply an additional 40% tariff on the baseline 10% tariff already being levied by Trump. But not all goods imported from Brazil would face the 40% tariff: Civil aircraft and parts, aluminum, tin, wood pulp, energy products and fertilizers are among the products being excluded.The order said the tariffs would go into effect seven days after its signing on Wednesday.Also Wednesday, Trump’s Treasury Department announced sanctions on Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes over alleged suppression of freedom of expression and Bolsonaro’s ongoing trial.De Moraes oversees the criminal case against Bolsonaro, who is accused of masterminding a plot to stay in power despite his 2022 defeat.On July 18, the State Department announced visa restrictions on Brazilian judicial officials, including de Moraes.
Josh Boak, Associated Press
President Donald Trump has been getting his way on trade, strong-arming the European Union, Japan and other partners to accept once unthinkably high taxes on their exports to the United States.But his radical overhaul of American trade policy, in which he’s bypassed Congress to slam big tariffs on most of the world’s economies, has not gone unchallenged. He’s facing at least seven lawsuits charging that he’s overstepped his authority. The plaintiffs want his biggest, boldest tariffs thrown out.And they won Round One.In May, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of International Trade, a specialized federal court in New York, ruled that Trump exceeded his powers when he declared a national emergency to plaster taxes tariffs on imports from almost every country in the world. In reaching its decision, the court combined two challenges one by five businesses and one by 12 U.S. states into a single case.Now it goes on to Round Two.On Thursday, the 11 judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington, which typically specializes in patent law, are scheduled to hear oral arguments from the Trump administration and from the states and businesses that want his sweeping import taxes struck down.That court earlier allowed the federal government to continue collecting Trump’s tariffs as the case works its way through the judicial system.The issues are so weighty involving the president’s power to bypass Congress and impose taxes with huge economic consequences in the United States and abroad that the case is widely expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court, regardless of what the appeals court decides.Trump is an unabashed fan of tariffs. He sees the import taxes as an all-purpose economic tool that can bring manufacturing back to the United States, protect American industries, raise revenue to pay for the massive tax cuts in his “One Big Beautiful Bill,” pressure countries into bending to his will, even end wars.The U.S. Constitution gives the power to impose taxes including tariffs to Congress. But lawmakers have gradually relinquished power over trade policy to the White House. And Trump has made the most of the power vacuum, raising the average U.S. tariff to more than 18%, highest since 1934, according to the Budget Lab at Yale University.At issue in the pending court case is Trump’s use of the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) to impose sweeping tariffs without seeking congressional approval or conducting investigations first. Instead, he asserted the authority to declare a national emergency that justified his import taxes.In February, he cited the illegal flow of drugs and immigrants across the U.S. border to slap tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico. Then on April 2 “Liberation Day,” Trump called it he invoked IEEPA to announce “reciprocal” tariffs of up to 50% on countries with which the United States ran trade deficits and a 10% “baseline” tariff on almost everybody else. The emergency he cited was America’s long-running trade deficit.Trump later suspended the reciprocal tariffs, but they remain a threat: They could be imposed again Friday on countries that do not pre-empt them by reaching trade agreements with the United States or that receive letters from Trump setting their tariff rates himself.The plaintiffs argue that the emergency power laws does not authorize the use of tariffs. They also note that the trade deficit hardly meets the definition of an “unusual and extraordinary” threat that would justify declaring an emergency under the law. The United States, after all, has run trade deficits in which it buys more from foreign countries than it sells them for 49 straight years and in good times and bad.The Trump administration argues that courts approved President Richard Nixon’s emergency use of tariffs in a 1971 economic crisis. The Nixon administration successfully cited its authority under the 1917 Trading With Enemy Act, which preceded and supplied some of the legal language used in IEEPA.In May, the trade court rejected the argument, ruling that Trump’s Liberation Day tariffs “exceed any authority granted to the President” under the emergency powers law.“The president doesn’t get to use open-ended grants of authority to do what he wants,” said Reilly Stephens, senior counsel at the Liberty Justice Center, a libertarian legal group that is representing businesses suing the Trump administration over the tariffs.In the case of the drug trafficking and immigration tariffs on Canada, China and Mexico, the trade court ruled that the levies did not meet IEEPA’s requirement that they “deal with” the problem they were supposed to address.The court challenge does not cover other Trump tariffs, including levies on foreign steel, aluminum and autos that the president imposed after Commerce Department investigations concluded that those imports were threats to U.S. national security.Nor does it include tariffs that Trump imposed on China in his first term and President Joe Biden kept after a government investigation concluded that the Chinese used unfair practices to give their own technology firms an edge over rivals from the United States and other Western countries.
Paul Wiseman, AP Economics Writer
Meta Platforms released blockbuster second-quarter earnings on Wednesday, July 30. While well dive into the 22% year-over-year (YOY) revenue jump, were somewhat stuck on CEO Mark Zuckerbergs increasing fixation with the almost immaterial idea of superintelligence.
Zuckerberg uses the word a dozen times in his earnings statement. He mentions that superintelligence is now in sight, that it will help humanity accelerate our pace of progress, and that everyone should have a personal version that knows us deeply, understands our goals, and can help us achieve them.
But he never actually goes into how Metaparent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsAppwill go about creating or implementing it.
What exactly is superintelligence?
IBM refers to artificial superintelligence as an AI system that has cutting-edge cognitive functions and highly developed thinking skills more advanced than any human. According to Zuckerberg, the time has come to enter a new era for humanity.
As profound as the abundance produced by AI may one day be, an even more meaningful impact on our lives will likely come from everyone having a personal superintelligence that helps you achieve your goals, create what you want to see in the world, experience any adventure, be a better friend to those you care about, and grow to become the person you aspire to be, Zuckerberg said.
He added a note that intelligent personal devices like glasses (read: Metas glasses) will even take the place of laptops and phones, becoming our primary computing devices.
MoffettNathanson, a leading Wall Street research firm, has full confidence in Metas growth potential. Analysts at the firm have just increased their projections for Meta’s revenue growth for 2025 and 2026. This is in large part due to Meta’s success with using AI to “drive better monetization and engagement,” MoffettNathanson wrote in a research note on Thursday, thereby driving up ad revenues.
However, MoffettNathanson said it also has doubts about Meta’s ability to replace traditional phones with super-intelligent devices.
In Metas worldview, the future AI form factor will be dominated by glasses and Meta AI will be the core AI-driven agent to lift our human experience, the analysts wrote. “Thus, the current gatekeepersnamely Apple and Alphabetwill be pushed to the side as consumers embrace a non-phone future.
Do Meta’s rising costs matter?
So, how does Zuckerberg plan to usher in such an era? It appears that he will follow the adage, you have to spend money to make money.
Metas quarter-two revenue increased 22% YOY to $47.2 billion, but its costs and expenses also rose, increasing 12% YOY to $27.1 billion. The company also expects to spend between $114 billion to $118 billion in 2025, 20 to 24% more YOY.
At the same time, Meta continues to enjoy enduring success in advertising sales, one of the five major AI opportunities that the company laid out during its quarter-one 2025 earnings report three months ago. This most recent quarter saw ad impressions increase by 11% across all of Metas apps YOY.
The growth is a reminder that while Metas chief executive spends a lot of time extolling the hypothetical benefits of superintelligence, advertising on the companys massive social media platforms is still what pays the bills as it moves toward this aforementioned new era.
For now, Metas investors certainly dont seem to mind the higher costs as long as theres increased revenue and profit.
Shares of Meta rose about 12% after hours and into premarket trading on Thursday. The stock expected to hit a record high when the market opens this morning.
More than 100 years ago, Frigidaire invented the first self-contained electric refrigerator. Now, the American brand is introducing a hotter innovation.
Frigidaire’s new oven lets you bake pizza at home, in an oven that can reach never before achieved temperatures for a home oven. Typically, residential ovens in the U.S. are capped at 600°F, though most top out at between 500°F and 550°F. Frigidaire’s Stone-Baked Pizza Oven, which retails between $2,299 and $2,500 (depending on the fuel type), comes with a specially designed stone tray that slots into the upper cavity, where temperatures can soar to 750°F, enough to get that crispy crust we all crave when ordering takeout pizza.
[Photo: Frigidaire]
An ode to pizza
By some estimates, Americans consume three billion pizzas a year; 350 pizza slices are sold every second. Naturally, our obsession with ‘za translates into big money. In 2024, the market size of the U.S. pizza restaurant industry was just over $50 billion, while the frozen pizza market was worth $9.6 billion. “Everyone loves pizza,” says Natalie Walsh, senior brand manager at Electrolux (Frigidaire’s parent company).
On any given day, 11% of the American population is eating pizza, and the majority of them are consuming it at restaurants or from grocery stores. So when Frigidaire first entertained the idea of a stone-baked pizza oven, they kept going back to the “what if.”
“What if we could give consumers the ability to do that at home and make it a better and more fun experience?” says Walsh.
Frigidaire’s innovation pipeline stretches across 35 years, so that conversation first arose sometime in 2021, when the team spotted the rise of specialty pizza ovens. These came in all shapes and formsdome pizza ovens, countertop electric ovensbut all of them required an additional appliance or access to outdoor space. Frigidaire wanted to find a way to integrate the capabilities of a stone baked oven inside a typical oven, so they took a page from their own book.
Two years earlier, in 2019, Frigidaire had become the first brand to integrate an air-fry feature into an oven, mimicking the effects of a traditional air fryer, minus the appliance. Jacob Stork, who leads the North American food preparation product line for Electrolux, says that the feature has since percolated across the industry, and today, almost every new oven comes with an integrated air-fry.
Could Frigidaire do the same with stone-baked pizza ovens?
[Photo: Frigidaire]
Getting to 750°F
The Stone-Baked Pizza Oven relies on a specially designed, stainless steel tray that doubles as a heat shield and traps the heat in the upper portion of the cavity. The heat shield comes with a recessed slot in the middle, where the stone tray fits, while an edge on the tray prevents your pizza from falling through the back of the oven.
Stone is so good at absorbing and evenly distributing heat evenly that some home cooks already use stone trays you simply slide inside a regular oven. “The stone does a lot of the cooking,” says Stork, but high temperature is an equally important factor to achieving that “leopard char” you would see on a restaurant-quality pizza.
From the very beginning, the team at Frigidaire knew they wanted to achieve higher temperatures. “When you cook a pizza at the high heat of 750°F, the dough reacts so quickly to that hot stone that it immediately pops up, and that’s what gives you that really light and airy crust,” says Walsh. “It absolutely does make a difference.”
Residential ovens in the U.S. are typically capped at 600°F for good reasonsafety regulators don’t want home cooks accidentally turning their kitchens into fire hazards. The rules, enforced by groups like Underwriters Laboratories (UL), exist because most home kitchens aren’t built like restaurant kitchens. They have less ventilation, tighter spaces, and a lot more flammable stuff nearby (think dish towels, wooden cabinets, that stack of takeout menus on your kitchen counter).
The team worked closely with regulatory experts at UL and other agencies to get approval for a 750°F oven, which required extensive testing to demonstrate that the oven could maintain safe exterior temperatures, proper ventilation, and reliable safety shutoffs even at such elevated heat temperature.
In order to bake your pizza at 750°F, Frigidaire recommends you preheat the oven for 30 minutes. The team has designed a clever user interface to guide you through the process: the screen tells you where to put the heat shield and when the oven is hot enough for you to insert your pizza. It gives you a 30-second warning before your pizza is ready, and if you want it more caramelized, you can easily add 15 seconds.
At such high heat, it usually takes about two minutes for a pizza to cook, and about three minutes for the oven to reheat in between pizzas.
[Photo: Frigidaire]
Changing perceptions
A restaurant-quality pizza at home may sound hard to believe, so for the team, tasting is believing. “From a marketing perspective, what I’ve had to focus on is how do you bring this to life for consumers that can’t taste it,” says Walsh. In August, the team will start driving around a mobile kitchen decked out with a stone baked pizza oven at sporting events and pizza festivals around the country. “The more slices we can get into the hands of people, the better,” says Walsh.
There’s another challenge, which is that people still largely associate Frigidaire with fridges. (Refrigeration makes up for a larger portion of the company’s revenue, as well.) Like the Kleenex, or the Hoover, the brand name has become a shorthand for the object itself. “People still call [fridges] frigidaires,” says Walsh, which is not ideal for a brand that’s hoping to revolutionize the oven industry.
Walsh recognizes the awareness problem. She knows that the company’s legacy is synonymous with reliability, durability, “and it evokes a really good emotion with our consumer.” But she believes there is room for innovation, too.
“We definitely want to entertain folks,” she says. “We want to educate them, and we also want to have them walking away with a positive experience of the brand, and maybe change their perception a little bit.”
Picture this: Youre in a Zoom meeting discussing quarterly KPIs while simultaneously remembering its pajama day at school, mentally adding juice boxes to the grocery list, and wondering if your oldest child ever finished that social studies project on global warming. Spoiler alert: He did not.
Welcome to the mental load. Its the uniquely infuriating traffic jam taking place in the brain of working parents everywhere. They end up managing not just their jobs, but their familys entire logistics operation with no staff, no overtime, and zero institutional memory.
This is the invisible work behind the visible work. Not just doing things, but remembering, anticipating, organizing, and emotionally absorbing them. Its the difference between make the doctors appointment and realize child number two hasnt had a tetanus booster since 2017, locate the pediatricians number, find time between meetings, send calendar invites, and prep child so they dont scream bloody murder when they realize why they are at the doctor. And its mostly moms dealing with this.
{"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2015\/08\/erikaaslogo.png","headline":"Girl, Listen: A Guide to What Really Matters","description":"Ericka dives into the heat of modern motherhood, challenging the notion that personal identity must be sacrificed at the altar of parenting. ","substackDomain":"https:\/\/erickasouter.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
A 2021 Pew Research Center report found that 74% of moms say they manage their kids schedules, compared to 22% of dads. And 78% or mothers say they are the ones responsible for household responsibilities. That includes remembering birthdays (even your in-laws), buying new socks before the old ones get holes, and knowing where every single thing in the house is.
Its not that dads dont do anything. They do! Its just that moms are more likely to anticipate needs before they come up. You know, like gifted clairvoyants who can predict a lice outbreak just by glancing at a classroom newsletter.
Why It Matters
Mental load isnt just a little nuisance. Its a slow leak of cognitive energy. High mental load is linked to increased burnout, sleep problems, and feelings of resentment (shocking, I know). Its hard to be fully present at work or even mildly civil at home when your brain is running a 24/7 logistics hotline.
So How Do We Fix It?
I am going to skip the patronizing advice to just ask for help. Help implies the task was only yours to begin with. What you need is redistribution, accountability, and a few clever tactics.
1. Conduct a Mental Load Audit
For one week, track every single task you do. Then share it with your partner, kids, or coworkers. And not passive-aggressively. Think of it as a performance review. This week, I coordinated three dentist appointments, fielded five school emails, replaced the printer ink, and planned four meals no one ate. How was your week?
2. Create a Cognitive Labor Budget
If your household has a financial budget, you need one for mental tasks, too. Whos in charge of medical? Logistics? Emotional damage control? Divide and assign. Youre not being controlling; you are being efficient. The true definition of empowerment is when someone else remembers to send the camp deposit.
3. Use the One Free Fall Rule
Let one ball drop. See what happens. Dont remind anyone to pack their gym clothes. Or spend 30 minutes trying to wake your grumpy teen. If disaster strikes, let it. Sometimes chaos is the only true motivator. Thats not sabotage. Thats professional developmentfamily style.
4. Replace Whats for Dinner? With a Rotating Chef
Each week, assign someone else to meal planning. Not just the cooking. The planning. Including lunches. If you hear, Can we order in by Tuesday, congratulations. Youve proven your point.
5. Normalize saying, I Dont Do That Anymore.
This isnt about giving up. Its about going sane. Youre allowed to say no to the PTA request to plan the spring benefit. Youre allowed to stop being the household stuff finder. You are allowed to NOT notice that the bathroom toilet paper hasnt been restocked. (Even though you did. Of course you did.)
Shared accountability
The solution to the mental load isnt a better planner, or a new app, or an extra hour in the day. Its shared accountability. And it starts with naming the load, claiming your time, and refusing to be the familys unpaid executive assistant. Because heres the thing: if no one else is worrying about the lunch boxes, the lice, or the PTA signup link thats closing in two hours, it might be time they started.
{"blockType":"creator-network-promo","data":{"mediaUrl":"https:\/\/images.fastcompany.com\/image\/upload\/f_webp,q_auto,c_fit\/wp-cms-2\/2015\/08\/erikaaslogo.png","headline":"Girl, Listen: A Guide to What Really Matters","description":"Ericka dives into the heat of modern motherhood, challenging the notion that personal identity must be sacrificed at the altar of parenting. ","substackDomain":"https:\/\/erickasouter.substack.com\/","colorTheme":"blue","redirectUrl":""}}
Today, one of the most anticipated initial public offerings of the year is happening.
The collaborative design software platform Figma, Inc. is expected to debut on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). Wall Street will closely watch the results of the listing as a bellwether for investors’ appetite in tech-focused offerings. Heres what you need to know about Figmas IPO.
What is Figma?
Figma is an online collaborative design software platform. It provides tools for designers to craft the user interfaces (UIs) that many of us come across every day, whether that be in the form of websites or app interfaces.
Figma, Inc. was originally founded back in 2012 by Dylan Field and Evan Wallace. Their goal was to create an easy-to-use suite of online design tools that could be used in a web browser.
Those tools have now been embraced by more than 95% of Fortune 500 companies and 78% of Forbes 2000 companies, according to Figmas Form S-1 Registration Statement with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).
Companies including Microsoft, Netflix, Dropbox, Slack, The New York Times, Airbnb, Zoom, and many more use Figmas tools to design their interfaces.
As Fast Company previously reported, Figma says it had $228.2 million in revenue for the first three months of 2025. It also reported $749 million in revenue in 2024.
Currently, the company says it has more than 13 million monthly active users on its platform. It says that two-thirds of its users are non-designers.
What has Figma said about its IPO?
Many CEO letters that are published when a company goes public focus on how they believe the company is primed for growth and golden pastures ahead. But Figma CEO Dylan Fields letter is a bit different.
In it, he talked about the positive potential impact that the worlds shift to AI will have on Figma and design in general. He spoke about how, when it comes to artificial intelligence, he believes that despite its recent advances, the technology is still in its MS-DOS era.
The sentiment is reminiscent of Jeff Bezos’s original letter to shareholders in 1997, in which the Amazon founder famously said it was “Day 1 for the Internet.”
Field didn’t make grandiose claims about how AI and Figmas future moves would lift the newly public stock. Quite the contrary. After stating that the benefits of taking Figma public included brand awareness, liquidity, and access to capital markets, he cautioned that such benefits did not automatically mean the stocks price would rise.
Even if we execute perfectly (we wontno one ever does) markets wax and wane, Field wrote. In addition, you should know that while weve built an efficient business, our primary goal is not efficiency. Our goal is to achieve long-term growth by supporting the rapidly evolving needs of designers.”
Field went on to say that investors should expect Figma to take big swings when it comes to investing in its platform and acquiring other companies.
That means at times we will make decisions that may not seem immediately rational, he explained. And, while we always strive to exercise good judgement, sometimes we will make the wrong calls. If you decide to invest in Figma, we hope you will take a long-term view and stay patient . . .
When is Figmas IPO?
Figma priced its shares on Wednesday. It plans to list its stock today (Thursday, July 31, 2025).
What is Figmas stock ticker?
Figmas stock will trade under the ticker FIG.
What exchange will Figma shares trade on?
Figma shares will trade on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE).
What is the IPO share price of FIG?
Figmas IPO price is $33 per share.
As Fast Company previously reported, this is up significantly from the original target price range, which was $25 and $28 each. The IPO share price was then revised upwards again to between $30 and $32 each.
Its final IPO share price of $33 per share suggests that there was more demand for FIG shares than the company and analysts originally thought.
How many FIG shares are available in its IPO?
According to a company press release, Figmas public offering consisted of 36,937,080 shares of Class A common stock in its IPO.
Of those 36.9 million shares, almost 12.5 million of them were directly offered by Figma itself. About 24.5 million shares were offered by Figmas existing stockholders.
Its important to note that Figma only received the proceeds from the 12.5 million shares it offered. The proceeds from the 24.5 million shares sold by existing Figma shareholders went directly to those shareholders themselves.
How much did Figma raise in its IPO?
Figma says it received approximately $1.22 billion in its IPO, according to Reuters.
How much is Figma worth?
At its $33 IPO share price, Figmas market cap is now valued at $19.34 billion on a fully diluted basis, Reuters notes. Thats nearly equal to the sum of $20 billion that Adobe offered to buy Figma for in 2023.
Investors will be watching Figmas IPO closely
Figma is just the latest tech company to go public this year, but Wall Street will be watching how investors react to its listing in order to determine the wider appetite for tech IPOs for the remainder of 2025.
Thanks primarily to President Trumps chaotic tariffs, a lot of uncertainty has been injected into the markets in 2025. Uncertainty tends to drive investors away, which can lead to muted results for companies that choose to go public during such turbulent times.
If FIG shares trade up significantly in the next few days and weeks, it could make more investors more comfortable with other tech IPOs in the months ahead.
Other recent notable IPOs in 2025 have included Chime, Circle, Hinge Health, MNTN, and Slide.
New York-based cybersecurity company Reality Defender offers one of the top deepfake detection platforms for large enterprises. Now, the company is extending access to its platform to individual developers and small teams via an API, which includes a free tier offering 50 detections per month.
With the API, developers can integrate commercial-grade, real-time deepfake detection into their sites or applications using just two lines of code. This functionality can support use cases such as fraud detection, identity verification, and content moderation, among others.
The Reality Defender platform features a suite of custom AI models, each designed to detect different types of deepfakes in various ways. These models are trained on extensive datasets of known deepfake images and audio made using many different types of generative tools.
What we’re doing now is saying you don’t need to be a big bank, you don’t need to have a bunch of developers, Reality Defender cofounder and CEO Ben Colman tells Fast Company. Anyone that’s building a social media platform, a video conferencing solution, a dating platform, professional networking, brand protectionall of them can now have deepfake and generative AI detection.
The new Deepfake Detection API currently supports audio and image detection. But the company plans to expand coverage to additional modalities in the coming months. The detection system can identify visual deepfakes based not only on faces but also on other image features and the broader context in which the media appears.
Deepfakes are a form of synthetic media created using artificial intelligence to produce convincing video, image, audio, or text representations of events that never occurred. These can be used to put sham words in a public figures mouth or to trick someone into sending money by mimicking a relatives voice.
Global losses from deepfake-enabled fraud surpassed $200 million in the first quarter of 2025, according to a report by AI voice generation company Resemble AI. The most damaging uses of deepfakes include nonconsensual explicit content (such as revenge porn), scams and fraud, political manipulation, and misinformation. As generative AI tools advance, deepfakes are becoming increasingly difficult to detect. An unidentified imposter recently used a deepfake of Secretary of State Marco Rubios voice to place calls to at least five senior government officials.
Colman says that as generative AI tools become more widespread and deepfakes more common, both consumers and businesses will likely start viewing protection against fake content much like they do protection against computer viruses or spam.
The key difference, he adds, is that the tools required to create deepfakes are far more accessible than those needed to produce viruses or spam. There’s thousands of tools that are free, and there’s no regulation yet, Colman says.
In other words, were likely just seeing the beginning of the deepfake era. It just gets worse from there for companies, consumers, countries, elections, Colman says. The risks are endless.
Developers can access the new API and free tier starting today from the API page on the Reality Defender website.
