When meeting clients, I make one promiseto see the world as it could be.
Thats not a bad message right now. Its a pretty weird world out there. The volatile political and socio-economic landscape can make us all feel like things are going to hell. And in the slightly less real world of marketing and advertising, thats even more the case. The challenges of any agency or client team continue to escalate. Instability abounds. Then theres the issue of client loyalty, reduced scopes, tighter timelines, and the not-so-secret plan of AI to take everyones jobs. And then the cynicism comes.
As we know, misery loves company, so soonif you want to find itit can turn up everywhere. Youll see it in status meetings, LinkedIn posts, industry events, and coffee machine catch-ups. Quickly it becomes less funny. In the end, its just a deluge of boring negative energy.
Thats why optimism is a way out. We need radiators, not drains, in our teams and our businesses.
But lets be clear here, its not about smiling and hand clapping and whooping. Toxic positivity can be a nightmare, and will inevitably create a feeling of mistrust or emptiness from employees. Its about harnessing a belief and way of working that will refuse to allow the status quo to take hold or accept that things are inevitably going to be terrible.
Active optimism
Lets turn to the concept that I call active optimism. I see this as being willing to see what others dont, to learn, and to try new things. Its about fostering the growth mindset, which in turn allows people to be who they are and do things they never thought possible.
Critically, as opposed to the cynics who are simply tiring to be around, active optimism creates a flywheel of energy that gathers people up and becomes a magnet for others. Now, dont get me wrong, a little bit of skepticism is sometimes useful. But in the world we face today, active optimism can be a powerful tool. And you can embed it into an organization.
Practically, I define active optimism as follows:
Taking responsibility
Some days its hard to be positive. We have to deal with the truth and honesty. Sometimes, the truth isnt great. But we also know that our team needs us on our feet and to find a way forward. We need to take more responsibility for the environment, aspirations, and world as it could be. Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan recently made a plea to the writing community – to take more responsibility by Writing More Good Guys. In a world thats turning dark, taking responsibility is what a leader does.
Adopting the we can if mentality
Adam Morgan and Mark Barden in their brilliant book, A Beautiful Constraint talk about the power of using we can if as a starting point for finding a solution when faced with obstacles. Im obsessed with this approach. We spend so much of our time with challenges its so easy to default to its not going to happen. In many cases, that seems a perfectly reasonable point of view (back to that point about healthy skepticism).
But the moment we use we can if weve started to create an answer. From there we can build a way forward. Try it, I promise it works.
Implementing a reality distortion bubble
My good friend, the brilliant Rob Schwartz, introduced me to this. Like some kind of Rebellion Base in Star Wars, you need something to keep the dark side out. When the chatter or negativity can start to rise, having you and your management team able to take time to live in this reality distortion bubble means you can help each other believe and keep moving.
Far too many of us spend time with people coming up saying things arent going well. Even if they are. So it can sometimes feel like theres no good news, or that its only ever a problem. Sadly thats the job, which is why protecting yourself and your leadership team from it can be so useful.
Now, as Ive mentioned before, this doesnt mean not dealing with the truth or putting your head in the sand. It does mean dont get taken down by these hits and occasionally give you and your team the opportunity to go into that bubble and think about the positivity in your journey to the world as it could be.
Never wasting momentum
A small win here, a positive meeting there. Grab them, socialize them, and understand why they went well. Learn and repeat. Negativity is toxic and can get into the corridors and crevices of a team very easily. But so can momentum.
Surrounding yourself with the right people
You want to spend most of your time with radiators, not drains. Were the sum of the people we surround ourselves with. Get the energy in the room and, where necessary, change the people, or change the people!
It can be hard to be optimistic when fortune doesnt smile on you, and its even harder when you are surrounded by cynicism or negativity. Right now, many of us see a world and industry full of volatility and pessimism. But I believe for businesses, teams, and leaders, active optimism in seeing the world as it could be is the only practical course of action.
If you own what furniture designer Edgar Blazona calls a pandemic sofaor almost any recently-purchased couchthere’s a good chance that you already want to get rid of it.
Furniture sales surged during the pandemic, as people spent more time at home. That happened to coincide with a new low in furniture quality, as manufacturers continued to cut costs. (Supply chain challenges were especially bad during COVID-19, but quality arguably hasnt improved since then.) If your sofa is a few years old, or even newer, the cushions might now be sagging or lumpy. The frame might be wobbly and creaking. The fabric might be fraying or the leather peeling off. You might have spent $3,000, expecting your new sofa to last a decade or two; instead its already looking worse than the old sofa you replaced.
Ive spent the last few years really studying why the sofas of today only last three to five years even at the so-called specialty retailers, says Blazona, who worked with large brands like Pottery Barn in the past. Now, he runs a small company called MadeRight CA that makes sofas designed for durability, trying to fight the industrys move toward semi-disposable furniture that quickly ends up in landfills.
Furniture manufacturers have struggled to cut costs for years. When trade opened up with China in 1999, American furniture companies tried to compete with new imports and then started shutting down factories and moving jobs overseas. In North Carolina, the center of U.S. furniture manufacturing, the industry cut half of its jobs between 1999 and 2009. Some companies that were particularly known for making higher-quality sofas in the U.S., such as Iowa-based Flexsteel, also eventually started manufacturing in Asia instead. As the pandemic put new pressure on supply chains, and the first Trump administration’s tariffs went into effect, brands tried to find new ways to maintain their margins.
[Photo: MadeRight]
Because increasing the retail price of a finished sofa is a harder sell to consumers, companies focused first on cheaper materials. “In the world of sofas, the best place to hide these new, more expensive costs is by changing the materials inside,” says Blazona. One change, he says, is that brands have started using the cheapest possible cushions.
To nerd out a little: One design choice manufacturers have is the foam density, or the weight of a cubic foot of the foam that’s used inside cushions. (Density shouldnt be confused with firmnesshigher-density foam can be either soft or hard.) The best foam has a density of 2.5 pounds and can last more than a decade. Many furniture brands now use foam with 1.8-pound density, which Blazona says lasts three to five years instead. In between are options for two-pound and 2.3-pound foam, which lasts a little longer.
Crate & Barrel, for example, now sells sofas with 1.8 and 2.0-pound foam density cushions. Pottery Barn uses 1.8-pound foam. Even Room & Board, an employee-owned company known for making higher-quality furniture, started using 1.8-pound foam. “It’s a very shortsighted approach, in my opinion,” Blazona says. (Most brands don’t advertise these numbers, but Blazona gathered the stats on competitors by asking their customer service reps.)
[Photo: MadeRight]
Companies have also cut corners in how frames are madeusing particle board instead of plywood or hardwood, for example, and brackets instead of better-quality joinery. Many also now use cheaper textiles, like “genuine” leather that’s made from scraps mixed together with glue, or fabric that easily pills or stains.
Customers, unsurprisingly, have noticed. In one recent post on Reddit, an interior designer talked about how they’d relied on CB2 in the past until they bought a sofa and the back fell off when it was delivered; when the company sent a replacement, the center of the couch sank “within days,” and the customer decided to give up and return it, forgoing another offer of a replacement. In the “Buy it for Life” subreddit, commenters often recommend buying vintage sofasnoting that their parents and grandparents had much better furniture, even when it wasn’t especially expensive to begin withand spending more on reupholstery rather than buying something new.
When he started MadeRight CA, in 2021, Blazona says he visited old-school sofa makers to study how they worked. Small differences matter: the pattern of a fabric, for example, affects how it stretches over a cushion. Traditional sofa makers carefully adjust patterns so the tailoring is correct. “Thi prevents problems like wrinkles from forming where you sit, which we industry peeps call ‘butt puddles,'” he says.
“I spent years trying to mass manufacture, and what I learned was that mass manufacturing does not make for better upholstery,” he says. “Yes, it speeds things up, but it certainly doesnt make for better quality upholstery. Old school tailoringscissors, stretching, and pullingis what makes a well-made, beautiful, hand-tailored sofa. Combine that with great materials, and you get quality that lasts a long, long time.”
MadeRight uses high-density foam, kiln-dried wood frames reinforced with corner blocks, and each piece is upholstered by a single person. The company also works with customers to customize the fit of each piece, which is made to order. “Selling a sofa only to have it returned six months later because it wasn’t comfortable is a big waste for everyone involved,” Blazona says.
The company also has a showroom in the Bay Area, where customers can try out different sofas while Blazona carefully observes how they sit. He walked me through how this “Sit Fit” process worked virtually. That included asking how much I liked to sink into a cushion, and then asking my height and weight so he could calculate the best cushion density and the size of the back cushions so that I could sit comfortably. He asked how much I wanted my furniture to look pristine (answer: I’d rather be comfortable as possible), because the cushions can also be adjusted to show almost no wrinkles. He also walked, in detail, through how the sofas are made.
The company sent me a sofa to try out, which I’ve been using for three months. Of course, it’s too early to say if it will last a decade. I also can’t compare it to other makers that have a reputation for high quality, since my only other loveseat is a 1950s piece from Denmark. Still, the early signs are encouraging. I work remotely, and I’ve been working from the MadeRight sofa for hours each day (sorry, ergonomics); it still looks and feels exactly like it did the day it arrived. The frame feels solid; the cushions, a perfect balance between soft and firm, can all be flipped over to keep them going even longer.
The sofas are relatively expensive. The Venice sofa, for example, currently starts at around $3,000 for a 72-inch version. One similarly-sized option from Room & Board costs $1,799. But if MadeRight’s model truly lasts longer, the cost over time could be better.
[Photo: MadeRight]
Blazona is also thinking about how to further extend the longevity of each piece. The standard cushions are expected to last 10 years, and the premium cushions can last up to 15 years; flipping and rotating the cushions increases that time. When they do wear out, or if they’re damaged by a major spill, you can send back the covers and the company will make new cushions for the cost of materials. “Why have a frame that lasts a lifetime, and fabrics that last nearly forever, but not be able to replace any part of the sofa, like the cushions?” he says.
Modern shopping habits pose a different challenge. If some consumers now think of furniture more like fast fashionbuying based on the latest TikTok trends, and quickly replacing furniture even when it isn’t worn outthe longevity of a couch won’t matter. (Ultra-cheap options, like a $23 “sofa” from Temu, aren’t helping.) But plenty of other people are tired of trying to do the research to buy a new couch every few years, and don’t want to repeatedly spend thousands of dollars on something that might not last (and that might end up in a landfill because it can’t be given away). Customers often now come to MadeRight because they’ve gone down an online rabbit hole of cushion research, Blazona says. “Durability seems to be all we hear about these days,” he says.
Ukraines war with Russiasparked by Russias invasion in the spring of 2022is now entering its fourth year. So too is Sine.Engineering, a company born amid the conflict. CEO Andriy Chulyk founded the company in April 2022, pivoting from running a standing-desk business in the Lviv region to supporting his countrys defense efforts through various drone technologies and components. The 150-person-company has scaled rapidly over the past three years; its parts are now used in drones made by more than 50 manufacturers worldwide.
Everyone thought something might change, that [war] would stop, Chulyk says. But we see clearly now that the situation is only getting harder. We need to be more effective on the front line.
The scale of drone deployment is staggering: Drones are responsible for about 70% of all Russian and Ukrainian casualties, according to Ukrainian officials. In 2024 alone, Ukraine produced more than 2 million small drones for its war effort, with plans to manufacture 4.5 million this year. But such scale comes with a challengethere simply arent enough operators to control them all. That shortfall is precisely why the company is focusing on autonomous systems, developing drones capable of operating semi-independently.
The deployment of swarms of autonomous or group-controlled drones comes as a far cry from the early days of the conflict, when larger individual drones, such as the Turkey-produced Bayraktar UAVs (unmanned aerial vehicles), were put onto the battlefield. Theyre big targets, Chulyk says of the Bayraktars. The shift now is toward smaller, disposable systems. You fly a drone, it completes its mission, and if you lose it, its fine.
But ensuring drones reach their targets is no simple task. Environments are very contested, and its hard to operate, says Andriy Zvirko, Sine.Engineerings chief strategy officer. In response to the growing drone threat, Russia has ramped up GPS jammingdisrupting the traditional navigation systems UAVs rely on. In response, Sine.Engineering has developed a solution that enables drones to navigate accurately without GPS.
More pressingly, Ukraine must contend with a shortage of qualified drone operatorsand here, again, Sine.Engineerings innovations could prove a crucial boon to the countrys wartime efforts. The company is developing technology that will enable one operator, sitting hundreds of miles from the front line, to control dozens of drones simultaneously through a real-time electronic map. Eventually, the hope is that those drones can number in the hundreds. Its like StarCraft, says Zvirko, referencing the iconic strategy game. He will see everything, what is happening on the battlefield, and he can operate dozens of drones by himself.
That shift would be a significant scale up in capabilities for the Ukrainian armed forces. Sine.Engineerings technology is already capable of controlling 10 to 15 drones simultaneously, with systems currently being deployed to the front line in recent weeks. That rapid pace of development is something Ukraine has achieved out of necessitywartime demands quick iteration and adoption.
But Chulyk warns that allied nations must speed up the implementation of new technologies like Sine.Engineerings as the threat from Russia to the global West continues to grow. Western countries need to move faster, he warns. They need to wake upnot just to help Ukraine, but to help themselves.
Cargill Kitchen Solutions is recalling more than 212,000 pounds of Egg Beaters and Bob Evans liquid egg products because they may contain a cleaning solution with bleach, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
This recall comes at a time when egg prices have hit record highs as the country faces decreasing supplies due to an ongoing bird flu outbreak.
Here’s what to know.
What’s included in the liquid egg recall?
The recall covers 212,268 pounds of liquid egg products, which were produced on March 12 and March 13 and distributed in eight states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Iowa, Ohio, and Texas, and possibly nationwide, according to the USDA statement.
The problem was discovered when the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service received a tip about the potentially contaminated products. Upon investigation, FSIS scientists concluded that use of this product should not cause adverse health consequences and the risk is negligible, resulting in a Class III recall.
Cargill confirmed to CBS News there have been no reported illnesses or injuries associated with the products.
How can I tell if I have one of the recalled liquid egg products?
Here’s a list of the recalled items from the USDA:
32-oz. (2-lb.) carton of Egg Beaters ORIGINAL LIQUID EGG SUBSTITUTE with use by date August 10, 2025
32-oz. (2-lb.) carton of Egg Beaters CAGE-FREE ORIGINAL LIQUID EGG SUBSTITUTE with use by date August 09, 2025
32-oz. (2-lb.) carton of Egg Beaters CAGE-FREE ORIGINAL FROZEN EGG SUBSTITUTE and Egg Beaters NO ENJAULADAS ORIGINAL SUSTITUTO DE HUEVO CONGELADO with use by date March 07, 2026
32-oz. (2-lb.) carton of Bob Evans Bettern Eggs Made with Real Egg Whites with use by date August 10, 2025
The recalled products also have establishment number G1804 printed on the carton.
What should I do if I bought one of the recalled liquid egg products?
Anyone who has these products in their fridge or freezer is urged to throw them away or return them.
Although FSIS does not expect consumers to experience adverse health effects, and no illnesses have been reported, anyone concerned about illness should contact a healthcare provider.
Consumers with questions can contact Cargill Kitchen Solutions at 1-844-419-1574; or the USDA Meat and Poultry Hotline at 888-MPHotline (888-674-6854) or via email at MPHotline@usda.gov.
President Donald Trump’s tariffs are unpopular and expected to raise costs for Americans, but he’s trying his best to message them in a positive light. When his proposed new tariffs on foreign goods go into effect on Wednesday, he’s calling it liberation day.
We have liberation day, Trump said last week. Many countries have taken advantage of us, the likes of which nobody even thought was possible for many, many decades.
Trump has long been one for hyperbole, and when it comes to trade, he’s not holding back, calling the word tariff the most beautiful word in the dictionary. But the choice of liberation day to describe tariffs is a true misnomer.
In Europe, Liberation Day is observed by countries in celebration of the liberation from Nazi Germany. For Trump, he simply uses the phrase to describe a day on which he enacts his agenda. Already, Trump called his 2025 Inauguration in January liberation day during his speech, and he’s repeating the phrase to apply to tariffs hitting Wednesday.
How to make a political phrase stick
For words and phrases to take hold, both inside and outside of politics, they must meet the FUDGE test, according to the mnemonic device devised by linguist and Predicting New Words author Allan Metcalf. He wrote that new words need to meet a threshold for frequency, unobtrusiveness, diversity, generating new forms and meanings, and endurance in order to take hold. In other words, they need to be simple to pick up, used a lot, and able to be used flexibly across different groups and in different ways.
Trump is a master of bumper sticker-style slogans and political rhetoric, repeating straightforward, memorable phrases to explain his political agenda that becomes widely used, like America first and drain the swamp. Perhaps the best example is his already tired campaign slogan, Make America Great Again, which he cribbed from President Ronald Reagan. That became so ubiquitous in Trump’s rhetoric that it spawned an acronym and inspired spin-offs, like Make America Healthy Again.
Whether liberation day can similarly take hold remains to be seen. For Daniel Rogers, a Princeton University history professor who’s studied political rhetoric, the phrase is a distraction tactic.
Changing the subject has always been one of Trump’s favorite tactics, Rogers tells Fast Company. Don’t engage with those who want to know on whom the cost of tariffs is going to fall, or what steep new tariffs will mean for the cost of living. Get people to believe that tariffs will free the nation from the oppressive trade policies of the commercial enemies that surround it. Get them to think that there’s a ‘war’ going on, and that tariff is another, beautiful word for victory.
Whether voters outside Trump’s base ever find his trade-war rhetoric convincing seems unlikely. A majority of U.S. adults (55%) believe the Trump administration is focusing too much on tariffs and 64% think it’s not doing enough to lower prices, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll released Sunday. It’s not as if Americans squeezed by years of post-pandemic inflation will greet as “liberators” the higher costs that tariffs will add to cars, housing, food, and other regularly purchased goods.
Max just got a new logo. Again. Two years after rebranding from HBO Max to just Max with new a bright blue-and-white logo, the Warner Bros Discovery-owned streaming service is making an update to its logo. This time, it’s swapping blue for a metallic black and white logo.
According to Max, the color change is part of a larger refresh. Max says the standalone logo will be in the black-and-white color scheme, but an updated color palette, chosen to allow for flexibility of the logo in app and in marketing materials, will be unveiled in the coming months.
[Images: HBO Max]
Why Max updated its logo
Max includes content from HBO and other Warner Bros Discovery brands, like Adult Swim, Animal Planet, Cartoon Network, CNN Films Discovery, and TNT, but the new logo appears to put HBOwhich is responsible for top shows for the streamer like The White Lotus, The Sopranos, and Successionback at the center. The new logo reflects the black-and-white color palette of HBO’s branding and retains the circle inside the counter of the A in Max, a callback to the circle inside the O in the HBO logo.
[Images: HBO Max]
Throughout the streaming wars, individual brands have updated their visual identities to stand out in a sea of blue logos. Disney+ updated its logo last year from blue to teal, and when Max first rolled out its blue logo, its former global chief marketing officer Patrizio Spagnoletto said the specific shade was chosen because it stood apart from Paramount blue and Prime blue. Together with the logo mark, the color communicated something about how the streamer wanted to be perceived, he said.
With our blue and the way that the logo is designed, what we were going for is a combination of premium but accessible, Spagnoletto said in 2023.
In black and white, the new Max logo seems to be amping up the premium aspect of its brand and downplaying the accessible. A Nielsen survey of the top 10 most-streamed shows in the U.S. may suggest why, with HBO shows like True Detective and The White Lotus among the few Max shows with enough viewers to make it onto the list dominated by Netflix, Disney+, and Hulu shows. It’s a strategy that just might work.
In Central Texas, a bitter fight over a $1 billion water project offers a preview of the future for much of the state as decades of rapid growth push past the local limits of its most vital natural resource.
On one side: Georgetown, the fastest growing city in America for three years straight, which in 2023 signed a contract with an investor-funded enterprise to quickly begin importing vast volumes of water from the Simsboro Formation of the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer, 80 miles to the east.
On the other side: the cities atop the Simsboro that rely on its water. Bryan, College Station, and the Texas A&M University System, a metro area with almost 300,000 people, have sued the developer to stop the project. A trial is set for the first week of May.
The site of a water pipeline project by the company Recharge through Lee County into Williamson County is pictured on March 28. [Photo: Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News]
Were going to fight this thing until the end, said Bobby Gutierrez, the mayor of Bryan. It effectively drains the water source of the cities.
The pump and pipeline project to Georgetown, developed by California-based Upwell Water, is the largest of at least a half dozen similar projects recently completed, under construction or proposed to bring rural Carrizo Wilcox aquifer water into the booming urban corridor that follows Interstate 35 through Central Texas.
It would eventually pump up to 89 million gallons per day, three times the usage of the city of Bryan, to Georgetown and its neighboring cities.
That basically stops all the economic development we have, Gutierrez said. Were talking about our survival.
The fight over the Upwell project could well be a prelude for the broader battles to come as cities across Texas outgrow their water supplies. Lawmakers in the state Capitol are pushing to avert a broad scarcity crisis with funding to desalinate seawater, purify salty groundwater, and treat oilfield wastewater to add to the supply. But all of these solutions remain years from realization. In the near term, only import projects from freshwater aquifers will continue to meet the growing water demands of thirsty Texas cities.
Regulation of such projects falls to a patchwork of small, rural agencies called groundwater conservation districts, which might not be fully equipped or empowered to manage plans for competing regional water needs that can affect entire cities for generations to come.
Texas law offers limited clarity, generally preferring a landowners right to pump their own groundwater over regulations on private property. Despite fierce denunciations of the Upwell project from nearby city leaders, no one has alleged that its developers have broken any laws.
Were following the rules. Why are we being vilified? said David Lynch, a managing partner at Core Capital investment firm in Houston and a partner in the Upwell project. I think they feel uncomfortable about whats coming and their reaction is to make us go away.
After all, hes not the only one doing this. Five years ago, San Antonio started pumping up to 49 million gallons per day through a 140-mile pipeline from the Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer. Another pipeline was completed last year and will soon begin pumping to the city of Taylor and the new Samsung microchip manufacturing complex there. Another, scheduled for completion this year, will take water into the cities of Buda and Kyle.
After the lawsuit delayed the Upwell projects tight timeline, Georgetown commissioned two other pipeline projects from the same aquifer.
[Image: Paul Horn/Inside Climate News]
People are starting to pay enough for water to make these sorts of projects work, Lynch said, driving his black Ford Super Duty Platinum truck down the dirt roads of Upwells 9,000-acre farm property and well field in Robertson County. Theres no cheap water left in Texas.
In the middle of all this is the little Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District, based in the small town of Hearne and also a defendant, alongside Upwell, in the lawsuit.
District manager Alan Day feels for the cities of Bryan and College Station. To an extent, he said, they’re right. The more pumping from the aquifer, the sooner everyone will reach conditions of scarcity, though he doesnt think it will happen as quickly as city leaders say.
At the same time, he said, Bryan cant claim the water. Groundwater is a private property right in Texas as sacred as any other. Everyone is allowed to pump whatever their land produces.
Water is the new oil, said Day, a former ranch manager of 27 years. They have a commodity that can be sold and they have every right to sell it.
At this time, he said, he has no authority to stop landowners from pumping as long as they fulfill the requirements of the permitting process, which Upwell did. Even if he could do it, Day chuckled at the notion that state leaders would let his tiny office put the brakes on development along the I-35 corridor, home to manufacturing campuses of Tesla, Samsung, and Apple, and offices of Amazon, Meta, and Google, as well as one of the nations largest clusters of data centers and its fastest growing cities.
However, Day said, there will come a day when that changes. The laws for his district, like all others in Texas, specify a threshold at which new rules kick in. Its called the desired future condition, or DFC, a level below which the district is not willing to go. When they get there, everyone will face restrictions on pumping and the days of groundwater abundance will be over for the Simsboro portion of the aquifer. To date, no district in Texas has hit its DFC.
Day said hes only following the rules. Hell honor the property rights of landowners who want to pump, and when they hit the DFC, hell implement restrictions district-wide.
What does that do to the growth of Bryan and College Station and Texas A&M and anyoneelse who is depending on Simsboro? Day asked. It stops it.
The offices of the Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District in the tiny town of Hearne. [Photo: Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News]
The Texas Miracle
This situation follows a generation of steep growth and development that state leaders have dubbed the Texas Miracle. The population of Williamson County, seated in Georgetown, 28 miles north of Austin, doubled in 17 to 700,000 people while its median household income increased by more than 90%. Neighboring counties share similar stories, where sprawling subdivisions and shimmering tech campuses now cover former ranchlands.
Georgetown needs to add millions of gallons per day to its water supply within the next several years. When it signed the pipeline contract in 2023 that stipulated deliveries beginning in 2030, it was acting on a much tighter timeline than decades that are typically considered for large scale water planning.
Based on hyper growth that weve seen in our water territory, weve seen the need for higher levels of contracted water sooner than we originally anticipated, said city manager David Morgan.
Most of the new water will serve new residential areas, he said, and will be used primarily to irrigate lawns and other neighborhood landscaping. Williamson County is also courting a cluster of five large data centers that it expects would bring another 100,000 people to the county.
But what if Bryan, and the cities of the Brazos Valley, want data centers, too? The region is currently pursuing ambitious opportunities in semiconductors, nuclear energy, aerospace, defense, and life sciences, said Susan Davenport, president of the Greater Brazos Partnership, an economic development group.
These sectors, along with the growing workforce and families who support them, are directly dependent on access to our local water resources, she said.
Gold Rush on Water
Although many major projects importing groundwater into Central Texas are just now being realized, the plans have been in the works for decades, according to Michelle Gangnes, a retired finance lawyer and co-founder of the Simsboro Aquifer Water Defense Fund.
In 1998, Gangnes moved from Austin to rural Lee County. That same year, San Antonio, 140 miles away, announced plans to import 49 million gallons per day from wells in Lee County on the site of an old Alcoa aluminum smelter. A prolonged fight ensued and the project was never realized, but many others would follow.
Thats what started the whole gold rush on water, Gangnes said. It resulted in all these groundwater districts being formed, trying to resist the water rush on the Simsboro.
The groundwater districts were formed by an act of the Texas legislature in 2001. But, when the time came to make groundwater rules, powerful interests kept them loose, according to Ken Kramer, who previously directed the Texas office of the Sierra Club for 24 years. Chief among them was T. Boone Pickens, the iconic Texas oilman who also wanted to export groundwater from his land holdings in the Panhandle.
There was heavy lobbying by groundwater exporters to make sure that groundwater districts could not stop exports, Kramer said. Groundwater then became more of the target for moving water to growing areas and populations.
A sign on a water pipeline scar in Lee County on March 28. [Photo: Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News]
Under a principle in Texas called the right of capture, landowners are allowed to pump from their land whatever they are able to. Changes made to the Texas Water Code in 2001 stipulated that withdrawals are allowed so long as they dont affect other permit holders unreasonably, which lacks a firm legal definition. That leaves lots up to interpretation for the groundwater districts of Texas.
They live in a difficult world where its unclear exactly what their power is to tell somebody no, said Robert Mace, executive director of the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment at Texas State University. If you tell somebody no youre almost guaranteed to get sued.
In recent years, several major pipeline projects into Central Texas came online. San Antonio eventually got its Carrizo Wilcox Aquifer water through a 6-foot-wide, 140-mile-long Vista Ridge pipeline which began drawing water from Burleson County in 2020, causing levels in neighboring landowners wells to plummet.
The old Alcoa wells in Burleson County were also put to use. A developer called Xebec Holdings bought the 50-square-mile property in 2022 and signed deals to pipe almost 18 million gallons per day to the City of Tyler.
Theres constantly people out there trying to lease water rights to see if they could do a project to sell water, said Gary Westbrook, general manager of the Post Oak Savannah Groundwater Conservation District. Were going to have to find a way to regulate. You cant just say no.
The Gatehouse Pipeline is currently under construction to Georgetown, with another one called Recharge in development. Morgan, the Georgetown city manager, said those two projects were identified and accelerated after the lawsuit challenged the Upwell project.
We believe the lawsuit is going to likely delay getting that fully resolved, he said.
The Upwell Project
Upwell Water, a San Francisco-based financing firm, announced&nbp;in 2020 that it had raised $1 billion from investors to monetize water assets.
Upwell partnered with CoreCapital investors in Houston, which bought its 9,000-acre Robertson County farm property in 2021. Lynch, the managing partner at CoreCapital, said he expected to sit on the property for 10 years until the economics of water made it attractive to develop a major export project.
But as soon as he entered the market, he found eager buyers willing to pay well.
We bought it and all of a sudden we had everybody calling saying we need water, Lynch said. Then we said, we have more demand than we can supply, lets talk to the neighbors.
Upwell recruited seven neighboring landowners to put company wells on their property and contribute to the export project.
These arent regular irrigation wells, which in this area can tap water 40 feet down. These are 1,400 feet deep, cased in 2-foot-wide steel pipe, able to produce large volumes.
Mark Hoelscher, a landowner who is selling groundwater from his land to the Upwell project, stands in front of a 1,200-foot-deep Simsboro Well in rural Robertson County on March 20. [Photo: Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News]
Its a million-dollar hole, said Mark Hoelscher, one of the neighboring landowners involved in the project, as he looked up at one of the diesel-powered well installations. Its big time.
In October 2022, Upwell received permits for 16 wells to pump nearly 45 million gallons per day without any challenges in the hearing process. Four months later it received its permit to export the water out-of-district. Then in September 2023, the district issued permits for another 32 wells belonging to the seven adjoining landowners to produce an additional 45 million gallons per day.
Until that point, authorities in the Bryan-College Station metro area, some 30 miles south, apparently remained unaware of the project transpiring in Robertson County. Not until September 2024, when the district considered applications for updated permits to export the combined 89 million-gallon-per-day production of all 48 wells, did Texas A&M University enter into the proceedings, filing a request for review by the State Office of Administrative Hearings.
Texas A&M University declined to comment for this story.
No one has questioned the fact that we own the land and we have rights to the water underneath it, said Hoelscher, a third generation landowner in the Brazos River Valley. The fact of the matter is the water is ours.
The Lawsuit
One week later, A&M filed a lawsuit in state district court seeking a temporary injunction stopping the groundwater district from recognizing any of the permits associated with the Upwell project until a hearing is held.
A&M argued that the previously issued permits should be open for re-examination because some board members of the groundwater district were ineligible for service at the time the permits were originally approved.
In November, Bryan and College Station filed papers to join the lawsuit. It said their ability to produce groundwater from their Simsboro wells and the economic vitality of the region will be adversely affected if the Contested Applications are granted.
College Station Mayor John Nichols, a former professor of agricultural sciences at Texas A&M, said in a statement: The transfer of groundwater from our district to users in other areas is one of the most significant issues facing the College Station/Bryan area. Im a staunch proponent of private property rights, but we are deeply concerned about the long-term impact of excessive extraction on our community.
He called on lawmakers to adopt statewide groundwater regulations ensuring the rights of current permit holders over new water users.
None of that, however, matters to the trial that will take place in early May. All the judge will decide is whether or not A&M and the cities have rights to challenge the previously issued permits.
In court filings, Upwell argued A&Ms petition demands that the Court turn back time and recognize a nonexistent right to administratively contest final groundwater permits that the Brazos Valley Groundwater Conservation District properly noticed and issued to Intervenors months and years priorall without any complaint or contest by any party, including Plaintiff.
If the judge denies A&Ms request, the permits will be issued and work will begin on the Upwell project pipeline.
If the judge grants A&Ms request, the permits will head into a potentially yearslong process of state administrative hearings that could threaten the viability of the project and its promised returns to investors.
Construction on a water tank and tower, part of a Manville Water Supply Corp project through Lee County to Williamson County, on March 28. [Photo: Dylan Baddour/Inside Climate News]
Desired Future Condition
Whether or not the pipeline gets built, other similar projects are likely to follow. The situation is headed in one direction: towards the DFC, the threshold at which restrictions begin.
In the Brazos Valley and surrounding districts, that threshold is a 262foot drop in water wells from levels measured in 2000. In the 25 years since then, pumping has led the wells water to drop by one quarter of that allotted reduction, according to district manager Day, suggesting ample water supplies remain.
But, that remains to be seen. In total, Day said his district has issued permits for up to 291 million gallons per day of pumping from the Simsboro Formation, averaged yearly, of which 89 million gallons per day are associated with the Upwell project. However, only a fraction of that permitted volume is actually pumped.
If all permitted pumping were to suddenly come online, Day said, computer models showed they would hit the DFC in six years.
In reality it wont happen quite that fast. The Upwell project plans to scale up its pumping gradually over years. And many farmers hold irrigation permits to pump much more water than they ever actually will, unless they also encounter the opportunity to join an export project.
When the aquifer hits the DFC, the rules say it mustnt fall further. That means all users would face mandatory curtailment. Its unclear how such unprecedented measures would be enforced in Texas.
For Gutierrez, the mayor of Bryan, this management method creates a contest for investors to tap the water-wealthy Simsboro Formation and sell off its bounty before time runs out.
They want to exploit everything we have for their personal benefit, he said. Its a race of who can take the most amount of water in the least amount of time to deplete a resource for their pocketbooks.
Dylan Baddour, Inside Climate News
This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News. It is republished with permission. Sign up for their newsletter here.
A new study confirms what urban residents and advocates have known for decades: that Americas urban highways are barriers to social connection.
The research, published this month in the journal PNAS, quantifies for the first time how highways have disrupted neighborhoods across the 50 biggest U.S. cities. Every single city studied showed less social connectivity between neighborhoods where highways are present.
Nobody could put a number on the disruption, and now we can give a score to every single highway segment, says Luca Aiello, a professor at the IT University of Copenhagen and the studys lead author.
By comparing the social connections among people living on either side of highways to a baseline model of the same city with no highways, researchers found that the three U.S. cities that have experienced the most social disruption from highway infrastructure are Cleveland, Orlando, and Milwaukee.
To infer individual social ties, the study relied upon geolocated user data from social media platform X. Researchers assumed that two individuals were connected if they had mutual followers and estimated users home location based on where their posts were sent from.
Aiello notes that there has long been qualitative or small-scale evidence that highways and other urban infrastructure are disruptive to local communities, especially Black neighborhoods.
The problem is that nobody had any way to quantitatively measure how much this infrastructure impacts or decreases peoples opportunities to connect across these large highways, he says. If we can quantify and put a number on this, we can quantify the damage that it is doing to our social fabric.
In all the cities studied, the barrier effect was stronger at shorter distances (less than about 3 miles) and weaker at longer distances (of about 12 miles and more). If someone wants to cross a multilane highway, it takes a lot of effort, explains coauthor Anastassia Vybornova of the IT University of Copenhagen. So highways connect over long distances, but divide over short ones.
A long history of disruptive infrastructure
Researchers found several examples of highways as interracial barriers, where a predominantly Black community lives on one side of the highway and a predominantly white community exists on the other. Detroits Eight Mile Road is a classic example.
They also found examples of highways as intraracial barriers, where the highway runs directly through a predominantly Black community. Nashvilles I-40which split up a vibrant middle-class Black neighborhood, displacing about 80% of Nashvilles Black businesses, more than 600 homes, and close to 1,500 peopleis one of many such cases.
Highway infrastructure has long been connected to racial segregation practices across the United States. In 1956, President Dwight Eisenhower passed the Federal Aid Highway Act, allotting $25 billion to build 41,000 miles worth of highways.
The goal was to create a way to connect cities and address the poor road conditions. Ultimately, though, building highways through cities provided white suburbanites with convenient commutes to urban centers, while also allowing governments to remove entire communities of color in the name of urban renewal and slum clearance.
As Black Americans began migrating to cities to pursue economic opportunities, wealthier white residents left urban areas for the suburbs in a phenomenon known as white flight. The interests of white suburbaniteswho wanted to use highways to access the city for work and entertainment but also wanted to protect their own property values and businessesheavily influenced infrastructure development plans.
According to the U.S. Department of Transportation, these interstates displaced more than 475,000 households and more than 1 million people. Today, community leaders and historians alike acknowledge that highways were a key tool for segregating and displacing Black communities during the 1950s and 60s.
A call for policy solutions
Research has long established negative long-term health impacts for those living and working near highways. The exposure to increased air and noise pollution, particularly with 300 meters of highways, can lead to an increased risk for lung disease, heart problems, premature birth, respiratory diseases, neurological disorders, and more.
But more sparse social connections have very real consequences for residents health and economic well-being, too.
[Highways] limit social opportunities, and those social opportunities are connected directly to financial opportunities, Aiello says. Over time we see how these communities continue to lose.
City governments and urban planners have increasingly begun working to mitigate these effects by removing or capping highways, with former U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg noting in 2021 that there is racism physically built into some of our highways.
Last year, the Biden administration announced $3.3 billion for projects to reconnect neighborhoods divided by the federal highway system. Funds for this program, and others with equity goals, have been halted under the Trump administration.
This story was originally published by Next City, a nonprofit news outlet covering solutions for equitable cities. Sign up for Next Citys newsletter for the latest articles and events.
Spatial intelligence is an emerging approach to deploying AI in the physical world. By combining mapping data with artificial intelligence, it aims to deliver smart data tied to specific locationseven indoors and across multiple stories. With this technology, maps become more intelligent, evolving into 3D representations that offer contextual information not just about places, but also about the people and activities within them. While Google Maps and other platforms have long mapped streets and roads, the vertical, or Z-axis (i.e. spaces above and below ground) has remained largely uncharted. Until now.
The ability to project dynamic intelligence into our world has long been a staple of science fiction and has indeed inspired some real world innovations in Silicon Valley such as early cellphones at Motorola, which were inspired by the Star Trek communicator; or the metaverse, which was inspired by Neil Stephensons novel Snow Crash); any one of several technologies inspired by the film Minority Report, and holograms inspired by Star Wars, to name a few. Today, with large language models handling the delivery and interpretation of information, maps are struggling to catch up. Embedding AI more deeply into our physical environments not only gives contextual relevance to the structures and parts of our physical world, it creates new channels for data collection and analysisabout people, behaviors, and interactions. This means, in effect, that information about places is no longer limited to a flat map; it can now be dynamic, hyper-localized, and personal.
Whos building spatial intelligenceand why
Many companies are working on spatial intelligence from different angles. Some, like Descartes Labs, synthesize satellite, weather, and market data into actionable intelligence. Blacksky supports military and commercial partners by tracking rapid changes in geography. Mapbox customizes route planning by adding layers of intelligencelike dining options, scenic routes, or even music. Carto helps businesses analyze spatial data to identify patterns and turn those insights into strategy or revenue. While companies like Carto work on backend analytics, others like Mapbox provide direct consumer utility. And the AR industry continues to geolocate content.
However, todays spatial analysis is still largely limited to flat maps. To broaden its utility, mapping must become more immersiveaccounting for 3D objects, vertical space, and highly localized environments.
Another ambitious player in the field, World Labs, was cofounded by Stanford professor Fei-Fei Li, often called the godmother of AI. The company is building Large World Models (LWMs) that can perceive, generate, and interact with 3D worldscomplete with physics, semantics, and control. With $230 million in funding from a sizable roster of Silicon Valley luminary VCs and companies, World Labs aims to generate limitless virtual spaces, essentially layering privatized dimensional data onto the digital world. Dr. Lis dual roleleading this company while also advising the state of California on AI policyraises potential conflicts of interest, especially as other companies lack such access or influence.
The energy problem behind the tech
Building and operating spatial intelligence systems demands massive power, and already AIs energy consumption is straining the grid. As AIs energy appetite grows, some tech companies are turning to nuclear power. Microsoft, for example, is funding the restart of Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania; and Amazon has acquired land near the plant. Alphabet/Google signed a deal to purchase energy from multiple small modular reactors through Kairos Power, and Nvidia, has been backing nuclear-powered AI deployments with PG&E at Californias Diablo Canyon by managing the facilitys First Commercial Deployment of an On-Site Generative AI solution for their Nuclear Energy Sector. Meanwhile Meta, whose prior attempts towards nuclear energy were thwarted by bees, has not given up its effort, and has released an RFP seeking nuclear power partners with either small or large reactors to help them reach their energy usage goals.
It is worrying that the companies that have created the move fast and break things ethos are now getting into the nuclear energy gameand selling their generative AI software to run these nuclear power plants. Many small distributed reactors are being proposed by startups with limited nuclear experience, some near population centers. There are also questions about the dangers and resilience of AI-run software and testing practices, especially when applied to systems as critical as nuclear energy.
The return of nuclear power in service of AI and spatial intelligence raises serious concerns, given past nuclear efforts in the U.S. have been fraught with issues such as meltdowns, leaks, and equipment failures. Now, with climate change intensifying and weather patterns destabilizing, previously safe waste storage sites may also be at risk.
Spatial intelligence holds undeniable appeal to many, both for utility and profit. The ability to access real-time, contextual information about any spaceeven vertical onesis indeed seductive. But underneath that convenience lies a complex reality: a world where every space could be subject to tracking, surveillance, and monetization. And that, combined with a nuclear push, plays into powering the tech sector and governments vision for new kinds of smart cities, hinted to have less regulation and broader experimentation, with big energy needs. As AIs energy demands grow, the quiet revival of nuclear power by tech folks suddenly disrupting power to build, restore, and run private nuclear power plants, may carry many more unforeseen consequences that will impact all of our lives.
Tres Xemeneies (Three Chimneys) is a former coal-fired power plant in Sant Adri de Bess. Think of it as Barcelonas own Battersea Power Station, London’s iconic power station that has been redeveloped into a technological hub (and Apple’s new London digs). Like Battersea, Barcelona’s plant is set to undergo a radical transformation into the new Catalunya Media Citya cutting-edge hub for digital arts, technology, and education.
The winning design is called E la nave va, a nod to Federico Fellinis film of the same name, which translates to And the Ship Sails On, a reference to how this long-dead structure that resembles a three-mast ship will keep cruising history in a new era. According to its creatorsBarcelona-based Garcés de Seta Bonet Arquitectes and New York-Barcelona firm Marvelthe project promises to honor the sites industrial legacy while propelling it into a sustainable, community-centric future. The project is slated to break ground in late 2025 and be completed by 2028.
[Image: Garcés de Seta Bonet Arquitectes/Marvel]
Three Chimneys looks exactly how it sounds: a gigantic structure dominated by three 650-foot-tall chimneys. The brutalist plant was built in the 1970s and faced controversy even before its opening. Many of the residents of Badalona and Barcelona hated it both for the aesthetics and the environmental implications. Its problems continued in 1973, when workers building the station went on strike for better working conditions, and one person was killed by police. The company that ran the station was also sued because of the pollution it caused, and the plant eventually shuttered.
[Photo: courtesy Garcés de Seta Bonet Arquitectes/Marvel]
The structure is imposing. Its giant concrete vaults, labyrinthine floors, and towering chimneys presented a unique challenge to preserving its industrial DNA while adapting it for the 21st century. Guido Hartray, founding partner of Marvel, tells me over email that the buildings dense structure and distinct spatial qualities guided the strategy. Rather than force modern elements onto the existing framework, the team used the buildings features to organize its function.
[Image: Garcés de Seta Bonet Arquitectes/Marvel]
For instance, the lower floorswith their enclosed, cavernous spaceswill house vocational training classrooms and research labs, while the airy upper levels with their panoramic coastal views will host incubators and exhibition halls. We kept the existing structure largely unaltered, Hartray says, retaining its experiential qualities and limiting modifications. This approach ensures that the power plants raw, industrial essence remains palpable, even as it accommodates immersive media studios and a modern, 5,600-square-meter exhibition hall likened to Londons Tate Modern Turbine Hall. The intervention isnt a sharp contrast between old and new, Hartray notes. Its a dialogue.
[Image: Garcés de Seta Bonet Arquitectes/Marvel]
The architects leveraged the buildings robust concrete skeletona relic of its industrial pastas a sustainability asset. Barcelonas mild climate allows the thermal mass of the concrete to passively regulate temperatures, reducing reliance on mechanical systems. Spaces requiring precise climate control, such as recording studios and laboratories, are nested in a building within a building, insulated from external fluctuations, according to the studios.
The rooftop will double as a public terrace and energy hub, with 4,500 square meters of solar panels generating renewable power. This dual function not only offsets the energy demands of lighting and HVAC systems but also creates a communal vantage point connecting Barcelona, Sant Adri de Bess, and Badalona. The rooftops role as both infrastructure and gathering space embodies our vision of sustainability as a social and environmental practice, Hartray says.
[Image: Garcés de Seta Bonet Arquitectes/Marvel]
From turbine hall to coastal balcony
The projects most striking interventionthe transversal cuts that slice through the turbine hallemerged from a meticulous study of the buildings anatomy. Marvel and Garcés de Seta Bonet identified natural breaks in the long, warehouse-like structure, using these to carve openings that link the interior to the outdoors. These cuts create fluid transitions between the industrial hall and the surrounding landscape, stitching together the Barcelona-Badalona urban axis and the natural borders of sea and mountains.
[Image: Garcés de Seta Bonet Arquitectes/Marvel]
The north facades new balcony, overlooking the Badalona coastline, epitomizes this connectivity. Jordi Garcés, cofounder of Garcés de Seta Bonet Arquitectes, tells me via email that they have designed a proposal that plays with connections and knotstemporal, landscape, and territorial. One of the key features will be linking the city with the sea, where users and residents can share a large communal space. For the first time, there will be a balcony facing the city of Badalona, north of Barcelona. The architectural elements at different heights will offer new landscape perspectives, as if it were a land art piece. In this shared communal space, he says, residents and visitors alike can engage with the Mediterranean horizon.
[Image: Garcés de Seta Bonet Arquitectes/Marvel]
The building is the core of Catalunya Media City, which is a project that the regional government says will democratize access to technology and creativity. It claims that it will house educational programs for more than 2,500 students annually, including vocational training; research incubators partnering with universities and corporations; immersive installations and performances in a monumental hall with 56-foot-tall ceilings; and production studios, including an auditorium, soundstages, and UX labs.
