The L.A.-based fashion brand Lisa Says Gah just teamed up with Polly Pocket for a new limited-edition collection, and it appears to be a sign that Mattel is already gunning to recapture the marketing magic of the Barbie movie.
Polly Pocket Says Gah! is an assortment of cardigans, baby tees, accessories, and PVC slingback kitten heels, all rendered in a pastel palette and topped with playful details like ruffled edges and quilted stitching. Prices range from $50 to $198. It debuts today exclusively on the Lisa Says Gah website.
[Photo: Lisa Says Gah]
A Polly Pocket film has been in the works with MGM since 2021, but it faced a bump in the road last July when Lena Dunham, who was going to write and direct the movie, ultimately dropped out of the project. Communications on the status of the Polly Pocket film have been quiet since thenbut the movie is still in the development, Mattel confirmed to Fast Company. The studio has yet to share a release date.
On the design side, the collaboration merges an ongoing interest in coquette aesthetics and Y2K nostalgia. But more broadly, its also harbinger that Mattels next blockbuster marketing campaign is launching sooner than we thought.
[Photo: Lisa Says Gah]
Coquette core meets 90s nostalgia
The seed for Polly Pocket Says Gah! was first planted when Mattel reached out to the fashion brand with an Instagram DM. Lisa Says Gah founder Lisa Bühler felt the partnership would be a natural fit.
Growing up in the 90s, Polly Pocket was such a core memoryplaying with those tiny outfits, mixing and matching looksit was all about creativity and self-expression, says Bühler. LSG has always had Polly Pocket undertones in our playful cuts, graphic tees, and vibrant energy.
[Photo: Lisa Says Gah]
The limited collection represents an evolution of the coquette core trend that emerged last winter: An aesthetic that fully embraces feminine touches like bows, ribbons, and lace. For the past year or so, this look has come to encompass a cultural movement online toward accepting the trappings of girlhood (e.g., girl dinner and girl math) that some women say they previously felt compelled to repress.
Coquette core has enjoyed a longer-than-usual trend cycle thanks to the influence of rising stars like Sabrina Carpenter, whose Brigitte Bardot-esque look highlights soft, flirty touches and light pastels. According to Pinterest, the trend is expected to continue into 2025: per the sites Pinterest Predicts 2025 report, searches for both ultra-feminine, rococo-inspired looks and doll-like makeup are on the rise.
[Photo: Lisa Says Gah]
It makes sense that the Polly Pocket Says Gah! collab would incorporate nods to coquette fashion (like heart-shaped jacket pockets and tiny ribbon bows on handbags) given that Polly Pocket was created as a line of miniature doll toys for young girls. The collection adds its own spin to the trend, though, by fusing its whimsical details with recognizable 90s Polly Pocket IP as a nod to grown-up fansbuilding on a current Y2K resurgence hats popped up everywhere from the cereal aisle to music and tech.
[Photo: Lisa Says Gah]
Lisa Says Gah’s life-size Polly Pockets
Instead of incorporating the Polly Pocket brands current logo, the Lisa Says Gah collection uses the brands original logo, which ran from 1989 to 1998. It also takes clear inspiration from the packaging of vintage Polly Pocket toys, which recently began selling for upward of $1,000 due to a burgeoning market of collectors. In fact, one of Polly Pocket Says Gahs signature prints is made up of various Polly Pocket compacts, a must-have portable toy in the 90s that was meant to mimic real makeup packaging but contained a whole tiny dollhouse.
“This was a true collaboration,” Bühler says, noting that Mattel provided her team with 90s Polly Pocket images and prints from its archives for inspiration. “Our goal was to bring Polly Pockets tiny, magical world to life in a way that feels fresh, wearable, and true to LSG and its community.” That comes through in the apparel. Each detail of the new collection seems crafted to allow 90s babies to dress like life-size Polly Pocket dolls.
[Photo: Lisa Says Gah]
The first sign of a Polly Pocket movie
Long before the Barbie movie debuted in theaters on July 21, 2023, the world had already been introduced to more than 100 Barbie-based brand tie-ins, including a signature XBox console, a line of Ruggable rugs, a Hot Wheels car, and a collection at Gap.
Mattel and Universals wide-reaching marketing effort made the Barbie brand virtually unavoidable (and forced Fast Company to issue a moratorium on any new Barbie collabs.) It was such a smash hit that it arguably changed the way that major movie studios approach adapting recognizable IP, as in the case of 2024s Wicked, which similarly engaged in a months-long brand collab blitz.
Now it looks like Mattel is gearing up for an even more drawn-out movie marketing play. Alongside the Lisa Says Gah collab, Polly Pocket has also recently debuted collaborations with The Office, Cotton On, and Funko (the latter two also use the brands 90s logo.)
For now, its unclear whether there is a Polly Pocket summer on the horizonbut if there is, we can be sure to expect plenty more collaborations to come.
Eva Rodriguez has earned minimum wage at a Subway franchise in the Eagle Rock neighborhood of Los Angeles for more than a decade. She has stocked ingredients, wiped down tables, and served thousands of meals in the strip mall shop thats sandwiched between an optical store and a Mediterranean restaurant. Often, she worked 70-hour weeks so her family could afford the basics.
Im not someone with a lot of money. I have to fight to eat everyday. I have to fight to have a place to live, Rodriguez said in Spanish.
Only last year did she learn that she didnt have to labor under those conditionsa revelation that led her to accuse the franchises owner of violating numerous labor laws. Rodriguez claims her boss forced her to work under two names to avoid paying overtime rates, denied her sick pay, skimmed her tips, and threatened her residency status. She is seeking nearly $100,000 in back pay and punitive damages, according to a complaint she filed with the California labor commissioner against the owner, Amarjit Singh, known to workers as Ms. Happy.
Ive been a victim of every kind of theft you can imagine, said Rodriguez, who is 58 and a grandmother of seven.
Singh declined repeated requests to comment, including one made in a letter hand-delivered to her restaurant. Subway did not respond to requests for comment.
While wage theft is common in low-wage industries, Rodriguezs case is particularly egregious due to the sheer scope of alleged violations, according to Daniel Rojas, one of the lawyers representing her. It is especially prevalent in industries with significant numbers of immigrant workers, like construction, healthcare, and food services, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. In 2023, more than 1.5 million low-wage workers in California were victims of minimum wage violations, more than double the figure of just a decade earlier, according to a report from Rutgers University.
Advocates say foreign-born workers like Rodriguez may now be at higher risk of exploitation. The Trump administration is leading a crackdown on undocumented immigrants that many say is threatening immigrant communities more broadly. They say raising awareness about existing worker protections may provide the best defense against a rising tide of anti-immigrant sentiment and workplace abuses.
Early last year, an organizer with the California Fast Food Workers Union visited the Subway where Rodriguez works and invited her to join the union, a moment she described as a light from God that appeared on my path. That encounter made her aware of her rights in the workplace.
Formed last February, the California Fast Food Workers Union is the first statewide fast-food workers union in the country, and is focused on raising wages and improving working conditions for the more than 750,000 fast-food workers employed in the state.
Although Rodriguez has the backing of the union, she hasn’t had an easy time challenging her employer. She alleges that after she delivered a letter to her managers demanding proper pay and an end to the violations, Singh retaliated by reducing her hours dramatically. Rodriguez detailed her claims in the complaint she filed in Los Angeles Superior Court against Subway, Singh, and Singhs company, Guardashan & Happy Inc.
Over the course of three years, Rodriguez claims that she was denied nearly $54,000 in wages, most of which she attributed to thousands of hours of unpaid overtime. Though Rodriguez claims the wage theft has been ongoing for most of her time working at Subway, she is only seeking to reclaim three years of lost wages because the statute of limitations on earlier alleged violations has expired.
But Rodriguez finds some of the violations that she alleges occurred before then to be particularly galling. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, Singh allegedly convinced Rodriguez to work more than 1,400 hours without compensation, saying the shop might otherwise close due to low traffic. During that same time, Singhs Guardashan & Happy Inc. received more than $850,000 in paycheck protection loans, restaurant revitalization fund grants, and employee retention tax creditsall designed to keep her business open and workers paid, according to the complaint Rodriguez filed with the California labor commissioner last August. Upwards of $300,000 of Singhs PPP loans have since been forgiven.
Some of the alleged violations highlight the way in which even immigrants with legal residency are vulnerable to exploitation. After injuring her foot and back during a fall inside Subways freezer in 2023, Rodriguez filed a workers compensation claim to cover the costs of treatment. When Singh learned of the filing, Rodriguez was pressured to drop the claim, according to the complaint she filed with the California labor commissioner. Singh allegedly warned her that the federal government would investigate her, and once officials discovered she had worked under two names, her legal residency would be at risk, the complaint stated.
Rodriguez eventually dropped the claim after Singh also allegedly offered to pay her $30,000 and arrange for her to have medical care. But after weeks without the promised treatment or funds, Rodriguez found a workers compensation lawyer and resubmitted the claim to the state.
Millions of workers across the country regularly experience similar violations, amounting to tens of billions of dollars in illegally withheld wages every year, according to an Economic Policy Institute report. The average minimum wage violation in California as of 2015 amounted to about $3,400, a small fraction of Rodriguezs claim. The Washington, D.C.-based think tank also found that the countrys 32 million foreign-born workers were especially likely to be the victims of that crime.
Kent Wong, project director for Labor and Community Partnerships at the UCLA Labor Center, said foreign-born workers are particularly vulnerable to wage theft because they are often unaware of their rights, either as workers or as immigrants.
When workers are informed of their rights as workers, their rights as immigrants, theyre in a better position to exercise those rights. In nonunion workplaces where exploitation is rampant, they are much more vulnerable because they are unaware of their rights, Wong said.
The California Fast Food Workers Union, which is affiliated with the Service Employees International Union, has pushed for cities across the state to adopt mandatory know-your-rights training. In 2024, Los Angeles City councilmembers Hugo Soto-Martinez and Katy Yaroslavsky introduced a motion to direct the city attorney to draft an ordinance requiring employers to provide paid time off for fast-food workers to attend such training. The union has pushed for similar measures in Santa Clara County by launching strikes with the support of local lawmakers. (Disclosure: SEIU is a financial supporter of Capital & Main.)
For more than a decade, SEIU has been seeking to organize fast-food workers into a union, securing significant victories along the way. Last year, it successfully pushed California lawmakers to establish a fast food council tasked with setting workplace standards and wages. The formation of the California Fast Food Workers Union earlier that year marked another milestone. But despite those gains, CAFFWU lacks the collective bargaining power of more traditional unions.
With Trump as president, many fear working conditions for immigrant workers may become even more perilous. In early January, scores of farmworkers were detained by U.S. Border Patrol agents during immigration raids in Bakersfield, California, sending shockwaves of fear through immigrant communities. Tom Homan, Trumps choice for border czar, has pledged to launch similar raids across the country and has directly criticized know-your-rights training. The Trump administration is now also seeking to expedite deportations for more than a million migrants who arrived during the Biden administration by denying them court hearings.
We are entering a very dangerous period for immigrant workers, their families, and communities. . . . Many, many millions will be negatively impacted if Trump makes good on his promise to launch the largest mass deportations in U.S. history, Wong said.
In the meantime, Rodriguezs newfound understanding of her rights and experience of working with the California Fast Food Workers Union have emboldened her.
Im not afraid anymore because I have a union that defends me. . . . I am not fighting to win some money, I am fighting for my rights and the rights of all other workers, Rodriguez said.
By Jeremy Lindenfeld, Capital & Main
This piece was originally published by Capital & Main, which reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.
In a small section of Los Angeles’s Elysian Park, which spans the amount of land a single sprinkler head can water, a native plant experiment is underway that could change city parks for the better.
It’s called Test Plot. Combining native plant species, volunteer gardeners, and a not insignificant amount of weeding, the experiment is trying to find a new way for urban parks to counter ecological degradation and improve climate resilience. The project launched in 2019 and is now underway in parks across California, and the approach is showing that with the right plants and the right amount of effort, parks can be brought back into sync with the natural tendencies of their environments.
[Photo: Terremoto]
An experiment to spur native, fire-resistant plant growth
The idea came from the landscape architecture firm Terremoto, which formerly had an office just a few blocks from Elysian Park. “We saw that it was in need of some help,” says Jenny Jones, a landscape architect at Terremoto. Sections of the roughly 600-acre park were totally overrun by non-native species that crowd out more drought-tolerant, biodiverse, and fire-resilient species.
The city’s overstretched parks department had been managing these issues through annual brush clearance, but the non-natives would always grow back, along with the risks they posed. “It clears for fire, but it also mows down every single native species in its path,” Jones says. “We wanted to just challenge the regime of maintenance that we were seeing in the park.”
[Photo: Terremoto]
In conjunction with a longstanding community group associated with the park, Terremoto approached the city about using the firm’s landscape architecture skills to try a different approach. They asked if they could run a small experiment, planting native plants and doing some active, volunteer-based gardening. The city agreed, with the stipulation that the project be temporary.
[Photo: Terremoto]
A way forward for more sustainable parks
So in the fall of 2019 Terremoto hooked a hose to a water bib in the park, attached a sprinkler head, and started preparing a plot of land for a new kind of park planting. After a few rounds of watering and weeding, they planted dozens of one-gallon pots of native plants. Then, through regular maintenance and weeding sessions attended by a dedicated group of volunteers and enthusiasts, they simply helped the native plants thrive and stopped the non-native plants from moving back in. “We look to ecological restoration as a guide, but it’s not strict,” says Jones. “We lie somewhere between gardening and restoration.”
Within three years the native plants fully established themselves, and no longer required watering, nor much weeding. This one plot, just 30 feet in diameter, proved that the park could be restored to a more sustainable and ecologically balanced state.
[Photo: Terremoto]
A 30-foot circle in a 600-acre park might seem like a drop in the bucket, but the idea has caught on. Terremoto expanded its Test Plot approach to other parts of Elysian Park and other parks across L.A. There are now about 15 Test Plots, including four or five that have fully established plants.
By identifying degraded landscapes within parks, engaging with local groups already connected with those parks, and then asking city officials if they could temporarily intervene by adding native plants to those parks, they’ve been able to rethink planting and maintenance approaches at a larger scale. “There’s a little bit of figuring out how to pierce the bureaucracy and how to get around the otherwise really strict rules about engaging in that kind of work in public spaces,” Jones says.
But in the urban context, parks departments often have to deprioritize planting and maintenance in the face of the social issues they also experience, like vandalism, drug abuse, unhoused individuals, and compromised public safety. A volunteer project like Test Plot is a welcome intervention. “[Parks departments] simply don’t have the budget to do what it takes to actually take care of a complicated urban park that faces intense urban problems,” Jones says.
[Photo: Terremoto]
Test pilot’s appeal for time (and budget)-strapped cities
Test Plot is an appealing concept for parks who face such both budget challenges and the relentlessness of invasive species, and many across the state of California have allowed these interventions. Beyond half a dozen parks in L.A., Test Plots are adding native plants to parks in San Francisco, Berkeley, Daly City, Puente Hills, and Catalina Island.
Interest in the approach has grown so much that it’s been formally spun off into a non-profit organization by the same name. Jones says the organization has received interest from parks groups across the country, including in Minnesota and Rhode Island. They are also being hired as consultants for new park projects, including a redesign of the Los Angeles River Center and Gardens that will feature an ethnobotanical garden created by the Test Plot organization.
Jones says that a central element of all these Test Plots is community involvement. Volunteers are the backbone of the effort, and their ongoing engagement with the planting and weeding that Test Plot involves becomes a kind of reinforcement for the park’s vitality.
“We have people come and they form a bond with their park in a way that they didn’t before,” Jones says. “A lot of people love their parks because they take their dogs on walks, it’s where they run, it’s where they walk with their friends. But there’s a whole new layer of bonding when your hands are in the soil and you are taking care of the land yourself.”
Kendrick Lamar. Drake. Lady Gaga. The charts of music streaming services pretty much all look the same these days, with familiar names dominating the top spotsexcept on up-and-coming Spotify competitor Audiomack.
The current No. 1 album on Audiomack belongs to Nigerias Seyi Vibez, whose hypnotic Afrobeats tracks have amassed around 1.8 billion plays on the platform. Vibez is one of many African and Caribbean artists who have found breakout success on the platform. Many of them consistently draw larger audiences on Audiomack than on Spotify or Apple Music, largely due to the platforms strong presence in local markets.
We are the most-used streaming service in a large swath of Africa, says Audiomack cofounder Brian Zisook. We’re No. 1 on iOS and Android in Nigeria and Ghana. The company boasts 58 billion-plus songs streamed in Nigeria alone. Half of Audiomacks audience of 40 million monthly listeners comes from the continent.
Audiomacks rise in West Africa was initially unintentional, but it has since become a case study in the potential of emerging markets and how smaller music platforms can thrive alongside industry giants like Spotify and Apple Music.
From a mixtape hub to an Afrobeats force
When Zisook and Dave Macli founded Audiomack in New York in 2012, they just wanted to make it easier for local hip-hop DJs to distribute their mixtapes. At the time, many DJs relied on questionable file-sharing sites, creating a poor experience for fans. Those websites were strewn with pop-up [ads] and malware, Zisook recalls. If you downloaded a mixtape, you had to worry that you were going to crash your family computer.
Audiomack grew steadily in Western markets, but never really broke through against its much bigger competitors. All that changed seemingly overnight in 2019 when West African musicians and their fans began flocking to the service en masse. We just took off, Zisook says. The growth was a hockey stick.
To adapt, Macli and Zisook hired a local team in Nigeria, gaining valuable insights into their new market. The mistake that so many in the industry made was to view Africa as a monolith, Zisook says. If you are in Tanzania or Liberia, nothing is going to offend you more than only being served Nigerian, Ghanaian, or South African songs.
Betting on Africa as a growth market for music streaming is savvy, believes MIDiA Research senior music industry analyst Tatiana Cirisano. As Western markets reach saturation, most future streaming growth will come from Global South regions, of which Africa is an important part, she argues. It was smart for Audiomack to position itself as a key player here.
Betting on Africas music boom
Cirisano cautions, however, that business models that work in the West may not easily translate to emerging markets. African countries have a lower average revenue per user than countries like the U.S. and U.K., she says. Even though Africas impact on global music culture and consumption continues to grow, its impact on global music revenue is not matching that growth.
It’s very difficult to monetize music in Africa, acknowledges Zisook. You have a young audience that has limited or no disposable income, and a lack of access to credit and debit cards. They pay for things online using gift cards. So there’s no opportunity for consistent subscriptions. There’s a lot of churn. They have hard capped data plans, and they have unreliable or no Wi-Fi.
Audiomack responded to this by striking bundling deals with local cellphone carriers. The company also integrated alternative revenue streams for musicians: Fans can become direct financial supporters of their favorite artists on the platform, and in exchange get badges and bragging rights. Its a clever way for Audiomack to differentiate itself from the competition, Cirisano contends, noting, The traditional streaming business doesnt monetize fandom, or depth of engagementit monetizes pure consumption.
Thriving alongside giants like Spotify
Scaling a business works for streaming giants like Spotify, which recently reported its first full year of profitability. But it has been much more challenging for second-tier services like Tidal, which reportedly laid off 100 staffers last fall. Audiomack could provide a blueprint for these smaller services to compete with, and prosper alongside the big guys.
In addition to further growing its user base in Africa, Audiomack also courts expats across Western markets. A lot of our growth in Canada, U.K., Germany, and France is diasporic, Zisook says. Ghanaians in Germany, Nigerians in France. At the same time, the company is striking licensing agreements with major labels to gain access to more of their catalogs. This attracts Western listeners familiar with hip-hop while introducing them to Seyi Vibez and other Afrobeats stars.
That way, Audiomack can become a complementary service for Western audiences looking to dive deeper into different music genres. The same folks who listen to Spotify at work might use Audiomack later in the day to more actively discover music, express their fandom, and access a catalog that is not available on mainstream streaming services, Cirisano says.
Teenage YouTube users across the world will now get automatic reminders to go to bed and take a break from their screens.
YouTube announced this week it was expanding such reminders to minors across the globe, ensuring they are full-screen and toggled-on by default. The feature first debuted in the U.S. seven years ago, and went automatic for minors in 2023. So-called “bedtime” notifications have grown in popularity, buoyed in large part by YouTube and TikTok.
But it’s unclear how effective the notifications are in the first place. After all, YouTube users only have to click to close out the banner; on TikTok, its even easier to keep swiping past the text.
It will be effective for a small proportion of people, but the onus is still on the user to turn it off, says Jon-Patrick Allem, a professor of social and behavioral sciences at Rutgers School of Public Health. These are all cosmetic things that may work for some people, but arent really going to shift user behavior.
The rise of stop scrolling signs
YouTube first introduced their overuse warnings back in 2018. At first, it was a simple opt-in take a break notification. By 2020, YouTube revealed that theyd sent more than three billion warnings, and added a bedtime reminder to their suite. This is the same year that TikTok also premiered their screentime management ads, headed by popular creators like Alan Chikin Chow and Gabe Erwin.
A few years later, parents amplified concerns about their childrens social media usage. More and more data flooded the web about a teen mental health crisis, with an uptick in depression and anxiety. YouTube responded in 2023 by making their take a break and bedtime reminders more prominent on the screen, and making them mandatory for all American users under 18. TikTok debuted their own sleep reminder and silenced push notifications for users under 18 after 10 p.m.
Now, YouTubes changes are global. In a LinkedIn post, Pedro Pina, YouTubes head of Europe, Middle East and Africa, wrote that the program ensures teens time on the platform is well spent. (YouTube did not respond to a request for comment.) But these reminders are still just suggestions: Rutgers’s Allem says that users see them as recommendations for best options, advice that theyre unlikely to take.
There is no consequence if an individual acts or doesn’t act on this prompt, he says. It would probably be just as easy as moving on from the post like anything else you werent interested in. The one second that you take determining this isnt interesting so you keep scrolling, would that really be impactful?
What does it take for us to actually log off?
Beyond some limited content moderation, these warnings are the furthest major social media companies have gone to protect teens from addiction and overuse. But, in the wake of Jonathan Haidts The Anxious Generation and 2024s great upheaval around internet mental health, every pundit has their own ideas for further steps. The Surgeon General recommended cigarette-style warning labels; the State of New York demanded companies tamp down on their recommendation algorithms for minors.
Allem rattles off a list of changes that would be more effective at stopping social media overuse. They could mandate lock-outs for minors during nighttime hours. They could force users to pay for increased hours using their apps. Or, the apps could be redesigned all together.
Theres no natural stopping point for platforms designed with infinite scroll online, Allem says. We could consider default settings that were programmed to limit use, rather than allowing for unlimited use.
But none of these changers are likely to happen anytime soon. All of this can be done quite easily, Allem says. It isnt done because it will tap into and reduce growth and profit.
As a child, Sunita Sah says she learned to be good. Growing up in the U.K. in the 1980s as the daughter of Indian immigrants, she was praised for being obedient and studious at home and at school. But she also experienced racial slurs and hostile stares. Sah lived in a place that didnt always welcome differencesand her family was different.
Sah had long considered her mother to be a compliant person. Quiet and deferential, her mom was the model of goodness. But one day that changed. When Sah was 7 years old, she and her mother were accosted in an alley by teenage boys, who shouted at them to Go back home. They were alone, vulnerable, and outnumbered.
Thats when Sahs mother did something surprising. Rather than shrink under their threats, she stood up straight and confronted them. You think youre clever? she said to the boys. You think youre so strong. Big, tough boys, right? Then it was the boys turn to shrink. They took off, and Sah and her mother continued on.
Sah would come to realize that defiance isnt a personality trait, she says. We can choose.
Sah, a physician, psychologist, and professor at Cornell Universitys SC Johnson School of Business, has spent much of her career studying decision-making, including how and when we choose to defy.
Defiance is not reducible to strength or weakness, courage or cowardice. It is not solely for the brave, the strong, or the extraordinary, she writes in her new book, Defy: The Power of No in a World That Demands Yes. We all have the capacity to be defiant.
WHY DEFIANCE IS SO DIFFICULT
Defiancethe decision to act according to your own values when youre pressured to do otherwisemay be a matter of choice, but its certainly not an easy one. Many people find themselves wanting to stand up for what they believe is right, but unable to access that defiance.
Nearly all of us have been rewarded for compliant behavior, over and over again. We get good grades in school if we study; we get positive performance reviews at work if we support the companys goals. Compliance is so conditioned, that for many its an automatic response. So when its time to defy and act according to our own principles, it feels unnatural.
Compliance can be a good thing, but there is a dangerous side, too, Sah says. We learn quickly that we can keep earning promotions if we go along with shady business practices, or avoid retribution if we look the other way when we see a colleague being harassed.
1. WE DONT KNOW HOW TO DEFY
Even if we want to side with our own values over external pressure, we dont always know how. If you see a colleague misleading a client, whom do you tell, and what do you say? Will it be enough to gently nudge someone to investigate the problem, or should you confront the person yourself? If were accustomed to complying, its hard to picture what defiance looks like.
2. WE WORRY ABOUT INSULTING OTHERS
Another barrier is what Sah calls “insinuation anxiety, or the fear that we may appear to insult or undermine someone if we question their decisions or behavior. Rather than speaking up, we say nothing to avoid looking insulting or insubordinate.
3. THE COST OF DEFIANCE IS SOMETIMES TOO GREAT
For some, the cost of defiance is too risky. Speaking up at work can cost you your paycheck and your healthcare. Weve seen corporate whistleblowers fired, dragged through court, and blacklisted in their industries. When the risk of defying is too great, we sometimes have to defer our defiance to another day when the costs are manageable.
LEARNING HOW TO DEFY
Defiance is a choice, Sah writes in her new book. Defiance is also a process. Two decades of research have shown Sah that defiance and compliance are not binary, but rather exist on a spectrum . . . encompassing a gradation of understanding, questioning, and action. She believes her mother had likely encountered those boys several times, perhaps defying them in small ways before putting her foot down.
The difference between someone who does defy and someone who doesnt is preparation, she explains. Surprise can force us into compliance.
Defiance can be practiced in small ways. You can envision yourself in the situation and practice saying aloud what you hope you will be able to say in the moment. The first time we speak up, we might stumble, but with repetition our voice grows more confident, she says.
Practice is good because the best time to decide whether to defy or comply is not in the heat of the moment, Sah writes. Pausing can give you time to calculate the risks of defiance and form a plan to respond. Remember: You dont have to defy every time. If youre caught off guard and are unable to respond as youd like to, prepare yourself for the next opportunity.
Most acts of defiance are not historic moments, nor are they necessarily memorable ones. But those small moments of defiance can help us build the muscle we need when it matters most. The forces that lead to compliance are more complex than they might appear, but they are not insurmountable, Sah writes. We may not always know how to defy. But we can learn.
For anyone considering buying an EV this year, theres a looming question: Will the federal tax credits for clean vehicles still be around by the time you file your taxes in 2026?
Harbinger Motors, a startup that makes electric delivery vehicles for commercial use, decided to help its customers with what it calls an IRA Risk-Free Guarantee (referring to the Inflation Reduction Act). If the tax credit is discontinued, the company will cover enough of the cost to make the EV the same price as the diesel equivalent.
The tax credit is impactful, says Harbinger cofounder and CEO John Harris. We built the company around the belief that you have to sell these vehicles at the same price as diesel vehicles for them to make sense for most customers. And when you start to throw all this uncertainty at the customer around, Well, maybe the price is going to be $20,000 higher than you think it is, these customers dont have the margins to gamble like that.
[Photo: Harbinger Motors]
Harris believes that the odds of the credit disappearing are lowwhich is why the company is willing to take its own risk in offering the program.
Theres a lot of noise coming from the White House about electric vehicles, he says. Its mostly focused on mandates . . . but there is no mandate in the IRA. What the IRA really looks like is massive federal support for automotive manufacturingwhich last time I checked is a priority for this administration. If there was a 60-40 split in Congress, maybe the IRA would get repealed. But consider that the House margin is three seats. There are a dozen or more elected representatives just from Michigan. What youre really talking about is, can you convince all the elected representatives from Michigan to vote out the auto industry? I just dont think theyre going to do that.
Though the political odds may keep the incentive in place, it’s sort of scary for a lot of customers, and so we’re prepared to just take the uncertainty out of the equation for them, Harris says. It’s not the customer’s responsibility to employ a government relations firm and understand all of these political dynamics.
[Photo: Harbinger Motors]
Harbinger makes the chassis for delivery vehicles that are roughly the size of FedEx trucks; some preproduction vehicles are in use with its customers now, and around 1,500 are on track to be delivered later this year. One chassis has a list price of around $103,200 (in the standard way that this type of vehicle is built, another company completes the vehicle for additional money).
The leading diesel competitor has a similar list price for its own chassis, but dealers usually give discounts, so the typical transaction is $90,000. To make the vehicle truly cost-competitive, Harbinger is offering a $12,900 discount that will help replace the tax credit if it disappears and bring the cost down to around $90,000.
If the tax incentive stays in place, customers will make a second payment to cover that discount. But because the tax credit itself is even largerup to $40,000customers could ultimately get the vehicles for less than they would have paid for a diesel truck. (Operating an EV, and fueling with electricity instead of diesel, is also much cheaper.)
Most commercial EVs are much more expensive up front; the price difference between an EV and a comparable diesel version is often more than the full tax credit, so manufacturers are unlikely to offer a similar program.
Harbinger has competitive pricing in part because of its manufacturing process. At its factory in Orange County, California, it builds its own partsincluding battery packs and motorsrather than using a complex supply chain. And instead of dealing with multiple layers of suppliers, it buys materials like copper in bulk at commodity prices. The company also has little exposure to the tariffs newly imposed on Mexico, Canada, and China because it builds its own parts.
Companies that sell passenger EVs may also be unlikely to offer to cover the cost of the tax credit if it’s revoked, both because automakers are struggling with uncertainty about tariffs and because the vehicles are sold at higher volumes. In many cases, however, those cars and trucks are already close in price to the gas equivalents.
The first thing anyone will notice about the new electric pickup from Telo Trucks is its compact form. Snubnosed and sporty, the five-seater has a bed the size of a typical pickup but an overall footprint the size of a Mini Cooper. When it goes into production next year, it will offer a radical counterpoint to the gargantuan trucks that dominate the U.S. automobile market.Today, Telo is unveiling the first drivable preproduction model of its new truck, the MT1, and Fast Company has an exclusive look at the innovations inside the truck that make its seemingly impossible size possible.[Image: Telo]The key to the Telo trucks interior design efficiency is its focus on whats known in the automotive world as the H pointthe location of a drivers hip inside the vehiclewhich becomes the main parameter that determines the size of a cars interior. Telo aimed to get about the same volumetric interior space as a crew cab Toyota Tacoma, the top-selling midsize pickup in the U.S. A lot of the special sauce as to how we get five people and a 5-foot bed into the footprint of a two-door Mini Cooper is packaging, and people are the most important part, says Jason Marks, Telo cofounder and CEO.From left: An MT1 compared with a Tacoma; a Mini Cooper [Image: Telo]Telos focus on the H-point ended up shaping the entire truck, inside and outside. We knew we had the right amount of space that people were used to having. And then what the designers did within that space was they had a lot of free reign, says Forrest North, Telo cofounder and CFO.That led to an exterior design with a short, frunkless nose, and a truck bed that can expand inward into the trucks cab with an innovative folding midgate. That makes it big enough to haul a sheet of 4-by-8-foot plywood, giving the truck both utility and a compact size for urban settings.[Image: Telo]The interior design of Telos cabin space manages to compete with other trucks by repositioning how passengers sit. The driver and passenger seats were designed with an uncommon pedestal base that puts them higher up from the base of the floor. This height, and the lack of the typical twin mounting rails that sit on the floor beneath most front seats, creates more space underneath for the feet and legs of passengers in the back seat. The way that we built the front seats, its almost like theyre hovering in the air, Marks says. The angle of your thighs moves down, your back angle wants to be slightly more upright, and so it lets you actually occupy less horizontal room, even though you occupy more vertical room.[Image: Telo]Ditching the frunk in favor of a larger truck bed and shorter overall vehicle length meant that these front seats are positioned very close to the front of the truck. North equates it to the experience he had driving his first car, a 1975 Volkswagen bus. One of the great things about that is you know exactly where the front of the vehicle is. Parking and moving around in urban areas is much easier, he says.[Image: Telo]But to carve every cubic inch of waste out of the interior, the design had to account for the necessary safety features that exist in passenger vehicles, including crash structures, crumple zones, and a firewall. Having the front seats up on a pedestal cleared room beneath them for feet to swing in and out of the vehicle, which allowed those front end safety structures to sit closer to the people inside. That had to be designed in a very surface contoured, three-dimensional way that optimized for both how you enter and exit the vehicle and how the vehicle performs, Marks says. So that was a big part of how we do what we do in our vehicle[Image: Telo]Industrial designer Yves Behars company Fuseproject led the trucks design. (Behar is also an equity partner in Telo and serves as its chief creative officer and cofounder.) He says this pedestal seating approach is rare in car design, but has opened more space within the vehicle for human-centric design. Its a funny feature to talk about because its like talking about the underside of a chair. Nobody ever sees the underside of a chair, but thats really what this design is about, Behar says. Its about designing the things people cant see to deliver more comfort, more ergonomics, and more spaciousness in what I would say is an extremely small vehicle overall.[Image: Telo]Other space-efficient design elements are scattered throughout the cabin, from its two compact glove boxes to a smaller-than-usual center console bin to cupholders that slide out of view when not in use to a specific place to store sunglasses. Its actually a lot of storage but that feels more dedicated rather than just a big bin that you put all your random stuff in, Behar says.Because its an electric vehicle, the Telo trucks battery was also a big design parameter that shaped its interior design. North, who previously built the battery for the Tesla Roadster, says making the battery as thin as possible helped create more space inside the vehicle without compromising aerodynamics and range. You want to reduce any millimeter you can from your from your roofline, he says.For Telo, size is everything. But in contrast to most trucks out on the market today, bigger is not better, according to Behar. What I think pickup trucks have really embraced in the past 20-plus year is this notion of massiveness and masculinity and silly bigness, he says. That has essentially turned pickup trucks into dangerous and less utilitarian vehicles.
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump initiated a trade war with Canada and Mexico, Americas two largest trading partners. Following through on weeks of threats, he imposed 25% tariffs on imported goods from Mexico and Canada and a lower 10% tariff on imports of Canadian energy resources.
Leaders in Canada and Mexico quickly struck back. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau unveiled an immediate 25% tariff on $20.5 billion worth of goods from the United States and promised to extend the tax to another $85 billion in products in late March. Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum announced she also planned to unveil retaliatory tariffs this coming Sunday.
Trumps tariffs, which are widely expected to raise prices for U.S. consumers, are also poised to upend the American electricity market. All U.S. power grids except for Texass have some level of interconnection with grids in Canada, the largest energy supplier to the U.S.
Historically, the U.S. has imported roughly twice as much power from Canada as it exports there, though that ratio has started to shift in recent years as climate change-driven drought has slowed the output of hydroelectricity in provinces like Quebec and Ontario. Some 98% of Americas natural gas imports, and 93% of its electricity importsmuch of that from hydroelectric damscome from Canada.
Americas reliance on Canadian power is not evenly distributed. Northern energy grids are generally more reliant on Canadas energy resources than southern grids due to their geographic proximity to Canada. States like New York and Minnesota have also entered into energy market agreements with Canadian provinces to receive their hydroelectricity in order to meet ambitious and rapidly approaching climate change goals.
From Canadas perspective, withholding or taxing energy exports to the U.S. is an effective bargaining chipperhaps one of the countrys most powerful. I see energy as Canadas queen in this game of chess, Andrew Furey, the premier of Newfoundland and Labrador, said in January, when Trump had not yet followed through on his threat of Canadian tariffs. Fureys province is one of five that supplies the U.S. with hydropower.
On the evening before the tariffs took effect, Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, threatened to cut off energy exports to the United States full stop with a smile if Trump continues to target Canada with tariffs.
On Tuesday, Ford announced a 25% export tax on power Ontario ships via transmission lines to 1.5 million homes in three statesMichigan, Minnesota, and New Yorkand said a full export ban was still on the table.
All three states affected by Ontarios export tax have climate targets on the books that rely in some measure on hydroelectric power. Minnesota, Michigan, and New York all aim to achieve clean electricity grids by 2040. Michigan is relying in large part on its own hydroelectric facilities, but Minnesota and New York are, to varying degrees, dependent on Canada to reach their targets.
Experts told Grist its too soon to say what Trumps tariffs, and Fords retaliatory measures, mean for these states climate goalsand their residents. When youre adding unnecessary friction into the market, of course youre going to see price increases, said Daniel A. Zarrilli, who served as chief climate policy adviser to former New York City mayor Bill de Blasio. Tariffs are going to flow to the consumer, either directly or indirectly. Zarrilli noted that its unclear what those price hikes might look like, and whoratepayers, utilities, or some combination of actorswill shoulder them.
The trade war may be felt especially acutely in New York, where developers are extending a transmission line from Quebec all the way to Queens in order to pump much-needed hydroelectric power into New York City. Once the Champlain Hudson Power Express is operational in 2026, New York City is guaranteed hydroelectric power during the summer months. It is not, however, guaranteed that reliable power during the winter.
As the state has electrified its power grid, energy demand has been increasing during the cold weather months. New York power grid operators are preparing for demand during the winter to double over the next 30 years. But whether the state gets the hydropower it needs to provide reliable, renewable power during that peak demand now depends on how the trade war plays out.
The fallout could be actually catastrophic, said Adrienne Esposito, executive director at the nonprofit Citizens Campaign for the Environment, which has helped push New York City to adopt a climate plan that mirrors the states. It defies logic.
This article originally appeared in Grist, a nonprofit, independent media organization dedicated to telling stories of climate solutions and a just future. Sign up for its newsletter here.
Before Donald Trump took office, Memphis-based staff for the environmental advocacy group the Southern Environmental Law Center used a tool called EJScreen to measure air quality in South Memphis. The resource tracked air quality over time, allowing SELC staffers to quantify the cumulative impacts of air pollution in the neighborhood. But when the Trump administration began shutting down federal environmental websites and scrubbing the words climate change from government websites, EJScreen went dark.
The disappearance of this resource is just one example of how the SELCs work has been stymied in recent months, according to geospatial analyst Libbie Weimer. In just the first two weeks of his presidency, Trumps administration removed dozens of web pages and datasets from the official sites of the Environmental Protection Agency, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Council on Environmental Quality, NASA, and others.
At the SELCwhich specializes in legal environmental advocacy in the Southmany of those pages were part of the organizations daily efforts to track regional concerns. To address this loss, Weimer and her team have created a guide that preserves archived environmental sites.
The guide, published last Friday, includes three main sections: data archives, including suggested places to search for archived raw data, metadata, and scientific papers; a web clone section, which includes links to cloned tools like EJScreen and the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions Environmental Justice Index; and a web archive, which guides users through the Wayback Machine to find old pages. The whole guide is underpinned by a searchable list that allows users to quickly find specific lost sites.
[Screenshot: FC]
Where I work, I serve a staff of over 100 people, plus our dozens of community-based partner organizations across six states, Weimer says. Overnight, those people stopped having access to the information they use on a daily basis to protect the air, water, land, wildlife, and people where they live. The guide is my attempt to reconnect folks to the information and data they need.
The guide runs off a website that Weimer maintains by cross-referencing other grassroots lost-site trackers with a list of the sites that are important to her staff. Critically, Weimar notes, shes not the only person tracking the Trump administrations culling of federal environmental web pages: The Data Rescue Tracker, Public Environmental Data Partners, and Climate Change Transparency Project have already embarked on a similar mission.
The purpose is simple: We believe that everyone should continue to have access to public information and data, Weimer says. These resources belong to us and were created for the public good.
