What if I told you the single most important tool for growing your business is free? It doesnt require fancy business cards, a corner office, or the latest app that tracks every data point in real time. Its networking.
Networking fuels growth, builds relationships, and keeps your business thriving.
We live in a world moving at the speed of AI, where everything is changing all at once. As we streamline every aspect of life to be faster and more efficient, it only makes sense to modernize how we network. Before you overhaul your networking style, its important to remember the fundamentals, then build on them with new skills.
Networking is everywhere, all the time
Every person you meet knows someone or something you dont. Get to know people on a human level, and if you admire what they do, find ways to support them. Be open to casual conversations in unexpected places, especially when you travel. Ive booked speeches, made friends, and discovered opportunities simply by chatting with a seatmate on a plane. I try to wait until after I take off to put my earbuds in, just in case my seatmate wants to have a quick chat before the plane takes off.
Create your own opportunities
If invitations arent rolling in (yet), integrate yourself into spaces that genuinely interest you. Love museums? Join a volunteer docent group or a young patrons group. Love chess? Find a club. Run? Running groups are natural community builders, with a side of health built in. Shared passions create connections that naturally expand your network. The best networking happens when work and life intertwine.
Seek real human connection
In a digital-first world, people crave authenticity. Host a networking breakfast with a friend, and both of you bring three new people. Expanding your network often starts within the circles of people you already know. If you like your friend, theres a good chance youll like their friends, too. It also makes holiday parties more fun when you walk in and know half the room.
Do your homework
If youve asked for a meeting, be sure to show up prepared. Ask thoughtful questions that interest you, not questions you have Googled or asked ChatGPT. Always come armed with a few interesting talking points or stories that make you memorable. If you can find a few commonalities between the person you are meeting and yourself, be sure to bring those up: I “grew up in the same state,” “noticed that you have the same number of kids in your family,” or “love the same sport/sports team” are always good ways to connect and make an impression.
Use technology to stay top of mind
Keep your network updated on what youre doing and where youre headed. I send a monthly newsletter about my work, speaking engagements, auctions, ShopMy finds, favorite hotels, and travel tips using Mailchimp. When I meet new people, I immediately add them to my newsletter list so they are aware of everything I am working on. Dont underestimate the power of giving people the script to sell you when youre not in the room.
Give back
Networking isnt just about what you can getits also about what you can give. As you advance in your career, mentor those coming up behind you. Youll gain insights across generations, and often, someone you once helped will reappear later in your professional journey. A strong network grows both up and down.
In the words of my dad: “Network or die.” Maybe not literally, but your business might if you dont. And dont forget to have fun.
To create Apple TVs new branding, a team from the global agency TBWA\Media Arts Lab (MAL) gathered in a studio with a blacked-out stage, a giant glass version of the Apple TV logo, and a bevy of colorful studio lights.
Using just practical effects, they created a new animated logo for the brand that will roll out at the beginning of Apple TVs shows and films, on its app, and in marketing campaigns over the coming months.
Apple TV+ becomes Apple TV
Apple TVs updated branding, which includes a fresh static logo and two animated mnemonics, comes less than a month after the company announced that it would be changing its name from Apple TV+ to just Apple TV.
[Images: Apple]
The name change might seem subtle, but for Apple, it signals the companys belief that consumers know and trust its streaming service. In an October interview with Fast Company, Richard Swain, partner at the global brand agency Further, said dropping the Plus was, at its core, a show of confidence from Apple.
Now, the company is backing that up with new Apple TV branding that pays homage to Apples design historyboth by referencing one of the companys most iconic logos and by relying purely on practical effects, echoing Apples legacy of meticulous craft in its product design.
The previous iteration of the mnemonic for Apple TV+ [Image: Apple]
For Apple TVs new era, MALwhich is a bespoke agency that partners only with Applehad a daunting task. It had to reimagine the brand from the ground up, creating a visual identity that was both unmistakably Apple and distinctly Apple TV.
The refreshed Apple TV version [Image: Apple]
To achieve that goal, MAL needed to balance Apples history of simple, elegant design with the color, motion, and texture that one would expect from a film-centric brand. Prior to this overhaul, Apple TV+s logo and mnemonics were black and white. MALs first objective was to add color to the mix.
Apple’s 1977 logo [Image: Apple]
As inspiration, the agency turned to Apples 1977 logoone of its most memorable icons, which showed the companys signature apple rendered in six slices of rainbow color. Those hues appear as a subtle gradient in Apple TVs static logo, and feature prominently in both the five-second- and 12-second-long iterations of its new animated mnemonics.
[Image: Apple]
Bringing practical effects to Apple TV’s most ubiquitous brand asset
From the beginning, the team at MAL knew they wanted to shoot the Apple TV animatics using only practical effects. The goal was to embrace the craft of filmmaking by capturing the organic behavior of light that digital simulations cant entirely perfect.
[Image: TBWA\Media Arts Lab]
Neither government shutdown nor IT outage can stop the merger of Alaska Airlines and Hawaiian Airlines.
On Oct. 15, Seattle-based Alaska achieved one of the first major tech milestones of the combination. All new bookings made after that day for travel on either airline took place on Alaskas reservations system, or passenger service system (PSS) in airline parlance. And all existing bookings at Hawaiian after April 22, 2026 were moved over to the platform.
This is what Charu Jain, senior vice president of merchandising and innovation at Alaska who is overseeing the guest-facing technology integration of Hawaiian, calls the selling cutover.
The idea is that the reservations in Hawaiians PSS will drain out of the system until none are left by the night of April 21, 2026. Alaska will then turn off the Hawaiian system and the combined airline will run entirely on one platform.
Simple, right? Not at all.
PSS is the heart of the airline, says Jain. Everything guest-facing is connected to the PSS systems.
That customer centrality is why getting the PSS cutover right is so important for Alaska, especially as it aspires to become a global competitor to the big U.S. carriers American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and United Airlines.
Alaskas $1.9-billion takeover of Hawaiian is premised on the idea that a larger, more expansive airline is a stronger competitor. In its case to regulators, Alaska executives promised more growth and competition as a single larger airline than as two smaller carriers.
Federal regulators agreed and signed off on the deal in September 2024 after Alaska committed to certain consumer protections. They include guaranteed free-family seating, not blocking new competitors at the Honolulu airport, and continuing to serve rural small communities in both the state of Alaska and Hawaii.
These commitments have not slowed Alaskas integration of Hawaiian. In addition to the selling cutover, the carriers secured a single operating certificate that allows them to fly as one, rather than two, airlines at the end of October. And, in August, they launched a new, combined loyalty program, Atmos.
Still, the full PSS cutover in April remains one of the most challenging technical feats of any airline merger.
If any portion of the PSS cutover does not go well, it could screw up reservations for hundreds to many thousands of people, says Henry Harteveldt, aviation analyst and president of Atmosphere Research Group. The presence of risk is omnipresent to cutovers.
Every byte of data, from travelers personal details to whether or not they paid for or are entitled to a checked bag, must move from one platform to another. For Alaska and Hawaiian, that means moving the latter from a platform powered by travel tech company Amadeus to one run by competitor Sabre.
One only has to look back to March 2012 when United Airlines cutover to Continental Airliness PSS system for an example of what can go wrong. Travelers faced issues checking in for flights that resulted in long queues, lengthy call center holds and some flight delays that hit its reputation for years after.
We want this to be something [travelers are] not anxious about, says Jain. We want it to be a non-event.
The stakes for Alaska are even higher today than they were a month ago after two tech-related disruptions. On Oct. 23, an IT outage forced the airline to cancel more than 400 flights and then, on Oct. 29, a global outage of the Microsoft Azure system affected both the Alaska and Hawaiian websites.
The airline has engaged Accenture to conduct a full top-to-bottom audit of technology to avoid future IT-related disruptions.
Jain says Alaska is already implementing recommendations from the audit that is expected to wrap in a few weeks time.
Savanthi Syth, an airline analyst at Raymond James who has observed several airline mergers including Alaskas combination with Virgin America in 2016, says the October issues should not affect the PSS cutover.
They are using a well-established practice of drawing down bookings on the Hawaiian system, she says. This means there will be very few if any bookings left on the Hawaiian system when the cutover happens, minimizing disruptions.
There is a very good reason to believe Alaska can pull this off without a hitch: It has done it before, successfully using the drain-down approach to the PSS cutover with Virgin America.
Amy Burr, the CEO of Sky VC who led the integration of Virgin America into Alaska at the former before leaving the airline in 2018, says draining down reservations in the smaller airlines PSS dramatically derisks the cutover.
The Virgin America combination provided Alaska with the muscle memory to execute future mergers like with Hawaiian, she adds, noting that she is not involved in the current process.
Ben Minicucci, CEO of Alaska, told investors last December that one reason they were confident in their ability to carry off a smooth merger was because the majority of people who executed the Virgin American integration are [still] here.
Alaska is still not taking any chances.
The airline plans a number of table-top trials of the cutover before April to make sure it has worked out all of the details, says Jain. At least one mock flight is planned for testers to do everything from check-in to boarding and finding their seat using the combined platform to ensure everything goes smoothly. And, Alaska will reduce its schedule on April 21 and 22 a Tuesday and Wednesday to reduce possible strain on the system.
Alaska will also set up a command center in Honolulu Hawaiians largest base to oversee the cutover.
The process, so far, appears to be going smoothly with no notable hiccups during the selling cutover or move to a single certificate.
For us, the biggest honor, the biggest compliment we can get is silence, says Rodrigo Ramos, the regional general manager of North America at Sabre.
Countries around the world have been discussing the need to rein in climate change for three decades, yet global greenhouse gas emissionsand global temperatures with themkeep rising.
When it seems like were getting nowhere, its useful to step back and examine the progress that has been made.
Lets take a look at the United States, historically the worlds largest greenhouse gas emitter. Over those three decades, the U.S. population soared by 28% and the economy, as measured by gross domestic product adjusted for inflation, more than doubled.
Yet U.S. emissions from many of the activities that produce greenhouse gasestransportation, industry, agriculture, heating and cooling of buildingshave remained about the same over the past 30 years. Transportation is a bit up; industry a bit down. And electricity, once the nations largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, has seen its emissions drop significantly.
Overall, the U.S. is still among the countries with the highest per capita emissions, so theres room for improvement, and its emissions havent fallen enough to put the country on track to meet its pledges under the 10-year-old Paris climate agreement. But U.S. emissions are down about 15% over the past 10 years.
Heres how that happened.
U.S. electricity emissions have fallen
U.S. electricity use has been rising lately with the shift toward more electrification of cars, and heating and cooling and expansion of data centers, yet greenhouse gas emissions from electricity are down by almost 30% since 1995.
One of the main reasons for this big drop is that Americans are using less coal and more natural gas to make electricity.
Both coal and natural gas are fossil fuels. Both release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere when they are burned to make electricity, and that carbon dioxide traps heat, raising global temperatures. But power plants can make electricity more efficiently using natural gas compared with coal, so it produces less emissions per unit of power.
Why did the U.S. start using more natural gas?
Research and technological innovation in fracking and horizontal drilling have allowed companies to extract more oil and gas at a lower cost, making it cheaper to produce electricity from natural gas rather than coal.
As a result, utilities have built more natural gas power plantsespecially super-efficient combined cycle gas power plants, which produce power from gas turbines and also capture waste heat from those turbines to generate more power. More coal plants have been shutting down or running less.
Because natural gas is a more efficient fuel than coal, it has been a win for the climate in comparison, even though its a fossil fuel. The U.S. has reduced emissions from electricity as a result.
Significant improvements in energy efficiency, from appliances to lighting, have also played a role. Even though tech gadgets seem to be recharging everywhere all the time today, household electricity use, per person, plateaued over the first two decades of the 2000s after rising continuously since the 1940s.
Costs for renewable electricity, batteries fall
U.S. renewable electricity generationincluding wind, solar, and hydro powerhas nearly tripled since 1995, helping to further reduce emissions from electricity generation.
Costs for solar and wind power have fallen so much that they are now cheaper than coal and competitive with natural gas. Fourteen states, including most of the Great Plains, now get at least 30% of their power from solar, wind, and battery storage.
While wind power has been cost-competitive with fossil fuels for at least 20 years, solar photovoltaic (PV) power has only been competitive with fossil fuels for about 10 years. So expect deployment of solar PV to continue to increase, both in the U.S. and internationally, evn as U.S. federal subsidies disappear.
Both wind and solar provide intermittent power: The sun does not always shine, and the wind does not always blow. There are a number of ways utilities are dealing with this. One way is to use demand management, offering lower prices for power during off-peak periods or discounts for companies that can cut their power use during high demand. Virtual power plants aggregate several kinds of distributed energy resourcessolar panels on homes, batteries, and even smart thermostatsto manage power supply and demand. The U.S. had an estimated 37.5 gigawatts of virtual power plants in 2024, equivalent to about 37.5 nuclear power reactors.
Another energy management method is battery storage, which is just now beginning to take off. Battery costs have come down enough in the past few years to make utility-scale battery storage cost-effective.
What about driving?
In the U.S., gasoline consumption has remained roughly constant, but fuel efficiency has generally improved over the decades.
Sales of electric vehicles, which could cut emissions more, have been slow, however. Some of this could be due to the success of fracking: U.S. petroleum production has increased, and gasoline and diesel prices have remained relatively low.
People in other countries are switching to electric vehicles more rapidly than in the U.S. as the cost of EVs has fallen. Chinese consumers can buy an entry-level EV for under US$10,000 in China with the help of government subsidies, and the country leads the world in EV sales.
In 2024, people in the U.S. bought 1.6 million EVs, and global sales reached 17 million, up 25% from the year before.
The unknowns ahead: What about data centers?
The construction of new data centers, in part to serve the explosive growth of artificial intelligence, is drawing a lot of attention to future energy demand and to the uncertainty ahead.
Data centers are increasing electricity demand in some locations, such as northern Virginia, Dallas, Phoenix, Chicago, and Atlanta. The future electricity demand growth from data centers is still unclear, though, meaning the effects of data centers on electric rates and power system emissions are also uncertain.
However, AI is not the only reason to watch for increased electricity demand: The U.S. can expect growing electricity demand for industrial processes and electric vehicles, as well as for the overall transition from using oil and gas for heating and appliances to using electricity that continues across the country.
Valerie Thomas is a professor of industrial engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The Wall Street Journal published an opinion piece titled Why Work-Life Balance Will Keep You Mediocre. Certainly a headline designed to draw ire from many readers, myself included.
The author advocates ruthlessly optimizing your time, from missing important events with loved ones to declining social events. The goal? In his case, he built a company worth $20 million and set himself up with financial freedom for the rest of his life.
My gut reaction was, Thats no way to live a life. There was a time, in my early twenties, when I poured all of my energy and time into my job. I wore the badge of long hours and unlimited availability, replying to emails long into the evening as I worked on projects.
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Then I had kids. I began working remotely. In no way did this keep me mediocre. In fact, Id argue that work-life balance improved my career.
Learning to focus my impact
If you think you have 100 hours to work each week, youll undoubtedly find ways to fill 100 hours.
When I became a parent, my extra time disappeared. I couldnt reliably work outside of business hours. Even my work within business hours changed, since small children are frequently sick or school is closed for various holidays.
I became brutally efficient with my time. I learned to think of my work in terms of the results it produced, not the hours I put in. I advocated for better apps and tools at the company that could help the entire team do more with less time. I taught myself how to use automation tools to keep tasks humming in the background.
Work smarter, not harder became my mantra. I wasnt willing to sacrifice time with my family or a career Id worked hard to build. I had to figure out how to get more done with less effort so I could enjoy a balance between work and life outside of work.
Learning adaptability and empathy
Being a parent taught me to be more adaptable. Kids dont wait for your schedule. They dont conform to your ideal workday. You have to pivot quickly to Plan B when Plan A fails.
I became a manager early in my career, and Im now embarrassed to say that I was a very rigid thinker. I couldnt understand when life got in the way of work. I assumed that other people were bad at managing their time.
Having kids made me more empathetic. I saw how life outside of workeven for reasons unrelated to childrenhappened, and deserved compassion.
I wasnt mediocre by being more adaptable and empathetic. I became more human.
The entire team benefited from flexibility. As a manager, I let my team know that I trusted them to get work done, without micromanaging oversight. And if something unexpected came up, we would adjust.
Leading by example
At work, people take cues from other employees, especially those senior to them. If a company claims to be flexible but your manager sends Slack messages while on vacation, its a pretty good indicator that you shouldnt expect any work-life balance.
Or how about the job that provides zero coverage when you take time off? You return to a pile of work and spend the next week working extra hours to catch up. Not exactly restful if youre punished for taking time off with more work.
The more I embraced work-life balance, the more my team followed suit. If my kids were sick (or I was sick), I took the day off. I took fully unplugged vacations during the year and encouraged others to do the same. We set up internal systems so that anyone taking time off had adequate coverage.
Most importantly, my kids have seen how much I prioritize work-life balance. Im there to pick them up from after-school activities. They know that being sick means resting and recovering, not pushing through.
When my son was little, someone asked, What do you want to be when you grow up? He responded, I want to work from home. It was a proud moment for me, because I knew that my efforts to model work-life balance were paying off.
Do I have a multimillion-dollar business, like the author of Why Work-Life Balance Will Keep You Mediocre? No. But his priorities are just that: his prioritiesnot a universal truth.
Pursuing work-life balance is a worthwhile career goal. Dont let anyone tell you otherwise.
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When the Trump administration gave Immigration and Customs Enforcement access to a massive database of information about Medicaid recipients in June 2025, privacy and medical justice advocates sounded the alarm. They warned that the move could trigger all kinds of public health and human rights harms.
But most people likely shrugged and moved on with their day. Why is that? Its not that people dont care. According to a 2023 Pew Research Center survey, 81% of American adults said they were concerned about how companies use their data, and 71% said they were concerned about how the government uses their data.
At the same time, though, 61% expressed skepticism that anything they do makes much difference. This is because people have come to expect that their data will be captured, shared, and misused by state and corporate entities alike. For example, many people are now accustomed to instinctively hitting accept on terms of service agreements, privacy policies, and cookie banners regardless of what the policies actually say.
At the same time, data breaches have become a regular occurrence, and private digital conversations exposing everything from infidelity to military attacks have become the stuff of public scrutiny. The cumulative effect is that people are loath to change their behaviors to better protect their datanot because they dont care, but because theyve been conditioned to think that they cant make a difference.
As scholars of data, technology, and culture, we find that when people are made to feel as if data collection and abuse are inevitable, they are more likely to accept iteven if it jeopardizes their safety or basic rights.
Where regulation falls short
Policy reforms could help to change this perception, but they havent yet. In contrast to a growing number of countries that have comprehensive data protection or privacy laws, the United States offers only a patchwork of policies covering the issue.
At the federal level, the most comprehensive data privacy laws are nearly 40 years old. The Privacy Act of 1974, passed in the wake of federal wiretapping in the Watergate and the Counterintelligence Program scandals, limited how federal agencies collected and shared data. At the time, government surveillance was unexpected and unpopular.
But it also left open a number of exceptionsincluding for law enforcementand did not affect private companies. These gaps mean that data collected by private companies can end up in the hands of the government, and there is no good regulation protecting people from this loophole.
The Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986 extended protections against telephone wiretapping to include electronic communications, which included services such as email. But the law did not account for the possibility that most digital data would one day be stored on cloud servers.
Since 2018, 19 U.S. states have passed data privacy laws that limit companies data collection activities and enshrine new privacy rights for individuals. However, many of these laws also include exceptions for law enforcement access.
These laws predominantly take a consent-based approachthink of the pesky banner beckoning you to accept all cookiesthat encourages you to give up your personal information even when its not necessary. These laws put the onus on individuals to protect their privacy, rather than simply barring companies from collecting certain kinds of information from their customers.
The privacy paradox
For years, studies have shown that people claim to care about privacy but do not take steps to actively protect it. Researchers call this the privacy paradox. It shows up when people use products that track them in invasive ways, or when they consent to data collection, even when they could opt out. The privacy paradox often elicits appeals to transparency: If only people knew that they had a choice, or how the data would be used, or how the technology works, they would opt out.
But this logic downplays the fact that options for limiting data collection are often intentionally designed to be convoluted, confusing, and inconvenient, and they can leave users feeling discouraged about making these choices, as communication scholars Nora Draper and Joseph Turow have shown. This suggests that the discrepancy between users opinions on data privacy and their actions is hardly a contradiction at all. When people are conditioned to feel helpless, nudging them into different decisions isnt likely to be as effective as tackling what makes them feel helpless in the first place.
Resisting data disaffection
The experience of feeling helpless in the face of data collection is a condition we call data disaffection. Disaffection is not the same as apathy. It is not a lack of feeling but rather an unfeelingan intentional numbness. People manifest this numbness to sustain themselves in the face of seemingly inevitable datafication, the process of turning human behavior into data by monitoring and measuring it.
It is similar to how people choose to avoid the news, disengage from politics, or ignore the effects of climate change. They turn away bcause data collection makes them feel overwhelmed and anxiousnot because they dont care.
Taking data disaffection into consideration, digital privacy is a cultural issuenot an individual responsibilityand one that cannot be addressed with personal choice and consent. To be clear, comprehensive data privacy law and changing behavior are both important. But storytelling can also play a powerful role in shaping how people think and feel about the world around them.
We believe that a change in popular narratives about privacy could go a long way toward changing peoples behavior around their data. Talk of the end of privacy helps create the world the phrase describes. Philosopher of language J.L. Austin called those sorts of expressions performative utterances. This kind of language confirms that data collection, surveillance, and abuse are inevitable so that people feel like they have no choice
Cultural institutions have a role to play here, too. Narratives reinforcing the idea of data collection as being inevitable come not only from tech companies PR machines but also mass media and entertainment, including journalists. The regular cadence of stories about the federal government accessing personal data, with no mention of recourse or justice, contributes to the sense of helplessness.
Alternatively, its possible to tell stories that highlight the alarming growth of digital surveillance and frame data governance practices as controversial and political rather than innocuous and technocratic. The way stories are told affects peoples capacity to act on the information that the stories convey. It shapes peoples expectations and demands of the world around them.
The ICE-Medicaid data-sharing agreement is hardly the last threat to data privacy. But the way people talk and feel about it can make it easieror more difficultto ignore data abuses the next time around.
Rohan Grover is an assistant professor of AI and media at American University.
Josh Widera is a PhD candidate in communication at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
If you glanced at the headlines this week, you might think everything is fine. Markets are not in full panic mode, unemployment is not spiking, and earnings season is still producing plenty of upbeat charts for investor decks. Underneath that, though, there is a very different story taking shape about what it takes to keep growth going when people are tired of paying more for less.
Across the economy, companies are being forced to get creative. Some are reworking how they price core products, others are quietly shrinking their physical footprint, and a few are openly trying to trade short term stock market love for longer term loyalty. Even the hottest corners of tech are starting to see what happens when the narrative shifts from limitless upside to awkward questions like “how much is too much.”
At the same time, politics and policy are bleeding into everyday life, showing up in places like flight schedules and housing costs. Put it all together and you get a picture of an economy that is not crashing, but is being quietly renegotiated in real time. Here is a look at the stories that captured that tension this week.
Housing affordability is so tight that builders are buying down mortgage rates
D.R. Horton is leaning hard on mortgage rate buydowns to keep homes moving in a market where affordability is stretched past its limits. In its latest quarter, nearly three quarters of buyers took a discounted mortgage rate, often starting around 3.99 percent, in order to make monthly payments work. That generosity is not free. Incentives helped push the companys gross margin on home sales down to 20 percent, well below its 2021 peaks, even as net new orders rose 5 percent year over year. The builder is also slowing new starts and managing inventory more tightly, especially in softer markets like parts of Florida and California.
TD Bank trims branches as customers shift to their phones
TD Bank is closing 51 branches and one drive through location across 13 states and Washington, D.C., as it redraws its physical footprint for a more digital world. The cuts are part of a plan to reduce or relocate about 10 percent of its stores while pouring more money into tech forward, advice based services. Executives say they still plan to open new locations in some affected communities, but with a sharper focus on where customers actually show up in person. For now, TD is relying on more than 1,000 remaining U.S. branches plus its apps and online tools to handle the shift.
Outback Steakhouse quietly closes doors in eight states
It is not your imagination if the nearest Bloomin Onion suddenly disappeared. Outback Steakhouses parent company, Bloomin Brands, has closed 10 U.S. locations across eight states as part of a broader turnaround plan. The casual dining chain is facing higher costs and more cautious diners at the same time its stock has dropped more than 40 percent this year. The company says it chose which restaurants to shutter based on sales, traffic, and investment needs, and is trying to move affected workers to nearby locations. It is another sign that full service chains are feeling the squeeze as consumers trade down or stay home.
The Big Short investor is betting against the AI darlings
Some of the shine came off the AI trade this week after Nvidia and Palantir shares fell on news that Michael Burry is shorting both names. The investor, who became famous for calling the housing crash ahead of 2008, disclosed that his fund bought put options on the two high profile AI plays. His move hit a nerve in a market already debating whether AI stocks are in bubble territory, even as surveys show many investors think they are. Still, the pullback comes after a monster run. Nvidia is up more than 50 percent this year and Palantir has gained well over 100 percent over the same period.
McDonalds is losing its lowest income customers
McDonalds latest earnings call confirmed what a lot of families already feel. Fast food is not cheap enough to be a default option anymore for the lowest income diners. The company said quick service traffic from lower income customers fell by nearly double digits in the third quarter, a trend that has dragged on for almost two years, while higher income traffic keeps rising. Same store sales were up modestly in the U.S. and globally, but still missed some Wall Street expectations. In response, McDonalds is leaning back into value with limited time deals like a 5 dollar breakfast combo and 8 dollar nugget meal, plus digital promotions tied to its Monopoly game.
YouTube TV hides a 60 dollar credit where only power users will find it
After YouTube TV dropped more than 20 Disney owned channels when carriage talks broke down, subscribers expected a meaningful bill break. What many are discovering instead is a somewhat buried offer of 10 dollars off per month for six months, for those who can find and redeem it in their account settings. The credit is not automatic and appears to be available only to some users, which has frustrated customers who already feel shortchanged by the loss of ESPN, ABC, and other major networks. The move follows an earlier suggestion from YouTube that a larger 20 dollar monthly credit might be on the table if the blackout dragged on.
Electric aircraft maker Beta Technologies takes off on the NYSE
Beta Technologies, a Vermont based electric aviation startup, made its public market debut under the ticker BETA. The company priced its IPO at 34 dollars a share, above the marketed range, raising just over 1 billion dollars and implying a valuation around 7.4 billion dollars. Beta builds electric aircraft and charging systems, including a conventional takeoff plane and a vertical takeoff and landing model called Alia, which it has already flown tens of thousands of nautical miles. With contracts that include the U.S. Department of Defense, Beta joins a growing club of electric aviation companies betting that cleaner, quieter aircraft can carve out a real slice of future air travel.
Duolingos earnings are strong, but its stock still fell off a cliff
On paper, Duolingos third quarter looked great. Daily active users jumped 36 percent, revenue climbed 41 percent, and paid subscribers rose by more than a third. Yet the stock dropped around 25 percent after the company told investors to expect much slower growth in total bookings next quarter, a key metric that bakes in future subscription and test revenue. CEO Luis von Ahn said Duolingo is deliberately prioritizing product quality and user growth over near term monetization, particularly as it leans into AI powered teaching tools. The markets reaction shows how little patience some investors have for long term thinking in a choppy tech tape.
Airlines offer rare refunds as the shutdown snarls air travel
United, American, and Delta all said they will offer refunds during the government shutdown to customers who decide not to fly, even if their flights are not technically canceled. The move comes after the FAA ordered a 10 percent cut in flights at 40 major airports because thousands of unpaid air traffic controllers are unavailable. Long haul international routes are expected to mostly hold, but domestic schedules will be trimmed, affecting as many as 4,000 flights a day. The big three are framing the refunds as a customer friendly gesture in a tough situation, while also urging Washington to move quickly to end the shutdown that is disrupting the system they rely on.
Over the past 50 years in the shoe trade, I have had my fair share of failure.
The biggest lesson I learned, at the start of my career, is not to devote time and energy to a business or project that has little chance of success. This might sound obvious, however sometimes you are so involved in the detail of the day to day running of the business that you dont stand back and question the future viability of what you are doing.
I was a womens shoe manufacturer in London in the 1980s. If I had looked at the big picture I would have seen that the future of manufacturing in the U.K. for low technology, high labor content businesses like footwear manufacturing, was unsustainable. Most of the production was moving to Asia where costs were much lower and the quality was excellent. It took a visit to Taiwan to see the same shoes being made at half the price that it was costing us in our London factory to persuade me to leave manufacturing and become an importer. My lesson is to respond quickly and try and anticipate change.
Pressure on middlemen
Another example is from the 2000s. I was a successful importer from Asia, a business I set up in 1986 called Browning Enterprises. It had a turnover of 60m. As communications improved and markets opened, more Chinese manufacturers and trading companies came directly to the major U.K. retailers, putting pressure on the margins of the middlemen, like me. Our costs were too high. We couldnt compete. The import company struggled on till 2009.
It was the decline in the importing business and the desire to start my own brand that led to me to launch Dune in 1992.
Temper your optimism
Another failure was opening unprofitable stores. This is an expensive mistake as the 400k investment is written off when the store is closed. The failure is usually due to overestimating the level of sales. The costs of a new store are easily calculated. The big variable, that is largely a matter of judgement, is the sales number. Of course you do your due diligence by looking at footfall figures, studying demographics, and talking to adjacent stores to try and judge their performance.
Finally, you come to a sales number. The lesson is to be cautious about the level of sales. Look carefully at the possible downsides. As an entrepreneur your natural tendency is to be optimistic. You must temper this optimism. Resist the temptation to open the shop because you want to grow. It has got to make commercial sense.
As an entrepreneur it is easy to get distracted and sidetracked into ventures that are not related to your area of expertise. This loss of focus can be damaging, as not only is there a high probability that the new venture is unprofitable and you will lose money, but it also takes your attention away from your main activity.
Not special
My career has been in fashion footwear. Thats what I know. However, during the pandemic, I launched a sustainable trainer brand. I felt that was where the growth was in footwear, so thats where I needed to be. It was a failure. Why? Two reasons.
Firstly, it wasnt special enough. It was a good, well-made sustainable product but in a crowded market it didnt have an important point of difference that would make it stand out.
Secondly, we didnt go out and aggressively sell the product. I thought I would generate the online sales through the website. This was a mistake. We needed to sell wholesale as well, not only to generate sales but to get the brand out there in the market.
There are two important lessons for entrepreneurs here. One: Dont underestimate the marketing cost of selling a new brand online. Two: You may have a great product, but it is essential that you get out there and sell. It is no coincidence that over the years the sales team has been the highest earners in the business.
Avoid distraction
We launched a range of childrens shoes. This was related to our main activity, but as we found to our cost, the market is very different from adults shoes. As we didnt have the space in our stores to offer the range we focussed on online and wholesale. Selling a new brand of childrens shoes online was more difficult than we anticipated. Mothers like to buy their kids shoes in a physical store. In addition, the market was polarized between the established heritage brands, Clarks and Startrite, and the large stores like Next, Marks & Spencer, and Zara, who were offering similar shoes at lower prices. The lesson is clear. Resist the temptation to get distracted unless you are very confident that the new venture is financially compelling.
The right team
Finally, having the right team in place is essential. As an entrepreneur there is a danger that you are reluctant to give up control. It is essential to recognize the limitations of your abilities and hire a team that can do things better than you.
The importance of building the right team came into sharp focus in 2009 when we acquired a company called Shoe Studio and trebled our size. A year after the acquisition we started to struggle. Our profits fell. We didnt have the management expertise to run a larger business. My skills and time were being stretched to the limit. We employed a first-class FD and a team of senior experienced retailers which transformed the business.
It is a well-known expression that you learn more from your failures than your successes. That is certainly my experience. And if the project is failing, then fail fast.
I love FM radio. Its okay: You can call me a Luddite.
My alarm clock is the local public radio station. I love toggling between a few music stations while driving, or even while reading at home. And during a road trip, theres nothing quite like discovering a community station with random locals curating their own playlistsit gives you a sense of where you are that no Spotify playlist can match.
The problem: Its hard to know what stations exist locally, even in your own town but particularly while on a road trip. You can explore the dial, which has a certain serendipity, but what if you just want to . . . know?
And be able to tune in with or without an actual traditional radio in front of you?
This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures!
Old-school listening with a modern twist
This exact problem is why I like Radio Locator. Its a free website that lets you enter any city or zip code and find all the terrestrial stations that are available for that area.
Itll show you a list of every FM and AM station in any U.S. city or zip code. You can also browse international radio stations by country.
And it all takes just a few seconds to do.
The Radio Locator site is free and as simple as can be.
This is a rare service that isnt cluttered with ads or upselling. Just open the site, type a place, and youll see a list. Stations are sorted by frequency, but youll also see the call sign, the distance to the tower, and what format of radio station is offered. (Im personally always looking for public radio or alternative stations, but you can figure out what you want for yourself.)
You can find info about all sorts of stations, in any geographical area.
Of course, all of this only applies if youve got an actual-factual FM radio on your hands. What if youre more of a computer-and-phone kind of person? Easy: Just click through on any of the stations on Radio Locator, and theyll generally take you to a website where you can stream the station.
Or, if you prefer a dedicated tool for the job, theres Streema. Its a free site that makes it easy to search for and stream just about any radio station imaginable, anywhere in the world. A few stations redirect to websitesbest I can tell for legal reasonsbut the overwhelming majority of the time, you can just search for a website and start listening.
Streema makes most on-demand radio listening a swift click or tap away.
Either way, you can find and listen to old-fashioned radio stations anytime. Again: I recommend finding public and community stations, as those tend not to have ads, but take the time to explore. Its nice to get away from the algorithm sometimes.
You can open Radio Locator and Streema directly in your web browser on any device. Streema also offers an app called Simple Radio for both Android and iOS, if youd rather go that route.
Radio Locator and Streema are both free in the browser. Simple Radio is free with on-screen ads or you can get an ad-free version for $6 a month.
Neither site requires a login or any real personal data, but you can opt to share your locationif you want.
Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletterstarting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app thatll tune up your days in truly delightful ways.
When OpenAI launched its text-to-video app Sora in September, there was immediate blowback. To absolutely no one’s surprise, users on the platform had a field day using popular characters in their AI-generated videos, in all sorts ofadmittedly creative!situations. (See OpenAI founder Sam Altman grilling Nintendo’s Pikachu.)
Brands condemned the use of their intellectual property without permission. The Motion Picture Academy called out OpenAI for its blatant copyright violations. Soon after launch, Altman wrote a blog post addressing the issue, stating that Sora would give rightsholders “more granular control” of their IP on the app, adding that in the near future he expected that plenty of brands and content makers would actually welcome the chance to have their characters on the app. He called it a new form of “interactive fan fiction.”
Well, that day is here. According to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal, OpenAI has opened the floodgates and is now in talks with brands about how they can bring their mascots and characters into the app for users to feature in videos.
Its obvious why OpenAI wants brands to free their mascots. People would love to play in that sandbox with well-known characters. Hell, theyre already doing it.
But, um, what’s in it for the brands?
Most brands are still trying to figure out what their mascot stance on Sora will be. I reached out to McDonald’s, Geico, KFC, and General Mills but none were ready to comment about it on the record.
This is a newer, more urgent version of a conversation brands have been having for the past 15 years. In the age of social media, how much creative control should a brand cede to its audience? Now the stakes are even higher, given the pace of technological advancement, the public’s appetite to get AI sloppy, and our inability to distinguish between what’s real and what isn’t.
Sharing the pen
For what seems like centuries, the conversation between brands and everyone else was a one-way street. Advertising flashed in our eyes and blasted in our ears, and that was that.
With social media, a two-way conversation began. The mantra among marketers circa 2008 was to get involved in the social conversation because people are talking about your brand whether youre there or not.
In the past few years, that has evolved even further to brands actually collaborating with fans and creators. Morgan Flatley, McDonalds global chief marketing officer, calls this sharing the pen.
Historically, most brands are nervous or overprotective when they arent in full control of the creative. McDonalds was prime among them, vigilantly protecting its IP. In 2013, it won a federal case on trademark infringement in Canada against a dim sum restaurant called MacDimsum. In 2019, it sent a cease-and-desist order to a small Edmonton restaurant serving an “Effing Filet O’ Fish.”
But the success of Famous Orders, a campaign launched in 2020 where it began regularly partnering with artists to customize meals and create merch, changed things. Allowing artists like Travis Scott, BTS, and Cactus Plant Flea Market to play with its brand logos and characters, and the passionate response from fansalong with the sold-out merch and boosted salesgave Flatley and the brand more confidence to loosen the reins. The win for McDonalds was in reflecting its role in culture (the artists are genuine fans) while creating something new.
Ive become a big believer that if we lean into the right kind of creators in the right cultural phenomenon, and loosen some of our control on the brand, magic will happen, Flatley told me back in 2023 when we talked about the brands partnership with Marvel. A few years ago, I dont know that we would have felt as comfortable handing over key aspects of our brand to be part of a storyline like this, but today were really aware of the authenticity of our brand and the role that it can play.
Alyson Griffin, State Farms head of marketing, told me recently that the key to a successful partnership with creators is to be prepared to give up some control. Brand leaders must do their due diligence and vet any potential partner, but then they must let them cook. If you know you have the right person, because you vetted them to your brand needs, let them be them, Griffin said. Let them create, because then it looks and is authentic.
According to marketing intelligence firm Sensor Tower, Sora was downloaded 3.8 million times in the U.S. in its first month, despite only being available on iOS with an invite code. It was the No. 4 app in the U.S. over that same time. In a world where brands and marketers are looking for any and every opportunity to gain our attention, the temptation here is clear.
Handing over your brand IP to the Sora 2 slop factory, however, is a recipe for disaster.
Character chaos
Brand mascots have been a staple of advertising for more than 100 years. They’re used to hawk everything from kids cereal to batteries, cigarettes to insurance, and they continue to be a valuable way for brands to forge an emotional connection with people. Take the insurance industry, which has a huge roster of mascots that ai to make their brands more relatable: Jake from State Farm, the Geico gecko, Flo from Progressive, Mayhem for Allstate, Liberty Mutuals LiMu Emu (and Doug), and the Aflac Duck.
A 2021 study reported that a long-term campaign featuring a recurring character will, on average, increase market share gain by 41%. The Grimace Shake helped McDonalds boost U.S. sales by 10.3% in 2023.
When I was in journalism school 20 years ago, we got an assignment to practice whats called a survey article. Basically, you pick a topic and go ask a bunch of people the same question, then see what story angle emerges from their answer. I chose to visit as many tattoo artists as I could in an afternoon and ask them all Whats the craziest tattoo youve ever done?
Ill never forget the clear winner. When I asked the question, this artists eyes lit up, and he rushed to find a specific binder on his shelf. He frantically flipped through the photos and flash designs until he found it. There! He pointed to a photo of a mans meaty calf featuring a very detailed and anatomically correct depiction of all the characters from Winnie-the-Pooh on a picnic blankethaving an orgy.
That story taught me that some people will do anything for attention (and that I would never sing the Tigger song ever, ever again). Now that’s playing out in real time on Sora, with the app granting anyone’s weirdest visual wish.
Remember the public discourse when M&Ms talked about making the green M&M less sexy? If Mars put its beloved characters on Sora 2, the brand is one quick prompt away from someone making Behind the Green (M&M) Door. You think that Duolingo owl is weird now? Just wait.
Kevin Mulroy, founding partner and ECD at award-winning ad agency Mischief, says the upside for brands to surrender rights to their IP on Sora is still unclear. Without much narrative control, and no clear link back to a strategy, it’s highly unlikely everyday people are going to use these mascots in the way these brands intend, he says.
Strategy vs. Slop
The risk here is not just about brand mascots appearing in questionable content. Its also the trade-off between the idea of facilitating peoples creativity versus brands being complicit in the sloppification of culture by allowing their mascots to be used on Sora.
Prediction market Kalshi made a viral splash during last springs NBA playoffs with an absolutely hilarious and unhinged AI-generated spot (see above) that cost just $2,000 to make. Then in September, Jake Paul tricked folks with AI videos of himself in strange situations, later revealing that it was all a marketing stunt for Sora 2 (the spot attracted about 1 billion views in six days). Whenever new tech hits the market, the initial stunts get a ton of attention as these illustrate. But then what?
“No doubt whichever brands are first to experiment will benefit from a bump in cultural awareness, as we’ve seen with Jake Paul’s likeness, Mulroy admits. But at what cost? In a world where it has never been easier for a brand to say something, the true value is in figuring out what it is the brand should say. The latter won’t come from rogue AI content.”
Eventually every marketer will have to decide the value exchange in joining the Sora party. As Mulroy says, the key is making sure theres an actual strategy behind it.
If not, all that mascots brand value could end up getting f***ked on a picnic blanket.
