If youve ever been to a museum or on a school field trip, you may have had a tour guide walk you through a historical exhibit of 19th-century households or of ancient Mesopotamian agricultural tools.
Now, a current TikTok trend suggests that one day in the future, those exhibits will be the modern workstationstanding desks, Zoom meeting headsets, and all. The viral series titled “Historical tour of a corporate workers desk,” by marketing professional and content creator Heike Young, imagines what that will look like.
Now in those times, it would have been really common for a corporate worker to sit at a desk, much like this one, and be on calls all day, she says in the skit, now with over 116,000 views. Behind Young, a standing desk is set up with two screens, one for work and the other for online shopping, she says. The desk is scattered with an assortment of beverages, or brown liquids, plastic food containers, and packets.
Believe it or not, this worker wouldve actually been considered very lucky to have a job like this, she continues. People would submit hundreds of applications and submit themselves to many humiliation rituals just to get a job like this one.
In another video, Young highlights a few common tabs workers would have had open on their screens.
Yes, Amazon. Thats the same name as the extinct rainforest, thats right, she replies to a question. We got some history buffs in here.
She also educates on the linguistic practices of the period, more commonly known as business jargon or work voice.
There was one sound that always got the laborers moving. It was a mild form of psychological torture, she explains in yet another skit. Our museum’s immersive effects team will play it now. And there were two common variations. One was more typical among workers who used Windows technology. And the next one is often for people who used Apple Mac.
The comments are filled with corporate workers who feel horrifyingly seen by the series.
With every video I watch, the more Im horrified by the reality of the life I currently live, one commenter posted.
Others, though, had the opposite reaction. This made me feel really hopeful in a very strange way, another wrote, finding comfort in the fact that, for better or worse, the current economic reality cannot continue forever.
Much of corporate landscape right now is pretty bleak, and its easy to get frustrated with it all, Young told Fast Company. But we are living in one moment. Theres so much history before and after us.
With the series, she thought to zoom out and examine the corporate experience from an entirely different point of view, much the same as we might now look back on laborers in the past and their working conditions.
When viewing it from the future as a detached museum docent, what is striking? Young continues. What little, mundane details seem quaint, absurd, or even grotesque?
As for what anthropologists will be uncovering about the corporate worker experience centuries from now, Young says: A bunch of Amazon returns that may never go back. Chips, gotta have chips. A fork with an empty plastic container. Three different beveragessome for their caffeine and some for the illusion of hydration. And a picture of the people youre doing this for.
AI has now arrived at the Treasury Department.
Sam Corcos, a former startup leader and Department of Government Efficiency affiliate now serving as chief information officer at the Treasury Department, appears to have approved spending at least $1.5 million on up to 3,000 licenses for ChatGPT, the OpenAI platform, federal spending records show. The agency has obligations to spend $1.5 million on the services, and has already outlaid more than $500,000 for the technology, those records show.
Fast Company obtained a user agreement showing that Treasury is allowing employees to use ChatGPT for authorized mission purposes. Such purposes include using the technology, in certain circumstances, with whats known as controlled unclassified information, a government designation thats given to information that isnt classified, but still requires some safeguarding. The expanded use of the tool comes amid growing pressure on federal agencies to adopt artificial intelligence systems, which advocates say can increase efficiency and cut down on excess bureaucracy.
In this case, the rules laid out in the user agreement include strong limits on how AI systems might be usedparticularly, for example, with regards to personally identifiable information, market-sensitive economic information, and federal tax data. The rules also forbid Treasury staffers from trying to tamper with or evade an AI chatbots security measures without express authorization. Employees arent supposed to use the output of an AI system without a human reviewing that work, or obfuscate the role AI played in making a particular product, according to the user agreement. A violation of these rules could lead to someone being fired, the agreement states.
One former Treasury official said department staff are probably using the tech on heavy lifting for tasks that would normally take a long time. Tony Arcadi, the official that Sam Corcos replaced, tells Fast Company that there were myriad use cases that could benefit from the technology, including automating administrative work. Done correctly and with robust controls, LLMs could be a force multiplier for intelligence, operations, finance, enforcement, and public engagement,” he says. The agency had previously invested in a smaller cache of ChatGPT licenses.The Treasury Department and OpenAI did not respond to a request for comment. Still, in September, the agency released a compliance plan focused on promoting the use of AI, as well as a strategy spelling out its approach to the technology.
Amid the move to speed up the use of AI throughout the government, including the militarys new GenAI.mil tool, theres still the serious risk of government officials putting too much faith in the far from faultless technology.For example, it seems like a recent report from the Department of Health and Human services may have been created using artificial intelligenceand included fake citations. Federal clerks have used ChatGPT and Perplexity and have ended up including misquotes and other errors in documents.
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.
While national active inventory for sale is still rising year over year, the pace of growth has slowed in recent monthssomething weve been closely documenting for several months for our ResiClub members.
The side-by-side maps below help you to see that decelerated rate of inventory growth.
Left map: Year-over-year change in metro level active inventory between November 2023 and November 2024
Right map: Year-over-year change in metro level active inventory between November 2024 and November 2025
Click to expand
Between November 2023 and November 2024, U.S. active housing inventory for sale rose by 26.1%.
Between November 2024 and November 2025, U.S. active housing inventory for sale rose by 12.6%.
Some of that percentage deceleration is a denominator effect (i.e., as U.S. active inventory rises, it takes an even larger increase to generate the same year-over-year percentage gain). That said, the deceleration is not only due to a denominator effect.
In November 2024, there were 196,885 more U.S. homes for sale than in November 2023.
In November 2025, there were 120,003 more U.S. homes for sale than in November 2024.
The chart belowyear-over-year unit shift in inventoryhelps us to see the trend without the denominator effect.
Why has U.S. active inventory growth slowed?
Some of it is due to the number of days on the market not rising as quickly or stabilizing in some markets. Part of the slowdown reflects an increase in delistings in softer markets, as some sellers have thrown in the towel and pulled their listings.
And, to a lesser degree, a handful of markets have seen a mild pickup in absorption as existing-home sales have edged up slightly from their multiyear troughs.
What does decelerating inventory growth mean?
Back in September, I published an article titled “The speed of housing market softening has slowedbut softness remains.”
I think that framing still holds for what weve seen in recent months. On a nationally aggregated basis, as inventory growth decelerated in the second half of 2025, so did the pace of market softening.
Since then, the U.S. housing market has largely stabilized, with national home price appreciation hovering close to 1% year over year and below U.S. income growth.
Of course, there remains significant regional variation: Many pockets of the Midwest and Northeast continue to see mild year-over-year home value gains, while many areas in the Southwest and Southeast are experiencing mild year-over-year declines.
What to watch in early 2026?
As the nationally aggregated housing market transitions from its seasonally slower period into its seasonally busier spring window, a key question will be how inventory behaves.
In particular, it will be important to watch whether the recent uptick in delistings in softer markets comes back online. For example, do homes that were pulled from the market in weaker areassuch as Southwest Floridaquickly reappear once seasonality shifts?
Earlier this month, the State Department announced that it was instructing U.S. embassy staff around the world to reject work visa applications from individuals involved in what it described as censorship of Americans speech online. In a cable that was first leaked to Reuters, consular officers were instructed to review LinkedIn profiles of visa applicants mentioning work history involving misinformation, disinformation, content moderation, fact-checking, compliance, and online safety. This work includes journalists and fact-checkers, academics, people working in media literacy, and a broad range of tech workers in a field known as Trust and Safety.
This isnt the first such visa restriction stemming from what the Trump administration views as censorship. Nor is it the first Republican assault on academics and tech workers who monitor online disinformation. Instead, this represents the latest escalation in a five-year campaign by the GOP and its allies to discredit misinformation research, which theyve long contended silences conservative views.
In April 2022, the Biden administration appointed Nina Jankowicz, a disinformation researcher, to lead the Department of Homeland Securitys Disinformation Governance Board, tasked with aiding government efforts to understand and mitigate false information related to border security, human trafficking, and domestic terrorism. Almost immediately, the board came under attack from Republicans like Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz and far-right pundit Tucker Carlson, who likened the body to a Ministry of Truth.
Jankowicz herself endured all manner of abuse, including death threats and threats of sexual violence; she resigned her post in May of 2022 and the entire project was shuttered by the end of that summer. In the years since, she cofounded the American Sunlight Project, a nonprofit aimed at protecting Americans from disinformation, and serves as its CEO.
The Republican attempt to kneecap disinformation researchers, she says, is part of a broader attack not only on trust and safety or content moderation, but on anybody and any organization that attempts to safeguard our shared reality or the truth.
‘Woke speech police’
There was a time when combating misinformation and foreign interference in elections was a bipartisan effort. In 2018, Facebook was summoned to congress to answer for the Cambridge Analytica scandal, in which a British consultancy was accused of targeting Russian election disinformation to Facebook users. We’re here because of what you, Mr. Zuckerberg, have described as a breach of trust, “Sen. John Thune (R-South Dakota) said to Zuckerberg.
Meta and other tech companies soon ramped up their fact-checking operations. Meta began partnering with news outlets like Snopes, the Associated Press, and others, to fact-check viral information online. It also tightened its data-sharing policies, expanded its policy teams, and implemented a global trusted partner program to work with nonprofits to monitor harmful content online. It was an imperfect system, but certainly better than what platforms had done prior to 2016.
But those enforcement policies wound up angering Republicans, who felt disproportionately targeted by them. Tech companies were not in fact censoring their freedom of speech. Even if they had been, it wouldnt be a violation of the First Amendment, which only protects citizens from government censorship.
The problem was Republicans tendency to disseminate material that contains misleading content. One study found that conservatives were eight times more likely to spread misinformation than those who lean liberal.
After 2020, conservative ire at tech companies for censoring their posts reached a fever pitch, fueled by the platforms attempt to regulate anti-vaccine content during the COVID-19 pandemic and their deprioritizing of reports about allegedly compromising information about President Biden on his son Hunter Bidens laptop.
By 2023, when Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, became chair of the House Judiciary Committee, his party began subpoenaing Big Tech and research organizations that study online hate speech and misinformation. In tandem, lawsuits from Republican activists against those very research organizations eventually made it politically and financially cumbersome for many of these organizations to continue functioning. The Stanford Internet Observatory, a prominent disinformation watchdog, effectively shuttered its doors due to Republican attacks last year.
Big Tech is out to get conservatives, and is increasingly willing to undermine First Amendment values by complying with the Biden Administrations directives that suppress freedom of speech online, Jordan wrote to Zuckerberg in his 2022 subpoena. Because of Big Techs wide reach, it can serve as a powerful and effective partisan arm of the woke speech police.
Capitulation
As it became clear Donald Trump could defeat Kamala Harris in last years election, Zuckerberg capitulated — first with reticence, then with enthusiasm.
In August of last year, he sent a letter to Jordan apologizing for letting the platform go too far in censoring posts related to the COVID-19 vaccinewhich Republicans have sowed skepticism over its perceived safety. Zuckerberg also admitted that Meta demoted posts about the Hunter Biden scandal. Then, this January, shortly before Trumps inauguration, Zuckerberg, wearing a black t-shirt and gold pendant chain, hosted an infamous Facebook Live in which he announced that his company would no longer invest in fact-checking. Echoing Gaetz and Carlson, the CEO attacked legacy media for focusing too much on the threat of misinformation to democracy. Fact-checkers have just been too politically biased and have destroyed more trust than they’ve created, he said.
Theres also a significant financial motivation behind divesting from trust and safety initiatives. They don’t want to spend all that money on what is a very expensive investment, Jankowicz says. By Metas own estimates the company has spent $20 billion on trust and safety operations since 2016.
Its one thing for tech companies to fire their fact-checkers and content moderators — for the most part, theyre within their legal right to do so, as long as they figure out an alternative way to remove child abuse material. Its a very different thing for the government to obstruct tech companies from hiring content moderators, which arguably is a violation of the companys first amendment rights.
Theoora Skeadas, a former associate on Twitters Public Policy team, worries that the new rules will be used to harass trust and safety workers in the same way researchers like Jankowicz have been harassed. The work we do as trust and safety workers involves ensuring safe experiences for children and women online, and fighting fraud, terrorism, and hate, she says. I observe the irony, too, that this measure entails heavy-handed censorship. Skeadas says that trust & safety workers are scrubbing their LinkedIn of the keywords the government might find objectionable.
A Faustian bargain
While Big Tech CEOs were quick to speak out against the Trump administrations blanket $100,000 fees for H-1B workerswhich would have disproportionately impacted foreign software engineers working for major tech firms (and now appears to have been dramatically narrowed in scope)not a single CEO has spoken out against these new rules.
That might be because the newfound allyship with Trump seems to be paying off for the platforms. The Trump administration has spent much of this year attacking foreign tech regulators, including in the E.U., which recently passed the Digital Services Actrequiring social media companies to more aggressively police disinformation and other illegal contentand the Digital Markets Act, which was designed to curb Big Techs anti-competitive practices.
Since the administration has been in office, there has been an increasing amount of pressure and, I would say, attacks on regulators, civil servants, and researchers abroad as well, Jankowicz says.
The administration has even sanctioned foreign officials for attempting to regulate Big Tech companies. This summer, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced very similar restrictions to the H1B memo for foreign government workers who the administration viewed as targeting Americans First amendment rights. The administration sanctioned Brazil Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes, and, later, his wife, under this new policy in what appears to be a politically motivated retribution for ordering Twitter be blocked in Brazil and later extended the sanctions to his wife.
For the tech companies, theres a clear upside to this Faustian bargain: Go along with the administrations narrative on censorshipeven if that means sacrificing the safety of your own workers and risking the further fracturing of American societyand the entire might of the U.S. government will reward you.
The amount of electricity data centers use in the U.S. in the coming years is expected to be significant. But regular reports of proposals for new ones and cancellations of planned ones mean that its difficult to know exactly how many data centers will actually be built and how much electricity might be required to run them.
As a researcher of energy policy who has studied the cost challenges associated with new utility infrastructure, I know that uncertainty comes with a cost. In the electricity sector, it is the challenge of state utility regulators to decide who pays what shares of the costs associated with generating and serving these types of operations, sometimes broadly called large load centers.
States are exploring different approaches, each with strengths, weaknesses, and potential drawbacks.
A new type of customer?
For years, large electricity customers such as textile mills and refineries have used enough electricity to power a small city.
Moreover, their construction timelines were more aligned with the development time of new electricity infrastructure. If a company wanted to build a new textile mill and the utility needed to build a new gas-fired power plant to serve it, the construction on both could start around the same time. Both could be ready in two and a half to three years, and the textile mill could start paying for the costs necessary to serve it.
Modern data centers use a similar amount of electricity but can be built in nine to 12 months. To meet that projected demand, construction of a new gas-fired power plant, or a solar farm with battery storage, must begin a yearmaybe twobefore the data center breaks ground.
During the time spent building the electrical supply, computing technology advances, including both the capabilities and the efficiency of the kinds of calculations artificial intelligence systems require. Both factors affect how much electricity a data center will use once it is built.
Technological, logistical, and planning changes mean there is a lot of uncertainty about how much electricity a data center will ultimately use. So its very hard for a utility company to know how much generating capacity to start building.
Keeping older coal plants running may be an expensive way to generate power. Ulysse Bellier/AFP via Getty Images
Handling the risks of development
This uncertainty costs money: A power plant could be built in advance, only to find out that some or all of its capacity isnt needed. Or no power plant is built, and a data center pops up, competing for a limited supply of electricity.
Either way, someone needs to payfor the excess capacity or for the increased price of what power is available. There are three possible groups that might pay: the utilities that provide electricity, the data center customers, and the rest of the customers on the system.
However, utility companies have largely ensured their risk is minimal. Under most state utility-regulation processes, state officials review spending proposals from utility companies to determine what expenses can be passed on to customers. That includes operating expenses such as salaries and fuel costs, as well as capital investments, such as new power plants and other equipment.
Regulators typically examine whether proposed expenses are useful for providing service to customers and reasonable for the utility to expect to incur. Utilities have been very careful to provide their regulators with evidence about the costs and effects of proposed data centers to justify passing the costs of proposed investments in new power plants along to whomever the customers happen to be.
Regulators, then, are left to equitably allocate the costs to the prospective data center customers and the rest of the ratepayers, including homes and businesses. In different states, this is playing out differently.
Kentuckys approach to usefulness
Kentucky is attempting to address the demand uncertainty by conditionally approving two new natural gas-fired generators in the state. However, the utility companiesLouisville Gas & Electric and Kentucky Utilitiesmust demonstrate that those plants will actually be needed and used. But its not clear how they could do that, especially considering the time frames involved.
For instance, suppose the utility has a letter of agreement or even a contract with a new data center or other large customer. That might be sufficient proof for the regulator to approve charging customers for the costs of building a new power plant.
But its not clear what would happen if the data center ends up not being built, or needing much less power than expected. If the utility cant get the money from the data center companybecause they bill customers based on actual usagethat leaves regular consumers on the ook.
A data center in Columbus, Ohio, is just one of many being built or proposed around the country. Eli Hiller/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
Ohios demand ratchet and credit guarantee
In Ohio, the major power company AEP has a specific rate plan for data centers and other large electricity customers. One element, called a demand ratchet, is designed to mitigate month-to-month uncertainty in electricity consumption by data centers. The data centers monthly bill is based on the current months demand or 85% of the highest monthly demand from the previous 11 monthswhichever is higher.
The benefit is that it protects against a data center using huge amounts of electricity one month and very little the next, which would otherwise yield a much lower bill. The ratchet helps ensure that the data center is paying a significant share of the cost of providing enough electricity, even if it doesnt use as much as was expected.
This ratchet effectively locks in the data centers payments for 12 months, but regulators might expect a longer commitment from the center. For instance, Floridas utilities regulator has approved an agreement that would require a data center company to pay for 70% of the agreed-upon demand in their entire electricity contract, even if the company didnt use the power.
Another aspect of Ohios approach addresses the risk of changing business plans or technology. AEP requires a credit guarantee, like a deposit, letter of credit or parent company guarantee of payment, equal to 50% of the customers expected minimum bill under the contract. While this theoretically reduces the risk borne by other customers, it also raises concerns.
For example, a utility may not end up signing contracts directly with a large, well-known, wealthy technology company but with a subsidiary corporation with a more generic nameimagine something like Westside Data Center LLCcreated solely to build and operate one data center. If the data centers plans or technology changes, that subsidiary could declare bankruptcy, leaving the other customers with the remaining costs.
Harnessing strength in flexibility
A key advantage of these new types of customers is that they are extremely nimble in the way they use electricity.
If data centers can make money based on their flexibility, as they have in Texas, then a portion of those profits can be returned to the other customers that shared the investment risk. A similar mechanism is being implemented in Missouri: If the utility makes extra money from large customers, then 65% of that revenue increase is returned to the other customers.
Change is coming to the U.S. electricity system, but nobody is sure how much. The methods by which states are trying to allocate the cost of that uncertainty vary, but the critical element is understanding their respective strengths and weaknesses to craft a system that is fair for everyone.
Theodore J. Kury is a director of energy studies at the University of Florida.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
China will impose tariffs of up to 19.8% on pork imports from the European Union, a drastic drop from preliminary tariffs of up to 62.4%, its Commerce Ministry said Tuesday.
The ministry’s announcement followed an investigation the Chinese side launched into imports of pork from the trading bloc after the EU imposed provisional tariffs on China-made electric vehicles.
Beijing also levied anti-dumping duties on European brandy, most notably cognac produced in France, though major brandy producers received exemptions. Imports of dairy products from the EU likewise were subject to anti-dumping probes.
The EU runs a massive trade deficit with China: over 300 billion euros ($348 billion) last year. However, the trading bloc is a major exporter of pork and key supplier of byproducts such as ears, snouts, feet, and other items considered to be delicacies in China.
In September, China ordered preliminary anti-dumping duties, in the form of security deposits, of 15.6% to 32.7% for pork imports from EU companies that collaborated with the anti-dumping investigation, and up to 62.4% for all others.
Chinas Commerce Ministry concluded that the EU was dumping pork and pig by-products in China, selling them at prices below production costs or domestic market prices, and harming Chinas pork industry. The final tariff rates of 4.9%-19.8% are due to take effect beginning Wednesday and last for five years.
Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark will be the most affected.
The Commerce Ministry said the new tariff will apply to all kind of pork products, fresh, chilled, frozen, dried, pickled, smoked or salted.
It said it had reached its conclusions in an objective, fair and impartial manner.
EU exports of pork products to China peaked at 7.4 billion euros ($7.9 billion) in 2020 when Beijing turned to imports to meet domestic demand after its pig farms were devastated by a swine disease. But it has reduced imports as it has rebuilt its herds.
Elaine Kurtenbach, AP business writer
We all have goals, but at least some of the difference in achieving those goals comes down to how you frame them.
In a study published in PLOS One, the researchers separated participants goals into two basic categories:
Avoidance goals: stopping or preventing an undesired behavior.Stop ignoring interpersonal issues between employees. So is stop putting off important tasks. So is stop watching so much TV. So is anything you want, or wish, to stop doing or do less often.
Approach goals: adopting a new behavior. Complete the most important task on my to-do list every day. So is Compliment at least one employee every day. So is Eat at least one serving of vegetables at lunch and dinner.
Why does the difference matter? Compared with people who set avoidance goals, people who set approach goals were significantly more likely to stay the course.
Partly thats because its more satisfying to do something you want to do than to avoid something you dont want to do. For example, for decades I drank a ton of Diet Mountain Dew. When I finally decided I wanted to drink less soda, I set an approach goal: Instead of setting a goal like Stop drinking Diet Mountain Dew in the morning, my goal was Drink water with my protein bar and banana for breakfast.
Later, I extended my water rule to lunch, and dinner, and snacks. The result, of course, was drinking less Diet Mountain Dew. But I wasnt avoiding soda; I was approaching water.
The same can be true for any habit you want to change. If you tend to avoid getting involved in interpersonal disputes between employees, dont say youll stop ignoring interpersonal issues. Make it your goal to build a better sense of camaraderie and teamwork, and choose activities or behaviors that support your goal.
Maybe youll spend a little time each day working in the department where two employees arent getting along. Maybe youll create situations where people can work together on something positive: A boss of mine once assigned me and an employee I was feuding with to a project with a potentially significant reward, and in the process we quickly ironed out our differences.
Just about every avoidance goal can be turned into an approach goal; simply determine the positive behavior or habit that you want to have replace what you want to stop doing, and focus on doing that.
If you want to watch less TV, make it your goal to read 20 pages every evening. If you want to spend less time in your office, make it your goal to walk the shop or office floor first thing in the morning. If you want to spend less time on social media, start an activity that makes it hard to engage. (If your goal is to take a walk every night with a partner or friend, and you leave your phones behind, voil: more actual social time, much less social media.)
If you want to stop doing one thing, or do less of it, choose another thing you want or need to do, and make doing that your goal: Do (this), and youll naturally have less opportunity to do (that).
Thats the beauty of approach goals. Stopping a habit is easier when you dont have as much time or opportunity to engage in that habit.
Besides: Its a lot more fun to start doing something you really want to do than it is to try to stop doing something youve decided you shouldnt.
Jeff Haden
For many people, the winter holiday period is their favorite time of the year. Its weeks full of family, friends, gifts, and cozy indoor get-togethers.
But those social gatherings are among the main reasons why the flu spreads so readily at this time of year. And this year, a so-called superflu variant known as subclade K is set to make things even worse.
Heres what you need to know.
When is flu season?
Flu season is officially in full swing. Its the time of year when flu viruses are most rampant, and infections tend to spike before finally decreasing and leveling off.
Most people know that flu season usually occurs in the winter months, but the period actually lasts for longer.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, in the northern hemisphere, the flu season starts in October. However, its worst period encompasses December to February, which is when the highest number of cases occur.
Cases usually begin to decline after February, and flu season is typically considered over by May.
But besides its conventional start date, theres another way to measure when flu season is underway.
As CNN reports, health professionals often use the epidemic threshold to measure when flu season is underway. When that threshold, which measures the percentage of visits to a healthcare provider for respiratory illness, rises above 3.1%, flu season is here.
And according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the United States passed that threshold last week when it hit 3.2%. And that number is likely to rise in the coming weeks, thanks to a new flu variant circulating the globe called subclade K.
What is the subclade K influenza variant?
The common seasonal flu going around this year is part of the H3N2 family, a strain that has been circulating for decades, notes Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance.
However, a new H3N2 variant has arisen with enough mutations to make it materially different, from a genetic perspective, from the reference strains scientists chose earlier this year to make this years flu vaccine.
This variant is called subclade K.
Because it has enough genetic differences, the subclade K variant is more resistant to this years flu vaccine than other strains.
However, that doesnt mean this years flu vaccine cant help protect you against subclade K or other flu strains.
As CNN reports, despite this years flu vaccine failing to neutralize subclade K viruses as well as other flu strains, the flu vaccine still cuts hospital visits for H3N2 strains in children by 75%. For adults, the vaccine appears to be less effective, but data shows that it can still cut hospital visits by 30% to 40%.
Where in America is the flu most widespread?
According to CDC data for the week ending December 6, the flu virus, including subclade K, is present in most of the United States. The CDCs Influenza Divisions Weekly Influenza Surveillance report shows that the states with the highest level of flu activity include:
New York
Colorado
Louisana
New Jersy
Conneticut
Idaho
Screenshot via CDC.
What are the symptoms of the flu?
Common symptoms of the flu include the following, according to the CDC:
fever or feeling feverish/chills
cough
sore throat
runny or stuffy nose
muscle or body aches
headaches
fatigue (tiredness)
some people may have vomiting and diarrhea, though this is more common in children than adults.
How can I protect myself against the flu over the holidays?
In winter, people tend to spend more time indoors with windows closed, which allows flu viruses to spread more easily between people. Holiday gatherings can accelerate this spread as many spend more time socializing during the period than they usually do.
But just because it’s flu season doesn’t mean you cant enjoy the holidays. The CDC offers several bits of advice on how to reduce your risk of seasonal flu, including:
Getting vaccinated
Avoiding contact with people who are sick
Cleaning your hands regularly
Avoiding touching your mouth, nose, and eyes
And if you think you are sick, you can help protect others by staying home and covering your nose and mouth when you sneeze.
President Donald Trump filed a lawsuit Monday seeking $10 billion in damages from the BBC, accusing the British broadcaster of defamation as well as deceptive and unfair trade practices.The 33-page lawsuit accuses the BBC of broadcasting a “false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory, and malicious depiction of President Trump,” calling it “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence” the 2024 U.S. presidential election.It accused the BBC of “splicing together two entirely separate parts of President Trump’s speech on January 6, 2021” in order to “intentionally misrepresent the meaning of what President Trump said.”The lawsuit, filed in a Florida court, seeks $5 billion in damages for defamation and $5 billion for unfair trade practices.The BBC did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Associated Press.The broadcaster apologized last month to Trump over the edit of the Jan. 6 speech. But the publicly funded BBC rejected claims it had defamed him, after Trump threatened legal action.BBC chairman Samir Shah had called it an “error of judgment,” which triggered the resignations of the BBC’s top executive and its head of news.The speech took place before some of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol as Congress was poised to certify President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election that Trump falsely alleged was stolen from him.The BBC had broadcast the hourlong documentary titled “Trump: A Second Chance?” days before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. It spliced together three quotes from two sections of the 2021 speech, delivered almost an hour apart, into what appeared to be one quote in which Trump urged supporters to march with him and “fight like hell.” Among the parts cut out was a section where Trump said he wanted supporters to demonstrate peacefully.Trump said earlier Monday that he was suing the BBC “for putting words in my mouth.”“They actually put terrible words in my mouth having to do with Jan. 6 that I didn’t say, and they’re beautiful words, that I said, right?” the president said unprompted during an appearance in the Oval Office. “They’re beautiful words, talking about patriotism and all of the good things that I said. They didn’t say that, but they put terrible words.”The president’s lawsuit was filed in Florida. Deadlines to bring the case in British courts expired more than a year ago.Legal experts have brought up potential challenges to a case in the U.S. given that the documentary was not shown in the country.The lawsuit alleges that people in the U.S. can watch the BBC’s original content, including the “Panorama” series, which included the documentary, by using the subscription streaming platform BritBox or a virtual private network service.The 103-year-old BBC is a national institution funded through an annual license fee of 174.50 pounds ($230) paid by every household that watches live TV or BBC content. Bound by the terms of its charter to be impartial, it typically faces especially intense scrutiny and criticism from both conservatives and liberals.
Associated Press
If you want to recycle an old electric toothbrush or pair of headphones with a lithium battery embedded inside, it can be hard to find a place to do itand many existing battery collection boxes are fire risks. Thats why Redwood Materials, the battery recycling and energy storage company founded by ex-Tesla engineer J. B. Straubel, just redesigned the collection bin.
The new bins, rolling out first in San Francisco stores in partnership with the citys environmental department, can accept any type of rechargeable device, from phones to electric razors, earbuds, and loose lithium batteries. When someone drops a battery or device into a slot, the bin automatically lowers it into a sealed 50-gallon drum and coats it in fire suppressant. The bin also uses sensors to monitor itself to prevent fires.
[Photo: Redwood Materials]
Consumer recycling has been incredibly challenging, says Alexis Georgeson, Redwoods vice president of external affairs and consumer recycling programs. I think some of the issues and lack of technology to enable frictionless, free, visible collection points for consumers have contributed to the abysmal collection rates that were at right now.
Only around 16% of electronics are recycled in the U.S. right now. Most batteries end up in junk drawers or landfills, because fundamentally consumers just dont understand how to get them recycled, Georgeson says.
[Photo: Redwood Materials]
Redwood launched to handle battery recycling for businesses in 2017, but people who heard about the startup almost immediately began dropping off their own batteries at the companys front door or shipping them in. The company started working with nonprofits and communities trying to make recycling easier, and previously placed standard collection bins at some locations. But those bins didnt solve the challenge of fire risk, so they had to be monitored by staff.
[Image: Redwood Materials]
The new bins manage fire risk without human intervention, so they can scale up much more easily. Theyre also secure, so someone could feel safe dropping in an old phone or laptop, unlike in the open cardboard boxes that exist in some other stores. When the drums are full, Redwood adds them to pallets that are shipped back to its Nevada facility for recycling. (The fire suppressant is also reused.)
EV batteries still make up a bigger volume of the companys recycling; a single Tesla Model 3 battery is equivalent to several thousand iPhone batteries. But as the number of battery-filled devices keeps proliferating, and consumers quickly get rid of them, the potential scale is large. Redwood plans to install the bins in other parts of the Bay Area, then Nevada, and then deploy them nationally.
Even before the official launch in San Franciscoand without any promotion or signagethe bins are already popular. We actually rolled the bins out very quietly a couple of weeks ago, and we’ve already filled several of them up, Georgeson says.
