Snow has returned to the Philadelphia region, and along with it, the white residues on streets and sidewalks that result from the overapplication of deicers such as sodium chloride, or rock salt, as well as more modern salt alternatives.
As an environmental scientist who studies water pollution, I know that much of the excess salt flows into storm drains and ultimately into area streams and rivers.
For example, a citizen science stream monitoring campaign led by the Stroud Water Research Center in Chester County (about 40 miles west of Philadelphia) found that chloride concentrations in southeastern Pennsylvania streams remained higher than levels recommended by the Environmental Protection Agency not only after winter snowfalls but also in many cases during some summer monthsshowing salt persists in watersheds year-round.
Once there, it can have a profound impact on fish and other aquatic life. This includes a decrease in the abundance of macroinvertebrates, which are small organisms that form the base of many freshwater food webs, and reductions in growth and reproduction in fish.
Increased salt concentrations can also degrade and pollute the local water supply. Working with other researchers at Villanova University, I have measured spikes in sodium levels in Philadelphia region tap water during and immediately after snow melts. These spikes can pose a health risk to people on low-sodium diets.
What local governments can do
In recent years, many state and local governments nationwide have adopted best management practicessuch as roadway brining, more efficient salt spreaders, and improved storm forecastingto limit damage from salt to infrastructure, including roads and bridges.
Roadway brining works by applying a salt solution, or brine, that contains about 23% sodium chloride by weight prior to a storm. Unlike road salt, brines adhere to all pavement and can prevent ice from sticking to the roadway during the storm. This potentially reduces the need for subsequent road salt applications.
The environmental benefits of these best practices, when properly administered, are promising. The Maryland State Highway Administration reduced its total salt usage on roadways by almost 50% by using multiple best practices.
The extent to which these strategies will continue to reduce the salt burden on roads and, by extension, improve the water quality of streams elsewhere will largely depend on political will and corresponding economic investments.
Yet, roads are not the only source of salt to our streams. Recent studies have suggested that the cumulative amount of salt applied to other impervious surfaces in a watershed, such as parking lots, driveways, and sidewalks, can exceed that applied to roads.
For example, one survey of private contractors suggests their application rate can be up to 10 times higher than that of transportation departments.
I do not know of any studies that have been able to determine a household application rate.
How to salt at home
To better understand how individuals or households deice their properties, and what they know about the environmental impacts of deicing, I collaborated with a team of environmental scientists and psychologists at Villanova University and the local conservation-focused nonprofit Lower Merion Conservancy.
In winter 2024-2025, the Lower Merion Conservancy disseminated a survey in a social media campaign that received more than 300 responses from residents in southeastern Pennsylvania. We are completing the analysis to determine a household application rate, but some of our initial findings provide a starting point for engaging households on how to limit the environmental impact of deicers.
One key finding is that only 7% of respondents reported being aware of municipal ordinances regarding deicer use on residential sidewalks.
Of those who applied deicers to their property, 55% indicated they were unsure whether they used them in a way that would reduce environmental harm.
About 80% of all respondents indicated interest in learning more about the environmental impacts of road salt.
Based on these survey results, here are several actionable steps that homeowners can take to reduce their deicer use.
1. Check your local municipal ordinance.
Most municipalities in the greater Philadelphia area do not require deicer use but instead require clearing a walkable pathin most cases, 3 feet widefree of snow and ice within a certain time frame after a storm event ends.
For example, the city of Philadelphia requires this to be done within six hours, the borough of Narberth within 12 hours and Lower Merion and Haverford townships within 24 hours.
Narberth and Lower Merion specify which abrasivessuch as sand, ashes, and sawdustor deicers, like rock salt, can be used if ice persists.
2. Use rock salt and other deicers judiciously.
The recommended amount from conservation organizations is one 12-ounce coffee mug of deicer for every 10 sidewalk squares. Keep in mind that pet-friendly deicers are not necessarily environmentally friendly. Many of these deicers contain magnesium chloride, which is harmful to plants and aquatic life.
Deicers coupled with dyes might be a good choice to visually prevent over-application. They can also temporarily reduce concretes surface reflectivity, thereby increasing its warming effect and enabling melting.
inally, its important to know that many deicers become ineffective at or below certain temperatures. Rock salt/sodium chloride loses its effectiveness at 15 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 9 Celsius), magnesium chloride at 5 F (minus 15 C) and calcium chloride at minus 20 F (minus 29 C). If temperatures are expected to fall below those numbers, it might make sense to skip the salt.
3. Sweep up after.
We have all seen rock salt on sidewalks for days on end, especially when a storm never materializes. If the next storm brings rain, this leftover salt will form a concentrated brine solution that will wash down the nearest storm drain and into a local waterway.
Leftover salt can be swept up and reapplied after the next storm event, saving money and supplies.
Read more of our stories about Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, or sign up for our Philadelphia newsletter on Substack.
Steven Goldsmith is an associate professor of environmental science at Villanova University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
You probably know filmmaker and actor Taika Waititi from directing work like the Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok or the Oscar award-winning film Jojo Rabbit. What you might not know is that hes also the creative mind behind multiple Old Spice ads, a bout of early 2010s PSAs for his home country of New Zealand, and some of the most iconic Super Bowl commercials of all time.
From the early days of his career, between directing short films and appearing in acting gigs, Waititi has kept up a consistent cadence of ad work, ranging from spots for local names like the New Zealand Transport Agency to bigger brands like Samsung. Even as his Hollywood work has expanded, ad work remains a consistent part of his creative churn.
In 2025, Waititi directed three different spots for the Super Bowl. This year, hes returning to Americas biggest game with a new spot for Pepsi. Waititi says he keeps coming back to the Super Bowl for the same reason hes done ad work for decades: it keeps his creative muscles firing.
Selfishly, Ive used the world of making commercials as my filmmaking gym, he says.
Inside Pepsi’s new Super Bowl spot
Waititis 2026 return to the Super Bowl comes via a Pepsi spot titled The Choice, set to Queens I Want to Break Free. The ad carries on Pepsis long tradition of lightheartedly bashing its main rival, Coca-Cola, by signaling the superiority of its colas taste. This time, Pepsi turned to one of Coca-Colas most iconic symbols as the star of its new Cola War spot: the Coca-Cola polar bear.
I feel like I’ve been watching the [Cola Wars] all my life, and so it was pretty fun just to take part in that and because it’s an iconic relationship that they’ve got, Waititi says. He adds that the spots bear-centric storyline was already established before he joined the project, and that my main job when it comes to these things is just to help solidify the tone, carry that through, and make sure that it’s fun and watchable.
The bear has appeared in Coca-Colas advertising as far back as 1922, including in some of its most beloved Christmas ads. In The Choice, hes faced with the reality that he actually prefers Pepsi over Coke after conducting a blind taste-test of the two sodas. The realization drives him to his therapist (played by Waititi himself), before he ultimately breaks free from Coca-Cola and enjoys a Pepsi in, weirdly enough, a parody of the viral Coldplay kiss cam moment from last summer.
Why ads are Taika Waititi’s creative gym
Before Waititi ever became a household name, many of his clever, absurdist spots had already cemented themselves in the canon of advertising acclaim. Along the way, those projects were quietly shaping his creative voice and informing his larger projects.
In 2008, Waititi directed a series of ads for Pot Noodle, including one surrealist spot called Moussaka Rap, a loosely Eminem-inspired song about the Greek casserole. In 2011, he tackled another rap video for Sour Patch Kids and an underwater ballad for Cadbury. His first big break in the ad worldand one of his most recognizable spots to this daywas NBCs 2012 Super Bowl bash Brotherhood of Man, which featured talent from on-air shows at the time like The Office and Parks and Recreation (as well as a now cringe-inducing cameo from The Apprentices Donald Trump), and which had such a fraught production that its inspired entire think pieces.
What I remember about that was just how fun it was to visit all of these different TV shows and work with all of these people, Waititi says, adding with a laugh, Let’s not talk about everyone that I worked on that with.
Waititi took a hiatus from the big game to produce iconic spots like Air New Zealand’s 2014 Lord of the Rings-inspired “The Most Epic Safety Video Ever Made, featuring Elijah Wood; and a 2018 series of heavy hitters for Old Spice. By the time he returned to directing for the Super Bowl in 2025, Waititi was both an Oscar and Grammy winner. His spots last yeara heartstring-pulling ad for Lay’s, two shorts for Homes.com featuring Morgan Freeman, and a brain-rottingly ridiculous ad for Mountain Dew starring humanoid sealswere all met with a hearty dose of acclaim.
For Waititi, ad direction isnt just a side gig; its a tool thats shaped his career. In the periods between filming larger projects, he uses commercials to test new jokes, try out character ideas, experiment with VFX, and work on new camera and lighting techniques. If he feels like theyre really good, he says, he can use them in a film at some point down the road.
It’s fun to play with the creative space, and it’s not as risky for me when I’m making commercials, Wititi says. It’s just kind of a play space, reallya nice big sandpit.
The moment I rise in the morning, I check my phone. Bad habit, to be sure. But I know Im not the only one. There is a message from an editor marked urgent, there is an email from the school reminding me its parent-visit morning, and a text from a fellow soccer mom making sure I remembered the time change for Sundays tournament. (I hadnt). The day had barely started, and I already felt hopelessly behind.
This is the reality for working parents everywhere. On any given day, we have many jobs: employee, caregiver, chauffeur, chef, boo-boo healerand each has its own inbox. Once upon a time, we believed technology would make our lives easier. Instead, it taught us how to be reachable at all hours of the day.
We are desperate for time hacks. So naturally, parents are wondering if AI can help, or whether its just another thing demanding our attention.
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How AI Can Actually Help
AI helps by taking care of the boring, time-sucking stuff that clutters your brain. In other words, that invisible labor that never lets up. For example, school emails that go on and on when all you really need to know is the date of the field trip and what the kids need to wear. AI can summarize them in seconds and pull out the important parts.
It can also help us write polite notes to teachers, coaches, or HR without seeming defensive. It can turn your parent-teacher conference notes into an actionable plan.
At home, the help is small but impactful. Weekly meal plans with grocery lists, recipes based on whats already in your pantry, family calendars that catch conflicts you would have missed.
At work, AI can summarize meetings you were half paying attention to, draft versions of presentations, and help organize your day so things dont hit you all at once.
And it does this in less time than it takes to pour a cup of coffee.
Moments That Feel Like Magic
AI can change your life in practical ways. For example:
Turn this voice note into a packing list.
Rewrite this PTO request that expresses the urgency without sounding apologetic.
Summarize the 25 Slack messages I missed while I was at the pediatrician.
Simplifying these tasks is one less thing crowding your mind.
How AI Makes Things Worse
Some tools require so much setup and maintenance that they become another thing to do. Others add notifications instead of reducing them. Many raise privacy concerns, especially if they include your childrens data.
And there is the danger of us becoming too reliant on these tools. It should make our lives easier, but we still need to be able to do these things for ourselves just in case our sci-fi nightmare comes true and an electromagnetic pulse wipes out technology.
Then there is the economics of it all. AI isnt free, and paywalls could widen inequalities among parents.
Efficiency vs. Relief
Parents dont just need to be more efficient; they need to feel supported. We are expected to be completely available for our employer and a fully present parent. AI can relieve that tension a little bit if used wisely.
How to Get Started
Start with one pain point, not your entire life.
Choose the tools that reduce notifications instead of creating them.
Be careful about what data you share.
If a helpful tool creates more work, then it isnt helpful.
The Real Test
Parents arent asking AI to raise their kids or run their livesat least not entirely. We are asking it to carry the parts that dont require humanity. So if AI can give us fewer tabs to keep open (either on our screens or in our heads), it might actually live up to its promise. It wont make us superhuman, but it can make the day-to-day a little less punishing.
Seven AI Apps That Make Parents Lives Easier
To get started, here are some AI apps to try:1. ChatGPT
Think of it like a very fast assistant who never rolls their eyes. Use it to summarize long school emails, draft texts to teachers or coaches, and plan dinner. It can also turn a rambling voice memo into a to-do list.
2. Ohai.ai
If you find yourself saying “Wait, when was this due?” several times a week, you might need this. It scans emails, documents, and screenshots, pulls out dates and tasks, then adds them to your calendar so fewer things slip through the cracks.
3. Goldee
You can use Goldee to organize emails, schedules, and random information that gets lost in the class group chat.
4. AI meal-planning tools (like Ollie)
These tools are for parents who are sick and tired of figuring out whats for dinner. Ollie can suggest meals, create grocery lists, and even work with whats already in your fridge.
5. Reclaim.ai
This scheduling assistant automatically finds the best times in your calendar for work, family, and breaks.
6. Cozi (with AI features)
This one helps flag schedule conflicts to keep everyone in the family on the same page.
7. AI-powered email tools (Gmail, Outlook)
Use these to summarize long email threads, suggests replies, and pull up the messages that matter most.
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Back on February 6th, 2017, a teenaged Sabrina Carpenter tweeted, Is there a way to look attractive while eating Pringles asking for a friend.
Is there a way to look attractive while eating Pringles asking for a friend— Sabrina Carpenter (@SabrinaAnnLynn) February 6, 2017
Now, nine years later, the pop star is doing exactly thatin the brands Super Bowl ad campaign. Created by agency BBDO New York, the teaser shows Carpenter treating her Pringles like a flower bouquet, plucking chips while saying, He loves me, he loves me not . . .
For Pringles, the spot represents the perfect formula for celebrity partnership. Our partner talent has to be a genuine brand fan! says Sarah Reinecke, senior vice president of Mars Snackings salty portfolio and brand, which oversees Pringles. Sabrina is the biggest thing in culture right now and is a fan of Pringles, so having the opportunity to work with her and engage her fan base in all the fun we have planned for the big game is an exciting partnership that hits all the right factors for us.
Pringles’ celebrity strategy
Pringles is no stranger to the celebrity Super Bowl ad game. The brand tapped Meghan Trainor in 2023, Chris Pratt in 2024, and last year, a seemingly random collection of stars like James Harden, Adam Brody, and Nick Offerman. But Reinecke says the brand’s strategy isnt some game of big name roulette.
Each partnership has sharpened our approach, she says. Weve learned that the most effective talent isnt just recognizableit has to authentically align with both the audience and the brands voice.” Reinecke points to Carpenter as an example of this. “She connects deeply with Gen Z while naturally embodying the self-aware, unhinged internet humor that defines how the brand shows up today,” Reinecke says. “The partnership has really embodied a shared sense of play, which we hope ultimately makes it resonate with our fans.
Beyond the Game
Given the level of investment required to just get a spot in the game, most brands now extend Super Bowl-related work to run long before and after the final whistle. For Pringles, that means tying its work with Carpenter into an existing campaign that launched last fall to resurrect its 90s ad slogan Once You Pop.
Pringles Super Bowl teaser was one of the first to drop back on January 14th. Reinecke says that they knew partnering with someone like Carpenter would spark a ton of conversation, so the goal was to capitalize early and often in order to allow the brand to be at the center of the conversation for as long as possible.
That level of conversation and enthusiasm is a key metric for the brand. Of course, we would be lying if we said we didnt care about ROI and metrics, says Reinecke. Its incredibly important for us to measure success across both the marketing funnel and the impact on business. But while reach is important, what may be even more important is how much people care. So, we track everything from awareness, consideration, sentiment and purchase intent, and our impact to go beyond where a snack brand is expected to show up.
Celebrity Q&A
There are three key questions every marketer should ask themselves before deciding whether to use celebrity talent and who to choose for a Super Bowl ad, according to Reinecke:
Does the partnership feel authentic to the brand and relevant to the audience youre going after? The face of the campaign on one of the largest stages in brand marketing of the year is a crucial piece, according to Reinecke.
How will this ad positively impact the business? For us, the Big Game is the biggest snacking occasion of the year, so having a presence directly ties back to business objectives, she says.
Does the partnership have the potential to expand beyond the game? While the move to social media as a newsfeed grows, think about how the partnership and creative could extend to the small screen, and relevant ways to tap into the narrative your brand builds with your partner beyond game day, Reinecke adds.
How much would you pay for a gray fleece? Yes, the type thats ubiquitous in corporate cubicles and business-casual work conferences across America.
What if it had the Miu Miu logo stitched on the left chest? If you said $2,500, youd be on the money.
Miu Mius $2,500 fleece sweatshirt, specifically in gray, has been trending online in recent months, spotted on celebs and featured in dozens of videos across social media platforms. You might think it looks like any other gray fleece. And youd be right. Yet the Miu Miu version has inspired dupes and influenced people to unearth 4imprint jackets from their dads closet or old thrift finds to participate in the trend.
For more than a decade, banks, investment firms, and tech companies have co-branded corporate logos on gray fleece vests for their workforces. Worn by everyone from interns to executives, this look, dubbed the Midtown uniform in major cities like New York, has become as ubiquitous in workplaces as the sad desk salad.
As my boyfriend was leaving for work this morning he put on the fleece that his company gave him, New York City-based influencer Danielle Carolan said in a recent TikTok while wearing the Miu Miu version. I was like, oh my god, this is literally like a fleece your tech company would give you.
Still, in influencer circles the Miu Miu fleeceto be uttered with the same reverence as Andy Sachss coveted Chanel boots in The Devil Wears Pradahas become a cultural shorthand. The Miu Miu fleece is a wearable argument about how taste, comfort, and status work now, according to a recent Substack post from Dot Dot Dot. In simple terms: the ability to look relaxed without looking irrelevant.
And for the $2,500 price tag surely theres something fashion normies must be missing to justify the cost? Something about the garment construction or fabric composition, perhaps. No. Its really just a gray fleece made of 80% polyester and 20% recycled polyester.
Some have suggested its a social experiment. Or is it a sign of the times?
Coinciding with the RTO push, fashion houses have been tapping into the workplace discourse, taking inspiration from the office in runway collections and ad campaigns.
Throughout 2025, designer brands like Prada and Miu Miu and more affordable high-street retailers like Uniqlo and Aritzia put their own spin on workwear fashion as companies ushered employees back in the office. That interest in corporate style has continued in 2026, with views on #OfficeOutfits up 811% over the past week, according to Vogue Business.
From power dressing to business casual, corp-core is in vogueeven if the Miu Miu fleece is worn predominantly by influencers on their way to Pilates and brunch.
At least three-quarters of the speaking invitations I get these days are about AI. But lately, theyre for different reasons. Companies used to bring me in under the assumption that artificial intelligence was going to change everything. So theyd ask me to talk about the jobless future, prompt engineering, or automating marketing online. Today, theyre asking a different kind of question: What went wrong? Where are the promised productivity gains? In other words, why isnt AI helping our company do stuff?
And if I were to answer honestly, Id tell them the simple truth: Its because you and your people dont know what you want to do with it! This is not a technology problem or even a people problem, but an organizational one. Most companies are trying to run 21st-century AI-enabled companies on 20th-century industrial age architectures. The goals and the values are simply not aligned.
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Weak returns
The failure of AI to increase productivity isnt just cherry-picked anecdote or idle speculation. According to Microsofts own study, only 25% of AI initiatives achieved expected returns over the past three years. Computer scientist Gary Marcus has been writing about the hype and misplaced hope around large language models (LLMs) for just as long. But the problem here is not that AI cant do great stuff; its that organizations are not yet thinking in a human-first way about technology.
Its what Chris Perry, my partner at Andus, calls the Human OS. Companies are trying to integrate AI into their existing workflows without considering the human systems that can not only utilize it, but also grow and improve with it. This means more than training workers on AI interfaces or running trials of AI-derived ads. It means remaking the very structure of your organization around these new opportunities.
Its a transition less technologically focused than the term OS may imply. You dont reprogram your workforce around the needs of AI. Rather, you develop a different kind of workplace. Who thought up how a bank works, with a safe in the back and tellers behind special windows? It was a way of creating an interface between lenders and borrowers in a new economic system. Now it seems obvious. Or take the grocery store, with aisles, shopping carts, and cashiers. It is an operating system designed to allow humans to browse, gather, purchase, or even socialize (in the fruit section). These are architectures for human interaction under capitalism and then industrial production. And they worked, largely because the people designing them were taking the human consumers into mind.
Lessons from the Industrial Age
We dont generally devise our operating systems for labor with the same considerations for the people trying to function within them. Industrial age values of efficiency and productivity led to the assembly line, the sweatshop, and the typing pool. These are environments in which humans are cogs in a machine, and the more repeatable and uniform their tasks, the better.
If anything, the values of the industrial age were to remove human beings from the value equation altogether. Assembly lines allowed for unskilled, replaceable workers to replace higher-paid craftspeople. New machines were always valued for their ability to replace labor, or at least allow labor to be outsourced to less expensive labor in Asia.
This approach to new technology wont work in the age of AI. And even talking this way will make workers less likely to consider the possibility that you are trying to do anything other than replace them with this stuff. You are trying to augment instead of replace them, right? I sure hope so, because the alternativea world where you are using AIs instead of peoplemeans your only competitive advantage is the size of your contract with the AI company.
Moving from “more to better”
Assuming you are on Team Human here, then the object of the game is to help your people come to terms with how their own capabilities can be enhanced with this stuff. Sure, they can churn out more PowerPoints or spreadsheets in an hour, but thats not the enhancement on offer here. The possibility is for them to do categorically better, more considered, and more developed work. Instead of using AI to create more volume of what already is (industrial age efficiency), what about using it to help imagine what does not yet exist?
Again, this is the opposite of industrial age repeatability and workforce reduction. We have that one down. Its time to move on from more to better. But to do that, your company needs to retrieve its core competencies, rediscover its values, and reclaim its culture. Oddly enough, this is the real AI opportunity: to double down on the human creativity driving your enterprise. Its the very opposite of what weve been doing with technology until recently.
But this means building a different kind of human readiness into the very architecture of your organization. You can buy a bunch of AI capabilities, but you need to match them with human processes that can benefit from them in real and sustainable ways over time. It will take more than one article to explain how that works, because it covers everything from talent development and workflows to rituals and incentives.
For now, think of it this way: Machines process data fast and accurately. Humans dont process so much as respirate and metabolize. In a successful organization, these two functionsprocessing and metabolizingcan support each other. The way to get there is not simply to buy more AI capability and work on training, but to engage with your people in a way in which they know what they want to do better. They must understand that their nervous systems and sensibilities are going to be valued and trusted as they explore uncharted territory, and that their explorations are being integrated into the companys institutional memorywhatever their apparent contribution to growth or efficiency.
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A major winter storm is expected to bring heavy snow to parts of the East Coast this weekend. Amid freezing temperatures, many will be hunkering down and sipping hot cocoa by the fire or trying out new warming winter recipes.
Others will be getting creative with an ingredient that wont be in short supply: snow.
First snow of the year means SNOW CREAM, one TikToker posted earlier this month. This is literally my childhood, another wrote in the caption of her video, combining fresh snow with milk, sugar, and vanilla to make a bowl of dessert.
Other snow-based recipes that have gone viral in light of the recent weather include using snow as a way to freeze ice cream, adding whipped cream, vanilla, and icing sugar to a mixing bowl pressed into the snow. Another is sugar on snow, also known as maple taffy, made by pouring hot maple syrup directly onto snow and rolling it onto a stick for a simple cold-weather treat.
While many of these concoctions arent new, comments online are mixed. Ohhhh girlfriend you’re not supposed to make snow cream with the first snow of the season, one warned. Another wrote, Hey so I saw an under the microscope of snow and Id just put that back on the ground.
These fears arent entirely unfounded. The National Snow and Ice Data Center suggests avoiding ingesting the first layer of snow covering the ground.
“As snow falls through the sky, it can lock in pollutants into its intricate latticework. The most common is black carbon from coal-fired plants and wood-burning stoves, the organization explains. Snow acts like a scrubbing brush as it falls through the atmosphere. So, the longer the snow falls, the cleaner the air, and also the snow.”
If you do want to try your hand at making snow cream this weekend, avoid any discolored or yellow-tinged snow (for obvious reasons) and anything that could have been in contact with chemicals, such as salt or ice melt.
City snow is also more likely to be contaminated than rural snow. If you live in Manhattan, perhaps you should sit this one out.
The darkness that swept over the Venezuelan capital in the predawn hours of Jan. 3, 2026, signaled a profound shift in the nature of modern conflict: the convergence of physical and cyber warfare. While U.S. special operations forces carried out the dramatic seizure of Venezuelan President Nicolįs Maduro, a far quieter but equally devastating offensive was taking place in the unseen digital networks that help operate Caracas.
The blackout was not the result of bombed transmission towers or severed power lines but rather a precise and invisible manipulation of the industrial control systems that manage the flow of electricity. This synchronization of traditional military action with advanced cyber warfare represents a new chapter in international conflict, one where lines of computer code that manipulate critical infrastructure are among the most potent weapons.
To understand how a nation can turn an adversarys lights out without firing a shot, you have to look inside the controllers that regulate modern infrastructure. They are the digital brains responsible for opening valves, spinning turbines, and routing power.
For decades, controller devices were considered simple and isolated. Grid modernization, however, has transformed them into sophisticated internet-connected computers. As a cybersecurity researcher, I track how advanced cyber forces exploit this modernization by using digital techniques to control the machinerys physical behavior.
Hijacked machines
My colleagues and I have demonstrated how malware can compromise a controller to create a split reality. The malware intercepts legitimate commands sent by grid operators and replaces them with malicious instructions designed to destabilize the system.
For example, malware could send commands to rapidly open and close circuit breakers, a technique known as flapping. This action can physically damage massive transformers or generators by causing them to overheat or go out of sync with the grid. These actions can cause fires or explosions that take months to repair.
Simultaneously, the malware calculates what the sensor readings should look like if the grid were operating normally and feeds these fabricated values back to the control room. The operators likely see green lights and stable voltage readings on their screens even as transformers are overloading and breakers are tripping in the physical world. This decoupling of the digital image from physical reality leaves defenders blind, unable to diagnose or respond to the failure until it is too late.
Historical examples of this kind of attack include the Stuxnet malware that targeted Iranian nuclear enrichment plants. The malware destroyed centrifuges in 2009 by causing them to spin at dangerous speeds while feeding false normal data to operators.
Another example is the Industroyer attack by Russia against Ukraines energy sector in 2016. Industroyer malware targeted Ukraines power grid, using the grids own industrial communication protocols to directly open circuit breakers and cut power to Kyiv.
More recently, the Volt Typhoon attack by China against the United States critical infrastructure, exposed in 2023, was a campaign focused on pre-positioning. Unlike traditional sabotage, these hackers infiltrated networks to remain dormant and undetected, gaining the ability to disrupt the United States communications and power systems during a future crisis.
To defend against these types of attacks, the U.S. militarys Cyber Command has adopted a defend forward strategy, actively hunting for threats in foreign networks before they reach U.S. soil.
Domestically, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency promotes secure by design principles, urging manufacturers to eliminate default passwords and utilities to implement zero trust architectures that assume networks are already compromised.
Supply chain vulnerability
Nowadays, there is a vulnerability lurking within the supply chain of the controllers themselves. A dissection of firmware from major international vendors reveals a significant reliance on third-party software components to support modern features such as encryption and cloud connectivity.
This modernization comes at a cost. Many of these critical devices run on outdated software libraries, some of which are years past their end-of-life support, meaning theyre no longer supported by the manufacturer. This creates a shared fragility across the industry. A vulnerability in a single, ubiquitous library like OpenSSLan open-source software tool kit used worldwide by nearly every web server and connected device to encrypt communicationscan expose controllers from multiple manufacturers to the same method of attack.
Modern controllers have become web-enabled devices that often host their own administrative websites. These embedded web servers present an often overlooked point of entry for adversaries.
Attackers can infect the web application of a controller, allowing the malware to execute within the web browser of any engineer or operator who logs in to manage the plant. This execution enables malicious code to piggyback on legitimate user sessions, bypassing firewalls and issuing commands to the physical machinery without requiring the devices password to be cracked.
The scale of this vulnerability is vast, and the potential for damage extends far beyond the power grid, including transportation, manufacturing, and water treatment systems.
Using automated scanning tools, my colleagues and I have discovered that the number of industrial controllers exposed to the public internet is significantly higher than industry estimates suggest. Thousands of critical devices, from hospital equipment to substation relays, are visible to anyone with the right search criteria. This exposure provides a rich hunting ground for adversaries to conduct reconnaissance and identify vulnerable targets that serve as etry points into deeper, more protected networks.
The success of recent U.S. cyber operations forces a difficult conversation about the vulnerability of the United States. The uncomfortable truth is that the American power grid relies on the same technologies, protocols, and supply chains as the systems compromised abroad.
The U.S. power grid is vulnerable to hackers.
Regulatory misalignment
The domestic risk, however, is compounded by regulatory frameworks that struggle to address the realities of the grid. A comprehensive investigation into the U.S. electric power sector that my colleagues and I conducted revealed significant misalignment between compliance with regulations and actual security. Our study found that while regulations establish a baseline, they often foster a checklist mentality. Utilities are burdened with excessive documentation requirements that divert resources away from effective security measures.
This regulatory lag is particularly concerning, given the rapid evolution of the technologies that connect customers to the power grid. The widespread adoption of distributed energy resources, such as residential solar inverters, has created a large, decentralized vulnerability that current regulations barely touch.
Analysis supported by the Department of Energy has shown that these devices are often insecure. By compromising a relatively small percentage of these inverters, my colleagues and I found that an attacker could manipulate their power output to cause severe instabilities across the distribution network. Unlike centralized power plants protected by guards and security systems, these devices sit in private homes and businesses.
Accounting for the physical
Defending American infrastructure requires moving beyond the compliance checklists that currently dominate the industry. Defense strategies now require a level of sophistication that matches the attacks. This implies a fundamental shift toward security measures that take into account how attackers could manipulate physical machinery.
The integration of internet-connected computers into power grids, factories, and transportation networks is creating a world where the line between code and physical destruction is irrevocably blurred.
Ensuring the resilience of critical infrastructure requires accepting this new reality and building defenses that verify every component, rather than unquestioningly trusting the software and hardwareor the green lights on a control panel.
Saman Zonouz is an associate professor of cybersecurity and privacy and electrical and computer engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Two in five Americans have fought with a family member about politics, according to a 2024 study by the American Psychiatric Association. One in five have become estranged over controversial issues, and the same percentage has blocked a family member on social media or skipped a family event due to disagreements.
Difficulty working through conflict with those close to us can cause irreparable harm to families and relationships. Whats more, the inability to heal these relationships can be detrimental to physical and emotional well-being, and even longevity.
Healing relationships often involve forgivenessand sometimes we have the ability to truly reconcile. But as a professor and licensed professional counselor who researches forgiveness, I believe the process is often misunderstood.
In my 2021 book, Practicing Forgiveness: A Path Toward Healing, I talk about how we often feel pressure to forgive and that forgiveness can feel like a moral mandate. Consider 18th-century poet Alexander Popes famous phrase: To err is human; to forgive, divineas though doing so makes us better people. The reality is that reconciling a relationship is not just difficult, but sometimes inadvisable or dangerous, especially in cases involving harm or trauma.
I often remind people that forgiveness does not have to mean a reconciliation. At its core, forgiveness is internal: a way of laying down ill will and our emotional burden, so we can heal. It should be seen as a separate process from reconciliation, and deciding whether to renegotiate a relationship.
But either form of forgiveness is difficultand here may be some insights as to why.
Forgiveness, karma, and revenge
In 2025, I conducted a study with my colleagues Alex Hodges and Jason Vannest to explore emotions people may experience around forgiveness, and how those emotions differ from when they experience karma or revenge.
We defined forgiveness as relinquishing feelings of ill will toward someone who engaged in a harmful action or behavior toward you. Karma refers to a situation where someone who wronged you got what they deserved without any action from you. Revenge, on the other hand, happens when you retaliate.
First, we prompted participants to share memories of three events related to offering forgiveness, witnessing karma and taking revenge. After sharing each event, they completed a questionnaire indicating what emotions they experienced as they retold their story.
We found that most people say they aspire to forgive the person who hurt them. To be specific, participants were about 1.5 times more likely to desire forgiveness than karma or revenge.
Most admitted, though, that karma made them happier than offering forgiveness.
Working toward forgiveness tended to make people sad and anxious. In fact, participants were about 1.5 times more likely to experience sadness during forgiveness than during karma or revenge. Pursuing forgiveness was more stressful, and harder work, because it forces people to confront feelings that may often be perceived as negative, such as stress, anger, or sadness.
Two different processes
Forgiveness is also confusing, thanks to the way it is typically conflated with reconciliation.
Forgiveness researchers tie reconciliation to interpersonal forgiveness, in which the relationship is renegotiated or even healed. However, at times, reconciliation should not occurperhaps due to a toxic or unsafe relationship. Other times, it simply cannot occur, such as when the offender has died or is a stranger.
But not all forgiveness depends on whether a broken relationship has been repaired. Even when reconciliation is impossible, we can still relinquish feelings of ill will toward an offender, engaging in intrapersonal forgiveness.
Not all forgiveness has to involve renegotiating a relationship with the person who hurt you.
I used to practice counseling in a hospitals adolescent unit, in which all the teens I worked with were considered a danger to themselves or others. Many of them had suffered abuse. When I pictured what success could look like for them, I hoped that, in adulthood, my clients would not be focused on their past traumathat they could experience safety, health, belonging, and peace.
Most often, such an outcome was not dependent upon reconciling with the offender. In fact, reconciliation was often ill-advised, especially if offenders had not expressed remorse or commitment to any type of meaningful change. Even if they had, there are times when the victim chooses not to renegotiate the relationship, especially when working through trauma.
Still, working toward intrapersonal forgiveness could help some of these young people begin each day without the burden of trauma, anger, and fear. In effect, the client could say, What I wanted from this person I did not get, and I no longer expect it. Removing expectations from people by identifying that we are not likely to get what we want can ease the burden of past transgressions. Eventually, you decide whether to continue to expend the emotional energy it takes to stay angry with someone.
Relinquishing feelings of ill will toward someone who has caused you harm can be difficult. It may require patience, time, and hard work. When we recognize that we are not going to get what we wanted from someonetrust, safety, loveit can feel a lot like grief. Someone may pass through the same stages, including denial, anger, bargaining, and depression, before they can accept and forgive within themselves, without the burden of reconciliation.
Taking stock
With this in mind, I offer four steps to evaluate where you are on your forgiveness journey. A simple tool I developed, the Forgiveness Reconciliation Inventory, looks at each of these steps in more depth.
Talk to someone. You can talk to a friend, mentor, counselor, grandmasomeone you trust. Talking makes the unmentionable mentionable. It can reduce pain and help you gain perspective on the person or event that left you hurt.
Examine if reconciliation is beneficial. Sometimes there are benefits to reconciliation. Broken relationships can be heald, and even strengthened. This is especially more likely when the offender expresses remorse and changes behaviorsomething the victim has no control over.
In some cases, however, there are no benefits, or the benefits are outweighed by the offenders lack of remorse and change. In this case, you might have to come to terms with processing an emotionalor even tangibledebt that will not be repaid.
Consider your feelings toward the offender, the benefits and consequences of reconciliation, and whether theyve shown any remorse and change. If you want to forgive them, determine whether it will be interpersonaltalking to them and trying to renegotiate the relationshipor intrapersonalin which you reconcile your feelings and expectations within yourself.
Either way, forgiveness comes when we relinquish feelings of ill will toward another.
Richard Balkin is a distinguished professor of counselor education at the University of Mississippi.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
As global leaders disperse from the World Economic Forum, LinkedIn cofounder and tech investor Reid Hoffman breaks down the biggest challenges and opportunities facing business todayfrom political headwinds tied to immigration and geopolitics to why fears of a tech bubble arent shaping his investing. A self-proclaimed optimist, Hoffman urges todays business leaders to speak up and use their voices to help society steer toward the good futures.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
One of the biggest drivers of U.S. tech leadership has been attracting talent from outside the U.S. … Immigration policies have tightened up. The outside pipeline has basically been cut off. Are we going to start to see any implications from that this year?
Well, I think we already are. A huge amount of the technology advantages the U.S. has had is because of Indian and Chinese talent that’s come over. Well, now, the Indian talent’s going to stay there. It’s going to go to Canada. It’s going to go to Europe. When someone comes and builds a huge company here, it creates lots of jobs for restaurants and accountants and all kinds of services … and then buying stuff from American manufacturing and staying in American hotels and all the rest of the stuff. Youre wiping out all of that, and you’re saying, “Go somewhere else.” It’s like the Bernie Sanders stupid [remark], “No data centers here. Build them all in Canada. Have Canada get all the economic benefits. Let’s make sure we Americans don’t.” And its just, literally, up is down. It’s crazy thinking. It’s stupid thinking.
And so, you want that immigration. That’s how we built the prosperity of this country. In 250 years, it comes entirely from a generation of us going, “Here is the way that we will take immigration and be a competitive advantage to every other country in the world.” It’s like, “Oh, well, let’s take our competitive advantage and let’s sabotage it.” Now, none of this says that we haven’t gotten to a place where we have problems with the borders, we have problems with asylum, we have a set of other things that, of course, need to get fixed. People are saying, “Hey, I’m feeling pain in my job, in my community, my environment. What’s going wrong? And help fix it.” And we should be doing that. But by the way, completely closing the border is not the right idea.
I mean, you could do that as a start, just as saying, “Hey, let’s re-normalize.” But then you have to understand, for example, the earlier: “Well, we’re going to send ICE after all of the agricultural work.” And then I was, like, “Oh, our farm’s going to stop working. Oh, don’t do that. No, no. Send them into the center streets of Minnesota, so they can beat up people and shoot people. Do that instead.” You’re, like, “Okay, that’s not good either.” It’s frankly catastrophic and terrorizing. So, if you want to see domestic terrorism, see how ICE is operating in some cities and some environments. And so, it’s like, “Okay, what are the things to do to actually really solve Americans’ problems? That’s what we need. And some rationality in immigration is absolutely essential.
How do we have prosperity for our society, for our children, for our grandchildren, and including a bunch of communities that right now feel a lot of pain? How do we solve all those problems?” That’s the thing we need to be doing.
The political climate has made business leaders more cautious about commenting on societal issues. What do you say to people when it’s worth weighing in or even necessary to weigh in or whether now just isn’t the moment?
Look, the theory that if you just keep your mouth shut, the storm will blow over, and it won’t be a problemyou should be disabused of that theory now. That is not what’s happening. Lots of people say, “Oh no, no, this tariffs thing. This is just an early negotiation tactic.” And it’s, “Look, the volatility is a massive sabotage to business. Our young people aren’t being hired.” It’s, “Well, yeah, businesses are in a highly volatile situation.” I’ll say, “Well, we’re not going to do no hiring until we understand what’s going on.” That’s the message that’s being sent from the White House out to the whole business community. And so, you need to speak up and you go, “Well, but what if I speak up, then they’re going to penalize me.”
And they’re, like, “Well, by the way, precisely when you feel fears, you should think about, is this a time for courage?” Because by the way, of course, it shouldn’t be punitive for you speaking up about what your knowledge and expertise and experience and what’s going on is.” I, myself, get regularly called out by the White House and basically only for political persecution purposes. If they would say, “Hey, unlike Trump who has all these pictures of Epstein at parties, I did a little bit of fundraising for MIT. Well, I’m a close associate.” Well, you guys have all the documents. Release all of them. Let’s let people decide the truth of this themselves. So, stop lying about me and reveal all the documents. So, speaking up is actually, I think, really important.
And part of the reason why I do so, is not just because of me and because my sense of moral rightlike First Amendment, freedom of speech, freedom of assemblybut it’s also to try to give other people a sense of, look, you should speak up about the things that you think are real. And if you feel fear, get some other people to speak up along with you and put the energy into it. Don’t just go, “Oh, I’m going to create a rationalization. I’m going to say, ‘Hey, I don’t need … I’m not being fearful. I’m not being a coward. It’s the right thing. It’s the right thing for my business. It’s the right thing.'” And look, human beings firsthumanity, societyand you are members of both of those. Speak up, be present on those things.
And by the way, when you’re powerful, one form of power is wealthy. Anyone who’s wealthy inthe society should be extremely grateful for being part of the society. You have responsibilities. They’re commensurate with your power. And so, you need to speak up. And by the way, not only does the current administration want to silence all of this as speech and say, “No, no, you’re not allowed to. You must take pledges of loyalty.” But I also get arguments from the lefties who go, “Oh, well, you as a wealthy person, you have no moral right to speak.” I’m, like, “Yes, I do. We all have a right to speak.” Some people might value my speaking by knowledge of how companies are created, how prosperity is created, how you have a vibrant economy.
And that’s part of what creates jobs. I mean, I’m a guy who’s created a site that has many hundreds of millions of people participating in it in order to find work. Should people weigh my opinion on some things more than others? Absolutely. Should they weigh them less than certain things than others? Absolutely. But it’s, we need to be speaking up, and we need to be figuring out how to solve our problems together.
