A book festival took place over the weekend in Baltimore, but even if you’re local, you likely didn’t hear about it until after the fact. The event, called A Millions Lives Book Festival, is now trending on social media, but for all the wrong reasonsit’s being called “the Fyre Festival of book festivals,” if that’s any indication of just how disappointing it seems to have been.A Million Lives, organized by author Grace Willows and Archer Management company, came to Baltimore’s Convention Center on May 2 and 3. While the event was allegedly described to authors as an extravagant fantasy-themed ball where they could promote their books to hundreds to thousands of attendees, videos on TikTok and Threads suggest that barely a handful of attendees showed up, and there hardly appeared to have been any setup done in terms of decor.
Videos show what looks like a mostly empty room with some tables. The only real setup appears to have come from the book vendors themselves and whatever books, signage, and display items they brought.In one of many recap videos posted to TikTok, one author explains that prior to heading to Baltimore, she was convinced the event was going to be absolutely massive. Author Perci Jay says she counted at least 120 vendors, authors, narrators, and speakers prior to attending. The numbers were so big, she cleared her schedule, and even planned huge life events around the book festival. “I’m currently pregnant with twins,” Jay says in her recap video. “I planned my pregnancy around this event, like a clown.”
Jay now says that doing so was a huge mistake. Not only did she not earn back the money she spent on the event from book sales, she lost a bundle. In addition to the $150 table fee she paid, she also shelled out $250 to sponsor the event in order to get extra author promotions, such as social media posts, her logo on the organizer’s web page, and more. She also traveled from Texas to Baltimore.
However, according to Jay, none of what she signed up for ever came to fruition. She didn’t get her logo on the site, no social media posts about her were made, and the event itself was a huge flop with almost no readers in sight.
Beyond that, Jay claims there were issues with hotel bookings. According to her, “featured authors” like herself were promised a free stay at the Hilton, which is connected to the Convention Center, but at the last minute were bumped to the Days Inn across the street. “Does this look like I’m at the Hilton?” Jay jokes, panning the camera around her hotel room.
Other authors reported not being able to check in to their hotel at all, or having to pay hotel fees they were promised were already covered. Author Luna Laurier, who also posted on TikTok, said that not only is she out thousands of dollars from the event, but the hotel actually called her in the middle of the night saying that she had to take over payment for her room, which she had been told would be covered by the organizers. “I’m still kind of in shock,” she tells her audience in the post. “I really cannot believe that it got as bad as it did.”Mikayla Hornedo, an author who saw red flags prior to the event but decided to attend anyway because she used to live in Baltimore, was utterly disappointed as well. Hornedo shared her experience at the festival on TikTok, saying that her very “generous” estimate was that 40 attendees in total showed up on Friday.
Archer Fantasy Events did not respond to Fast Company‘s request for comment, but did post an apology online, which directed vendors seeking refunds to reach out to them directly.
“I do understand that the ball tonight was not set up to standards,” organizer Grace Willows said. “There were a lot of issues getting set up, and it was not set up well . . . if you would like a refund, please contact me and I will issue a refund immediately.”Still, for many, the apology fell short. In the comments section on Instagram and TikTok, many flat out called the event a “scam.” Multiple comments mentioned that Willows explicitly told them in emails that hundreds, if not thousands, of tickets had been sold. “In our correspondence, you told me you expected 1,200 attendees; otherwise I wouldn’t have paid the table fee, which I hope you refund,” one commenter vented.
Other comments pointed to the thousands that some vendors spent to get there, with one suggesting that giving refunds may not be enough to make up the financial cost for some authors. “Honestly, you need to be worried about litigation at this point, given how many people are saying they were told a lie about how many tickets you sold,” it read.
Anthropic is turning to a Biden administration alum to run its new Beneficial Deployments team, which is tasked with helping extend the benefits of its AI to organizations focused on social goodparticularly in areas such as health research and educationthat may lack market-driven incentives.
The new team will be led by Elizabeth Kelly, who in 2024 was tapped by the Biden administration to lead the U.S. AI Safety Institute within the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Kelly helped form agreements with OpenAI and Anthropic that let NIST safety-test the companies new models prior to their deployment. She left the government in early February, and in mid-March joined Anthropic.
“Our mission is to support the development and deployment of AI in ways that are good for the world but might not be incentivized by the market,” Kelly tells Fast Company.
Anthropic views the new group as a reflection of its mission as a public benefit corporation, which commits it to distribute the advantages of its AI equitably, not just to deep-pocketed corporations. In an essay he published last year, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei emphasized AIs potential to drive progress in areas like life sciences, physical health, education, and poverty alleviation.
The Beneficial Deployments team sits within Anthropic’s go-to-market organization, which it says ensures that the companys AI software and services are designed and deployed with customer needs in mind. Kelly says her team will collaborate across departmentsincluding with Anthropics Applied AI group and science and social impact specialiststo help mission-aligned customers build successful products and services powered by Anthropic models.
We need to treat nonprofits, ed techs, health techs, those organizations that are developing really transformative solutions the same way that we treat our biggest enterprise customers, Kelly says. In fact, the smaller organizations, which often lack budget and in-house AI expertise, may get a level of support thats not considered standard for Anthropics larger customers.
“Our primary focus here is making sure that . . . the work that we’re doing has the biggest impact in terms of lives that we’re improving, diseases that we’re curing, educational outcomes we’re improving,” Kelly says. When considering new beneficiaries, Kelly says she’ll take input from members of Anthropics long-term benefit trust, an independent governance body whose five trustees have experience in global development.
The Beneficial Deployments team will also grant partner organizations free access to Anthropics models. One of the teams first initiatives is an AI for Science program, which will provide up to $20,000 in API credits over a six-month period to qualifying scientific research organizations, with the possibility of renewal. Anthropic wants to work with at least 25 science organizations that use its large language model (LLM) Claude for starters, then expand the program to additional industry verticals.
As publicly funded support for scientific endeavors faces increasing challenges, this program aims to democratize access to cutting-edge AI tools for researchers working on topics with meaningful scientific impact, particularly in biology and life sciences applications, Anthropic said in a statement.
From special cases to a new program
Anthropic began piloting the Beneficial Deployments concept earlier this year, providing API credits and consulting to several ed-tech organizations. Amira Learning, for example, leverages Anthropic AI to teach millions of students reading comprehension. With the advent of sophisticated new LLMs like Claude, Amira recognized the possibility of an AI tool that can have deeper, humanlike conversations with students about the context and meaning of words. Amira uses Claude to generate dialogues that are personalized to students and designed to measure and enhance reading comprehension skills. The AI can create custom instructional content for students, like questions and hints. Amira says that more than 90% of its users approve of their interactions with AI.
Anthropic then began engaging with other types of organizations using the same model. FutureHouse, for example, is an Eric Schmidt-backed nonprofit dedicated to automating scientific research, particularly in biology, with the help of AI systems. Modern biological research is often stalled by information overload, with researchers spending countless hours combing through papers in order to avoid duplicating existing work. Fortunately, this information comes mainly in the form of text and graphsboth of which are right in Claudes wheelhouse. FutureHouse has used Anthropics Claude models (alongside models from OpenAI and Google) to underpin a suite of agents that can help with science and drug discovery research.
We’ve recently been working with the Beneficial Deployments team at Anthropic to share how we’ve been using their models to build our scientific agents on our platform, says Michael Skarlinski, head of platform at FutureHouse. Their team has been interested in learning which use cases Anthropic models are uniquely capable of, and how they can help improve our development process.
Another partner, Benchling, operates a cloud-based data management platform to help life sciences researchers manage and share (often fragmented and complex) scientific data and collaborate efficiently. Benchling is using Anthropics AI within Amazons Bedrock cloud application environment to embed AI agents directly into scientific workflows. Scientists spend up to 25% of their time on tedious data tasks.
“AI will transform the biotech industry: automating toil, improving experiment design, and even generating novel hypotheses, says Ashu Singhal, Benchlings cofounder and president. But today, only a handful of R&D teamswith the budget, tooling, and technical expertiseare at the frontier.
With the Beneficial Deployments team now in place, the terms of those earlier engagements will be formalized, expanded, and offered to more qualifying organizationsmost of them academic and nonprofit groups. The size of the new team hasnt been disclosed, but Anthropic has already posted several open roles within the group, including specialists in public health and economic mobility.
“I’m incredibly excited about the potential of these efforts to support organizations, companies, and causes that are sometimes left behind and need to really be part of the AI transformation,” Kelly says.
Less than a year after Rite Aid finally wrapped up its first bankruptcy proceedings, its now reportedly planning to file for Chapter 11 protection a second time.
Based on a new report from Bloomberg, Rite Aid employees received a letter today from CEO Matthew Schroeder stating that the companys negotiations with lenders for more capital have failed. He went on to explain that the pharmacy chain can no longer sustain itself and intends to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy.
Per the letter, the company will start by cutting jobs at its corporate offices in Pennsylvania, a move Schroeder attributed to the dramatic downturn in the economy. An apparent copy of the letter is now making its rounds on Reddit, though Rite Aid has not publicly verified its accuracy.
As of this writing, Rite Aid has not officially confirmed a second bankruptcy filing or publicly acknowledged the alleged impending job cuts. Fast Company has reached out to the pharmacy chain for more information on the report and will update this story accordingly.
Bitter pills
Over the past several years, Rite Aid has struggled with the Sisyphean task of recovering from an initial bankruptcybut now, it seems that its restructuring efforts have fallen short.
Rite Aid first filed for Chapter 11 back in 2023, a move that was intended to help the company reduce its debt. As part of the process, the chain received a financing commitment of $3.45 billion from lenders.
In the following months, Rite Aid closed hundreds of stores across the U.S. to reduce costs and turn its finances around.
As Fast Company reported in April, Rite Aid store closures have continued this year, with local media in New Jersey, California, and Oregon reporting on such closings recently.
Emerging from bankruptcy a year ago
Last June, Rite Aid asked for court approval of its restructuring plan, which was ultimately granted, allowing the company to emerge from the bankruptcy proceedings in September. At the time, the company reported that it had eliminated $2 billion of total debt and received $2.5 billion in exit financing.
Now, though, it looks like that wasnt enough to get the company back on track. According to several previous reports from Bloomberg, the writing has been on the wall for this second Chapter 11 filing for several weeks.
Late last month, Bloomberg reported that Rite Aid was low on cash and seeking a debtor-in-possession (DIP) loan, with the end goal of selling itself in pieces as part of this next bankruptcy. Per sources close to the company, Rite Aid will sell certain store locations to bidders, while others will be closed permanently.
The effects of President Donald Trump’s tariff policies are already appearing at America’s busiest port, which says shortages could begin showing up on store shelves in as early as five to seven weeks if new deals aren’t made.
The Port of Los Angeles, the busiest seaport for container freight in North America, is expecting about a third of its import volume to drop next week, its executive director Gene Seroka says, and CEOs are telling him they’re putting imports on hold because of uncertainty and because Trump’s tariffs are too expensive.
“CEOs are telling me, ‘Hit the pause, I’m not going to import any more at these kind of prices. Let’s wait and see,'” Seroka recently said on Bloomberg Surveillance. “Retailers are saying we’ve got about five to seven weeks of normal inventory in the country right now, then we start to see spot shortages if it goes on much beyond this.”
Even if the Trump administration reaches deals to lower tariffs, it would take about a month for container freight ships to be repositioned, loaded, and arrive in the U.S., Seroka said, which could impact spring and summer apparel and back-to-school sales.
Already, Trump’s tariffs are having an impact on hiring, Seroka said, with CEOs telling him hiring and capital investments are now off the table. And at the Port of L.A., fewer container freights means less work for dock workers and truckers.
“Every four containers mean a job, so when we start dialing this back, it’s less job opportunity,” he said.
The U.S. economy shrank in the first quarter of 2025, and Trump’s tariffs have added uncertainty for small businesses and publicly traded companies alike. Trump told NBC’s “Meet the Press” in an interview that aired Sunday that he thought “the good parts” of the economy can be attributed to him and “the bad parts” can be attributed to former President Joe Biden. “Ultimately, I take responsibility for everything, but I’ve only just been here for a little over three months.”
“The tariffs have just started kicking in and we’re doing really well,” he said. “We’re going to be a very rich country.”
Warren Buffett’s announcement Saturday that he would be retiring as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway came as a surprise to lots of people, including the person who was elected to succeed him the next day. Greg Abel has been Buffett’s right-hand man for many years and the public heir apparent for the past five, but Buffett, in making his announcement, said he hadn’t told Abel the moment was coming.
Buffett, 94, will stay on as chairman at Berkshire Hathaway, but by the end of this year, Abel will be in the driver’s seatand will have a big legacy to follow. Buffett took over Berkshire Hathaway in 1965. Things began to take off in 1978, when he convinced his friend Charlie Munger to come on board. Together, the two created a company that was the envy of the investing world. The price of Berkshire Class B shares (NYSE: BRK-B), the most widely held shares of the company, has gone up more than 2,000% since they began trading in 1996. The price of Class A shares (NYSE: BRK-A), held by Buffett and institutional shareholders, is up 42,413% since they began trading in 1985.
Abel is fairly well known to people who closely follow Berkshire Hathaway, but he’s less familiar to people who only know Buffett. Here’s a look at the man who will try to fill Warren Buffett’s shoes.
Who is Greg Abel?
Abel, 62, currently serves as vice chair of non-insurance operations at Berkshire. He’s also the chair of Berkshire Hathaway Energy, which Buffett called one of the company’s four “jewels” in his 2021 shareholder letter. (The other three are Berkshire’s property and casualty insurance businesses, Burlington Northern Santa Fe railroad, and the company’s stake in Apple.)
He has been the designated successor to Buffett for at least four years and has joined Buffett onstage at the company’s investor meeting for the past several years, even before Munger’s death in November 2023.
Away from the office, Abel is a huge hockey fan and serves as assistant volunteer coach for his son’s team in his hometown of Des Moines, Iowa. He’s said to have a quick wit and nurtures strong personal relationships.
“Hes not loud or bombastic, but hes 500% friendly,” Mark Oman, a retired Wells Fargo executive and friend of Abel’s told Fortune.
What is Greg Abel’s background?
Abel started his career at the PricewaterhouseCoopers consulting firm in Canada, eventually moving to the San Francisco office. He joined CalEnergy in 1992, which six years later would acquire Des Moines-based MidAmerican Energy Holdings (which would eventually be renamed Berkshire Hathaway Energy). He began running that company in 2009. In 2018, he was asked to join the Berkshire board.
Why did Warren Buffett pick Greg Abel to succeed him at Berkshire Hathaway?
Abel’s performance with Berkshire Hathaway Energy caught the eye of senior Berkshire executives. Through a series of acquisitions, he transformed that company into a major player in the power industry, with earnings of $5 billion in the first quarter of 2025. In 2023, Buffett told CNBC that Abel does all the work, and I take all the bows.
He’s also seen, in many ways, as the spiritual successor to the plain-spoken, non-flashy Buffett, ensuring the culture at Berkshire Hathaway doesn’t change.
What is Greg Abel’s investment strategy?
Abel, when asked Saturday to compare his approach in dealing with Berkshire’s subsidiaries to Buffett’s, said he saw himself as “more active, but hopefully in a very positive way.
Buffett jokingly offered a more succinct answer: “Better.” He added, “You really need someone that behaves well on top and is not playing games for their own benefit.
Munger, in 2023, told CNBC that Abel was a tremendous learning machine and one could argue that hes just as good as Warren in learning all kinds of things.
Abel’s not expected to pick the companies that go into the Berkshire portfolio. That will be handled by Todd Combs and Ted Weschler, who already help Buffett with that.
Its not every day that a Republican from the Trump administration gets a standing ovation, or three, from a roomful of Democrats. But as Mike Pence showed on January 6, 2021, he doesn’t always stick to the party line.
According to the former vice president, the attacks on the Capitol four years ago were ultimately unsuccessful and a triumph of freedom” because “our institutions held that day, not because of any one person, but because leaders in both political parties, Republicans and Democrats, did their duties, Pence said while receiving the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in Boston at the JFK Library on Sunday.
Pence received the award for putting his life and career on the line to ensure the constitutional transfer of presidential power.
After repeated pressure to overturn the results of the 2020 election, which Joe Biden won, Pence was to preside over Congress and the certification process, which includes counting the Electoral College votes, when a violent mob of Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to stop the process.
While the Secret Service urged him to evacuate, Pence, his wife, Karen, and their daughter Charlotte refused to leave the Capitol, coordinating with the military and congressional leaders during the attack. Once the Capitol was cleared, Pence resumed the certification process.
In these divided times, in these anxious days, I know in my heart that we will find our way forward as one nation, Pence said, acknowledging the current Trump administrations agenda, without naming the president specifically. He added: It’s the Constitution that “binds us all together.”
Unpopular positions, principled stands
The awardnamed after President Kennedys 1957 Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage, which recounts the stories of eight U.S. senators who risked their careers by taking principled stands for unpopular positionsis presented each year to public servants for making a courageous decision of conscience without regard for the personal or professional consequences.
Kennedys daughter, Caroline Kennedy, and grandson, Jack Schlossberg, presented the award to Pence, acknowledging the new political climate of fear that has taken over in the last four months.
We are especially grateful for your presence this year, as many are afraid to speak out or show up, Kennedy said. Its hard to believe that attending a black-tie gala could be described an act of couragebut here we are. President Kennedy called his time the hour of maximum danger and welcomed the challenge. We are living in a similar moment now.
Just as President Kennedy famously stated, “my fellow Americans: Ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country,” Caroline Kennedy said, now is the time to act because, as we have seen in the past 100 days, we can no longer take our democracy for granted.”
“Everyone should be speaking their hearts”
Those in attendance included Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, who called Pence a profile in courage [for] standing up against a leader of his own party, and comedian David Letterman, who said, In this day and age, courage needs to be identified and celebrated in this way. It didnt use to be that way.
When asked what Americans can do right now, Letterman told Fast Company: “They should be speaking their hearts. Everyone should be speaking their hearts.
This was a moment when the vice president stood up for the constitution, and we have to all remember that today, U.S. presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin told Fast Company. History shows that people working from the ground up are what make all the changes. So its at your local area, its in your state, its in your city. Every changewhether its civil rights, womens rights, gay rightshas come from the ground up. Thats what we need to do.
Previous award recipients include former presidents Barack Obama and George H. W. Bush, Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney, and former Democratic Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.
Stock prices for Netflix, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery fell this morning after President Trump took to social media to warn of major incoming tariffs for films made overseas.
This Sunday, Trump used Truth Social to announce another escalation of his ongoing trade war. In the post, Trump claimed that Americas movie industry is dying a very fast death, as Other Countries are offering all sorts of incentives to draw our filmmakers and studios away.
The president went on to call this rise of foreign production both propaganda and a national security threat, ending by stating that, I am authorizing the Department of Commerce, and the United States Trade Representative, to immediately begin the process of instituting a 100% Tariff on any and all Movies coming into our Country that are produced in Foreign Lands.
Howard Lutnick, the U.S. commerce secretary, responded to Trumps rant with the brief note posted to X: Were on it.
Neither Trump nor Lutnick provided any clarification on how such a tariff would be applied, or who might be affected. But this morning, production and streaming companies are already feeling the impact of Trumps proposed plan:
Shares for Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount Global took a sharp decline in early Monday trading, although Disney has since quickly bounced back.
A potential industry-wide “chilling effect”
So far, Trumps announcement has left media experts scratching their headsand incited its fair share of backlash.
First, its difficult to parse how an 100% tariff on movies produced in foreign lands would actually be implemented.
Experts have noted that its unclear whether this tariff would apply only to foreign-language films imported to the United States or to any production shot overseas, including those led by major U.S. studios.
Its also not apparent whether this move will affect streaming services like Netflix and Disney+, which host plenty of titles that are either fully foreign-made or produced in part in another country, and whether short-form content like TV shows will also be impacted.
So many questions, Simon Pulman, an entertainment lawyer at Pryor Cashman, wrote on LinkedIn. Who is ultimately charged the tariff, and on what basis? Production spend? Distributor gross? Do you seek to hit the distributors and platforms that exhibit foreign-produced content? What about Netflix, whose titles do not generate direct revenue? What happens if production occurs offshore but post happens in the US? What about cross-border productions?
It’s true that producers are filming more overseas
In an interview with Fast Company, Pulman said that while the implementation of Trumps proposed plan is unknown, its main goal appears to be convincing major movie studios to bring production back to the U.S.
In the wake of Hollywoods 2023 writer and actor strikes, its become more common for major Hollywood films (Gladiator II, the soon-to-be-released Mission: ImpossibleThe Final Reckoning, and several upcoming Avengers films, for example) to be produced at least partly overseas.
Thats because, Pulman says, the strikes caused many production companies to reevaluate costs, while, simultaneously, foreign jurisdictions like the U.K., Hungary, and the Czech Republic began instating aggressive tax incentives for producers.
Already, politicians and executives from Australia, New Zealand, France, and Italy have spoken out against Trumps plan.
According to the nonprofit media tracker FilmLA, film and television production in Los Angeles has fallen by nearly 40% over the past decade. Given this offshoring trend, Pulman says, the idea of re-incentivizing production in the U.S. is laudable to some extent.
But he thinks adding major tariffs to overseas production is more likely to both increase domestic ticket prices and decrease the number of movies being made rather than convincing American filmmakers to shoot in the U.S.
To my knowledge, every jurisdiction, whether it’s a state in the U.S. or a country like France or Canada, they don’t achieve [more production] by penalizing companies that go offshore, Pulman says. They try to attract and incentivize companies to shoot in their jurisdictions by offering various benefits to them.
The worst kind of Hollywood cliffhanger
At this point, Pulman adds, its difficult to predict exactly how production companies will react to Trumps announcementbut he believes its most likely to have a chilling effect on the industry.
The reality is, until we know the details, and until there’s actually some kind of plan here, we’re not going to have a true sense of what this means, Pulman says. But the challenge with that is it creates uncertainty. If you’re a major streamer or a major studio, you’ve got this potentially hanging over your head.
When the email came from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Jacques Agbobly at first didnt quite believe it.
The Brooklyn-based fashion designer had only been in the business for five years. Now, one of the worlds top museums was asking for two of his designs to be shown in Superfine: Tailoring Black Style, the exhibit launched by the starry Met Gala.
I was just floored with excitement, Agbobly said in an interview. I had to check to make sure it was from an official email. And then the excitement came, and I was like am I allowed to say anything to anyone about it?
Agbobly grew up in Togo, watching seamstresses and tailors create beautiful garments in part of the family home that they rented out. Studying fashion later in New York, the aspiring designer watched the Met Gala carpet from afar and dreamed of one day somehow being part of it.
Superfine: Tailoring Black Style is the first Costume Institute exhibit to focus exclusively on Black designers, and the first in more than 20 years devoted to menswear. Unlike past shows that highlighted the work of very famous designers like Karl Lagerfeld or Charles James, this exhibit includes a number of up-and-coming designers like Agbobly.
The range is phenomenal, says guest curator Monica L. Miller, a Barnard College professor whose book, Slaves to Fashion: Black Dandyism and the Styling of Black Diasporic Identity, is a foundation for the show.
It’s super exciting to showcase the designs of these younger and emerging designers, says Miller, who took The Associated Press through the show over the weekend before its unveiling at Mondays Met Gala, and to see the way they’ve been thinking about Black representation across time and across geography.
The gala had already raised a record $31 million, Metropolitan Museum of Art CEO Max Hollein said Monday the first time the fundraiser for the Mets Costume Institute has crossed the $30 million mark and eclipsing last year’s haul of more than $26 million.
Defining dandyism
The exhibit covers Black style over several centuries, but the unifying theme is dandyism, and how designers have expressed that ethos through history.
For Agbobly, dandyism is about taking space. As a Black designer, as a queer person, a lot of it is rooted in people telling us who we should be or how we should act dandyism really goes against that. Its about showing up and looking your best self and taking up space and announcing that you’re here.
The exhibit, which opens to the public May 10, begins with its own definition: someone who studies above everything else to dress elegantly and fashionably.
Miller has organized it into 12 conceptual sections: Ownership, presence, distinction, disguise, freedom, champion, respectability, jook, heritage, beauty, cool and cosmopolitanism.
How clothing can dehumanize, but also give agency
The ownership section begins with two livery coats worn by enslaved people.
One of them, from Maryland, looks lavish and elaborate, in purple velvet trimmed with gold metallic threading. The garments were intended to show the wealth of their owners. In other words, Miller says, the enslaved themselves were items of conspicuous consumption.
The other is a livery coat of tan broadcloth, likely manufactured by Brooks Brothers and worn by an enslaved child or adolescent boy in Louisiana just before the Civil War.
Elsewhere, there’s a contemporary, glittering ensemble by British designer Grace Wales Bonner, made of crushed silk velvet and embroidered with crystals and the cowrie shells historically used as currency in Africa.
There’s also a so-called dollar bill suit by the label 3.Paradis the jacket sporting a laminated one-dollar bill stitched to the breast pocket, meant to suggest the absence of wealth.
How dress can both disguise and reveal
The disguise section includes a collection of 19th-century newspaper ads announcing rewards for catching runaway enslaved people.
The ads, Miller notes, would often describe someone who was particularly fond of dress or note that the person had taken large wardrobes. The reason was twofold: The fancy clothes made it possible for an enslaved person to cloak their identity. But also, when they finally made it to freedom, they could sell the clothing to help fund their new lives, Miller says.
So dressing above ones station sometimes was a matter of life and death, the curator says, and also enabled people to transition from being enslaved to being liberated.
The contemporary part of this section includes striking embroidered jackets by the label Off-White that purposely play with gender roles like displaying an ostensibly male jacket on a female mannequin.
Views of an emerging Black middle and upper-middle class
Stopping by a set of portraits from the early 19th century, as abolitionism was happening in the North, Miller explains that the subjects are Black men who were successful, well off enough to commission or sit for portraits, and dressed in the finest fashions of the day. Like William Whipper, an abolitionist and wealthy lumber merchant who also founded a literary society.
They represent the beginnings of a Black middle and upper middle class in America, Miller says. But she points out a group of racist caricatures in a case right across from the portraits.
Almost as soon as they are able to do this, she says, referring to the portraits, they are stereotyped and degraded.
Projecting respectability: W.E.B. Du Bois and Frederick Douglass
W.E.B. Du Bois, Miller points out, was not only a civil rights activist but also one of the best-dressed men in turn-of-the-century America. He traveled extensively overseas, which meant he needed clothing befitting his status as a representative of Black America to the world.
Objects in the display include receipts for tailors in London, and suit orders from Brooks Brothers or his Harlem tailor. There is also a laundry receipt from 1933 for cleaning of shirts, collars, and handkerchiefs.
Also highlighted in this section: Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist, writer, and statesman and also the most photographed man of the 19th century.
The show includes his tailcoat of brushd wool, as well as a shirt embroidered with a D monogram, a top hat, a cane and a pair of sunglasses.
Designers reflecting their African heritage
One of Millers favorite items in the heritage section is Agboblys bright-colored ensemble based on the hues of bags that West African migrants used to transport their belongings.
Also displayed is Agboblys denim suit embellished with crystals and beads. It’s a tribute not only to the hairbraiding salons where the designer spent time as a child, but also the earrings his grandmother or aunts would wear when they went to church.
Speaking of family, Agbobly says that he ultimately did tell them and everyone about his pinch-me moment.
Everyone knows about it, the designer says. I keep screaming. If I can scream on top of a hill, I will.
Jocelyn Noveck and Gary Gerard Hamilton, Associated Press
Running a small business demands many skills, including ambition and resilience. However, nothing beats financial preparednessespecially as the Trump administration’s tariffs loom.A new survey from TD Bank suggests that small business owners may not be as prepared for revenue shortfalls as they’d like to believe. Wakefield Research conducted the Financial Preparedness Survey among U.S. small business owners who have 100 employees or fewer and revenues of $100,000+ annually. Overwhelmingly, respondents reported that their business is equipped for whatever challenges the next 12 to 18 months may bring, with 94% saying they were ready. But most also admitted their business could not withstand temporary revenue shortfalls.
In the survey, 72% of respondents said insufficient revenue for two quarters or less would cause them concern about their business’s future. And, more concerningly, 43% said longer dips, for three to four quarters, would be catastrophic. In other words, their business would not survive the impact of more than two quarters where revenue fell short.
With the impact of federal layoffs and tariffs already setting in, 99% of respondents said they are assessing overall preparedness more frequently. “Now, more than ever, it is critical for business owners to be financially prepared,” Andy Bregenzer, cohead of U.S. Commercial Banking at TD Bank, said in the report. “Business owners who invest the time to create a financial plan will be better positioned to face challenges and seize new opportunities.”Still, respondents were divided on how to gauge their readiness. More than half say a positive cash flow is a telltale signal for how well equipped they are, while 37% said enough capital to cover emergencies is the most important way to stay afloat.
Small business owners are not the only ones who are worried about stability in the wake of tariffs. In a recent survey of 5,000 frontline workers, 52% said they fear they will be laid off, while 74% said they expect Trump’s tariffs to impact their earning potential. Unsurprisingly, 77% of these workers said it’s small business owners, rather than Wall Street, who will be hurt by tariffs.
Is a side hustle really the only thing separating you from the life you desire? Listening to some influencers on social media could certainly have you thinking so.
Side hustles encompass a range of self-directed entrepreneurial activities undertaken while also working a job. For young people with limited access to capital, theyre the most accessible opportunity to engage in entrepreneurship.
Yet, we still know very little about who takes them on and why, and what kind of impact they have on working life in economies like Australia.
Our new report, Side Hustles: How Young People Are Redefining Work, presents the first wave of findings from an ongoing three-year, mixed-methods study that seeks to answer these questions.
In our first year of data collection, we surveyed 1,497 side hustlers ages 18 to 34 and interviewed a further 68. Our findings raise questions about the merits of entrepreneurship as a solution to youth unemployment or a pathway to financial freedom.
What makes a side hustle?
To be included in our project, a young person had to be employed, but also carrying out some form of entrepreneurship.
We defined entrepreneurship as self-directed economic activity, where the side hustler has some measure of control over when they work, who they work for, and what they charge.
The most popular side hustle among participants was selling goods (42.9%). Others included:
services such as gardening, dog-walking or moving furniture (29.2%)
creating media content (16.5%)
creative work such as graphic design or photography (11.3%).
Side hustling could include some gig work through online platforms, but only when these platforms allow workers to negotiate prices with clients and make choices about their work. As such, we excluded ride-share and food delivery drivers from the project.
Projects for the privileged
While some people may assume that young people start a side hustle out of financial stress, we found side hustlers are actually a relatively privileged cohort.
They are a well-educated group. Almost two-thirds of our sample had university degrees and many of the remainder were studying. They also generally report their financial well-being as comfortable.
Why is this? Side hustles often dont make much money, cost money to set up, and carry riskall of the hallmarks of entrepreneurship.
Median hourly earnings from their side hustles are less than what they would make working in retail or hospitality, and on average they are about 50% what they make in their main job.
As one e-commerce side-hustler put it: “If I really put my time and energy into the consideration, I would say were not making much money at all. Its just something I enjoy doing in my free time.”
Their side-hustle earnings are also uncertain: 65% say they are unsure what their earnings will look like in three months.
In other words, you need to be financially secure already to even contemplate a side hustle.
Passion over pay
Side hustles dont make enough to help someone who is really financially struggling, and they are unlikely to be a pathway out of the employment rat race.
Despite this, our participants are overwhelmingly satisfied with their side hustles and say they have good work-life balance. So what motivates them?
The top motivation reported in our study is passion and enjoyment. Side hustlers say they want work that relates to their interests and enjoy the autonomy and flexibility that a side hustle allows.
Even though side hustles are often less profitable than a second job, the second-highest motivation was still money.
Thats likely because they offer a way of making some supplementary income in a way that is flexible and autonomous.
Theyre often a source of play money. One 33-year-old man with an e-commerce side hustle told us: “If I was to pick up a second job, like Uber driving at night time, I wont be happy. Ill be tired. Ill be stressed out trying to do that. Whereas, I think because Ive got the passion for it here, Im happy to do it because, like I said, Im doing it at my own pace.”
Pressure to be productive
Our research suggests that rather than being a pathway out of unemployment, side hustles actually represent a broader social and economic trend: More and more of young peoples lives are being encompassed by work.
Interviewees frequently talked about feeling like they needed to make their time outside of work productive in some way. For some, it was as though they could not justify leisure time unless it was financially profitable.
One participant told us: “You obviously want to enjoy life and have a bit of a chill time, but some days you just go, like, ‘What am I doing? Just sitting at home and just relaxing watching Netflix or whatever. I should probably be out there making more money.
Blurring work life boundaries?
Most participants were also not very concerned about growing their side hustles into businesses.
Instead, they aspired for balanced working lives with a side hustle offering passion, flexibility, and autonomous work, and paid employment supporting them financially and offering the option of a traditional career.
They also did not necessarily see the time spent on their side hustles as work, being much more personally invested and self-directed in their side hustles than in their paid jobs.
But this means that much of their leisure time looks very much like work, and more and more of their lives are dedicated to being productive.
David Farrugia is an ARC Future Fellow at the School of Education at Deakin University.
Brendan Churchill is an ARC senior research fellow and senior lecturer in sociology at The University of Melbourne.
Kim Allen is a professor of sociology of youth and culture at the University of Leeds.
Stephanie Patouras is a research officer and PhD candidate at Deakin University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
