So many mourners lined up to see Pope Francis lying in state in a simple wooden coffin inside St. Peter’s Basilica that the Vatican kept the doors open all night due to higher-than-expected turnout, closing the basilica for just an hour Thursday morning for cleaning.The basilica is bathed in a hushed silence as mourners from across the globe make a slow, shuffling procession up the main aisle to pay their last respects to Francis, who died Monday after a stroke.The hours spent on line up the stately via della Conciliazione through St. Peter’s Square and through the Holy Door into the basilica has allowed mourners to find community around the Argentine pontiff’s legacy of inclusion and humble persona.Emiliano Fernandez, a Catholic from Mexico, was waiting in line around midnight, and after two hours still had not reached the basilica.“I don’t even care how much time I wait here. It’s just the opportunity to (show) how I admired Francisco in his life,” said Fernandez, whose admiration for the pope grew during his 2016 visit to Mexico. “I think because of the respect that I have for him and the great person he was, it’s worth the wait.”The last numbers released by the Vatican said more than 50,000 people had paid their respects during the first 12 hours of the public viewing, starting at 11 a.m. Wednesday. The basilica closed for just one hour Thursday morning, from 6 a.m. until 7 a.m., the planned opening time.Among the first-day mourners was a church group of 14-year-olds from near Milan who arrived for the now-suspended canonization of the first millennial saint, as well as a woman who prayed to the pope for a successful operation and an Italian family who brought their small children to see the pope’s body.“We came because we didn’t bring them when he was alive, so we thought we would bring them for a final farewell,” said Rosa Scorpati, who was exiting the basilica Wednesday with her three children in strollers. “They were good, but I don’t think they really understood because they haven’t yet had to deal with death.”Like many others, the Scorpati family from Calabria was in Rome on an Easter vacation, only to be met with the news of Francis’ death on Easter Monday.Out of devotion to the pope and his message of inclusion, the grieving faithful joined the procession of mourners that wended from St. Peter’s Square through the basilica’s Holy Door, with the repentant among them winning an indulgence, a form of atonement granted during the Jubilee Holy Year. From there, the line extended down the basilica’s central aisle to the pope’s simple wooden casket.By late Wednesday, the wait appeared to be three or four hours and growing. A person doing crowd management estimated that the wait was closer to five hours. The mourners stretched down the center of Via della Conciliazione, in a lane set aside for Jubilee pilgrims.After three days of public viewing, a funeral Mass including heads of state will be held Saturday in St. Peter’s Square. The pope will then be buried in a niche within the St. Mary Major Basilica, near his favorite Madonna icon.The death of Francis, who was 88, capped a 12-year pontificate characterized by his concern for the poor and his message of inclusion, but he was also criticized by some conservatives who felt alienated by his progressive outlook.A procession of priests, bishops and cardinals accompanied Francis’ body Wednesday on its journey from a private viewing inside the Vatican to St. Peter’s Square. The pageantry contrasted with the human interactions of rank-and-file mourners at the public viewing.Francis lay in state in an open casket, perched on a ramp facing mourners, with four Swiss Guards standing at attention. As the crowd reached the casket, many lifted their smartphones to snap a photo.One nun accompanying an elderly woman with a cane walked away sobbing, “My pope is gone.”Such despair was rare. The mood was more one of gratitude for a pope who had, by example, taught many people to open their minds.“I am very devoted to the pope,” said Ivenes Bianco, who was in Rome from Brindisi, Italy, for an operation. “He was important to me because he brought many people together by encouraging coexistence.” She cited Francis’ acceptance of the gay community and his insistence on helping the poor.Humbeline Coroy came to Rome from Perpignan, France, for the planned canonization Sunday of 15-year-old Carlo Acutis, which was suspended after the pope’s death. She stayed to pay respects to Francis, enjoying exchanges with Japanese mourners they met as they waited under the sun in St. Peter’s Square.“For me, it is a lot of things. In my job, I work with disabled children, and I traveled to Madagascar to work with poor people. Being here, and close to the pope, is a way of integrating these experiences, and make them concrete,” she said. Coroy also brought prayers for her father, who is sick with cancer.For Alessandra Nardi, the pope’s death brought back memories of the death three years ago of her beloved uncle Luigi, who used to call her from St. Peter’s Square when he came to see Pope Francis say Mass. He “let me hear the bells toll. It was a beautiful thing.”Riccardo Ojedea from Colombia said his experience waiting in line for two hours to pay respects to the pope had shown him how much “humanity loves the pope.”“He left a very important legacy for everyone,” he said, “to make this world happier.”AP video journalist Isaia Montelione contributed.
Colleen Barry, Associated Press
Weve all heard the familiar directive: Were going through another reorganization and will be cutting 20% of headcount, but priorities remain the same and, in fact, may expand. Meanwhile, youre being told to just make it work” without offering additional resources, guidance, or support.
This conversation, unfortunately, isn’t unique. It represents the silent crisis engulfing middle management across America.
Middle managerswho oversee 90% of the U.S. workforceare facing unprecedented challenges in 2025. Recent KPMG data reveals nearly one-third are actively disengaged, while 62% report unsustainable stress levels as they struggle with expanded responsibilities amid shrinking teams. At the same time, Gallup’s findings show employee dissatisfaction at 15-year highs.
The economic uncertainty plaguing the U.S. has created a perfect storm for middle management burnout. Organizations are seemingly undergoing constant reorgs and scrambling to eliminate redundancies, optimize productivity and reduce resources to do more with less. Middle managers find themselves caught between the demands from top leadership to cut costs and maintain output while keeping their teams productive and motivated at the same time.
The concrete middle
Middle managers are what I call “the concrete middle”the foundation bearing pressure from both the top echelon of organizations and the functions and teams reporting to them. They understand the real flow of work, the network connections, and who the true “magic makers” are in the organization. They’re facing tightening budgets from above while trying to maintain an engaged, high-performing workforce below.
What makes this crisis particularly acute in 2025 is that the job market is reported as healthy but remains very tight. Employers may be in a wait-and-see mode, and struggling leaders may not see viable alternatives. This creates a dangerous apathywhat I’ve observed as “doing just enough to survive.”
But here’s the concern: When the pendulum swings the other way and market conditions improve, companies will feel real painbecause employees remember. They remember which organizations honored their values during difficult times and which simply treated people as disposable resources.
Break the cycle of disempowerment
One of the biggest challenges middle managers face is maintaining a sense of autonomy and growing their employees’ talent and potential. How do you keep top talent feeling they can contribute meaningfully and advance their careers amid constant change and disruption?
The truth is, during volatile periods, trust and empowerment often take a back seat to numbers. While financial responsibility is certainly necessary, organizations need a more nuanced approachparticularly for functions that drive growth.
During these unprecedented times, I’ve coached leaders to advocate and empower themselves by harnessing this moment as a chance to reinvent and reimagine how their work is being done. Because amid the volatile and unpredictable times lies opportunityan opportunity to change and employ new strategies, tactics, and ways of working that may not have been supported during more stable, constant, and calm periods. Middle managers, with their unique vantage point, often see possibilities that senior leadership overlooks or never considers. We need to give them the tools, trust, and ability to reimagine their work in ways that might actually achieve growth in a down period while achieving cost savings by simply doing things differently and better.
This approach requires a fundamental shift in perspectivefrom viewing middle managers as mere implementers to recognizing them as the crucial bridge between strategy, execution, and market growth.
Move from platitudes to real development
Many middle managers have been told, “Nobody owns your development but you.” Translation: Its up to you to grow yourself, learn, and improve.
Traditional leadership development approaches are not meeting the needs of today’s leaders. The solution isn’t another perfunctory annual performance-review exerciseit’s creating intentional support systems that address well-being, professional growth, trust, and empowerment.
Organizations must implement scenario planning into their talent management process. This means preparing leaders for all market conditionsgrowth, stable, uncertain, and competitive landscapes. Building this muscle prevents paralysis during challenging times and empowers managers to push for a strategic repositioning of their teams to restructure, realign, and optimize team performance.
The development of top talent isn’t just about surviving difficult periodsit’s about positioning them to deliver in different ways that might not have been possible before. In times of disruption, there’s often more support and openness for working differently, adopting new tactics, approaches, and novel ways of working than during periods when business as usual comes with a playbook of what to do and how to do it.
Cut the consensus culture
Perhaps the most insidious barrier to middle-management effectiveness is what I call “consensus culture”the endless cycle of meetings and layers of review and approvals that exist primarily to stroke egos rather than drive decisions and unleash innovation and potential.
During my time leading organizational development initiatives, we introduced the philosophy of GEPO (Good Enough, Proceed On). This wasn’t about compromising the operational excellence of what you’re doing, but about streamlining how ideas are socialized. Do you really need three to five meetings with people at all levels to make a decision? Can you eliminate the pre-meetings prior to the decision meetings and the “I’m just being informed” meetings that clog calendars without adding value?
By streamlining decision-making and trusting and empowering the people who own and support the work, organizations can reduce the time-to-decision and allow experts to take true accountability. This approach isn’t just about efficiencyit’s about restoring purpose and autonomy to the manager’s role while empowering them to do their jobs effectively with minimal bureaucracy.
In the absence of this trust, we handicap our middle managers. They become dependent on groupthink and consensus-driven approaches, operating in a highly risk-averse fashion because they fear making independent decisions without extensive backup and group support. This is the opposite of innovationand organizations simply cannot afford thi handicap if they want to innovate, disrupt, and improve performance.
Embrace AI as ally, not threat
The AI revolution adds another layer of complexity and also an opportunity for middle managers in 2025. Too often, leaders view these technologies through a lens of fear rather than as an efficient resource that enables productivity and output.
Its a genuine fear of replacement. But I don’t believe AI will replace good managers. Instead, organizations must be transparent about AI’s business value while generating excitement about its possibilities. AI should be positioned as a complement to human talentjust like we would approach any new technology.
Leaders at the top need to create engagement and excitement around AI as a strategic lever that can help streamline processes and improve decision-making. This isn’t about replacing jobs but freeing up time and attention for the work that truly mattersthe strategic thinking and human connection that AI cant replace.
The path forward requires moving beyond traditional development approaches to build resilient leadership pipelines capable of sustaining organizations through continuous transformation. By elevating and empowering middle managers, companies can stabilize their operations while preparing for future challenges in an increasingly complex business environment.
The companies that will thrive in this era of disruption will be those that transform their middle management from a burnout risk into an innovation advantage through empowerment, trust, autonomy, and accountability for their work.
On a quiet residential street lined with unassuming homes and white picket fences in Gliwice, Poland, one building is not like the rest. Its a hulking, bright silver structure that’s covered entirely in pipes.
This eye-catching building is the new headquarters for Gambit, a Polish pipe distribution company specializing in underground water systems. Designed by the architecture firm KWK Promes, the headquarters takes Gambits building materials aboveground, transforming pipes from a utilitarian necessity into an aesthetic material that encases the buildings entire exterior. The result is a visually striking structure that cleverly merges architecture with product advertising.
[Photo: Juliusz Soko³owski/courtesy KWK Promes]
Building a headquarters out of pipes
While the idea to create an office entirely covered in pipes might seem like an avant-garde concept, it actually started as a cost-saving measure.
The idea to use pipes on the facade came up when the investorthe company Gambitasked us to design an office-warehouse building that would serve as its unique showcase, but at the lowest possible cost,” says Robert Konieczny, founder of KWK Promes. “We then thought that since they deal with specialized pipes, we could use this very materialespecially since they could acquire it at cost price.
The concept of using Gambits actual pipes was short-lived, as Konieczny’s team quickly discovered that PVC pipes meant for underground use are prone to oxidizing in the sun, tend to be quite bulky, and dont meet Polish fire safety requirements. Still, the firm wanted to follow through on the idea of transforming Gambits building material into a custom cladding that would resemble a stack of pipes.” Ultimately, they found a way to make it happen without breaking the bank.
[Photo: Juliusz Soko³owski/courtesy KWK Promes]
To mimic Gambits pipes, KWK Promes commissioned custom silver tubes from a metal fabrication company, each made from inexpensive raw aluminum sheetinga material the company has also used for projects like an apartment complex in Katowice, Poland, and a futuristic mountain home.
KWK Promes explained on the Archello platform that as an added advantage, the aluminum sheeting develops a patina over time, taking on a matte, raw character reminiscent of concrete.” Importantly, the firm added, “the sheet is incredibly durable and virtually indestructible, making it easy to maintain. This is crucial for us because the operation of buildings generates up to 30% of CO2 emissions, so we always seek simple, low-maintenance solutions.
[Photo: Juliusz Soko³owski/courtesy KWK Promes]
The final structure includes a two-story office section with sloping walls, a cube-shaped warehouse to hold the companys inventory, and a lower workshop section. The entire exterior is fitted with piping, while rooftop skylights and glass windows allow natural light into the working spaces. Inside, concrete walls and flooring have been added to mimic the building’s eventual aging process.
[Photo: Juliusz Soko³owski/courtesy KWK Promes]
A multifunctional material
Aesthetically, the cladding comes about as close to resembling a stack of pipes as a building could get, lending parts of the structure the disconcerting sense that it might be moments from rolling away. From certain angles, the sides of the tubing create a striped pattern, while other angles of the building take on a honeycomb pattern from the open ends of the pipes. KWK Promes also hopes that beyond its visual advantages, the pipe cladding might serve a purpose for the surrounding environment.
[Photo: Juliusz Soko³owski/courtesy KWK Promes]
Initially, at the investors suggestion, the design included protective nets for the pipes,” Konieczny explains. “Over time, however, we decided to leave the pipes open so that, for example, birds could make their home there. In the end, we managed to convince the investor to abandon the netsalthough it’s hard to say whether it was the ecological arguments or the financial ones that convinced them more, as this decision significantly reduced the implementation costs.
In an era when remote and hybrid work arrangements increasingly influence the way office interiors are designed, the Gambit headquarters is a reminder that theres still plenty of room for innovation on an offices exterioreven in an industry that rarely sees the light of day.
Oceans cover about 70% of the Earths surface, yet the ocean floor remains largely untouched by humans. But perhaps not for long.
A Canadian-based firm called the Metals Co. (TMC) recently announced plans to ask the Trump administration to allow it to mine the deep seabed for valuable critical metals in the Pacific Ocean. President Donald Trump is reportedly considering an executive order that would speed up permitting for deep-sea mining, which has prompted outrage from other countries. While some small and exploratory deep-sea mining operations already exist, the practice has yet to happen on a large commercial scale, partly due to fears that it could cause catastrophic damage to the pristine seafloor environment and the wealth of life harbored there.
But the worsening climate crisis and the urgent need to transition away from fossil fuels has put deep-sea mining in the spotlight. Clean energy technologies like solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries contain critical minerals like nickel, lithium, cobalt, copper, and manganese, and concerns are growing over whether well have enough of these materials to meet near-term net-zero goals. Some companies have pitched deep-sea mining as a solution. But would the risks be worth the potential rewards?
Into the deep
TMCs mining process would involve collecting potato-size balls of rock, known as polymetallic nodules, that rest gently on top of the seafloor sediment and contain various critical minerals. These nodules have formed over millions of years, and they carpet vast swathes of the seabed. A large rover-like machine would be lowered from a ship down to the seafloor where it would gather the nodules and send them back up to the ship. (To give you a sense of depth, the area in the Pacific where TMC wants to mine, called the Clarion-Clipperton Zone (CCZ), is a deep-sea abyssal plain some 2.5 miles down and is estimated to hold 21 billion tons of nodules.) The water and sediment that comes up with the nodules would then be pumped back into the ocean.
A 2021 concept rendering of a Metals Co. mining device [Image: Bjarke Ingels Group/The Metals Co.]
The company says it would pay careful attention not to harm the integrity of the deep-ocean ecosystem during this process and plans to use a real-time monitoring program that will enable it to adapt, pause, and change . . . operations to stay within expected ecological thresholds.”
But the nodules themselves are an essential part of that ecosystem, and removing them would have consequences. Nodules are among the only hard surfaces in a vast plain of sludgy sediment, and serve as a habitat for many slow-growing and unique creatures, including sea sponges, corals, and octopuses. And the CCZ likely contains many thousands of species that have yet to be identified.
Research suggests that removing the nodules would lead to a loss of food-web integrity and a significant depreciation of faunal biodiversity. Disturbing the ocean food web could have cascading effects, putting many fish populations at risk and threatening the livelihoods and food security of millions of people. (The Trump administration did not respond to request for comment by the time of publication.)
There are other concerns. The mere presence of the rover itself in an environment that has remained untouched for millennia would likely disturb its living organisms, most of which exist in the top 2 inches of sediment, explains Oliver Ashford, a marine biologist with the World Resources Institutes Ocean Program. The organisms there aren’t really adapted to rapidly changing currents and being thrown around and disrupted, he says. They’re quite delicate organisms normally. So the physical interaction with that machine might cause death. A recent study published in the journal Nature found that life at a small deep-sea mining test site in the CCZ is still recovering four decades after the tests were conducted.
The creatures that arent physically disturbed by the rover could be harmed by changes in temperature, light, and sound. The activity could stir up large plumes of sediment that get picked up by ocean currents and spread across hundreds of miles, smothering and starving sponges and coral and disrupting fishing activities. Theres even some concern that mining could interfere with the oceans natural ability to sequester carbon and produce oxygen, further harming the Earths climate. TMC doesnt deny that deep-sea mining comes with environmental risks, but says the clean energy transition will require trade-offs.
Whos in charge around here?
The U.N.s International Seabed Authority is responsible for setting environmental and financial regulations for the nascent deep-sea mining industry, but has yet to do so even after years of deliberations. Theyre developing regulations from scratch for an industry that could potentially have a large environmental impact, Ashford says of the ISA. I feel like it’s a process that shouldn’t be rushed. But the sluggish pace of this rulemaking has frustrated some mining firms, including TMC, that are tired of waiting.
Technically the United States doesnt have to wait for the ISA to give mining the go-ahead because it never ratified the UN Law of th Sea, the 1994 treaty that put the ISA in charge of seabed mining. This is why TMC has come knocking on Trumps door. The company promises a massive and rapid injection of metals into the U.S. if its allowed to mine the seabed. This is important because demand for critical minerals is expected to more than double by 2030 and triple by 2040 as clean energy technology advances.
While mineral reserves are abundant on land, production tends to be concentrated in a handful of countriesin China especiallywhich makes the supply chain unreliable. In the U.S., for example, more than 80% of critical minerals are imported. And heightened trade tensions will further tighten supply: China recently restricted exports of seven rare earth elements in response to Trumps tariffs on Chinese goods. Lack of investment has also made it difficult to rapidly scale up mineral production. Deep-sea mining, therefore, is a path to making real progress toward solving our supply chain problem, TMC says in a promotional video.
TMC also argues that deep-sea mining would be less harmful for the environment than terrestrial mining activities. Its true that land mining contributes to pollution, resource depletion, and damage to biodiversity. Mining, by its nature, is not a zero-harm activity. It poses significant risks to the environment and local communities, writes Melissa Barbanell at the World Resources Institute. But its not clear that deep-sea mining would be more sustainable than land mining, and TMC admits that seabed mining is unlikely to replace land mining anytime soon.
Peering into the future
Some groups predict that rapid technological advances, improved recycling methods, and robust circular economies would be enough to help us use the minerals we have more efficiently, eliminating the need for deep-sea mining altogether. Future mineral demand can be met without deep seabed mining, declared the World Wildlife Fund in a report finding that innovations could curb demand for critical minerals by 20% to 58% by 2050.
As with so many new technologies, figuring out whether deep-sea mining is a good idea or a bad one isnt straightforward. A paper published in the journal Ocean Sustainability a few years ago tried to look at the question through an economic lens. The researchers wanted to know: Of all the key stakeholdersfrom mining companies to governments to humanity at largewho really benefits from deep-sea mining, and by how much? Our conclusion was that only the commercial mining companies are likely to get some profit, and it’s not much, says Ussif Rashid Sumaila, a professor of ocean and fisheries economics at the University of British Columbia, and lead author on the paper.
The analysis found that revenues would likely be huge for deep-sea mining companies in the first few years while demand for minerals is high, but would drop off as the market is flooded and prices come down. Combine this with high operational costs and the threat of numerous expensive lawsuits, and the long-term viability of deep-sea mining looks tenuous. Some companies, like the Norwegian firm Loke Marine Minerals, have already gone bust due to funding troubles.
As for another key stakeholdernatureSumailas paper concluded that the costs of managing environmental damage caused by deep-sea mining will likely be astronomical. Look, he says, sometimes you just have to leave things alone.
Substack and Patreon are vying to become creators primary revenue stream.
For most influencers, payouts from platforms like Meta or Google arent enough to build a sustainable career. Rather than spending their days hawking products, many creators are turning to direct fan support, and two companies dominate that space: Patreon and Substack.
Patreons latest move targets streamers. Its native livestreaming feature, currently in demo and set for a broad rollout this summer, could attract gamers and broadcasters alike. But Substack beat them to it, launching a similar live video tool just three months earlier. As the two platforms expand their offerings, the rivalry for creator loyalty is heating up.
The market for creator livestreams
Video already performs well on the platform: Its Patreons second-highest-earning media category after podcasting. Many Twitch streamers rely on Patreon as a more stable source of subscription revenue, preferring it to Twitchs unpredictable payouts. With the addition of live video, Patreon is betting that more of these streamers will shift even larger parts of their operations to its platform.
Creators can use livestreams to attract new free members, but they can also use it to encourage free members to pay to upgrade to unlock a Live so that creators are earning the most from their fans, writes Drew Rowny, Patreons VP of Product, in an email to Fast Company. Native livestreams will also be a part of our existing ticketed events experience on Patreon. Live will become a part of our tools that already convert 700,000 free memberships to paid each month.
But Substack, which was founded four years after Patreon, already has the upperhand. The platform introduced livestreaming to top-performing creators in September, then expanded access sitewide in January. Video is now central to Substacks strategy: 82% of its 250 highest-earning creators are using audio and video in their work.
Since its inception, Substack has been a refuge for journalists leaving legacy mediaand its live video feature is now drawing in television anchors as well. Don Lemon and Jim Acosta both stream on Substackand sometimes, they stream together. As of 2025, roughly one in three live videos on the platform are cohosted with another Substack creator. Earlier this month, former MSNBC host Chris Matthews announced hell be streaming there, too.
The important thing about live video, community features, or any other publishing tools is that they aren’t just standalone featuresthey’re connected to a network that helps publishers grow both audience and revenue, Substack cofounder Hamish McKenzie writes in an email to Fast Company. That’s what Substack does exceptionally well.
Who will win the creator subscription market?
Second-stream creator revenue has been Patreons domain for over a decade. But Substack has recently inched its way, courting TikTok creators with big-money incentives. To some extent, the budding strategy has worked. When Hannah Neeleman, the infamous trad wife behind Ballerina Farm, wanted to venture outside of TikTok, she started a Substack newsletter. So have a good many shopping influencers, wanting to more easily insert affiliate links. Not long ago, Patreon would have been these creators only option.
Of course, Substack doesnt think of itself as a Patreon competitor. It wants to be known as a wider social media platform, and not just a subscription serviceeven if it continues to tout its five million paid subscriptions.
Substack is a destination people visit specifically to discover new voices and find creators to subscribe to,” McKenzie says. “Users willingly engage with all content forms while there, whether it’s livestreaming, reading, watching videos, or listening to podcasts. In that sense, Substack is truly a 360-degree platform, offering creators everything they need. It’s more comparable to YouTube than to Patreon.
That doesnt mean Patreon is losing its grip. The company emphasizes that more than half of the $290 billion creator economy comes from direct-to-fan paid programs. The growth of other platforms could just be a sign of an expanding industry.
Were seeing more and more platforms helping creators to connect directly with their fanswhich is a great thing for the creator economy, Patreons Rowny writes. Creators can build tighter communities, grow their audience more, and earn more income on Patreon. Were laser-focused on helping creators manage and grow their direct-to-fan businesses.
Welcome to the world of social media mind control. By amplifying free speech with fake speech, you can numb the brain into believing just about anything. Surrender your blissful ignorance and swallow the red pill. Youre about to discover how your thinking is being engineered by modern masters of deception.
The means by which information gets drilled into our psyches has become automated. Lies are yesterday’s problem. Today’s problem is the use of bot farms to trick social media algorithms into making people believe those lies are true. A lie repeated often enough becomes truth.
We know that China, Iran, Russia, Turkey, and North Korea are using bot networks to amplify narratives all over the world, says Ran Farhi, CEO of Xpoz, a threat detection platform that uncovers coordinated attempts to spread lies and manipulate public opinion in politics and beyond.
Bot farm amplification is being used to make ideas on social media seem more popular than they really are. A bot farm consists of hundreds and thousands of smartphones controlled by one computer. In data-center-like facilities, racks of phones use fake social media accounts and mobile apps to share and engage. The bot farm broadcasts coordinated likes, comments, and shares to make it seem as if a lot of people are excited or upset about something like a volatile stock, a global travesty, or celebrity gossipeven though theyre not.
Meta calls it coordinated inauthentic behavior. It fools the social networks algorithm into showing the post to more people because the system thinks it’s trending. Since the fake accounts pass the Turing test, they escape detection.
Unlike conventional bots that rely on software and API access, bot farm amplification uses real mobile phones. Racks and racks of smartphones connected to USB hubs are set up with SIM cards, mobile proxies, IP geolocation spoofing, and device fingerprinting. That makes them far more difficult to detect than the bots of yore.
Its very difficult to distinguish between authentic activity and inauthentic activity, says Adam Sohn, CEO of Narravance, a social media threat intelligence firm with major social networks as clients. Its hard for us, and were one of the best at it in the world.
Disinformation, Depression-era-style
Distorting public perception is hardly a new phenomenon. But in the old days, it was a highly manual process. Just months before the 1929 stock market crash, Joseph P. Kennedy, JFKs father, got richer by manipulating the capital markets. He was part of a secret trading pool of wealthy investors who used coordinated buying and media hype to artificially pump the price of Radio Corp. of America shares to astronomical levels.
After that, Kennedy and his rich friends dumped their RCA shares at a huge profit, the stock collapsed, and everyone else lost their asses. After the market crashed, President Franklin D. Roosevelt made Kennedy the first chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, putting the fox in charge of the henhouse.
Today, stock market manipulators use bot farms to amplify fake posts about hot stocks on Reddit, Discord, and X. Bot networks target messages laced with ticker symbols and codified slang phrases like cmon fam, buy the dip, load up now and keep pushing. The self-proclaimed finfluencers behind the schemes are making millions in profit by coordinating armies of avatars, sock puppets, and bots to hype thinly traded stocks so they can scalp a vig after the price increases.
We find so many instances where there’s no news story, says Adam Wasserman, CFO of Narravance. There’s no technical indicator. There are just bots posting things like this stocks going to the moon and greatest stock, pulling out of my 401k. But they arent real people. Its all fake.
In a world where all information is now suspect and decisions are based on sentiment, bot farm amplification has democratized market manipulation. But stock trading is only one application. Anyone can use bot farms to influence how we invest, make purchasing decisions, or vote.
These are the same strategies behind propaganda efforts pioneered by Russia and the Islamic State to broadcast beheadings and sway elections. But theyve been honed to sell stocks, incite riots, and, allegedly, even tarnish celebrity reputations. Its the same song, just different lyrics.
People under the age of 30 don’t go to Google anymore, says Jacki Alexander, CEO at pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting. They go to TikTok and Instagram and search for the question they want to answer. It requires zero critical thinking skills but somehow feels more authentic. You feel like youre making your own decisions by deciding which videos to watch, but you’re actually being fed propaganda thats been created to skew your point of view.
Its not an easy problem to solve. And social media companies appear to be buckling to inauthenticity. After Elon Musk took over Twitter (now X), the company fired much of its anti-misinformation team and reduced the transparency of platform manipulation. Meta is phasing out third-party fact-checking. And YouTube rolled back features meant to combat misinformation.
On TikTok, you used to be able to see how many times a specific hashtag was shared or commented on, says Alexander. But they took those numbers down after news articles came out showing the exact same pro-Chinese propaganda videos got pushed up way more on TikTok than Instagram. Algorithmically boosting specific content is a practice known as heating.
If theres no trustworthy information, what we think will likely become less important than how we feel. Thats why were regressing from the Age of Sciencewhen critical thinking and evidence-based reasoning were centralback to something resembling the Edwardian era, which was driven more by emotional reasoning and deference to authority.
When Twitter introduced microblogging, it was liberating. We all thought it was a knowledge amplifier. We watched it fuel a pro-democracy movement that swept across the Middle East and North Africa called the Arab Spring and stoke national outrage over racial injustice in Ferguson, Missouri, planting the seeds for Black Lives Matter.
While Twitter founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey thought they were building a platform for political and social activism, their trust and safety team was getting overwhelmed with abuse. Its like they never really read Lord of the Flies. People who dont study literature or history, they dont have any idea of what could happen, said tech journalist Kara Swisher in Breaking the Bird, a CNN documentary about Twitter.
Your outrage has been cultivated
Whatever gets the most likes, comments, and shares gets amplified. Emotionally charged posts that lure the most engagement get pushed up to the top of the news feed. Enrage to engage is a strategy. Social media manipulation has become very sophisticated, says Wendy Sachs, director-producer of October 8, a documentary about the campus protests that erupted the day after the October 7th Hama attack on Israel. It’s paid for and funded by foreign governments looking to divide the American people.
Malicious actors engineer virality by establishing bots that leach inside communities for months, sometimes years, before they get activated. The bots are given profile pics and bios. Other tricks include staggering bot activity to occur in local time zones, using U.S. device fingerprinting techniques like setting the smartphones internal clock to the time zone to where an imaginary user supposedly lives, and setting the phones language to English.
Using AI-driven personas with interests like cryptocurrency or dogs, bots are set to follow real Americans and cross-engage with other bots to build up perceived credibility. Its a concept known as social graph engineering, which involves infiltrating broad interest communities that align with certain biases, such as left- or right-leaning politics.
For example, the K-pop network BTS Army has been mobilized by liberals, while Formula 1 networks might lend themselves to similar manipulation from conservatives. The bots leach inside these communities and earn trust through participation before agitating from within.
Bot accounts lay dormant, and at a certain point, they wake up and start to post synchronously, which is what we’ve observed they actually do, says Valentin Châtelet, research associate at the Digital Forensic Research Lab of the Atlantic Council. They like the same post to increase its engagement artificially.
To set up and manage thousands of fake social media accounts, some analysts believe that bot farms are deployed with the help of cyber criminal syndicates and state sponsorship, giving them access to means that are not ordinary.
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The ever-increasing power of generative AI has divided the graphic design community. Many are embracing the tools in their workflows, while others believe theyve stolen from culture and commoditized a craft.
In any case, we all live in a strange time, when people are often presenting fully generative work as their own. Sometimes thats innocuous. And sometimes thats icky.
But now Adobe wants to offer the public a means to distinguish the authentic from the automated. A new created without generative AI tag in Adobe Frescothe company’s drawing and painting appwill let you mark work as being free from the use of generative AI tools, to certify that you created it by hand. The feature is likely to come to other pieces of the Adobe Suite, according to Eric Snowden, SVP of design at Adobe.
[Image: Adobe]
Fresco is one of our tools that were not including generative AI, and we wanted to make sure that for someone creating these amazing artworks by hand, they have the ability to say, I did not use generative AI inside of Fresco, says Snowden. Those are our customers, too, and we want to support them. If they feel the need to be able to convince clients that they didn’t use generative AI, we want to make that as simple for them to do as possible.
The new optional disclosure comes alongside a greater wave of announcements from Adobe this week that double down on generative AI. Adobe is introducing video and vector support to its own commercially safe Firefly model, while also integrating popular generative AI models by third partiesincluding OpenAIs ChatGPT, Googles Imagen and Veo, and Fluxinto its software suite. (More partners, including Runway and Luma, will be coming down the line.) Despite Adobes lengthy, and even delayed approach to building its proprietary AI model, Snowden says enabling these options that Adobe has tacitly criticized is all about customer choice.
How Adobe marks work as created without generative AI
To certify your work as AI-free, Adobe is using its Content Credentials standard. While originally presented as a means to limit misinformationa topic on which I was more than a little skepticalthis approach to metadata makes a lot more sense in the context of Adobes GenAI workflows. These credentials are basically a running receipt of where you did what to any piece of media inside of Adobe’s system. So it will list if you brought your own photo into ChatGPT to restyle it, and then exported it to Adobe Firefly to turn it into video. (Adobe is labeling any media imported into its software that out of its gaze might already be influenced by GenAI as media of unknown origin on this running receipt.)
Granted, provenance is almost an oxymoron in any generative AI workflow: ChatGPT 4 was trained on 13 trillion tokens of data youll never be able to cite. But the Content Credentials standard does offer some sort of ledger of reference to clients or the public at large to how something was created. Its something a creator can point to and explain or defend the source of their work.
I think illustration is where we’re seeing [demand] . . . but I don’t think it’s specific to only illustration, Snowden says. Indeed, the competing platform Procreate has taken an anti-GenAI stance, but anti-AI sentiment doesnt apply to illustrators alone. I would imagine there are people in every creative discipline where generative AI is not something they’re interested in, Snowden continues. And if they feel compelled to communicateor they’re again being asked to communicatethat they didn’t use generative AI, we should help them do that.
Claiming that any digital work is free from the influence of AI is impossible. For a human gesture to be transformed into a pixel, its filtered through all sorts of algorithms that help smooth and make sense of ones input on a screenand that’s definitely true for Adobe Fresco as well as the other apps in its suite. Long before GenAI arrived, Adobe products were steeped in the benefits of artificial intelligence and similar coded assistance.
That said, Adobe is clearly reading the room, and realizing it must acknowledge that many creators find generative AI to be an assault on their viewpoint and livelihoodeven while Adobe is investing more into these technologies that are simply too powerful, and in demand, to be ignored.
Everybody’s going to create in such different ways, says Snowden. Which is the exciting thing about working on these kinds of projectsgiving people as much choice as possible.
As the 2025 Major League Baseball season gets into full swing, youd expect the league to use its marketing muscle to hype the heroics of its biggest stars. But its anime-style ad campaign takes that idea to a new level.
Heroes of the Game mixes the on-field superpowers of players like Shohei Ohtani, Paul Skenes, Julio Rodríguez, Juan Soto, and Aaron Judge with the pop cultural artistry of anime hits like One Piece and Fullmetal Alchemist. Created with ad agency Wieden+Kennedy, the league also partnered with Passion Pictures and Echelle Studios in Japan, as well as acclaimed animation director Hiroshi Shimizu, to make the work.
The first ad features a whole collection of players, with individual player spots rolling out over this month. The new work follows earlier collabs with anime series Demon Slayer and Japanese artist Takashi Murakami for the season-opening Tokyo Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and Chicago Cubs last month.
Not-so odd couple
It may feel like an odd coupling, but MLB chief marketing officer Uzma Rawn Dowler says the league has used anime in past social posts and fans loved it. And our players are also die-hard anime fans, says Rawn Dowler. Whether it’s Julio (Rodríguez) or Fernando Tatís customizing their cleats with their favorite characters, or Jazz Chisholm wearing a One Piece chain, anime is really popular in our clubhouses and with our players. So we felt like it was a really authentic medium to tell our player stories.
The campaign lands at a time that finds baseball flying high. The leagues $12.1 billion in reported 2024 revenue was a record, breaking the previous record of $11.6 billion set in 2023. It also represents a 33% jump in the past decade. Last seasons attendance of more than 71 million fans was the highest since 2017. Television viewership was up across the board, including among the coveted 18-to-34 demographic.
If you hit a baseball to Julio Rodríguez, just know you've entered a no-fly zone J-Rod anime goes CRAZY #HeroesOfTheGame pic.twitter.com/kyQq8fFppS— MLB (@MLB) April 13, 2025
Now that it’s got the attention of fansespecially younger onesMLB is focusing on how it can harness their passion for baseball and culture in creative new ways.
Back in 2023, the league partnered with Wieden+Kennedy for its Baseball Is Something Else campaign, which this years work continues. Rawn Dowler says the emphasis on specific stars has really paid off, noting, We have young, dynamic, diverse, global players who transcend baseball, and our younger sports fans are increasingly identifying with individual players. So we want to continue to prop up the folks who are the face of our game.
The league picks which players to spotlight based on a number of factors, including sheer on-field dominance, and making sure the mix works across a variety of club markets and global audiences.
It probably shouldnt be a surprise to find the anime pedigree involved in the new campaign, considering Wieden+Kennedys award-winning, manga- and anime-related work for McDonalds last year. That saw the fast-feeder flip its golden arches as a nod to the fictional spoof store WcDonalds that had become a mainstay of many popular manga and anime TV shows, graphic novels, and video games for the past several decades. The brand went deep to collaborate with celebrated artists on limited-edition packaging, a new sauce, and a series of WcDonalds anime shorts and manga.
The next big league event is the inaugural Speedway Classic in August, when the Atlanta Braves will play the Cincinnati Reds on the infield of NASCARs Bristol Motor Speedway in Bristol, Tennessee. In the meantime, the league will continue its winning formula of finding creative ways to bring pop culture to baseball, and its superstars to pop culture.
It’s just a really exciting time in baseball right now, Rawn Dowler says. The talent level is insane. We have players achieving remarkable feats, and they’re doing it with a little bit of swagger, style, and flair, and so that has allowed us to really showcase and tell the stories of our players.
Michelle Eisen, a 15-year Starbucks veteran, is a barista for the coffee chain at a location in Buffalothe first Starbucks store to unionize back in December 2021, in fact. But on a Tuesday in March, Eisen was at a Pittsburgh Starbucks, to participate in what Starbucks Workers United members have dubbed sip-ins. A spin on sit-ins, they involve union workers and allies hanging out for hours in a Starbucks store, ordering drinks under names like Union Strong and leaving tips for workers.
In the weekend leading up to that Tuesday, union members held more than 100 sip-ins across the country. It was a message to Starbucks management: Union workers were calling attention to the fact that, more than three and a half years after organizing their first store, they still didnt have a contract.
Negotiations between the union and the company have broken down, members say. Since September, the union has presented the company with a number of suggestions around wages, benefits, and guaranteed hours, all of which are meant to be negotiations, but it says the company wouldn’t even counter those offers. The union (and the National Labor Relations Board) argue that Starbucks hasn’t been bargaining in good faith.
But the Pittsburgh action was more than just a sip-in. Partway through, the workers at that store announced that they were on strike and walked out. Most of the attendees followed, forming a picket line on the sidewalk. Eisen and four others stayed in the store, refusing to leave. The sip-in had turned into an occupation.
The stores manager called a manager from a different store for help. They would periodically come over and they were like, We need you to leave and wed say, We’re not leaving. We don’t know what you don’t understand about this, but we will sleep in the store, Eisen says. The five of them, all current or former Starbucks workers, were asking that company executives, including CEO Brian Niccol, talk to them and respond to the union’s demands.
The crowd outside grew louder; there were speeches and chants from people on the picket line. Eventually the store manager called the police, who gave the occupiers three warnings to exit the store. When Eisen and the others refused, they were arrested, handcuffed, and walked out the front doors.
That action was a form of civil disobedience, a nonviolent tactic in which people intentionally break the law or disobey orders in order to highlight actions they say are unjust. It has long been used by activistsduring the civil rights movement, the fight for womens suffrage, and frequently by labor unions looking to improve worker conditions.
For Starbucks Workers United, the decision to engage in acts of civil disobedience didnt happen overnight. It’s a natural evolution or escalation for where we are on the campaign, Eisen says. After three and a half years, still in bargaining, and . . . with an offer [from Starbucks] that is very far from sufficient given what this company can provide to its workers, we felt like we needed to take a stand.
Starbucks sit-ins spur action
Starbucks Workers United has been doing various strikes since its inception in 2021, but recently, those protests and strikes have been escalating to arrests. A January sit-in at a Park Slope store was first. That was a union location that the company was permanently closing. Ahead of the closure, union members peacefully protested, and at least seven were arrested.
Those arrests got a lot of media coverage, and Eisen says it pushed the company to agree, in writing, that they were willing to go to mediationa process in which a company and a union meet with a neutral third party mediator to assist in negotiations.
That agreement to use a mediator was the first progress the union has seen in weeks, Eisen says. Before that, there had been a December bargaining session at which the company proposed an economic package with no wage increases for union baristas. The union opposed that proposal, and then conducted a five-day strike across multiple cities.
The day of the Pittsburgh occupation coincided with two others, at a store in Chicago and also in Seattle. (In Chicago and Pittsburgh, 16 people in total were arrested.) The timing was intentional: The next day, March 12, Starbucks was holding a shareholder meeting. We wanted them to go into that meeting having to defend their actions when it came to how they were dealing with the union stores [and] union workers, Eisen says.
This week, we took direct action to show @Starbucks the urgency of finalizing contracts with the wages, staffing, and protections we need to thrive.Were doing what it takes to win. And we won't stop until we do. pic.twitter.com/OQ60OOGUEO— Starbucks Workers United (@SBWorkersUnited) March 13, 2025
At that meeting, Starbucks executives were asked when the company would negotiate its first union contract. Though she didnt give a timeline, Sara Kelly, executive vice president and chief partner officer for Starbucks, answered in part that, When a partner elects a union to represent them, we are committed to engaging in good faith with that union and the partners who have selected that union to negotiate fair contracts.
In a response to a request for comment about these actions and the current bargaining process, a Starbucks spokesperson said the company is focused on creating the best job in retail, and added that the company and the union have held more than nine bargaining sessions since last April and three mediation sessions, reaching over 30 meaningful agreements on hundreds of topics Workers United delegates told us were important to them. They reiterated that the company is committed to good faith bargaining.
Why Starbucks workers say civil disobedience makes sense
Workers are willing to risk arrest to draw attention to their fightand that fact alone should show the company how desperate its employees feel, the union says. You’ve got people you employ who feel so strongly about the way you are mistreating them that theyre willing to put their body, their being, at risk to demand change, Eisen says. I just think you have to take that seriously. The union and Starbucks have come to some tentative agreementsaround issues like safety and dress codebut not on economic issues.
The union says the minimal concessions from the companyno raises in the firt year and a guarantee of just 1.5% in future yearsamounts to less than 50 cents an hour for most baristas. The union also still wants progress around guaranteed hours and staffing; they say some workers have had their hours cut below the threshold to qualify for benefits, even as stores are understaffed. Starbucks Workers United filed an unfair labor practice against the company specifically alleging that its refusal to negotiate on economic suggestions, instead coming with a “fixed economic position,” is against the spirit of bargaining in good faith.
Though Eisen was calmly walked out of the building when she was arrested, she says the sit-in was still nerve wracking: there are a lot of unknowns in terms of how the police will respond or how things may escalate. Though civil disobedience itself is nonviolent, it can provoke violent reactions from others.
The union knew that if they were going to engage in actions that come with safety risks or potential arrest, they had to prepare their members. Starbucks Workers United reached out to labor activist Bill Fletcher Jr. to run workshops on civil disobedience, mostly talking about the tactics history and what the union should know if it wanted to carry this out.
The most important thing is that you have a critical mass of your membership that embraces this and feels the need for it, he says, because if you dont, you will find yourself quickly isolated and ultimately defeated.
When some people think of civil disobedience, they might think of the civil rights movement and the Greensboro sit-ins in which young Black students protested racial segregation. To some, the plight of Starbucks workers may seem, in comparison, less serious or not deserving of such drastic action. Unionized Starbucks workers have heard criticisms of their efforts since they began. When, in April 2022, an employee mentioned unfair labor practice charges against the company to then-CEO Howard Schulz, he told her, If youre not happy at Starbucks, you can go work for another company.
Workers have also been criticized for being just baristas, implying that the title isnt deserving of raises or worker protections. Baristas, though, have been trying to communicate just how chaotic and difficult their jobs areand how understaffing exacerbates that. They’ve also highlighted issues with mobile ordering (asking for pauses or limitations during busy times) and their concerns about low pay.
Eisen adds that its a pervasive American viewpoint that some jobs are just bad, and people should try not to end up there. But theres very little recognition, she notes, of the fact that these are jobs that need to be done. And they are in a lot of ways essential. Why do we look at a job and say, ‘Well, that’s not a skilled job? Working at Starbucks has been the most physically demanding job shes ever doneand shes put in years to develop her skills, get to know regular customers, and make friends with coworkers. Why should I walk away from all that? she says. Why not try to make it better?
Starbucks unionand civil disobediencesits in a bigger context
Diego Franco, a union member and Starbucks worker at a Chicago store, is trying to get a better jobby making his at Starbucks better. He was one of the people arrested at the Chicago sit-in, and though he said he felt nervous ahead of the action, it helped knowing he wasnt doing it alone. [Civil disobedience] comes with a lot of risk, but with that risk, it shows dedicationnot just to get a contract, but to the people who you work with, he says.
Starbucks workers all over the country are participating in a strong showing of solidarity today.Civil disobedience, strikes, solidarity actions, and more are happening at $SBUX locations all over the country.Hear us yet, @Starbucks? ITS TIME TO FINALIZE CONTRACTS NOW. https://t.co/e9GXWHFlFS pic.twitter.com/6hpxshl7l1— Starbucks Workers United (@SBWorkersUnited) March 11, 2025
That camaraderie is key, Fletcher says. When speaking to the union, he emphasized the risks and hard realities of civil disobedience, how these actions require preparationand the fact that workers need to know they’re not alone in order to get through it.
The Starbucks unions cause has reached beyond the company. It helped spur a larger revitalized labor movement that has seen record-high strike actions and led to the highest U.S. support for labor unions since 1965. Starbucks workers sit in that broad labor contextas does civil disobedience as a tactic. People are standing on the shoulders of others, he says. Theres a history to this.
Since the first Starbucks store unionized in December 2021, it has been joined by more than 550 stores, encompassing more than 11,000 workers. Though labor experts have long said that penalties under current labor laws are so weak that they’re essentially toothless, the Trump administration has already been even more hostile toward unions, adding to the challenges workers face. Still, Eisen is hopeful about the future of Starbucks Workers United.
I know these members and I know this campaign, and I know that for every one of us who gets exhausted and has to take a step back, there are 10 more Starbucks workers who are willing to step into their place. And so the company is fighting a losing battle, she says. We will keep growing [our actions] and getting bigger, until the company just has to recognize that.
When it opened in 2001, watchmaker Timex’s new headquarters building in Middlebury, Connecticut, was an architectural wonder. Its all-glass walls and open floor plan put the entire 275-person company in one big, light-filled workspace, covered by a swooping arched roof. It was a radical embrace of the ideals of openness, collaboration, and anti-hierarchical social interaction. On top of all this, the award-winning building had one additionaland uniquefeature: a hole in the top that shines sunlight down on an ancient time-marking device known as a meridian line. Covering the building at the time, Fast Company noted the building itself is a watch.
But now the building is on the verge of being demolished, decades earlier than most buildings of its generation would be threatened. A distribution center has been proposed for development on the site, and Timex, which is now majority owned by a hedge fund, is planning to move out. About the only thing standing in the way of the wrecking ball is a man named Nicholas Stuller.
In 2020, the 61-year-old and his family moved to Middlebury, where he runs a financial technology startup. The town of about 8,000 people sits 25 miles outside of New Haven, and is mostly green and bucolic. Its the kind of place where not much changes. So in 2023, many residents were surprised to learn of plans for a speculative 670,000-square-foot distribution center that a group of developers wanted to build there, not far from Interstate 84. Part of the complex, named Southford Park, would sit right on the footprint of the Timex building, known as Watch Hill. To build the distribution center, the Timex building would have to be torn down.
[Photo: M3Media Productions]
Stuller learned the news at the same time as the rest of the community, but he was even more in the dark: Still relatively new to the town, he didn’t know Timex was located there, or about its unique headquarters. Curious, he took a detour one morning in October 2023 on the way to dropping his daughter off at grade school.
Stuller and his daughter pulled up to the building and walked in the front door to take a look. They ended up going on an impromptu tour led by a group of eager company employees. They rolled out the red carpet. An hour and 15 minutes later, I had to take my daughter to school, but they kept on talking about the building, about the company, Stuller says.
[Its] a magnificent building, he adds. It’s so unusual. I’ve been in a lot of buildings around the country and the world, and this is a really unique building. I walked out of there saying, wow, something’s got to get done. Irrespective of the distribution center, this building needs to be preserved.
So Stuller launched a nonprofit called Save Historic Middlebury with the goal of creating preservation laws in the town, which currently has none. The intent is to establish the legal framework to stop the demolition of the Timex building. For now, there’s little to prevent the building’s owners from knocking it down.
Save Historic Middlebury is trying to get the building recognized as a significant historic property. It’s the only building, we think, in the world, let alone the U.S., where the building itself is a working example of the product the company makes, Stuller says. His group has gathered support from a range of preservation groups, including the Sierra Club of Connecticut, the Cultural Landscape Foundation, and Docomomo US.
[Photo: M3Media Productions]
Former Timex employees are also supportive of the preservation effort. Lou Nugai worked in computer operations for Timex from 1968 until his retirement in 2012, spending time both in the company’s previous headquarters in an office park on the edge of town and in the current building from 2001 onward.
It was nice. The floor plan was open. There was good visibility. I liked it quite a bit, he says, noting it was a particular improvement on the previous headquarters. They were completely opposite. I wouldn’t say it was a dungeon, but it wasn’t as bright or cheerful as Watch Hill.
Last August Save Historic Middlebury made a formal application to the Connecticut State Historic Preservation Office to have the building added to the National Register of Historic Places. When we applied to put the building on the register, not surprisingly the developer who owns the building said, no, we don’t want you to put it on, Stuller says. But because anybody can apply for a building to be included on the National Register, Stuller and his group moved forward.
In December, the application was denied at the state level, ostensibly because the building is not at least 50 years old, a general guideline often used to gauge a building’s historic character. It’s one particular person at the state level who just doesn’t like new buildings, Stuller says. Save Historic Middlebury is amending its application and plans to reapply. (The group also briefly filed a lawsuit under the Connecticut Environmental Policy Act to stave off demolition, but withdrew the suit in December.)
Timex plas to vacate the building this spring and move into another office building in nearby Shelton. Once it’s vacant, theoretically the property developer could knock it down, Stuller says. Timex did not respond to requests for comment.
[Photo: M3Media Productions]
In the meantime, other groups in Middlebury have lobbied to stop the development project that would result in the Timex building’s demolition. The Middlebury Small Town Alliance has led a lawsuit against the distribution center’s developers.
It doesn’t match our community, says Jennifer Mahr, president of the alliance. Her organization is opposed to the distribution center, but is also in favor of preserving the Timex building. A lot of us agree that something else could be done on that property as is, says Mahr, who was subsequently elected to the town’s governing Board of Selectmen. It’s a perfectly fine building.
In January, the group got a favorable ruling from the local superior court judge, who decided that permits issued to the developers were in violation of the town’s wetlands and zoning regulations, effectively halting the project. But an appeal is now being prepared. Lawyers for the developer declined to comment.
I’ll be surprised if the appellate court takes the case, Mahr says. I do think that their appeal has run out of steam.
Even if the distribution center project falls through, Stuller and his group of volunteer preservationists are concerned that the Timex building is still in danger. He says the group plans to filed its amended National Register application directly to the National Park Service within the next month or two. They’re hoping for a positive response the second time around, but aren’t relying on protection from the top down.
Stuller says the building’s fate may hinge on how much support he can gather from the local community and beyond. Once we continue to beat this drum and get the word out, he says, I think there’s decent odds we can convince the people that do control the building to change their plans.
