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This week’s biggest business news is perhaps that the U.S. federal government shutdown finally ended; however, that ending didn’t come without more than a few noteworthy concessions. Meanwhile, a beloved coffee chain walked straight into a strike on one of its biggest promo days, and a regional grocer found a way to turn literal loose change into both PR and foot traffic. In the background, the tech world reminded everyone that hype cycles come with fine print. CoreWeave, one of the hottest names in AI infrastructure, delivered blockbuster revenue but still saw its stock sink on news of a delayed data center. IBM, facing louder rivals in quantum computing, rolled out new chips and a faster manufacturing plan to reassure customers it is still a contender. And amid all of that, Target is telling workers to smile more, and Google is suing over scam texts. Here are the stories that defined the week in business. Marriott and Sonders Split Leaves Guests on the Street Marriott abruptly terminated its licensing deal with Sonder, and within a day, the short-term rental operator announced plans to liquidate and file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy protection. The collapse has created chaos for roughly 1,400 employees across more than 35 cities, not to mention for guests caught in the middle of stays. Some travelers reported being told to vacate with little warning, and others were denied access to their rooms or forced to navigate partial refunds and small credits after hours while on hold on the phone. Marriott says its priority is minimizing disruption for guests who booked through its channels, but both companies have gone quiet publicly as blame for the failed partnership flies in both directions. Google Sues Alleged Smishing Kingpins Behind Fake USPS Texts If you have ever gotten a fake USPS or toll road text, Google says it has found one of the groups responsible. The company filed a lawsuit against 25 unnamed individuals it ties to a global phishing as a service operation called “Lighthouse,” which allegedly used hundreds of fake website templates to mimic brands such as Google, USPS, and New York City agencies. Google argues that the nefarious network may have stolen as much as a billion dollars over three years by tricking users into entering logins and payment information. The suit leans on RICO, trademark, and computer fraud laws, and aims to disrupt Lighthouses infrastructure, even if the operators themselves are based overseas and beyond easy reach of U.S. law enforcement. Starbucks Baristas Turn Red Cup Day Into a Red Cup Rebellion On what is usually one of Starbuckss biggest promotional days, unionized baristas at more than 65 stores across 42 cities walked off the job. Members of Starbucks Workers United say negotiations over pay, hours, and hundreds of alleged unfair labor practices have stalled, and they accuse the company of refusing to bring serious proposals to the table. Starbucks insists the strike has had minimal impact so far and says it is ready to bargain when the union returns. The union counters that it is prepared to escalate into the largest, longest strike in company history if leadership does not agree to a contract that improves scheduling and take-home pay. Hemp Becomes Collateral Damage in the Shutdown Deal To move a bill that would reopen the federal government, senators accepted language that could effectively outlaw many hemp-based products within a year. The provision bans unregulated sales of items containing THC, which even legal hemp can include in trace amounts, and could devastate a $28 billion industry built after the 2018 Farm Bill loosened restrictions. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul tried and failed to strip the hemp language, arguing that it threatened thousands of jobs in his home state and elsewhere. Shutdown Fix Sets Up a 2026 Sticker Shock for Health Insurance The same deal that moved the government toward reopening will leave millions of Americans facing higher health insurance premiums in 2026. Senators agreed to fund the government without extending enhanced Affordable Care Act premium tax credits that currently keep exchange plans more affordable. Data from the Kaiser Family Foundation suggests that individuals could pay up to $1,836 more per year, and families of four could pay up to $3,735 more a year, if the credits expire. Democrats secured only a promise of a future vote on an extension and will now have less leverage, while employers are expected to hike premiums on workplace plans as well, continuing a decades-long trend of costs outrunning inflation. Target Bets on Smiles and Service With New 10-4 Policy Target is testing a back-to-basics strategy for its in-store experience as it heads into the holiday rush. A new 10-4 policy instructs employees to smile, wave, and acknowledge customers who are within 10 feet and to actively greet shoppers who are closer than 4 feet. The initiative lands just ahead of Black Friday and at the start of weeks of rolling promotions that stretch through late December, a period when two-thirds of Americans say they will already be shopping. Behind the friendlier vibes, Target is coming off better-than-expected second-quarter earnings, but also traffic declines, DEI-related boycotts, and recent layoffs that trimmed about 8% of its corporate staff. CoreWeaves Data Center Delay Spooks AI Investors AI infrastructure firm CoreWeave reported staggering growth, with revenue up 134% year over year and a $55.6 billion backlog of future business, yet its stock slid nearly 10%. The problem is a delay at a third-party data center that forced the company to lower its full-year 2025 revenue forecast by about $200 million. CoreWeave says the affected customer has agreed to keep the contract intact, meaning the revenue should arrive in 2026 instead, and stresses that 41 other data centers remain on track. Even so, the market reaction shows how jumpy investors have become about richly valued AI names, and how quickly sentiment can swing when execution hiccups threaten hyper-growth narratives. IBM Pushes Back in the Quantum Arms Race With DARPA publishing a list of top quantum contenders, and with rivals like Quantinuum touting record-setting machines, IBM is working to remind customers that it is still on schedule. The company announced two new processors: Nighthawk for near-term quantum advantage experiments, and Loon for longer-term, fault-tolerant architectures backed by advanced error correction codes. IBM is also moving quantum chip production into a 300-millimeter wafer fabrication plant at the Albany NanoTech Complex, a shift that should double its manufacturing speed and allow for much more complex processors. Executives say the goal is to make sure both hardware and classical software tools are ready so that real-world applications can scale by the latter half of the decade. Pennies End, but a Grocer Turns Them Into a Marketing Win With the U.S. Mint pressing its final penny this week after an order from President Trump to stop producing one-cent coins, a regional grocer is trying to capture both coins and customers. Market 32 and Price Chopper stores in six Northeastern states are hosting a Double Exchange Day that will swap up to $100 in pennies for gift cards worth twice as much. For shoppers, it is a way to turn jars of change into a sizable grocery credit. For the chain, it is a clever way to stock up on coins ahead of a looming shortage.
Category:
E-Commerce
A reader writes: I have a new employee who is refusing to do some parts of her job. She hasnt done this with me directly, but when I left for a weeks vacation, I gave very clear guidance on what she should be working on. That included learning to use some of our equipment, practicing her job skills, and reviewing training videos with the team. Unfortunately, while the other team members were focused on the training videos, she was watching personal videos on her phone. Each team member later told me separately that when they asked her to participate, her response was, No, Im not going to do it. What should I do now? Minda Zetlin responds: Unless your employee is covered by a union contract, or a contract between you and her, you certainly have the legal right to fire her. Ethically, you have that right as well. When you hire someone to do a specific job, you can reasonably expect that they will do that job. The exceptions would be if you asked her to do something dangerous, illegal, or that violated her own ethics. Or, if you had unreasonable expectations for when or how much she would work, as in last weeks Ethics question. Assuming none of that is the case, you can do whatever you choose. So ask yourself whats best for you and for your company, and also whats best for her. The answer will depend on why you hired her in the first place. Does she have skills your company needs? Do you see potential in her? Is she refusing to do these things because shes inexperienced and perhaps afraid of doing them badly? Your next step should be to have a one-on-one meeting with her. Id begin by asking her why she declined to do tasks that clearly are part of her job. Id also ask about her future career goals both inside and outside your organization. Her answers will help you make an informed decision about what to do next. Update: The reader writes that they met with this employee one-on-one. I asked if she wanted the job, and she said yes, they write. I then listed the specific behaviors that needed to changeincluding refusing to participate and using her phone during work time. This was done firmly but with kindness, the reader says. The reader also explained that the goal was to help this employee develop valuable professional skills. I made sure she understood the opportunity in front of her. The more senior person in her role earns more than $82,000 a year, and I explained that the training shes receiving could put her on a similar path at this company or anywhere else. The reader then printed out a list of the expectations this employee was to fulfill, and they each signed it. The two met again for a follow-up two weeks later. By that time, her performance had improved dramatically. Shes now on week seven, and time will tell if she continues to grow into the role, the reader writes. But the kindly, structured explanation seems to have made a real difference. Got an ethical dilemma of your own? Send it to Minda at minda@mindazetlin.com. She may address it in a future column.
Category:
E-Commerce
Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. Generally speaking, housing markets where inventory (i.e., active listings) has returned to pre-pandemic 2019 levels have experienced weaker home price growth (or outright declines) over the past 36 months. Conversely, housing markets where inventory remains far below pre-pandemic 2019 levels have, generally speaking, experienced more resilient home price growth over the past 36 months. Of the 50 largest metro area housing markets, 21 major metros now have more homes for sale than at the same point in 2019. Last year, that count was 13 markets. These are the 21 major markets where homebuyers have gained the most leverage: Memphis, TN; Austin, TX; Phoenix, AZ; Tucson, AZ; Denver, CO; San Antonio, TX; Orlando, FL; Nashville, TN; Tampa, FL; Oklahoma City, OK; Dallas, TX; Charlotte, NC; Seattle, WA; Houston, TX; Jacksonville, FL; Las Vegas, NV; Raleigh, NC; Birmingham, AL; Miami, FL; San Francisco, CA; and Portland, OR. Many of the softest housing markets, where homebuyers have gained the most leverage, are located in the Southeast, Southwest, and Mountain West regions. Many of those areas were home to many of the nations top pandemic boomtowns, which experienced significant home price growth during the Pandemic Housing Boom, which stretched housing prices beyond local income levels. There are some markets within Florida that have struggled with some inventory balance issues,” D.R. Horton COO Michael Murray said on the company’s October 28 earnings call. “Notably, Jacksonville and Southwest Florida have had some excess inventory, and demand has been a while coming to absorb that. So that’s kind of what you’re seeing in the current quarter’s results in the Southeast for us.” window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}}); Once pandemic-fueled domestic migration slowed and mortgage rates spiked, markets like Punta Gorda, Florida, and Austin, Texas, faced challenges as they had to rely on local incomes to sustain frothy home prices. The housing market softening in these areas was further accelerated by the abundance of new home supply in the pipeline across the Sun Belt. When and where needed, builders are often willing to reduce prices or make other affordability adjustments to maintain sales. These adjustments in the new construction market also create a cooling effect on the resale market, as some buyers who might have opted for an existing home shift their focus to new homes where deals are still available. In contrast, many Northeast and Midwest markets were less reliant on pandemic domestic migration and have less new home construction in progress. With lower exposure to that migration pullback demand shockand fewer homebuilders doing large incentivesactive inventory in these Midwest and Northeast regions has remained relatively tight, keeping the advantage in the hands of home sellers.
Category:
E-Commerce
When the camera was invented in 1826, many people thought painting would die. But it didnt. Instead, painters found new ways to express themselves. Painters reinvented expressionism, impressionism, and abstract art. Monet, Munch, and later Picasso, all thrived after the camera arrived. When personal computers became common in the 1980s, there was fear that creative thinking would become less valuable. But computers opened the door to digital design, animation, and new forms of storytelling. Studios like Pixar, founded in 1986, showed how technology could help artists create worlds that were impossible before. When Photoshop launched in 1988, photographers worried that editing tools would destroy the purity of photography. But Photoshop expanded what photographers and designers could do. It made visual creativity more accessible and helped build the modern creator economy. So why does AI, today, make so many creators feel threatened? History tells us one clear truth: New technology has never replaced creativity; it has always expanded it. Every time new technology arrives, progress follows. The AI Genie Cant Be Rebottled Artificial intelligence is simply the next chapter. It can help creators work faster, explore more ideas, and bring their imagination to life with fewer barriers. Human imagination cant be replicated by a machine. The spark that evokes tears in a storys readers or a swoon from a melodys listeners is innately humanthat intangible side of creativity: talent, taste, lived experience, a unique point of view, and the urge to express it. But turning those intangibles into something others can see, hear, or feel also requires tangibles: time, tools, access, and resources. Too often, thats where great creators get stuck. Not everyone can dream up and create a world worth caring about. But even those who can often lack the means to bring it to life in a way that others can enjoy as well. That’s where AI can help. It cant create soul, but it can remove barriers to entry by lowering the cost, time, skills, and resources needed to truly bring creative expression to life. In this sense, AI can be a force multiplier for creativity. Just as the smartphone made photography universal, AI can democratize storytelling itself. Collaboration, Not Replacement In my work building an audio storytelling platform, Ive seen how AI can help creators, not replace them. Our platform lets anyone write and publish serialized audio stories. To help them, we’ve built AI tools that act like creative partners. They dont write for the authorsthey assist them. They help a writer stay consistent across hundreds of episodes, suggest plotlines when inspiration stalls, and offer real-time feedback on pacing and dialogue. Other tools turn text into natural-sounding audio, add background sound, or generate artworkcapabilities once available only to professional studios. These tools dont take jobs from artists; they open doors for them. Many of our creators couldnt afford to hire professional narrators, sound designers, or illustrators. Without AI, their stories would never be heard. With it, they reach millions of listeners. Thats not replacing creators. Its expanding who gets to be one. Keeping Humans at the Center Great art doesnt come from pattern recognition or probability. It comes from emotion, contradiction, curiositythe things that make us human. AI can help a writer structure a story, but it cant feel heartbreak or hope. That’s why we must build creator systems that keep those human creators squarely at the center: ensuring transparency, maintaining creative ownership, and deeply valuing the originators of ideas. A New Chapter for Creativity Were at a pivotal moment in a long story. The history of art and technology has always followed the same arc: disruption, fear, adaptation and, ultimately, expansion. Steve Jobs once described the home computer (a technology that stirred up a frenzy of fear when it came to market) as a bicycle for the mind. He envisioned a tool that didnt replace our thinking but accelerated it, amplifying human imagination in the same way a bicycle amplifies human movement. This next chapter of creative innovation is ours to write. We can let AI reduce creativity to algorithms, or we can shape it into a bicycle for the creative mind, something that helps human talent travel farther and faster. The future of storytelling shouldnt be about machines replacing humans. It should be about more humans telling more stories, reaching more people, and inspiring more imagination (and tears and swoons) than ever before.
Category:
E-Commerce
Legendary documentarian Ken Burns is set to release his long-awaited series after a decade in development. In the lead-up to the premiere of The American Revolution, Burns shares key lessons he gleaned from the founding of the United Statesand the parallels between the revolutionary era and today. He also reflects on his admiration for Lin-Manuel Mirandas Hamilton, and the obstacles he faces in his ongoing quest for truth. This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by former Fast Company editor-in-chief Robert Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. You have a new, six-part series about the American Revolution premiering on November 16. Why were you drawn to this? And why now? I’ve been working on this for almost 10 years. . . . I said yes to this project in December of 2015. Barack Obama still had 13 months to go in his presidency. What drew me to the Civil War was organic and interior to my choices. I was looking at a map, a kind of 3D map, where I suddenly saw an arrow of British moving west through Long Island towards Brooklyn. This little, tiny town of Brooklyn, which is the largest battle in the entire revolution. While there are no photographs in newsreels, I felt being a lover of maps and a willingness, I think, to reexamine my usual disdain for reenactments, they’re not going to reenact that battle. They’re just being there to make you feel the weather, make you feel the heat, make you feel the cold, make you feel the location, the interiors of all of these actions, and at that point, I realized maybe we can do this. Of course, I went about three years into this project and said, “Wow. If we hit our marks, we’ll be in 2025, which is the 250th anniversary of Lexington and Concord.” Then, all of a sudden people would arrive and say, “Oh. You planned this so well.” Yes, yes. We didn’t. I’m glad that a very deep dive into the revolution is going to happen way in advance of the 4th of July of next year, which is, for many people, the 250th. Of course, it’s been going on for some time, and will go on if you want to follow it through to the end, until 2039, which is 250 years after our government officially got started and George Washington became the first President of the United States of America. There’s lots of things going on, but a lot of it will be focused next July, and there is that risk that it could become super-ficialized. The war itself is already encrusted with the barnacles of sentimentality and nostalgia. It is not bloodless or gallant. You do not want to die when a cannon takes off your head, a bayonet guts you, or a musket ball rips through you. There’s just a remarkable set of characters and remarkable interiors to the war, the details of the battles, a really long, six and a half year war from Lexington to Yorktown. We need to know about our origin story, particularly in a time when people are sort of ringing their hands. We’re so divided. Well, you just look back there, and we’re really divided back then, and that maybe reinvesting with our origin story helps us find out what’s real and what’s artificial in all of the stuff that’s going on right now. The current cultural story about the American Revolution that maybe is most prominent or most well known is Hamilton, is Lin-Manuel Miranda’s retelling in that. Did that impact the way you told the story at all? Look, let me give my props to Lin Manuel. Hamilton is the greatest cultural event of this new millennium, this new century. It is a phenomenal thing. I mean, I’ve got a teenage daughter who’s 15, a 20-year daughter and an almost 15-year-old granddaughter, and they can recite, sing the whole thing, two-and-a-half hours. And so, they know tensions between big and small states. They understand between a strong federal Hamiltonian system and a state’s rights Jefferson model. They know who Hercules Mulligan is. They know all this sort of stuff about the revolution, and they have a kind of great glee about it that must mean that history teachers of this period are just lying down and thanking God for Lin-Manuel Miranda. I mean, truth and fact are increasingly contested today, and we mentioned Hamilton. I mean, Lin-Manuel, the big picture is certainly there, but there’s a lot of artistic license in what he pulled together. When you look at this as a storyteller, and for our listeners who are business leaders and other leaders, the responsibility to promote strict accuracy, or like as long as we get the big picture right, it’s okay the details don’t matter as much. The people that are listening to this have to do the former, right? Strict accuracy, and so do I. There’s not a filmmaker in a world when a scene is working, you don’t want to touch it, but we’re always finding new and destabilizing information that are true and you need to incorporate them. Lin-Manuel can actually take the poetic license necessary to do a big, Broadway musical, and God bless him. I mean, there’s a guy that we know in our past who would take the histories and conflate characters, change countries, move these characters around. His name is William Shakespeare, and we don’t believe that there are any truths higher in fiction, which are sometimes more true than what’s real, but I can’t do that. I will sacrifice the art for the correct story. That makes it super complicated, but what’s interesting is when you do that, when you try to fit the round peg of the truth into the square hole of art, if you will, and you successfully negotiate it, it’s as good as anything. You’re right, we’re in an age where we’re supposed to be post-truth. No, we’re not. Are you post-truth? I’m not. I’m not. Right. Nor are the business leaders of the country. You’re going to fudge your figures? I don’t think so. We do know that large sections of where we supposedly get information are, themselves, unaccountable. They do not care, one way or the other. Whatever political persuasion, whatever it is, people are manipulating the truth all the time. Always has been. The problem is just the sheer size of the internet and its ability for a lie to get started before the truth can come back, but one and one is always going to be two. You can’t build an airplane, you can’t run a business, you can’t work the budget of a documentary film without one and one equaling two. You can’t just make it up, right? You cannot make it up. George Washington rides out on the battlefield at least three times, that I know of, risking his life at Kipp’s Bay in Manhattan, at Princeton, and at the Battle of Monmouth, and these are significant things. If he’s killed, it’s all over, because he is the only person that held us together as a historian, Annette Gordon Reed says, that there’s one person who was able to figure it out. I’m interested in him. He’s deeply flawed. He’s rash. Those movements potentialy sacrifice the whole thing, and he makes terrible battlefield mistakes. He leaves his left flank exposed in the Battle of Long Island, the largest battle of the American Revolution, and loses it and New York for seven years. It’s the British headquarters and the loyalist stronghold for the rest of the war. He does the same mistake at Brandywine in Pennsylvania, another huge, huge battle, where this time he leaves his right flank, but there’s nobody who knew how to inspire men in the dark of night, in the dead of cold, who could pick subordinate talent, that he wasn’t afraid of their skills or talent, who could defer to Congress and understand how they work, who could speak to a Georgian and a New Hampshireite and say, “You’re not that. You’re an American, this new thing.” Nobody. Nobody could do that. Does he have undertow? Yes. Does that make him any less heroic? No. Heroism is not perfection. Heroism is a negotiation within yourself between your strengths and your weaknesses. Has truth always been sort of fungible and selective in U.S. history, a kind of a matter of debate and perspective, or is this time we’re in now different? Human beings have always lied. People have been lying as long as there have been human beings.
Category:
E-Commerce
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