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In 2022, Jennette McCurdy released her memoir I’m Glad My Mom Died, a brutally honest portrait of her life as a former child star, her battle with eating disorders, and, as the title would suggest, her rather complicated relationship with her mother. The book has spent more than 80 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list with over three million copies sold. It’s currently being adapted into an Apple TV+ series with Jennifer Aniston playing McCurdy’s mom, and McCurdy serving as co-writer, co-executive producer, and co-showrunner. Adjacent to the massive success of I’m Glad My Mom Died has been McCurdy reclaiming writing, not acting, as her true passion. In her memoir, McCurdy stated her acting career was solely to appease her mother and support her family, an experience she’d later describe as “hellish” and “embarrassing.” But writing is McCurdy’s truth “North Star” for her creativity. “Writing has always been in my bones, McCurdy says in the latest episode of Fast Company‘s podcast Creative Control. It’s always been my mode of processing and making sense of the world. And there’s much to process with McCurdy’s debut work of fiction, Half His Age. Half His Age follows Waldo, a 17 year old high school student who enters into an affair with her married English teacher, Mr. Korgy. It’s an unflinching and often visceral exploration of power dynamics, desire, and, most of all, to McCurdy, “female rage.” “That’s what I really tried to explore as thoroughly as I could and as potently as I could,” McCurdy says. “To me, there’s no vessel that’s more potent than a 17-year-old. Feelings are never going to be higher, never gonna be hotter, never gonna be more intense.” In this episode of Creative Control, McCurdy unpacks her writing process (it’s a full-body endeavor, mind you), the discomfort shes intentionally leaning into with Half His Age, and what it means to take full authorshipand creative controlof her career. NOTE: Some spoilers ahead! On her Creative Process The initial idea for Half His Age came to McCurdy nearly a decade ago. She knew she wanted to explore a relationship between a young girl and her teacher, but that was about it. It wasn’t until around two years ago, as she was trying to write something else, that Half His Age kept bubbling up. [Cover Image: Random House] “It was keeping me up at night, frankly. I couldn’t stop thinking about it,” McCurdy says. I said, Im going to give Half His Age a week; I’ll grow tired of it by day three or four; and it will never come to fruition.” Cut to McCurdy going all-in to write her first draft in a month. Im such a full bodied writer. I write with emotions. For my first drafts, my inner critic is nowhere to be found, McCurdy says. That’s generally how I know. If I’m feeling really emotionally activated by an idea, that’s my sign its go timeIm so sorry for saying, its go time. On Making You Uncomfortable The premise alone of Half His Age could be enough to negate a whole swath of potential readers. The concept of a high schooler entering into a sexual relationship with her teacher is most certainly squirm-worthy. Adding to that is the highly visceral nature of how McCurdy explores this affair and the collateral emotional damage it inevitably brings. One scene in particular involves Waldo and Mr. Korgy having sex while she’s on her period. Midway through, they’re interrupted and Waldo is forced to hide in a closet while she continues to have her period holding her blood in her hands. I think it’s a very memorable [scene]. I did want it to feel very visceral and just deeply uncomfortable, McCurdy says. It was important that Waldo experienced something so raw and so ugly because she needed some kind of wake-up call, some kind of rock bottom that could help her piece things together.Broadly speaking, the discomfort in Half His Age is driven by something more universal than cupping your own period blood in a closet. Much of the novel feels like a mediation on gaining autonomy over your own body. At that young age, you don’t know what [your body] wants, McCurdy says. Its just this complicated process of fully integrating your mind and your body.” As a woman, so much of our intuition, so much of my intuition, comes from my body and me sitting with it, she adds. And [thats] for better or worse. Sometimes I’m having feelings that I wish I wasn’t having. But always it’s useful information. And that’s definitely a part of Waldos experience throughout the course of the book and her journey. On Having AuthorityNot ‘Control’ For so much of McCurdys early years, control wasnt part of her vocabulary. In addition to being pushed into an acting career she didnt want, McCurdy recounted stories in her memoir like her mom showering her until she was 18 years old. Fast-forward to today, McCurdy is defining her life and work on her termsalthough she admits to avoiding the word control. I think I have maybe a slightly negative connotation around control. Not completely, but there’s something in it that feels a bit like grippy,” McCurdy says. “I kind of prefer the word authority. So how does she define authority at this stage in her life? When I feel authority, it’s when I allow myself to lead with my body. It’s when I listen to my body, when I take the information that’s it’s giving me, and I sit with it, McCurdy says. For so much of my life, I neglected the cues and the emotions and all that my body was telling me. And now I think, you know what? My body has wisdomthat I don’t got. Listen to this full episode of Creative Control and many more on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, RadioPublic, Google Podcasts, or Stitcher.
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Trevor McOmber and his 14-year-old son, Tye, share a love for the Chicago Blackhawks. When Trevor was his son’s age, he watched the Blackhawks on TV, caught highlights on ESPN and read about the team in the newspaper.It’s a much different experience for Tye.“I go to YouTube with Snapchat, or Google something if I just have an idea that I want to know,” Tye McOmber said while sitting next to his father at a recent Blackhawks game.Tye McOmber is on the border of Generation Z, born roughly between 1997 to 2012, and Generation Alpha, approximately 2012 to 2024 a sprawling group of people with unique media habits and diverse attitudes on where sports fit into their lives.Together, they form potentially, at least the next generation of sports fans, an almost constant topic of conversation in the offices of every major sports organization. And they have proven to be a tricky target.According to a Morning Consult poll, 20% of Gen-Z adults identify as avid sports fans, compared to 33% of Millennials and 27% of Generation X. One-third of the Gen-Z respondents said they do not follow sports at all. Even among those who are fans, the touchpoints for teams and leagues are changing constantly.“Something that we might have done two or three years ago to capture this audience is changing based on how they consume, the way they consume, the way that content is packaged to them as well,” said Uzma Rawn Dowler, the chief marketing officer for Major League Baseball. “And so we’re always constantly keeping up with the trends and of how we can continue to resonate with this audience in the right way.” Gen Z, Gen Alpha and sports Mark Beal, a communication professor at Rutgers University, shows an image of a Zamboni during his presentations on Gen Z and Gen Alpha. He asks his audience what the Zamboni is, and after a while, he provides his perspective.“That is a Gen-Z dream right there,” he says. “You put a Gen Z-er in that between period one and two of a game. By the time they get done they’ve live-streamed it, they’ve shot it, they’ve put it out on TikTok.”In their own distinct voice, too, one that often appeals to a large audience. In the Jan. 28 poll, social media (53%) and streaming services (38%) were the top choices for the Gen-Z respondents when it comes to where they go the most for sports content.Media consumption for Gen Z and Gen Alpha “is unprecedented,” said Beal. The challenge is finding those eyes, and staying in front of them. Especially when it comes to casual sports fans who are perhaps more interested in the latest celebrity post than highlights from games.That means embracing unorthodox connections. Like kids celebrating basketball teams reaching 67 points as part of the “6-7” craze. Or the NFL’s Buffalo Bills posting a video of its rookies identifying characters from Italian brainrot a popular group of internet memes.Gen Z and Gen Alpha gravitate toward personalities, so major sports organizations work with a group of creators to help spread their content.The NBA is hosting more than 200 creators with a collective footprint of more than 1 billion followers for its All-Star festivities this weekend in Los Angeles. They are slated to participate in live broadcasts, in-arena programming and fan experiences.Bob Carney, a senior vice president for digital and social content at the NBA, said the league uses an artificial intelligence-powered social media measurement platform to identify creators for its network.“That’s only the first step,” Carney said. “Once the technology flags someone, our team still evaluates their creativity, authenticity, tone and how naturally they fit into basketball culture. So, it’s an AI-assisted process. The goal is to make sure we never overlook the next creator who is resonating with fans.”The players, who often have their own social media followings, serve as their own network for their sports. The prospective audience matters, Dowler said.“For our growth audiences, we partner with influencers in relevant adjacent spaces,” she said, “whether it’s food, fashion, other culturally relevant sort of spaces to reach that casual perspective fan to bring them into the baseball ecosystem through the side door and feed them that adjacent baseball content through the lens of players or influencers to then ultimately have them convert to be that core fan.” Where it’s going Reaching and developing the next generation of sports fans is a collective endeavor.Partnerships play a role. The International Olympic Committee announced a collaboration with Roblox in 2024 that created Olympic World on the popular online gaming platform. Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James and Los Angeles Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani are part of Fortnite, an online game. Major League Baseball also has a partnership with ABCmouse for baseball-themed learning activities for kids.Youth participation also is a vehicle for making new sports fans, and it’s a major reason why MLB has invested heavily in youth baseball and softball programs.“We’re trying to fish where the fish are, quite honestly,” Dowler said.The NBA has been experimenting with using generative AI to create more specialized content think animation for a younger age group, something that wasn’t practical before because of the cost but it’s pursuing a particular look and feel on social media.“On our league-run social channels, we are very deliberate about keeping the content grounded in the same native tools and formats that fans and creators themselves use,” Carney said. “That helps the ecosystem feel organic, authentic, and not overly produced. Where generative AI really comes into play for us is behind the scenes and in purpose-built experiences. We use it to solve problems at scale.”The NHL’s strategy for reaching younger fans leans at least in part on its NHL Power Players, a youth initiative that is in its seventh season.The league uses an application process to create an advisory board of approximately 25 members ranging in age from 13 to 17. There are two virtual meetings every month, in addition to other conversations between the league and the teenagers.“We’ve had people from everywhere from Nova Scotia to Hawaii and everywhere in between,” said Heidi Browning, the chief marketing officer for the NHL. “They’re not necessarily all in hockey towns, which is really incredible for us. And they advise us on everything from marketing to content to technology to social to creators to fan engagement.”The NHL periodically revisits the insights it gleans from the youth board to see how attitudes and behaviors are shifting over time. Browning said she goes to all the meetings, underlying the importance of the program to the league.“(We) are constantly thinking about how can we intentionally listento the next generation of fans because they’re not just younger versions of our previous fans,” Browning said. “They’re actually consuming and connecting and engaging differently than the generations that are older than they are.” AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports Jay Cohen, AP Sports Writer
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Warp, which builds software to help developers control AI agents and other software from the command line, is rolling out a new tool called Oz to collaboratively command AI in the cloud. Last year, Warp launched its agentic development environment, which lets programmers command AI agents to write code and other tasks. Developers can also use the software to edit code on their own and run command-line development tools. That release came as many developers became increasingly fond of vibe codingthe process of instructing an AI on what source code should do rather than writing it directlyand the industry produced a variety of tools, including Anthropics Claude Code and Googles Antigravity, aimed at assisting with the process. But, says Warps founder and CEO Zach Lloyd, most existing agentic development software is geared at individual developers interacting with agents developing code on their own computers. That can make it difficult for teams to collaborate on agent-driven development and even make it hard for managers and colleagues to understand what individual developers already have AI agents working on. It can also make it difficult to guarantee agents are properly configured and securely handling company code and data, even in the face of deliberate attempts to steal data, like external prompt injection attacks meant to deceive AI, Lloyd says. Right now, with everyone who’s using these agents on their local machines, it’s like the Wild West, he says. You don’t know what they’re doing. [Image: Warp] Oz looks to solve that problem by providing secure, cloud-based sandboxes for AI agents to run as they write code, process customer feedback and bug reports, and handle a variety of other tasks, with all of their operations logged and accessible through a Warp app or web interface. Every time an agent runs, you get a complete record of what it did, Lloyd says. [Image: Warp] Through Oz, companies can heavily customize what access employees have to different agents and tweak what permissions agents themselves have to avoid security risks. And agents can be automatically scheduled to run at particular times or in response to particular events, or manually instructed to run as needed, says Lloyd, demonstrating one agent the company uses internally to root out potential fraudulent use of its platform. Developers can also switch between running particular agents in the cloud or on their own computers, which can be useful for interactive development, and the context of previous interactions and runs is automatically preserved. Since the cloud-based side of Oz is commanded via a standardized interface, locally run agents and other apps can even trigger agents to run in the cloud for purposes like generating code to respond to bug reports or feature requests. [Image: Warp] Our view on this is to try to make it really flexible, because companies are going to have lots of different systems and ways of deploying agents, Lloyd says. Warp says more than 700,000 developers are now using its software, which has expanded from an enhanced command-line terminalthe esoteric, text-based interface long beloved by power users on Linux and MacOSto include tools for knowledge sharing and commanding AI agents. The company declined to share precise revenue numbers but said that annual recurring revenue grew by a factor of 35 last year. [Image: Warp] Users of Oz will generally be charged both for cloud computing and for AI inference costs, with limited use of the system also available in Warps free plans, but customers can also work with Warp to use their existing infrastructure or AI models of their choice. Warp, which reported at the end of last year that its agents have edited 3.2 billion lines of code, is in essence betting that even in an era when vibe coding is making it easier than ever to build custom software, compaies interested in security, ease of use, and fast deployment will still prefer to use its tools for managing their coding agents rather than developing their own in house. Every company this year that’s building software is going to want some sort of solution to do this, just because it’s such a big potential force multiplier for how software is produced, says Lloyd.
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Honda reported Tuesday a 42% drop in profit for the nine months through December, compared to a year earlier, as U.S. President Donald Trump’s tariffs hurt the Japanese automaker’s earnings.Tokyo-based Honda Motor Co.’s profit over the three quarters totaled 465.4 billion yen ($3 billion), down from 805.2 billion yen.That marked the second straight year that profit declined during the period at Honda, the maker of the Accord sedan, Civic compact and Odyssey minivan.Sales for the three quarters dipped 2.2% to 15.98 trillion yen ($102.6 billion) from the previous year. Honda stuck to its full fiscal year profit forecast at 300 billion yen ($1.9 billion).The slowdown in electric vehicles in the U.S. market was one negative factor, according to Honda, while the relatively healthy performance in its motorcycle division worked as a plus.Honda lowered its global EV sales ratio projection for 2030 to 20% from its previous target of 30%. It also said it canceled the development of some EV models, because the EV market was changing.The Trump administration, which has favored the oil and gas industry, has backpedaled on prior programs supporting the proliferation of EVs, dismantling programs that kicked in during the Biden administration, which had encouraged environmentally cleaner cars and trucks.Last year, Trump lowered the tariffs on automobiles and auto parts to 15% from an earlier 25% that he had initially announced. Japan promised to invest $550 billion in U.S. projects.Tariffs are a major blow to Japan’s export-reliant economy, including the automakers. Last week, Japan’s top automaker Toyota Motor Corp. reported a decline in recent profit, and announced that its chief financial officer, Kenta Kon, will become its new chief executive and president.Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, who took office in October as Japan’s first female leader, scored a landslide parliamentary election victory for the governing party over the weekend. That’s expected to make it easier for her Liberal Democratic Party to push forward on its policies, including bolstering growth by boosting government spending, especially in technology and defense.Honda stock jumped 2.1% in Tuesday’s trading. The Nikkei 225 benchmark finished 2.3% higher, renewing a record high for the second day straight, in a rally set off, in part, by Takaichi’s popularity. Yuri Kageyama is on Threads: https://www.threads.com/@yurikageyama Yuri Kageyama AP Business Writer
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Shortly after 7:00 local time this morning, the internet-famous walk for peace monks began the final miles of their 2,300-mile walking journey. They left Alexandria, Virginia, and are set to arrive in Washington, D.C., before 9:30 a.m., where theyll take part in a public event at Bender Arena. The group plans to spend the next three days in and around the nations capital before traveling by bus to Fort Worth, Texas, where the journey began. Find out how they plan to spend the next few days. Who are the monks and why did they walk to D.C.? More than three months ago, a group of about 19 Buddhist monks and their rescue dog companion, Aloka, set out on a 2,300-mile walking journey to promote peace. The movement has been well-received in the United States and globally. Throughout the journey, massive crowds of people have gathered to welcome and celebrate the monks. They started the walk in Fort Worth, Texas, on October 26, 2025. After 108 days of walking, they arrived in Washington, D.C., this morning. The groups Facebook page notes that theyre walking to raise awareness of inner peace and mindfulness across America and the world. The monks have been using their Facebook page to provide updates, share photos, and announce official events. An interactive map powered by Google Maps also let people follow along with the monks in real time. As their message of hope and peace has reached more people, their social media following has continued to grow significantly. They now have nearly 6 million combined followers across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. The monks’ rescue dog, Aloka, who has been part of the walking journey, has become an internet fan favorite. In January, Aloka had surgery to heal a leg injury. Hes doing well, but because hes still recovering, hes been traveling in an escort car that follows the walking route. Aloka has his own official social media accounts. He has a combined following of over 1.5 million fans across Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. Heres where the monks will be this week The group has shared the following schedule for the week: Tuesday, February 10: 7:00 a.m.: Walk from Alexandria, VA, to Washington, D.C. 9:30-10:45 a.m.: Public Event at Bender Arena Lunch stop: Theyll attend an invite-only lunch at the National United Methodist Church 1:002:30 p.m.: Interfaith Ceremony at Washington National Cathedral 2:30 p.m.: Unity Walk on Embassy Row In the evening, theyll attend a private event at George Washington University Wednesday, February 11: 9:30 a.m.: Walk to Peace Monument / Capitol Hill begins Lunch stop: Theyll attend an invite-only lunch at St. Marks Capitol Hill Church 1:30 p.m.: Begin walking to the Lincoln Memorial 2:30-4:00 p.m: Peace Gathering and Concluding Ceremony at the Lincoln Memorial 4:30-7:30 p.m.: Meditation session with Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara at George Washington University Smith Center Thursday, February 12: 9:00 a.m.: Begin walking from the Navy-Marine Corps Memorial Stadium in Maryland to the Maryland State Capitol 10:00-10:45 a.m.: Peace gathering at the steps of the Maryland State Capitol 12:30 p.m.: Depart for Fort Worth, Texas, by bus Saturday, February 14: The group is set to arrive in Fort Worth around 8:00 a.m. They plan to walk from downtown Fort Worth to the Hng Ðo Vipassana Bhavana Center, where the 2,300-mile journey began. The homecoming walking route is approximately six miles. To celebrate the completion of their journey, a peace gathering will be held at the Hng Ðo Vipassana Bhavana Center. If youd like to follow along throughout the coming days, check their Facebook page for updates.
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