Fast Company

New Starbucks coffeehouses are getting smaller.

The coffee chain announced Tuesday that it’s rolling out store concepts with a smaller physical footprint. Prototypes of the new coffeehouse opened last year in New York City and last month in San Antonio. Starbucks said it was exploring the new concept because it can be adapted to smaller locations and different sizes and shapes, and yet still be inviting for customers.

[Photo: Starbucks]

As one of the largest chains in the world with more than 41,000 company-operated and licensed, Starbucks has a lot of real estate, and it’s rethought the footprint of its shops constantly in recent years. Its latest concept shows the company sees more and smaller coffee shops, designed to be inviting to guests, as key to growing revenue.

[Photo: Starbucks]

The new, smaller cafés have a shortened counter. A more compact glass case for displaying bakery and food items is located directly in front of customers at the point of sale.

There are different seating layouts depending on the location. A tiny urban coffeeshop inside a former mobile-only shop that’s been converted might have seating for only a few people, while a larger location can fit plush seating and tables with room for multiple people to work on laptops at a time.

[Photo: Starbucks]

Photos that Starbucks released of the new concept show a location decorated with dark green walls and wood accents. Touches like plants and side tables with knickknacks give the space an inviting, homey feeling. An awning out front shades a patio with outdoor seating.

[Photo: Starbucks]

Starbucks introduced mobile-only locations in 2019 but closed them last year as part of a pivot and turnaround plan. The chain calls this “Back to Starbucks,” and it aims to make coffeeshops more inviting under CEO Brian Niccol, who joined in 2024.

[Photo: Starbucks]

“Back to Starbucks” has included things like bringing back handwritten notes on coffee cups, big comfy chairs, and a revived employee dress code. In addition, existing stores are being “uplifted” by adding more seats and making them more comfortable. Each uplift, or renovation, costs about $150,000. But for the company, it’s an investment about creating a better experience that doesn’t feel so transactional for customers and welcomes visitors back.

[Photo: Starbucks]

“Great execution creates better experiences, which drives repeat visits and fuels growth,” Mike Grams, the chief operating officer, said in a statement.

Starbucks said at its 2026 Investor Day that under its uplift program, it will add more than 25,000 café seats to its stores by the end of the fiscal year. And though Starbucks said last month it would close about 250 stores in North America, Grams says that looking ahead, the company expects to build 400 net-new coffeehouses across the U.S. in 2028. Some of them might not be all that big.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misstated the number of Starbucks’s total global coffeehouses.

The Austrian Alps are breathtaking on their own. A new rooftop lookout at an Austrian ski destination now doubles the view.

Lech Mountain Mirror is a landscape installation on top of the Zugerbergbahn mountain station in Lech, Austria, just east of Liechtenstein and near the German border. The building used to have a simple flat roof that would be covered in snow during the winter when the resort’s cable car operated. It’s now a shallow, rock-bottomed water basin that reflects the mountains in the water and invites visitors to take in the view as a full sensory experience.

[Photo: Christian Flatscher/courtesy Snøhetta]

The architecture firm Snøhetta designed the installation because Lech Bergbahnen AG, which operates the Zugerbergbahn cable car and lift, wanted to extend its season to the summer too. That created a need to make the mountain station more attractive to guests and diners at Balmalp, the nearby restaurant which is connected to the resort by cable car, says Patrick Lüth, managing director of Snøhetta Studio Innsbruck.

Lech is located in Austria’s Arlberg region, which is known for its skiing in the winter, and the Zugerbergbahn is a former chairlift that was rebuilt in 2021. The area does draw mountain bikers in the summer, but the warm weather months are typically slower, and the revamped roof is meant to entice visitors to the destination year-round.

[Photo: Christian Flatscher/courtesy Snøhetta]

Snøhetta’s team was inspired during the project’s research phase and concept development by a piece of promotional material that showed an image of a single hiker admiring the mountain landscape. It reminded them of Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog, a well-known 1818 painting by the German Romantic artist Caspar David Friedrich showing a lonely hiker staring into a craggy, foggy landscape ahead.

[Photo: Christian Flatscher/courtesy Snøhetta]

Their concept was a shallow water basin without any railing to spoil the view. There’s a bench near the water to sit and look from, and a rough, uneven stone path that leads out to a viewing rock that’s angled as if to blend in with the mountains. It’s designed to look natural and complement the view; a bit of biophilic landscape design to not distract from nature.

“We wanted to create this kind of experience, a viewpoint where people can admire the landscape and [be] at one with themselves,” Lüth tells Fast Company. “That’s why we decided to surround the viewing rock with a water table with dual effect. It enhances the mountain experience by creating reflections of the scenery, the sky and the people. And at the same time, it guides the flow of visitors.”

[Photo: Christian Flatscher/courtesy Snøhetta]

Lüth says after the right design inspiration and concept were found, the Snøhetta team’s idea was quickly approved. From there, they worked to answer questions about technical issues like structural engineering, fall protection, and water treatment.

“The art installation works so well precisely because we don’t have a railing along the edge,” he says. “Implementing this from both a technical and legal standpoint was quite a challenge.”

Snøhetta has designed other mountain lookouts and viewing towers before, but Lech Mountain Mirror proves that sometimes it’s best to do more with less and just let nature take center stage.

With each new model, artificial intelligence is getting closer and closer to replicating human writing—but it’s not there yet.

Anthropic says its newest model for Claude, Opus 5.5, “communicates more naturally than prior models.” But that revamped communication style comes with its own set of hallmarks, and a new study lays out the writing trends in today’s most advanced AI models.

Researchers at Graphite, a research-based growth agency, compared 10,000 articles generated by Opus 5.5 to 10,000 human-written articles on the same topics. This generated a list of tells, which they define as words, phrases, and patterns that occur at least twice as often in AI writing as in human writing.

Opus 5.5 has fewer tells than previous Opus models, but it still has upwards of 2,500. If you want to keep your writing from sounding AI generated, here are the words and phrases to avoid, according to the study.

One-word tells

Though single words aren’t likely to get your prose pegged as generated by AI, there are still some buzzwords that scream Opus 5.5. Here are the top five culprits, along with their frequency compared with usage in human writing.

• “dependable” (used 23 times the human rate)
• “clearer” (used 14 times the human rate)
• “matters” (used 13 times the human rate)
• “quietly” (used 11 times the human rate)
• “practical” (used 11 times the human rate)

Two-word tells

When it comes to two-word phrases, Opus 5.5’s common function of breaking down concepts becomes especially clear.

• “matters because” (used 146 times the human rate)
• “especially valuable” (used 136 times the human rate)
• “this matters” (used 116 times the human rate)
• “article explains” (used 91 times the human rate)
• “builds trust” (used 83 times the human rate)

Three-word tells

The top tells in this category appear infinitely more times in AI writing than in human-written content, meaning that while Opus 5.5 used these phrases hundreds of times, humans didn’t employ them even once.

• “helps to understand”
• “article explains what”
• “this matters because”
• “taken together these”
• “this guide walks”

Stylistic features

Beyond specific words and phrases, the researchers identified style choices that Opus 5.5 employed more often than humans. The most pronounced among them included significantly greater lexical diversity, longer words, formulaic closes, higher word counts, and increased use of commas.

Meanwhile, the most stereotypical tell of AI writing—overuse of em dashes—has all but disappeared from current models. Opus 5.5 uses just 0.015 em dashes for every 1,000 words, a 99% drop from Opus 5. That’s less than 0.01 times the rate that humans use em dashes. This means that nowadays, they’re more likely a sign of human-written content than of AI-generated writing.

Opus 5.5 also tones down previous models’ use of mannered prose, which is flowery language and metaphor, in place of direct statements. Using their own scale, researchers determined that Opus 5.5 uses mannered prose 37% less than Opus 5. But the model still uses mannered prose far more than humans, opting for flourish over direct language 1.6 times as often as human writers do.

I was having lunch recently with a dear colleague I used to work with, reminiscing about our early-2000s days at Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe, a creative agency with a generation of alumni who loved working there. Genuinely joyful years (#IYKYK). And we found ourselves asking each other: Where did all the joy go?

Many industries are grappling with a happiness problem—education, healthcare, hospitality, tech—and advertising is no exception. The traditional agency model is going through radical change: shrinking margins, brands pulling work in-house, AI redefining how we’re valued. 

Tensions play out on forums like Reddit, where burnout, low junior pay, long hours, and job insecurity are common threads.

And it’s been building for years. Gallup’s 2026 State of the Global Workplace report found daily stress, anger, and sadness are still well above prepandemic levels.

All of this got me thinking about the correlation between happiness and business performance and the need to get back to joy if we are to drive growth.

It’s time we focus our attention on the health and happiness of a workforce not as an outcome of business performance, but as a driver of it. 

Joy as business imperative

Economists have long used a version of this logic on governments, tracking GDP alongside national “happiness scores” on the theory that the two move together. The World Happiness Report maps these scores, and found that countries that experience economic growth also tend to experience happiness growth.

Researchers at Oxford’s Saïd Business School tested the same concept at work. Over six months at British Telecom’s call centers, they found happier employees made more calls per hour and closed more sales, a 13% productivity gain tied directly to reported happiness, not to any change in workload or incentive structure. This points at something agencies should be paying attention to: Happiness isn’t the reward for good performance. It’s an input to it.

The correlation is clearly being recognized at high-performing companies like Google, Deloitte, and Unilever that focus not just on the stock price, but on happiness, too. They’ve created roles with titles like Chief Happiness Officer or Chief Well-Being Officer to manage workplace culture and employee satisfaction—in their pursuit of strong financial performance. I can hear the CFOs in our industry groan at the thought of hiring a CHO, but giving happiness and joy attention in pursuit of stronger performance should complement CFO efforts. Retention alone can make the case; replacing burned-out talent costs more. 

How do we get back to joy?

No, it’s not through employee sentiment surveys or a pool table in reception. 

The behavioral science explanation for employee happiness comes from Self-Determination Theory, elaborated by the psychologists Edward Deci and Richard Ryan. They posit that people have three basic psychological needs, which are echoed closely in Gallup’s employee engagement research:

1. Autonomy—the feeling that you control your work and your future, and are trusted to make the calls that matter.
2. Competence—the sense that your skills are being used and stretched, and that you can see the impact of your work. Learning is key. 
3. Relatedness—a meaningful connection with your team, your manager, and the purpose behind the work. 

That last one is especially important because so much of it comes down to the line manager. Feeling supported by someone who cares, gives feedback, and builds your strengths is paramount. Research from the Workforce Institute at UKG, a human capital management platform, found that 69% of employees said their manager shapes their mental health more than their doctor or therapist. Gallup puts it plainly: “A great manager can make a mediocre job feel meaningful. A terrible manager can make a dream job feel like a nightmare.” I think we can all relate.  

If happiness drives performance the way the evidence suggests, it shouldn’t sit outside how we run the business. It should sit inside it. That means measuring it alongside growth targets and holding leaders accountable for their direct reports having autonomy, growing their skillsets, and feeling genuinely connected to the work and to each other. 

In advertising, we spend enormous energy trying to engineer the conditions for growth: better creative, better data, better tools, better processes, better tech. But ours is still fundamentally a business powered by human ingenuity.

So perhaps we’ve neglected one of the most powerful conditions for unlocking it: People do better work when they enjoy doing it.

We know how to deliver financial performance. It’s time we got as disciplined about joy if we want to continue to drive growth.

In January 2025, Mark Zuckerberg told podcaster Joe Rogan that the corporate world needed more “masculine energy” and a culture that “celebrates the aggression a bit more.” Twenty months later, the political movement he was courting looks much weaker. Donald Trump’s average approval rating fell to 38% in September, the lowest of his second term. But the ideal Zuckerberg praised remains omnipresent in corporate America. Women lead 56 Fortune 500 companies this year, a record that still only amounts to 11.2% of the list. They hold 29% of C-suite roles, the same share as in 2024, according to McKinsey and LeanIn.org’s “Women in the Workplace” report. Bragging, shows of strength, and risk-taking get rewarded far beyond the military, while cooperation and caution continue to be seen as weakness.

The labor market is moving in the opposite direction. In 2025, private education and healthcare, where women hold 77% of jobs, added around 800,000 positions while all other sectors combined lost about 500,000, according to this analysis of BLS data. Many of the jobs created are badly paid. In my book En finir avec la productivité (“Against Productivity” is how I would translate the title), I argued that economists label care work “low productivity” mostly because the workers earn low wages. The true economic contribution of essentially female workers is seen as negligible even though it actually sustains the productivity of everybody else (you can’t work in finance or accounting if there’s nobody to look after your toddlers, for example).

The same logic applies inside companies. The work that helps the team—such as mentoring, organizing and defusing conflicts—falls disproportionately to women and goes unrewarded, as Linda Babcock and her coauthors show in The No Club, while self-promotion gets rewarded as leadership. Companies that build their culture on dominance will eventually face the bill. Two French authors, Lucile Peytavin and Élise Fabing, recently tried to price what they call “the cost of virility at work.” Their book made me want to look at the American situation, and it’s at least as scary.

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Risk as a badge of honor

Men accounted for 4,657 of the 5,070 fatal work injuries recorded in the United States in 2024 (about 92%), according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The first explanation is the type of jobs men hold (in construction or transportation). But a lot of deaths are also attributable to the norm that tells men to ignore fear, skip precautions, never admit they don’t know how to do something, and avoid getting help.

That norm can change, as two researchers discovered when they studied two offshore oil platforms (“Manly Men, Oil Platforms, and Breaking Stereotypes”) in the Gulf of Mexico. Their owner decided to transform the culture by focusing on safety and continuous learning. Workers then stopped putting on a show of fearlessness and accepted that it made sense to report mistakes and problems. The company’s accident rate fell by 84%. Its productivity increased spectacularly.

Rules are for other people and the masculinity contest

The second cost comes from people who believe they are above the rules and from peer groups that protect them. In the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners’ 2024 global study of occupational fraud, men committed 75% of cases and caused higher losses: a median of $158,000 per case, versus $100,000 for women. This has dramatic consequences for every other rule-abiding employee: When you see that rule-breakers are rewarded, you lose all motivation and stop trusting your employer.

The third cost is also very heavy. In 2018, a Harvard Kennedy School study described work as a “masculinity contest” governed by four implicit norms: show no weakness, display strength and stamina, put work first, and treat colleagues as rivals. These researchers then created a survey to measure how strongly a workplace follows these norms. When scores were high, they found more toxic leadership, less psychological safety, more bullying and harassment, and more burnout and intention to quit.

The “put work first” norm means being busy is a status symbol. A 70-hour workweek is a source of pride. An inbox with thousands of unread emails means you matter. And people who sacrifice their entire lives to their jobs are convinced they don’t owe anyone anything, which can make them blind to the suffering around them. If they endure, everyone else should endure too.

The damage shows up in harassment settlements, legal fees, and workers’ compensation claims. The higher costs come months or years later in the form of absenteeism, ill health, and turnover. Every lost employee must be replaced, and the people who stay are less productive.

The mirage of the top performer

Our metrics don’t show the real cost because they focus on individuals and ignore the consequences of individuals’ behavior on the people around them. Productivity measures ignore externalities. A factory that dumps waste in a river looks highly productive because the community pays for the cleanup. The numbers of a toxic star look great because colleagues, managers, and HR absorb the damage. Productivity is a collective achievement, built on cooperation, trust, and a lot of invisible work, yet we keep crediting it to individuals.

Stanford University’s Robert Sutton urged companies to calculate this “total cost of assholes” in The No Asshole Rule almost 20 years ago. One company did the math for a star salesman Sutton calls Ethan. After adding up the assistants who quit on him, his anger management training, legal costs, and the overtime he imposed on others, it concluded that he cost $160,000 in a single year. Later research confirmed Sutton’s intuition. Harvard Business School researchers analyzed data on some 50,000 workers and found that avoiding a toxic hire is worth $12,489 to a company, more than twice the amount that a top-1% performer brings in. 

Overvaluing stars produces exhausting productivity theater, with meetings dominated by a few silverback gorillas who claim their company owes them every success. Meanwhile, the people who listen, mentor, defuse conflicts, and keep teams together remain invisible. Wouldn’t companies be wise to send all their future leaders to humility training? Do we really need more assertiveness? 

Measure it now

There will be more scandals in the years to come. But we shouldn’t need to wait for one. You can start tracking what dominance culture costs your company: turnover and sick leave by team, harassment complaints, safety incidents, and team performance alongside individual results. When sick leave climbs in one department, the data already tells you a lot about the person running it.

Researchers have been documenting these costs for years, but it seems we have to make the case all over again. The current enthusiasm for “masculine energy” will leave burned-out teams, lawsuits, and lost talent behind. If we manage to put numbers on these costs, the bill is likely to be smaller. Men have as much to gain from that accounting as women do.

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Last year, video platform Vimeo announced plans to sell itself for $1.38 billion to tech company Bending Spoons.

Milan-based Bending Spoons, which since its founding in 2014 has acquired more than 50 businesses, including Evernote, AOL, Eventbrite, and Meetup, soon faced questions from Vimeo users wondering whether it would continue to offer the same level of service.

“I vividly remember some enterprise customers being worried about us stopping serving their segment,” says Marco Castello, a longtime Bending Spoons employee who now serves as general manager of Vimeo. “Essentially, they were worried that we’d stop investing into the enterprise segment, because they thought, An acquisition is coming. We don’t know these guys, so what’s going to happen?”

Castello says that since the purchase, he and his colleagues have spoken to more than 200 users of the software. Those users represent Vimeo’s distinct business segments: independent filmmakers, enterprise customers creating and distributing corporate videos, and streamers using Vimeo’s tools to build their own branded video channels.

The goal, he says, was not only to reassure them about the company’s continued commitment to Vimeo, but also to learn what they wanted changed about the product.

[Photo: Vimeo]

What customers requested, Castello says, wasn’t significant new features so much as fixes and upgrades to existing ones. By May 2026, the company said it had fixed more than 100 bugs on the platform and delivered more than 50 improvements in areas ranging from live-event search to page-loading performance.

One of the most common complaints was simply that basic functions, including search and video uploads, were uncomfortably slow. Search times, homepage load speeds, and upload times have all improved, Castello says.

Vimeo has also added quality-of-life features such as the ability to adjust the privacy settings of multiple videos at once, use internal collaboration tools without requiring video reviewers to log in, and access to an upgraded AI-powered captioning system. Additional AI-enabled features, including automated dashboard creation for enterprise users, are also in the works.

Those kinds of relatively minor changes can have a big impact for users, Castello says. Simply switching caption-service providers, for instance, allowed Vimeo to dramatically expand the number of supported languages, benefiting businesses that see captions as a core accessibility need.

“With that small change, we increased the languages from 7 to 99,” he says. “Sometimes we just focus on the small things that can have a drastic impact on the user experience.”

The Bending Spoons playbook

Bending Spoons, which went public at an $18 billion valuation over the summer, has at times been criticized for imposing layoffs at companies it acquires and, particularly in the case of Evernote, revamping pricing plans in ways that drove off some longtime users.

At Vimeo, Bending Spoons cut jobs as it reorganized the company’s product-development teams into lean groups focused on its three core market segments.

“We can confirm that there was a layoff at Vimeo in December 2025,” Castello writes in an email to Fast Company. “We retained the majority of specialized teams like sales, customer support, and curation (Staff Picks), while skilled Bending Spoons engineers, developers, and product managers took over the technical and product operations. We aren’t able to provide numbers on how many people were impacted.”

Bending Spoons, which announced in September that it had completed its roughly $1.29 billion acquisition of data and workflow management tool Airtable and entered into plans to acquire collaboration platform Miro for roughly $1.36 billion, has drawn comparisons to private equity for its model of revamping legacy tech brands while cutting staff.

In an August earnings call, cofounder and CEO Luca Ferrari told investors that the company has also grown more efficient at deploying employees, known as Spooners, to transform acquired companies.

“For instance, around 60 Spooners worked on Vimeo during Q2, broadly in line with the number of Spooners who worked on the Evernote transformation in 2023,” he said. “This is despite Vimeo being roughly four times the size of Evernote in revenue terms, and a more complicated business from both a technical and operational perspective.”

A different definition of growth

But Bending Spoons has also emphasized, in both financial filings and public statements, that it tends to focus on the long-term future of the companies it acquires rather than rolling out flashy features or quickly flipping businesses to other investors.

“For Bending Spoons, the growth engine has actually been great at acquiring and operating businesses,” says Matteo Danieli, Bending Spoons cofounder and VP of product. “We do not necessarily need to prove massive growth on products, and so we are actually free to focus on what’s useful for users.”

[Gif: Vimeo]

For Vimeo, he says, that includes the community of independent filmmakers who long made the platform a home but in recent years often felt neglected as its enterprise business took off.

Under Bending Spoons, Vimeo has revamped profile pages to let creators better showcase their work, enhanced controls around videos embedded on other sites, and added storage and other features to free plans.

More broadly, Castello says, Bending Spoons’s approach of deploying small teams to upgrade a product allows it to move quickly after an acquisition.

“We believe that smaller teams—leaner teams—can be much faster at innovation,” he says. “And so, whenever we approach reorganization, we do it in a way that, essentially, we try to bring the product back to a startup mode, where a very small, committed group of people can deliver amazing work in a very short period of time.”

Who Vimeo is really for

Vimeo also recently rolled out new plans aimed largely at midsize business customers that Castello says had been using individual plans in violation of the platform’s terms. The move naturally drew consternation from some users, though Castello says the new plans also come with added features.

“That comes with greater storage, greater bandwidth, all the tools that they need for collaboration, those kind of things,” he says.

According to Danieli, moving forward the company plans to keep serving each of Vimeo’s existing market segments without adding too much complexity to the software. “We’re trying to find the best possible way to serve all of them exceptionally well,” he says, “in a way that doesn’t complicate the product too much.”

For months, climate and weather experts have been warning about a historically strong Super El Niño that could turbocharge extreme weather across the world, intensifying everything from storms to floods to droughts.

Now AccuWeather has released its long-range Winter 2026-27 forecast, shedding more light on how that El Niño could affect this winter season across the U.S., and what specific conditions it may fuel. 

“The stronger we see an El Niño signal, which is one of our top drivers when we look at seasonal forecasts, the more confidence we feel that certain things are going to take place,” says Paul Pastelok, AccuWeather senior meteorologist and long-range forecaster.

[Image: AccuWeather]

Meteorological winter doesn’t begin until December 1, so there’s still time for weather conditions to change, Pastelok adds.

But he and his team have spent about a month working on this forecast, looking at the trends of past years and previous El Niños, and relying on more than 100 climate models.

Here are five maps that illustrate the winter forecast, and El Niño’s potential impact.

[Image: AccuWeather] What a typical El Niño looks like

El Niño is a climate phenomenon defined by above-average sea surface temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, and a weakening of trade winds that flow from east to west. All those changes affect atmospheric conditions, disrupting global weather patterns.

For the U.S., this typically leads to wetter conditions across the south and drier-than-normal conditions farther north.

This map illustrates those typical conditions, showing a “wetter” band across the southern half of the country, from San Francisco on the West Coast to Raleigh, North Carolina, on the East Coast; a “drier” spot in the Pacific Northwest; and a “warmer” region around the Great Lakes and into the Northeast. 

[Image: AccuWeather]

This year’s El Niño has the potential to be the strongest one since 1950—even surpassing the 1982-83 El Niño, which researchers have described as the “strongest and most devastating of the century.” 

That El Niño caused “weather-related disasters on almost every continent,” according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, as well as roughly 2,000 deaths and more than $13 billion in damage. 

El Niño isn’t the only thing that can affect winter weather, though.

“We’ve noticed over the last few El Niño that have taken place, the 2023-24, the 2015-16, that some other drivers start to poke their nose into the picture, and when they do, it gives you kind of different outcomes,” Pastelok says. 

Two strong marine heat waves, for example—one off the coast of Baja, Mexico, and another in the northwestern part of the Pacific—could push that storm track farther north, meaning Southern California may not get as much precipitation. 

“Most of the time, El Niño is aimed at Southern California, but we think it could get directed at times farther north up the coast, which could mean the Central Sierras could get buried again this year,” he says. 

Snow amount forecast map

This map shows the forecasted snow amounts, compared to historical averages.

The northern parts of the country and into the Midwest and mid-Atlantic could see below-average snowfall, while the Sierra to the Great Basin and central and southern part of the Rockies could see above-average snowfall.

[Image: AccuWeather]

That would help build the snowpack in those mountains, which would be a positive outcome after a historically hot and dry spring and summer. The Colorado Basin currently has record-low water levels. 

Forecasters expect more variability in the storm track for the Northwest, though, which could mean periods of snow followed by extended periods of drier weather.

The first half of the winter has the best chance for consistent snow; all those factors are why snowfall will be near to below average in that region. 

Another feature of El Niño winters, Pastelok says, is the way the southern track storms can pick up moisture out of the Gulf and Atlantic.

“If one [storm] just happens to come up the East Coast, it’s not a 5-to-10-incher. It could be a 1- to 2-foot or 2- to 3-foot snowstorm,” he says. “You get it all at once, and then it doesn’t do anything for several weeks.”

Ski and Snowboard Forecast Map

As a follow-up to the snow totals, AccuWeather also made a specific map on the ski and snowboard conditions expected throughout the winter season. 

This map generally reflects the same impacts as the snow totals: better ski and snowboarding conditions in the West, from the Sierra Nevadas to the Rockies, where more snow is expected, and poorer ski and snowboarding in the East. 

[Image: AccuWeather]

Potential early-season snow in November could help some New England ski resorts, AccuWeather says, but then a “lack of sustainable cold” might hurt those resorts later on, allowing only a few trails to open.

Flooding-risk map

AccuWeather doesn’t typically include a flood map in its long-range winter forecast, but the meteorologists there believed it was necessary this year, Pastelok says, because of the El Niño, which could set up the country for “potentially several heavy rain events.” 

That flood risk is predominantly focused on the California coast, then across the southern half of the country into the Southeast, above the Florida Panhandle. 

[Image: AccuWeather]

El Niños can intensify the atmospheric rivers—essentially “rivers in the sky,” according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration—that bring this rain. These “relatively long, narrow regions in the atmosphere . . . transport most of the water vapor outside of the tropics,” NOAA’s website explains.

This El Niño could come with “not just one atmospheric river, but six, seven, or eight that cause major flooding,” Pastelok says.

Heavy rain brings another concern: When it hits areas that have been burned by wildfires, that can form intense mud and even mudslides. 

Winter Temperature map

The 2025-26 winter was actually the second-warmest in U.S. history, with above-average temperatures in the Southwest—but it also brought frigid stretches of cold to the Northeast. 

This winter may see the opposite trend: The map shows how the southern half of the country could experience below-average temperatures, while the northern half sees above-average temperatures.

In the region right around the Great Lakes, temperatures could even hit 4-plus degrees higher than historical averages. 

[Image: AccuWeather]

The extreme, record cold that some parts of the country saw last winter was due to a polar vortex, a large mass of cold and fast winds that swirls around the Arctic Circle.

The polar jet stream, a river of air that sits below that polar vortex, turned wavy, bringing frigid Arctic air farther south than usual.

With El Niños, though, “You don’t typically see a lot of Arctic air masses that get pulled down,” Pastelok says. 

Even without Arctic air coming down, though, there’s a potential for severe ice.

“When you get to the time period of mid-January through February, you don’t really need to have true Arctic air to come down. It just can be marginal cold and sets up right,” Pastelok says.

That could mean one or two Southern storms, from Arkansas through Tennessee into the Appalachians, that bring ice, with the potential to take down power lines. 

Exactly what this El Niño winter will bring remains to be seen, of course, but the forecast will become clearer as it gets closer.

For his part, Pastelok predicts record-breaking conditions, either in terms of flooding, rainfall amounts, or even “because temperatures are too warm, not too cold.”

Good news for food court fans: Costco is bringing back a fan-favorite menu item.

Customers love Costco’s budget-friendly food court—especially its $1.50 hot dog and drink combo, which hasn’t changed in price since 1985. As Americans grapple with the ever-rising cost of living in this K-shaped economy, the big-box retailer—which operates a membership-only warehouse club—is one of the few places where food seems relatively affordable.

But there’s another item club members are happy to see return: Costco’s famous churros.

During Costco’s most recent 2026 fourth-quarter earnings call on September 24, chief financial officer Gary Millerchip confirmed that “for a limited time, the food court churro will be returning to all our U.S. locations starting this month.”

In 2024, the popular foot-long twisted pastry coated in cinnamon sugar was replaced by a warm, giant chocolate-chunk cookie, much to the dismay of many club shoppers.

The announcement about the return of the churro comes just days after the company teased the idea in an Instagram post, which was liked by over 145,000 people—a testament not only to the pastry’s outsize popularity, but also the intense speculation that had been brewing online.

“I did want to address the speculation that’s been blowing up our social media feeds and confirm that the rumors are true,” Millerchip explained.

Like the hot dog, the churro remains competitively priced at $1.49.

Shares of Costco Wholesale Corp. (Nasdaq: COST) were trading at $934.90, up over 9% year to date, as of Tuesday afternoon.

Brian Evergreen—AI executive coach, chess prodigy, and former choirboy—wants me to articulate a vision for my future. As the waiter replaces our appetizers with entrées, I dodge by peppering him with question after question about AI. 

• Has generative AI actually delivered meaningful results for his clients? Not as much as other forms of artificial intelligence. There are 27 different types of AI, according to Gartner. Machine learning and reinforcement learning have delivered ROI, such as allowing manufacturing engineers to test process improvements digitally without physical waste.

• Will AI actually kill us? Doubtful. Pay attention to who’s saying this and their incentives.

• How effective are vibe-coded apps? Have you seen the meme that says I code manually: $500. You vibe code, I review: $8,000? 

The conversation stretches from one hour to four. Evergreen isn’t ending this conversation until I start thinking about the future. Even though he’s not my AI coach, he can’t help himself. 

Evergreen is the former global head of autonomous AI co-innovation at Microsoft Research and author of Autonomous Transformation: Creating a More Human Future in the Era of Artificial Intelligence. He works with Microsoft, Accenture, Amazon Web Services, Salesforce, IBM, and NASA, among others. Since he started this practice in 2023, his coaching business has grown by 200% each year. Clients credit him with saving them billions of dollars. 

Brian Evergreen [Photo: Manny Espinoza]

One client, a leader of a global manufacturer of building materials, says Evergreen’s value was “at least 20x what we paid,” redirecting the leadership team away from work that didn’t add any value and toward what needed to get done. Evergreen’s work is still being used at the company two years later.  

Evergreen believes two things. First, the key to using AI effectively is choosing the future you want to build and then creating a strategy for how to get there given the resources you have. Second, this future relies on humans being empowered by AI. He calls this Future Solving, and yes, it’s trademarked. “McDonald’s got rid of human cashiers at some locations, and people drove out of their way to go to a location with a human,” he says. “We’re all wearing out the 0 button on our phones trying to reach a human.” 

At the moment, companies are doing a lousy job of anticipating what the AI future looks like. Companies are set to invest over $1 trillion in AI this year, according to an analysis by Goldman Sachs. Meanwhile, another analysis, from Deloitte, found that only 6% of companies are seeing a return on their investments within a year.

I’ve joined Evergreen in Vancouver to watch him run a workshop with Lululemon, specifically its guest support team, which is responsible for turning the trickiest customer experience issues into moments that create brand loyalty. (At Lululemon, customers are “guests”, and customer service personnel are “educators.”) Shadi El Baba, Lululemon’s VP of guest support, first encountered Evergreen last year and was particularly struck by an example he used of Expedia charging a premium for allowing people to talk to another human for help with travel plans. That inspired him to make the case internally to work with Evergreen to “fully lean into the human element of customer support,” and drive revenue for Lululemon rather than being a cost center.

Lululemon fireside chat (left to right): Dione Heater, senior learning & leadership partner, Shadi El Baba, Brian Evergreen. [Photo: Kai Jacobson, Tantulus Creative]

El Baba, who gives off cool uncle energy, invited Evergreen to Lululemon HQ to give a workshop to about 15 people, both his own direct reports and other company leaders, followed by a fireside chat with about 100 Lululemon employees. He needs everyone thinking about the future for any initiatives to stick. 

If there’s a company that’s in need of vision right now, it’s Lululemon. The pioneering athleisure brand has struggled with everything from heightened competition from Alo and Vuori to its founder, Chip Wilson, agitating against the company’s direction, particularly its new CEO, the Nike veteran Heidi O’Neill. Because she couldn’t start for five months after being hired in April 2026, Lululemon was in limbo for almost half the year. Meanwhile, its chief AI officer, Ranju Das, left in August after less than a year on the job. (Neither Das nor Lululemon provided an explanation.) In early September, the stock price fell to $102, an eight-year low.  

El Baba is counting on Evergreen to help his team crystallize their vision for delivering a premium “guest” experience. Lululemon is counting on El Baba to create the customer service moments that cement brand loyalty at a time when it’s hemorrhaging customers. No pressure. 

Yet, Evergreen is unfazed. He’s excited to jump in. “I always welcome the opportunity to work with brands that have had a great deal of influence,” he says. “Lululemon has faced some headwinds, but I’m excited to see if Future Solving can help them surge to new growth.”

Sweating the future 

The Lululemon workshop starts in the most Lululemon way: with a “sweat,” a 45-minute Pilates class. The team, who are all preternaturally fit and attractive, assure me the class is easy—and they make it look easy. The managers, alongside their direct reports, do not sweat as they perform donkey kicks and squats.   

Afterward, while I try to find a private spot to recover or accept that death is imminent, Evergreen introduces himself to the instructor, a lovely woman I hope to never meet again, and shakes hands. She gets a selfie. I imagine this will be the hardest part of the day. 

Evergreen’s framework is simple: Most people solve for problems and therefore make only incremental improvements on legacy systems. But the companies that rewrite history, they dream of what the future could be. Then they ask: What needs to be true in order to make this happen? 

Evergreen has two stories he likes to tell to illustrate the principle. The first is inspirational. In 1951, an executive at Bell Labs called a meeting with departmental leaders and pointed out that Bell Labs’ greatest innovations had all been created in the 1800s, including the dial and the transatlantic telephone cable that connected the U.S. to the U.K. 

As Evergreen describes it in his book, the executive told his team: “We’ve been focusing on improving parts of the system rather than focusing on the system as a whole.”  

The Bell Labs executive then asked everyone to imagine the existing telephone system had been destroyed, and redesign a new one from scratch. The result was a wave of innovations that included caller ID, voicemail, the touchtone telephone, and what would become the basis of cellphone technology. 

The second story is a warning. While Evergreen was researching his book, he interviewed a director of innovation at Georgia-Pacific who’d formerly worked at Blockbuster. Blockbuster hit its peak in the early 2000s, operating more than 9,000 video rental stores across America. Then, in 2007, Netflix launched streaming. Three years later, Blockbuster declared bankruptcy. 

What most people don’t know is the director in question had invented streaming—in 1995, before Netflix even existed—and piloted it with great success. He went home imagining this would be a career capstone. Instead, his boss called him and told him to ax the project. Late fees are 12% of our revenue, the boss said. “No doubt he got a bonus for that,” Evergreen says.

The lesson, as should be obvious: Be like Bell Labs, not Blockbuster.

Leveling up strategic thinking 

Watching Evergreen put his process into practice in a room full of Lululemon execs makes it look deceptively simple: 

• Divide into groups and discuss Lululemon’s vision for guests. 

• Condense this into a two-sentence mantra that will emotionally resonate with educators. 

• Write down everything that needs to be true for Lululemon to make this vision happen. For example: Pay customer service agents well, and make sure their job descriptions are clear. 

• Go down a level and map out what needs to happen to make the previous step happen. Then keep going down levels until you have a plan for how to proceed in the short term. 

• If it becomes apparent during the mapping process that an investment doesn’t make sense, or isn’t possible, go back up a level and revise until you reach a point where the relevant investments make sense, or go back to the beginning and create a new vision. 

Pilates, it turns out, is not the hardest part of the day. Coming up with a vision to kick off the Future Solving process is excruciating. It’s easy to say innovate. Figuring out which direction to march in the dark is brutal. The Blockbuster executive who killed streaming in 1995 made a rational decision in that moment: At that point, 42% of Americans had never heard of the internet. 

The Lululemon employees explore what Lululemon’s guest experience is and what it should be. They argue over the details: Is the vision about eliminating bad guest experiences? Or does it start a step further? Which direction is the right one?  

Even after each group has painstakingly outlined a vision, they now have to agree on which vision to pick. Now, the same process repeats and slowly, they begin to pull them apart and discuss the common threads. There’s a reason why Henry Ford infamously said, “Coming together is a beginning, keeping together is progress, and working together is success.”  

A few hours in, there’s a click and the mood changes as everyone hits upon the same epiphany: To provide the premier guest experience, Lululemon needs to provide its educators, as employees are known, with the premier work experience. Now that they’ve agonizingly articulated this, they believe it. “I’m proud we got here,” an employee comments. “It felt like we were on different chapters of the same book but had we done this a year earlier we probably would have been on different books.” 

By now it’s late afternoon and the team has moved onto the next part of the exercise: coming up with what needs to happen in order for the vision to come true. The ideas fly thick and fast. Educators already get financial rewards, but what about other types of rewards like a break between calls even though time is money? How can they create team bonding time at a call center? What other tools can the team give educators to appease irate guests besides free shipping and a discount? 

Occasionally, Evergreen steps in with sharp and detailed insights. For example: Rethink performance metrics. An educator talking to a happy guest will start a call with five stars and end at five stars, but the one who takes an irate guest from a one-star experience to a three-star one is arguably doing harder and more important work. This should be rewarded accordingly.  

Technically, Evergreen’s module contains more steps—building in the relevant skills and then accountability. But figuring out the vision has eaten up most of the day. 

“I’ve been dying for time to do the strategic vision,” one manager comments to a colleague. They make plans to sit down and fill out the rest of the mind map they’ve started at a later date. 

The team is content. AI has barely come up at all today.  

The chess prodigy-to-AI coach connection 

Evergreen has been thinking about the big picture since he was 3, which is when his older brother taught him to play chess. By the time Evergreen was 12, he was a national champion, competing in international tournaments. He had to decide if he wanted to drop out of school and embark on a full-time career as a chess pro or retire and go to school. Evergreen chose school. “I loved being around other kids, I loved sports,” he says. 

His last year of high school, he melded his love of extracurriculars and school, starting a company with his brother to bring chess to schools across the country. He credits the experience with giving him nerves of steel in front of an audience. “If you can talk to middle school and high schoolers,” he says, “you can talk in front of anyone.” 

After eight years, Evergreen was ready for a change. In 2014, he joined Accenture as a contractor working in data entry. In his spare time, he read up on the systems Accenture was using and proposed a new workflow to his boss. Within six months, he joined full-time and was given his own consulting project. He then landed jobs at Amazon and Microsoft, where he rose to be the global head of autonomous AI co-innovation at Microsoft Research in 2021.  

[Photo: Wiley Publishing]

There, he realized that business leaders had no idea how to tackle AI. “I was flying out to meet with these Fortune 500 C-suite leaders or hosting them in Redmond, and I noticed these incredibly capable leaders—with incredibly capable teams and immense resources—were struggling to gain traction with AI,” he says. “They were trying to use the same playbook that worked for digital transformation, but it wasn’t working for AI. We needed a new system.” 

Evergreen began researching systems thinking, successful transformations, and the history of innovation to develop that new playbook. In January 2023, Evergreen announced he was publishing a book with Wiley and his inbox exploded with people who wanted to work with him. He decided it was time to leave Microsoft and start a coaching business. 

Three years in, he’s come to realize that AI transformation is stuck precisely because people aren’t doing the Bell Labs thing first. “I’ve met with over 1,500 executives from Fortune 500 companies and consensus continues to be the emperor has no clothes—or no brains,” he says. “There’s all this hype around AI and no one wants to look stupid and say they don’t know what’s going on, so they’re all trying to accelerate AI use, but the truth is a little more complex. AI can be useful, but leaders need to have the vision for how to use it. AI doesn’t have a vision. Leaders do.” Evergreen doesn’t come out and say this, but it’s a lot like chess. If you want to win, you need to be thinking several moves ahead and put your pieces in the position to win.

This revelation has inspired Evergreen to publish a second book, which, yes, is called Future Solving: Leaders Create What the World Becomes. Its goal: help leaders come up with a vision and develop a strategy so their company can redefine their category. 

He’s very excited about his launch strategy because it features mugs.  

I ask him to repeat himself, to make sure “mugs” isn’t an AI acronym or some prompt I’ve never heard of. But, no, Evergreen is indeed talking about coffee mugs, about which he’s incandescently excited.  

[Photo: Kai Jacobson, Tantulus Creative]

Evergreen plans to give people who preorder his book a mug that says Leaders create what the world becomes. “It’s a reminder that even though everyone is stressing out about AI, we can take back the reins. AI is not in charge of the future,” he says. “We are, and we’re not going to surrender it to AI.” 

I can’t help it: I start laughing. Embarrassed, I try to tell Evergreen I’m laughing with him, not at him. 

Very politely, without using any four-letter words, Evergreen, former choirboy, informs me that I’m the only one laughing, so no, I am not laughing with him, but it’s OK because I’ll see the error of my ways after the Lululemon workshop when he does a fireside chat with El Baba and they’re both holding the mugs. 

I try to nod, but instead I keep laughing.

Dreaming up the future 

The day after the workshop, El Baba and Evergreen participate in that fireside chat for select Lululemon employees. While AI was barely mentioned the previous day, it’s the topic du jour for the hour.  

Before El Baba met Evergreen, he says the team “had little minivisions,” but without an overarching one, they found it difficult to innovate. For example, in early 2026, El Baba’s team debuted Scout, an AI assistant to help educators search for information on a call with a guest. “We were trying to figure out how to capture the value of the assistant,” he says. “We could reduce handle times for guests.” But El Baba and his team didn’t know where to go next.

Brian Evergreen in conversation with Shadi El Baba and Dione Heater [Photo: Kai Jacobson, Tantulus Creative]

When El Baba met Evergreen, he realized he was asking the wrong question. “What we should have been asking ourselves is what does it look like when we have the best and brightest educators, and how do we scale what they do to everybody? That’s a fundamentally different question and that’s when the light bulb starts to click.” 

El Baba is now picturing an AI tool that can not only reduce handle times, but also increase revenue. Scout has a feature that allows educators to provide product recommendations for guests who want advice on fit or weather conditions as well as outfit ideas. For example, if a customer is unhappy, the tool could recommend products the customer might be interested in and offer a discount so that the team captures another sale. “We’re on hole 3 of an 18-hole golf course on the journey of making this happen,” El Baba says. “But we have a much more cohesive vision.”  

El Baba isn’t sure how Lululemon’s new executive leadership will affect the work he’s doing with Evergreen, and he’s not able to comment beyond expressing optimism. However, even if Lululemon’s priorities change, what he’s learned allows him to feel equipped to adapt, and that ability isn’t going anywhere. 

For the fireside chat, Evergreen has lined up those mugs on a table for Lululemon employees to take. They’re ceramic, handcrafted in small batches, and covered in a glaze that drips down the rim like melted ice cream. The Lululemon employees cup their hands around them and turn them around and around to read that motto emblazoned on the side: Leaders create what the world becomes. 

I take one and it kills me to admit it, but in the moment, holding the mug, I can picture the future I want. 

My son goes to a school where no one is on their cellphone, and AI is just another tool. Not the teacher, not a threat to his critical thinking skills. He goes outside with his friends. He falls down on the playground and scrapes his knees, but still he gets up. He grows up, entering a world where there are interesting and challenging jobs for everyone. Around him, the world is filled with lush green trees, chirping birds, clear water, and crisp clean breezes that smell like hope. All of this is possible, because leaders around the world are asking themselves: What do I want the world to become? How do I make this happen?

The 2026 U.S. midterm campaigns are the first in which AI-generated political ads are regularly appearing on people’s televisions and social media feeds.

We are researchers who have been studying political advertising through the Wesleyan Media Project since 2010. This election cycle—using data from media reports; student coders; and AdImpact, a firm that tracks political ad spending—we’ve tracked about $80 million in spending on almost 170 unique ads that use AI.

What we found has surprised us: AI use spans from hyperrealistic deepfakes to subtle enhancements; Republican sponsors—both candidates and interest groups—are much more likely to use AI than are Democratic sponsors; and, thanks to a patchwork of state legislation, many of these ads do not disclose the use of AI at all.

From deepfakes to subtle edits

An assortment of politicians and watchdog groups have expressed concern about campaigns using generative AI to produce deepfakes—synthetic videos showing people doing things they did not do—that might deceive voters.

We’ve noticed several ads containing hyperrealistic deepfakes of famous politicians, including Donald Trump, Nancy Pelosi, Barack Obama, Kamala Harris, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Ocasio-Cortez, in particular, is a favorite among Republican advertisers, appearing in at least five ads.

We’ve seen deepfakes in which a Republican Senate candidate from Louisiana drives a school bus full of undocumented immigrants, a Republican candidate for governor from South Carolina walks arm in arm with drag queens, and an ad in which Liz Cheney, Mitt Romney, and Mike Pence are seen carrying pitchforks on the White House lawn.

People who are not politicians made appearances, too, including a fake Dr. Anthony Fauci, seen running around a state fair with a huge syringe, presumably eager to vaccinate everyone. We’ve also noticed several ads in which AI was used to generate crowds or constituents.

In several cases, AI was used to enhance visuals rather than generate something new. One ad from Chip Keating, a Republican candidate for governor in Oklahoma, includes an AI disclaimer, but it doesn’t specify exactly how AI was used.

Ads that use AI to enhance visuals don’t necessarily look different from ads that were created in the pre-AI era, which makes it difficult for viewers to discern whether they depict something false.

A partisan gap

Republicans—both candidates and groups such as super PACs and 501(c) organizations—are much more likely to use AI in their ads than are Democrats, according to our research.

In fact, Republican candidates or pro-Republican groups were behind 80% of the ads we tracked and 83% of the spending.

We can only speculate as to why Republicans dominate the use of AI in political advertising in 2026. In general, Democrats tend to take on a regulatory mindset when it comes to political campaigns, favoring limits on campaign spending and required disclosures.

In 2022, for instance, only Senate Democrats and two independents voted to advance the DISCLOSE Act that would have required additional campaign finance disclosures for super PACs, labor unions, and corporations. Republicans, by contrast, tend to be more in favor of a free market approach.

These more general philosophies may be reflected in the parties’ use of generative AI for political advertising, something about which voters are worried. Polling shows broad support for more regulation, with 78% of registered voters favoring a ban on AI content that makes deceptive claims about candidates.

AI-modified videos of House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries posted by President Donald Trump were displayed at the White House in October 2025. [Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images News via Getty Images] Disclaimers all over the map

Because regulation of AI in advertising depends on a patchwork of state legislation, many of these ads are not required to disclose the use of AI. This lack of disclaimers makes tracking AI use in ads challenging. Our team has relied on media coverage and trained student coders to flag ads that are potentially AI-generated.

Across 35 states, only 31% of the ads we tracked—representing 22% of the spending—disclosed the use of AI tools. The wording of these disclaimers was all over the map.

For example, one Georgia ad included the disclaimer, “This video has been manipulated or generated with artificial intelligence,” while an Oklahoma ad said, “Political satire. AI-generated images do not depict actual events.” A North Carolina state Senate ad said, “You guessed it! AI was definitely used to generate these silly video clips.”

Laws don’t drive disclosure

Some advertisers voluntarily disclose the use of AI even when they are not required to do so. Sometimes, the opposite occurs—advertisers don’t include disclaimers even when state law requires them to. In fact, we’ve found that a state law that requires disclaimers on ads that use AI has very little relationship with the actual use of disclaimers.

In states without laws governing the use of AI in political ads, 32% of ads contained a disclaimer; by contrast, in states with laws governing the use of AI, 29% contained a disclaimer. This comparison, however, is not perfect, as some of the ads in our database aren’t covered by their state’s law.

Some states, such as Colorado, have laws that apply only to candidate deepfakes and thus exclude other uses of AI. In other instances, such as in Louisiana, an AI law was enacted after the ad aired.

Minnesota law generally bans deepfakes in political ads, but an ad featuring synthetic video of Democratic Senate candidate Peggy Flanagan aired in May 2026 anyway. Whether it violated state law is uncertain, as the law requires that the media be “so realistic that a reasonable person would believe it depicts speech or conduct of an individual who did not in fact engage in such speech or conduct.”

Moving forward, the real policy challenge will revolve around transparency, the enforceability of existing laws, and simply figuring out what type of disclosure would be helpful to voters.

Travis N. Ridout is a professor of government and public policy at Washington State University.

Erika Franklin Fowler is a professor of government at Wesleyan University.

Michael Franz is a professor of government at Bowdoin College.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.

Now that fall is here, my focus has been fragile. Noise, notifications, news, and email grab at my attention. To help cope with distractions, I’ve stitched together a focus tool kit with apps, sites, and sounds. Some are new, others old. My goal this season is to concentrate for a bit longer when my attention might otherwise drift. I hope this collection will be useful for you, too.

Stop email interruptions Inbox Pause

This simple email add-on temporarily freezes what you see in your inbox. Any new messages will show up as soon as you unpause.

Price and platforms: Free for basic use. For extra features, like custom scheduling or hearing from select senders during pauses, get the $15/month pro account. Works with Gmail and Outlook online or on the iPhone. An alternative free option: Pause Gmail.

Avoid distracting sites News Feed Eradicator

Get rid of the addictive, endless feed on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, YouTube, and LinkedIn. Look instead at whatever accounts you’re actually interested in.

Price and platforms: Free. Chrome only.

Raycast Focus Mode

Block email and distractions during short, focused work sprints.

Price and platforms: Free. It can automatically block sites for you in Safari, Chrome, and Firefox (and related browsers modeled on WebKit, Chromium, and Firefox).

[Image: Raycast Focus Mode] SelfControl

Pick a list of sites to block. Set a timer for deep work. While it’s active, you won’t be able to use Facebook, email, or whatever you’ve blacklisted, even if you restart your computer.

Price and platforms: SelfControl is free for Mac. It’s open-source and not fancy.

Alternative: Cold Turkey is a more polished free Windows and Mac alternative for blocking sites. The pro version costs $45 for a lifetime license ($36 for students) for advanced features like blocking applications.

[Image: SelfControl] Forest App

Instead of blocking sites or apps, Forest helps you avoid wasting time on your phone by rewarding you for not using it. Your virtual trees grow until you pick up your phone. The approach seems to resonate: 60 million people have used this app. 🌳

Price and platforms: Free for iOS and Android. A paid subscription unlocks extra features.

[Image: Forest] Apple Screen Time

Set time limits on apps that tempt you to doomscroll. Count how many notifications your apps send, and see how much screen time you’re logging. I use the downtime feature most. It closes my apps at 11 p.m. I can override that when I need to. But I like that friction nudging me to stop late-night work.

Price and platforms: Free for Macs and iOS devices. Android has a related “Digital Wellbeing” feature. And Windows has focus options. There’s a related Do Not Disturb mode for Mac and iPhone.

Block noise Sony Noise-Canceling Headphones

The New York City subway is painfully loud. So I splurged on these over-the-ear WH-1000XM6 headphones. (My previous XM3 pair lasted for seven years until I accidentally bent them.) The battery lasts for several weeks on a single charge.

Price: $460. The XM5 model, also excellent, is $300. Wirecutter’s review (which agrees that Sony’s XM6 model is the best) includes a $100 alternative.

MyNoise

Pick your favorite type of focus sound: a waterfall, a purring cat, white noise, rain, or a dozen others. I like the café, where you can adjust the ratio of chatter to kitchen noise. The creator, Stéphane, records real sounds and wrote a manifesto about avoiding AI-generated noise. The newest release: Pigeons of NYC.

Price and platforms: Free, browser-based.

[Image: MyNoise] Headspace

This was designed as a meditation app, but I use the focus music without lyrics to block noise around my Times Square office.

Price: $70/year or $10/year for students. Or share six accounts (family, roommates, teammates, etc.) for $100.

A Soft Murmur

Mix a range of sounds to block out city noise or whatever annoys you. Customize and save your own sound mix. Here’s my blend of waves, wind, and white noise.

Price and platforms: Free, browser-based.

[Image: A Soft Murmur] Give your body a break Wakeout

Take quick exercise breaks with short video loops showing real people doing cardio moves. I like one-minute exercises. The newest version adds little movement games. Body breaks improve my focus.

You can also use Wakeout to pick apps that pause when you’ve been sitting too long. Moving brings back access.

Price and platforms: The Chrome browser extension is free; a subscription for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch is $70/year or $13/month.

[Image: Wakeout] Time Out

Rest your eyes periodically if you work at a screen. I set Time Out to remind me to give my eyes a screen break every 15 minutes. You can choose your own interval. It nudges me to look out the window and stretch. It’s an old app, but it still works.

Price and platforms: Free, optional contributions of $5 to $60. Mac only.

Alternatives: BreakTimer is simple, free, and works on Mac, Windows, and Linux. Restier is a little more polished and also works across platforms; $9 for one device or $15 for two. Lookaway is an elegant Mac option that starts at $19.

Nex Playground

I spend most weekdays standing in front of my computer, so I love how the Nex gets me moving. Its 60-plus motion-sensing games are played with your body, not thumbs or controllers. My daughters, wife, and I have it linked to our New York City apartment TV, and I appreciate how it boosts my energy for evening work. It’s also great for short breaks that reset my focus when I work from home.

Price: $300, plus an optional $89/year subscription for all 60+ games.

[Image: Nex Playground] Hold yourself accountable Focusmate

Pair up with an accountability partner online. Pick a time on the site’s calendar when you want to get work done. Choose an interval of 25, 50, or 75 minutes. You’ll be paired with a real person who also wants to stay focused. Log in at the appointed time.

I was originally skeptical about this “body doubling” tactic. I found, though, that an appointment with another human made it feel like a special work interval. It did feel a bit silly to have to meet a random person over Zoom to trick myself into concentrating. But if that’s what works, I’ll do it on occasion.

Price and platforms: No app or download required. Works on any computer or mobile device with a camera and microphone. Free for up to three sessions a week, or $8/month billed annually for unlimited.

[Image: Focusmate] Stickk

Pick a goal and create your own commitment contract. You can pledge to donate to a cause you don’t support if you fail to follow through on your resolution.

Price and platforms: Web-based. No cost beyond what you decide to commit.

BeeMinder

Make commitments tied to data you sync. Works with categories like time spent on Facebook or whatever else you choose to sync from Toggl, Fitbit, or other time- or health-tracking platforms. Here’s a video explainer.

Price and platforms: Web-based. Free or $8/month for extra features.

Tranquility by Tuesday

My favorite book by Laura Vanderkam offers nine ways to make time for what matters. I like her suggestion about carving out a time slot toward the end of each week expressly for finishing things you’ve fallen behind on. I enjoyed talking with her about her latest book, and you can read more of her tips in her Vanderhacks Substack.

Deep Work

Cal Newport is a computer science professor and New Yorker writer who argues that computers and other devices can ruin our focus if we don’t use them thoughtfully. I found it helpful in exploring how to separate technical and menial tasks from work that requires slow, nonlinear thinking.

Indistractable

Nir Eyal stuffed his excellent guide to staying focused with useful insights. It’s full of research-backed ideas for combating internal and external distractions.

This article is republished with permission from Wonder Tools, a newsletter that helps you discover the most useful sites and apps.

You’ve been working hard at your job for several years, ticking off milestones your younger self could have only dreamed of. Then one day you look around and wonder why you wanted this in the first place.

Or perhaps you pursued what you thought was your dream role, but you realize that there are a lot of things about it that you don’t like. 

Many people spend a lot of their waking hours at work, so what you experience there will often spill into other parts of your life. And if a big chunk of that is unhappiness, discontent, or some other form of negative emotion, it can feel like the only way to improve your situation is to change jobs or careers altogether. 

But changing jobs or careers isn’t always the fix-all solution, nor is it feasible for everyone. First of all, stable jobs aren’t in plentiful supply, thanks to a combination of economic shifts and technological advancements. There’s also (typically) a financial cost. 

So how do you know whether you’ve truly outgrown your job and career, and need to make a drastic change? Or will you benefit from making small changes to your circumstances? Here’s how to tell. 

1. Pay attention to your body 

Your physical health and body can often be the first signal that something isn’t going right. This is what happened to Alexander Poulsen, a photographer based in Denmark and ambassador for photo-editing software Luminar. The 32-year-old started his career as a salesperson for a security systems company. He rose up the ranks quickly, earning a series of promotions. 

Then Poulsen started having stomach pains. But multiple blood tests and doctor visits found nothing wrong with him physically. Then, during a three-week vacation, he had thoughts of self-harm and experienced a series of anxiety attacks. 

It wasn’t until he was let go from his job and stumbled into photography that he experienced what it was like to enjoy making a living. “I actually was trying to get back in sales three times,” he said. Upon starting a new sales position, he immediately felt the same feelings that he felt at his last job. He quit two hours later. He started working with a psychologist and discovered that the physical symptoms were a manifestation of his stress, and he decided to pursue photography full time.

2. Notice what drains you and what gives you energy 

Poulsen acknowledged that being a self-employed photographer comes with its own source of stress. However, what stood out to him was that his work environment didn’t create stress and anxiety the way his sales job did. 

Vanessa Cornell had a high-flying corporate career as a Goldman Sachs executive and then in hotel development. Then she had her first child at 27 and ended up giving birth to five children in the span of six years. When she explored going back to work, she realized that she’d spent her life “meeting everyone’s expectations.” She continues, “I was burning myself out trying to basically be who everyone else wanted me to be.” 

That was when she started the journey of experimenting with what she wanted to do. Today, Cornell runs two newsletters and digital communities—one around parenting, career, and midlife called Voicenotes From a Friend, and Vanessa’s Stitch Club, catered to crochet enthusiasts. Cornell spends a lot of hours on those projects, but it doesn’t drain her because it is something that she enjoys doing and is also deeply curious about.

“That energy is something that’s going to drive your productivity,” she says, as well as “your success and ultimately, your happiness.” 

3. Look for micro-joys in your work, and elsewhere

Cornell says that many people see joy as the reward for hard work, when it would be much more effective to see it as a “guidepost.” She encourages people who are unhappy at work to try and see if they can find something about their circumstances that gives them joy, and lean into that. “Can you find micro-joys in your job? Maybe it’s the colleagues you work with. Maybe it’s one aspect of it. And can you give it a fighting chance?” 

Looking for evidence of this, she says, will allow you to find things that you’re good at, and light you up. When you do this, she adds, “You’re really going to give yourself an opportunity to see: Can I make myself inside of where I am? Or do I feel like this is sucking the life out of me?”

4. Gain clarity on your likes, dislikes, and preferences 

Cornell encourages people to dig deep into what they enjoy doing, both in work and outside of work. “A lot of people miss opportunities because they seem like they need to seem smart or prestigious,” she says. She cites her two businesses as an example, both of which have been “incredibly lucrative,” but weren’t something she ever considered when she started her career after graduating from Harvard.   

When you find joy in the work that you do, she says, “you have the stamina to keep working hard.” After all, she says, “There’s no work in the world where you feel like every single day I’m doing something that I like. But there’s a really big difference between, ‘Oh, today I have to do this, or I feel like I’m abandoning myself.’ It’s a matter of that modulation,” she says. 

5. Ask yourself what you want and what you need

Circumstances and realities play a big part in what kind of change you’re able to make. Poulsen, for example, was able to make his career transition while having access to Denmark’s sickness benefit. That meant that when he was let go from his sales job, he could take some time to improve his health and figure out what kind of changes he needed to make in his life. “You need to be able to take a leap from a place where you can provide for yourself,” Cornell says. 

People often think, “I’m unhappy, and I have to change immediately to start to move towards what I want,” Cornell continues. However, if you do the work of figuring out what you want first without changing your external circumstances, the path can seem clear, she says. She cautions people against making drastic changes without considering their practical needs. 

“If you’re saying, I’m going to give this up, and then I’m going to start the work of figuring out what I want, you can find yourself in a very scary place.”

In 1995, Harvard Business Review published an article by Harvard professor John Kotter that has shaped how leaders have approached organizational change ever since. Based on his observations of more than 100 companies, he outlined a series of eight steps that he argued were necessary for successful transformation.

Since then, countless change consultants, trained and certified in methodologies based on similar principles, such as the ADKAR (awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement) model, have applied his principles diligently, but to little effect. Study after study finds that the vast majority of organizational transformations fail. There is, put simply, little evidence that Kotter’s principles are effective. 

Yet not all transformations fail. Some, like the color revolutions in Eastern Europe or the struggle for LGBTQ+ rights, prevailed under the most difficult conditions. Over five decades, Everett Rogers painstakingly documented successful and unsuccessful change efforts in every field you can imagine. Here are three counterintuitive strategies that actually work. 

1. Start with a majority

Kotter’s first principle is to create a “sense of urgency.” On his website, he stresses how important it is to “build momentum that excites people to pursue a compelling (and clear) vision of the future . . . together.” The idea is that for change to be successful, you need to communicate it quickly and at scale to build momentum.

However, decades of studies suggest otherwise. In fact, research has shown that when we’re presented with facts contrary to our beliefs, we tend to question the evidence rather than our own preconceived notions. There is also a common phenomenon known as the KAP (knowledge-attitude-practice) gap, in which shifts in knowledge and attitudes do not necessarily lead to changes in practice.

Another consistent finding is that change tends to be propagated socially, rather than through mass media. This became clear even in early research such as the spread of air conditioners in the 1950s and recruiting civil rights activists during “Freedom Summer” in the 1960s. I provided further examples in my book Cascades.

What we do know is that people tend to conform to the opinions of those around them. The best indicator of what we think and do is what the people around us think and do. So rather than trying to shape opinions, a much more reliable approach is to focus on shaping networks. It is through building dense groups of enthusiasts that an idea can build traction.

And rather than trying to convince everyone at once, start with a small local majority of early apostles. Even if that majority is just three people in a room of five, you can always expand a majority out. Once you’re in the minority, however, you will feel immediate pushback and things will begin to sputter. Never let yourself get there. You are under no obligation to invite the bomb throwers in. Empower enthusiasts instead. 

2. Wait for a trigger

One uncomfortable truth about change is that it isn’t always possible. The time isn’t always right. Sometimes the opposition is just too powerful, or the idea itself has been discredited. For whatever reason, pushing for change when it is unlikely to succeed is more likely to put you deeper in the hole than to make progress. 

What’s crucial for changemakers to grasp is that a trigger eventually emerges that creates a moment. It’s rare that we can predict exactly when it’s going to happen, but it’s not too hard to see that one will come eventually and prepare for it. Political revolutions have leveraged this for decades, focusing on particular stress points in which a trigger is likely to emerge.

For example, the color revolutions in Eastern Europe targeted elections they knew were likely to be falsified. After Martin Luther King Jr.’s failed campaign in Albany, Georgia, he moved on to Birmingham, Alabama, because he knew that Bull Connor, the commissioner of public safety, was a hothead and likely to employ the type of brutal tactics that would trigger a moment.

In much the same way, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered digital transformation in many organizations. Economic downturns trigger efficiency measures. When a competitor comes out with a hit product, it tends to trigger enthusiasm for innovation. We don’t know when these things are going to happen, but we know that they are likely to happen eventually.

One reason why so many change efforts have failed in recent years is that the movements were built in response to a moment. Once the moment comes, it’s too late. You build your movement to prepare for a trigger so that once it comes you can make the most of it.

3. Design a dilemma

I once had a six-month assignment to restructure the sales and marketing operations of a troubled media company, and the sales director was a real stumbling block. She never overtly objected, but would nod her head and then quietly sabotage progress. For example, she promised to hand over the clients she worked with directly to her staff, but never seemed to get around to it.

It was obvious that she intended to slow-walk everything until the six months were over and then return to the status quo. As a longtime senior employee, she had considerable political capital within the organization and, because she was never directly insubordinate, provoking a direct confrontation with her would have been risky and unwise.

So rather than create a conflict, I designed a dilemma. I arranged with the CEO of a media buying agency for one of the salespeople to meet with a senior buyer and take over the account. The sales director had two choices: She could either let the meeting go ahead and lose her grip on the department or try to derail it. She chose the latter and was fired for cause. Once she was gone, her mismanagement became obvious and sales shot up.

Dilemma actions have been around for at least a century. One early example was Alice Paul’s Silent Sentinels, who picketed the Woodrow Wilson White House with his own quotes in 1917. More recently, the tactic has been the subject of increasing academic interest. What’s becoming evident is that these actions share clear design principles that can be replicated in almost any context.

Key to the success of a dilemma action is that it is seen as a constructive act rooted in a shared value. In the case of the sales director, she had agreed to give up her accounts, and setting up the meeting was consistent with that agreement. That’s what created the dilemma. She had to choose between violating the shared value or giving up her resistance.

We need to take a more evidence-based approach

The modern practice of change management is still deeply rooted in Kotter’s original 1995 Harvard Business Review article. Yet the only evidence he cites is his own observations of 100 companies. From his subsequent writing, these appear to be case studies based on executive interviews. There doesn’t appear to be any significant effort to control for his own biases, those of his subjects, or any other significant sources of error.

Now consider the prominent sociologist Doug McAdam’s paper on recruiting for Freedom Summer during the civil rights movement. He was able to analyze the applications of not only 720 volunteers, but also 239 others who withdrew and 55 who were rejected. He conducted 80 in-depth personal interviews and, because the applicants were asked to list their social contacts, McAdam was able to document the social ties among them.

That type of documentation simply doesn’t exist in Kotter’s work or the work of his imitators. To be fair, it is rare in business research as a whole. We seldom get access to internal data, much less insights from other stakeholders or anything akin to what researchers routinely gather in more rigorous fields, such as sociology, anthropology, and psychology. 

The ugly truth about change management is that the traditional change models simply don’t work. They aren’t based on any serious research and have shown themselves, over a period of decades, to fail consistently. Often, organizational change management units are used by consulting firms and vendors to cheerlead larger engagements.

That isn’t to say it’s some sort of con. In my experience, organizational change management practitioners are well-meaning and under the impression that they make a positive impact. They are hired for engagements, make proposals, deliver on what they promised, and leave their clients happy. They usually aren’t around to see what happens after the engagement ends.

Yet we do have a vast body evidence from other fields that we can apply. Strategies like starting with a majority, waiting for a trigger, and designing dilemmas are rooted in that evidence. Transformation is too important to entrust to conventional wisdom when decades of research show us a better way. 

Want more housing market stories from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.

In today’s article, we’re sharing the full results from the Zoodealio-ResiClub Real Estate Agent Survey—Q3 2026. To conduct our real estate agent survey, ResiClub partnered with Zoodealio, a cash-offer platform and iBuyer-management software designed for real estate agents.

Among the 208 real estate agents/brokers who took the survey, nearly half (44%) have been real estate agents for 15 years or longer.

The survey was fielded between August 17 and September 29, 2026. Respondents included real estate agents spanning all regions of the U.S., giving us a ground-level view of seller urgency, seller motivation, leverage shifts, commission structures, and expectations for the next 12 months.

Here’s what the results revealed.

Buyer demand cools, and leverage continues to shift away from sellers

Nationally, a majority (63%) of agents report lower homebuyer demand relative to 12 months ago. The pullback is most pronounced in the Midwest, where 74% of agents reported seeing lower demand. In the Southwest, no agents reported seeing demand pick up, and 66% reported lower demand.

As buyer demand softens, nearly three in four U.S. agents (74%) say leverage is shifting toward homebuyers in their local housing markets. That share is highest in the Southwest (89%), followed by the Southeast (78%) and the West (74%).

As buyer demand fades, seller urgency is rising. Nationally, 49% of agents say seller urgency is higher than it was 12 months ago, led by the Midwest (60%), Southwest (55%), and Southeast (48%). In these regions, fewer sellers appear willing to wait for conditions to improve.

By contrast, the Northeast looks more stable: 50% of agents there say seller urgency is about the same as a year ago, and half say leverage isn’t shifting in either direction.

Agents’ 2027 expectations

In Q3 2026, 30% of agents surveyed expected home prices in their local market to increase over the next 12 months, down from 39% in Q4 2025. The shift was driven by a rise in agents expecting slight declines (30%, up from 22%), while the share expecting prices to stay flat held steady at 33%. Only 1% of agents anticipate price increases of 5% or more.

Mortgage-rate expectations have moved higher since our last survey. At the end of 2025, most agents were bracing for a lower-rate outcome, with expectations centered on a low-6% range. As 2026 progressed, that view shifted: In Q3 2026, the largest share of agents said they expect rates to land in the upper-6% range over the next 12 months, with far more expecting the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate to hold above the 7% range or higher.

Agent confidence weakens, with fewer than half optimistic about the year ahead

Among the real estate agents surveyed, 48% describe their business outlook for the next 12 months as optimistic, down from 60% in Q4 2025. Agents in the Southeast remain the most optimistic (62%), while pessimism is highest in the Northeast, where half of agents (50%) describe their outlook as pessimistic. Agents in the Southeast operate in relatively larger new construction markets, which haven’t contracted nearly as much as resale volumes over the past four years. Northeast agents, by contrast, rely far more on resale transactions, so they’ve been hit harder by resale turnover hovering near 40-year lows.

Agent commissions are holding up—but they’re still mad at NAR

Sentiment toward the National Association of Realtors remains weak: 59% of agents describe their view as somewhat unfavorable (31%) or very unfavorable (28%), while only 9% express a somewhat favorable (6%) or very favorable opinion (3%) of the trade organization.

Agent compensation structures remain largely similar to the way they were prior to the March 2024 National Association of Realtors settlement: 88% of sell-side deals and 84% of buy-side deals still use fixed-percentage commissions, mostly in the 2% to 3% range. Alternative structures are more common on the buy side but remain a minority.

Meanwhile, about 4% of U.S. agents say they have discussed iBuyer cash-offer options with clients “very often” in the past year. These conversations are most common in the Southeast, where 32% of agents discussed them very often or occasionally, while 83% of agents in the Northeast say they have never discussed them.

Clients are bringing AI to the table—and agents are using it too

AI has quickly become part of the home buying and selling process. Among agents surveyed, 78% say their clients have used AI tools to research pricing, listings, or the transaction at least occasionally over the past 12 months, including 39% who say clients have done so very often. Only 6% say their clients have never used AI tools.

When clients bring AI-generated information, they most often use it for researching neighborhoods, schools, or comps (53%), followed by interpreting contracts or disclosures (42%). Among real estate agents surveyed, 23% say clients have used it to challenge their pricing or valuation, and 12% say clients have used it to question their commission and fees.

Agents are adopting AI themselves, with 90% saying they use it in their business. The most common use is writing listing descriptions or marketing copy (72%), followed by generating pricing insights or market analysis (49%) and client communication (46%).

Looking ahead, most agents see AI as a tool rather than a threat. Over the next five years, 53% believe AI will increase the value agents provide, while 30% think it will reduce the need for agents, including 8% who expect a significant reduction.

Big picture

Relative to the Q4 2025 survey, the Zoodealio-ResiClub Real Estate Agent Survey results from Q3 2026 show a market moving in the same direction, but with softer momentum. Buyer urgency has cooled further, seller urgency has picked up, and the majority of agents (74%) say negotiating power continues to shift toward buyers, though that share is down from 82% (Q4 2025).

At the same time, expectations have turned more cautious: Fewer agents anticipate home price increases over the next 12 months, more expect slight declines, and agents now expect mortgage rates to land higher, mostly in the upper-6% range. Agents’ business outlook has dimmed as well, with fewer than half (48%) describing themselves as optimistic, down from 60% (Q4 2025). Meanwhile, post-settlement agent sentiment toward NAR remains poor, and commission structures remain largely unchanged.

Picture the near future, which is closer than it looks. You open an app and a car arrives with no driver and a non-useful steering wheel. The ride to the airport that costs $70 today will cost $20. Before long, you may not own a car at all. And with that, the brand of the car sent to pick you up will mean almost nothing. You did not buy the car. You summoned a service. So what, exactly, are you choosing?

That is the question the entire driverless industry needs to answer. How do you build a brand for something you can’t see?

INSIDER-OUT BRANDING

In the driverless economy, the brand becomes what’s inside the car as well as the user experience both in the app and in the ride. When the vehicle becomes a service you summon rather than a possession you own, the decision stops being Ford or Volkswagen and becomes something more intimate and important. Whose artificial intelligence is driving? Whose safety and crash-avoidance system is inside? Whose connectivity keeps me seamlessly online? Whose interior lets me work on the way to the meeting? The car turns into a platform, and the relevant brands are the systems riding inside it.

This insider-out branding is already happening. Waymo talks about the Waymo Driver. Tesla sells Autopilot and Full Self-Driving. Mobileye built an entire ingredient brand around the intelligence that lets a car see. Mercedes named its automated system Drive Pilot. Some of these names are strong and some are placeholders, but the pattern is unmistakable: The value and the trust are migrating to the named layers inside the vehicle.

This inside brand has played out before in other sectors. When the personal computer became a commodity box, the brand that captured the value was not the box. It was the chip. Intel Inside, and the Pentium name, turned an invisible component into what customers asked for by name. The lesson holds, and it is about to repeat at a far larger scale. As products dissolve into software, the branding for the intelligence inside the product captures the value formerly held by the hardware. A car is becoming software on wheels. The intelligence inside it needs to be named, and named brands are more likely to succeed in the market.

Trust makes this urgent. Until now, buying a car was a decision based on considerations like status, safety features, driving, and comfort. Getting into a driverless car is a decision about your life. You are handing a machine the wheel at 70 miles an hour, and you will want to know whose judgment you are trusting. That is what a great brand name can do. It compresses a mountain of reassurance into a single word you already believe. In an autonomous ride, an unbranded system is an untrusted system. The safety brand and the AI brand will be the product.

THE OPPORTUNITY

This is why the opportunity window is so large, but so brief. The brands that will define this category mostly do not exist yet. The incumbents are quiet, the naming is haphazard, and the companies building the technology are, understandably, thinking about sensors and software. They are not thinking about the words that will carry them into millions of lives. Whoever names these systems first, and names them well, will own the trust and therefore the choice, for a generation. This is a land grab, and the land is language.

The mistake is treating any of this as decoration, something to settle later with a logo and tagline. A name is the asset a company builds once and then inhabits for the life of the business, and the single thing a competitor cannot copy. Companies that understand that the brand has moved inside the car, and that naming the brand is a strategic act, will build the trusted names of the autonomous age.

So, who names the driverless car? The answer will be decided by whoever moves first. Those who succeed will see that when the driver disappeared, the brand did not. It simply climbed inside.

David Placek is the founder of Lexicon Branding.

Amid widespread upheaval in the global economy, workplace relationships may be suffering.  

In the latest edition of its annual “Trust at Work” survey, public relations giant Edelman found that workers’ trust in their colleagues has fallen to its lowest point in the survey’s history, dropping from 82% in August 2024 to 73% in August 2026. And trust in direct managers fell from 79% to 72%, while trust in CEOs fell from 70% to 66%—both also record lows. 

The report, which surveyed nearly 34,000 respondents in 28 countries, suggests that change may be to blame. More than three-quarters of respondents said they have experienced at least one “transformation” in the past year, such as implementation of AI and strategy shifts—with about a third reporting a negative experience.

This era of change has put trust in businesses at risk, writes Edelman chief executive Richard Edelman. “Business has been on a great run as the most trusted institution, but transformation is the hinge point,” he says. “If transformation goes poorly, it will go back to all the bad things once assumed about business—profits over people, employees are just numbers, and the like.”

Another factor that may be contributing to the erosion of trust is the threat of job loss, with three-quarters of workers saying they fear unemployment due to tariffs, automation, offshoring, and lack of training.

Political friction is another potential culprit, as the percentage of workers who feel comfortable discussing societal issues with colleagues who disagree is also in decline—including topics like discrimination (down 9 points to 56%) and climate change (down 6 points to 65%).

Indeed, trust issues in the workplace don’t seem to be going away anytime soon. Recent studies have found that just 13% of Gen Z believe most people can be trusted and that 47% of Gen Z have quit a job due to lack of trust in leadership. Gen Zers are also 16 times as likely to say they don’t trust their coworkers as members of Gen X.

But the key to rebuilding trust in the workplace is navigating the current moment of change, Richard Edelman says. 

Managing change is “the central business leadership challenge of our moment,” he writes. “It can drive a wedge in your organization or accelerate its growth.”

Every generation inherits problems it didn’t create, alongside tools it didn’t build. Ours are significant: diseases like cancer that we still can’t reliably cure, managing financial portfolios with countless variables in today’s financial markets, or trusting communications about our most sensitive information without having to worry whether security safeguards will hold.  

For most of my career, I’ve watched brilliant people attack these complex problems with computers that were never built for them. Classical computers are remarkable machines. They’re also a ceiling because, in spite of continued improvements, some problems still can’t be addressed as chips get faster. No amount of “faster” will ever help them catch up with the processing burdens we increasingly place on them.

That’s the real promise of quantum computing. It’s not a faster version of the computer already on your desk or in your hand, but a different way of computing altogether. It can be used to model a cancer drug’s interaction with 10,000 biological variables instead of scientists guessing at those interactions. Financial systems holding people’s savings and pensions can finally be built for the complexity of the markets they run on. And we can have confidence in the safety and security of our communications.

None of that is guaranteed by quantum computing. But all of it becomes possible because of it.

QUANTUM COMPUTING NOW

That distinction matters because it’s honest. Quantum gives the people working on cancer, in financial markets, within telecommunications networks, and on other complex issues a set of tools equal to the size of the problem.

I say this as someone building one piece of this industry. I want to be careful not to make this about any single company, including my own. What’s happening in quantum computing right now is bigger than any one lab or business. Physicists are coaxing qubits out of superconducting circuits colder than deep space. Others are trapping single ions with lasers, or holding neutral atoms in place with tweezers made of light. My own team has bet on light itself, the same physical medium the world already trusts to carry its most sensitive information billions of times a day without anyone needing to think twice about it.

I happen to believe that light gets us to practical, real-world quantum computing soonest, without the extreme conditions other approaches require. But I could be wrong about the fastest road while still being right about the destination.

QUANTUM COMPUTING MOVES FORWARD

That’s the part of this story I most want to change. For decades, quantum computing has been sold as a single, distant finish line. It’s always a “10 to 20 years away” technology, always someone else’s problem to solve. I don’t think that’s true anymore, and I don’t think we can afford to keep pretending it is.

Real, working quantum systems exist today. Some are more capable than others. None of them are wholly finished. But every one of them is a brick in a road that’s being built right now, in labs and businesses and universities around the world.

I understand if skepticism runs deep. Quantum computing has been “around the corner” for so long that the phrase has become a punchline, and plenty of bold claims in this industry have outrun what the hardware can deliver. That reputation is earned, and I don’t think it’s fair to ask anyone to take our word that this time is different.

What’s different, however, is that some of these systems are no longer confined to physics departments. We’re running real workloads today, outside of labs, that solve real problems that matter to real people who need them solved. That’s a smaller claim than “quantum will change everything,” and I think it’s an important claim worth making right now. Everything larger gets built from claims like this one, proven one step at a time.

DON’T WAIT

We don’t have to wait for the perfect quantum solution to start benefiting from a sometimes imperfect one. We didn’t wait for a perfect internet before we started using it, or a perfect airplane before we started flying. Progress always arrives in pieces, and each piece is worth using while the next one is built.

So, here’s what I’d ask of those reading this who work in this field or hope to benefit from it one day: Don’t wait for quantum computing to arrive. It already has, in enough places, doing enough real work. The question is no longer when but how. How fast can we build on it and realize the benefits in our world today?

Yuping Huang is CEO of Quantum Computing Inc.

Why is Amazon keeping track of the size of shoppers’ butts?

That’s the question that brought one Amazon customer to social media, where she shared the discovery that left her “literally speechless.” 

According to Threads user Megan Montgomery, she “stumbled upon a page of assumptions that Amazon has made,” which included statements based on her shopping habits. That included the details of events she’d hosted (“Prepared for a Bluey-themed 2nd birthday celebration”), products she’d purchased (“Probably owns a Shark vaccuum”), and—most shockingly—the shape of her body (“Has flat buttocks”).

View on Threads

Montgomery had accidentally opened Amazon’s “About you” page, which is currently in beta after launching this May. The page uses data from customers’ activity to generate details about them in categories like Product Preferences, Interests & Hobbies, and Home & Family, which allows Amazon to personalize the user experience.

In Montgomery’s comments, other users shared the strangest assumptions Amazon had made about them. One user shared that it said their “husband has skinny legs.” Another user’s account listed “cusses when scared” under their interests and hobbies. A third user’s account assumed that they like “brunettes with muscles,” much to their confusion.

Though many social media users are just discovering the feature, others have been discussing it since launch. On Reddit, one user complained that their “About you” page had seemingly pulled data from reviews they’d left. “I was absolutely stunned to see it saves these details I had put in my reviews and more,” they wrote. “Honestly, it seriously creeps me out.”

Amazon’s privacy policy

Though some shoppers seemed shocked to learn Amazon was pulling information from their reviews, that’s only the tip of the iceberg of Amazon’s personal data collection. 

In its Privacy Notice, Amazon lists every activity that provides user data to the company. That includes the obvious, like searching for items and placing orders, as well as actions users may not realize are being tracked, like interacting with Alexa Voice Service, participating in discussion boards, or linking an Amazon account to a third-party business.

While shoppers can’t directly opt out of Amazon’s “About you” feature, they are able to customize the data, adding details they want Amazon to know about them and deleting assumptions they deem inaccurate or too personal.

How to view your “About you” page

Want to see what Amazon thinks of you and your shopping habits? Here’s how to view your own “About you” page.

First, navigate to your “Account” page. Next, under the “Account settings” drop-down menu, select “Shopping preferences.” Finally, scroll to the bottom of that page and click “Manage your information” under the heading “About You.” The page is also accessible when switching between profiles.

On the “About you” page, customers also have an option to “make Amazon even more personal to you” by importing personal data they’ve shared with other AI agents. To do so, Amazon provides users with a prompt to feed to their chatbot to generate a shopping profile, then asks them to copy and post that bot’s response back into Amazon.

HubSpot announced on Tuesday that it is cutting 7% of its workforce—roughly 660 employees—as it reorganizes around what it calls AI-driven customer outcomes. 

The layoffs come as investors have spent months questioning whether AI will reduce the need for businesses to pay for software like HubSpot’s, a fear dubbed the “SaaSpocalypse.” 

HubSpot’s platform helps companies manage their customers, sales, and marketing. The company was removed from the FTSE All-World Index (USD) last month after a decline in its stock price, a report from Simply Wall St noted. The stock is down more than 43% this year as of this writing.

After news of the layoffs was announced Tuesday, premarket shares of HubSpot Inc. (NYSE: HUBS) rose over 1%, but they were down again by 1.57% as of midday trading. 

Building a “flatter organization”

Yamini Rangan, CEO of HubSpot, explicitly told employees in a memo that the layoffs were “not driven by AI-related efficiencies.” Rather, the aim was to focus on “aligning our organization with our strategy and how we need to operate going forward,” Rangan wrote. 

She added that the goal is to “build a flatter organization with fewer layers” by cutting back on management. 

Still, artificial intelligence has been central to the company’s concerns. In August, Rangan blamed AI for why the company “got off to a slow start” in April as HubSpot was trying to adjust its product and pricing.

“We’re in the middle of a real transition to AI, and we are making deliberate choices to lead in it,” she said on an earnings call. 

The restructuring is estimated to cost between $65 and $75 million, mostly in severance packages. The company said that laid-off employees will receive 20 weeks of base pay, one week per year of service (capped at 30 weeks), five months of COBRA and Modern Health healthcare benefits, and they will be allowed to keep their laptops. 

Tech industry layoffs have increased this year

HubSpot’s layoffs are part of a growing wave of staff reductions across software companies over the past year.

In March, Atlassian laid off 10% of its staff (around 1,600 jobs) to fund AI investments, according to the CEO. Oracle announced three major layoffs in March, June, and September, losing tens of thousands of jobs to invest in AI.

Salesforce cut about 4,000 customer service jobs in late 2025, and then made additional cuts earlier this year. Workday cut 400 support roles in February, then another 2.5% of the staff at the end of September.

Some company leaders have indicated that AI efficiencies mean they can do more with less, leading to fears of workers being replaced by AI.

HubSpot’s challenge may be different because investors fear that AI could replace the product itself. Some executives, including OpenAI’s Sam Altman, have accused tech companies of engaging in “AI washing,” or falsely blaming AI for corporate layoffs. 

When asked for comment, HubSpot referred Fast Company to Rangan’s message from Tuesday morning.

It’s official: Skydance-owned Paramount has closed its $81 billion takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery.

The companies completed the deal on Tuesday, ushering in a new Hollywood giant with the now shorter “Skydance” nametag. The merger brings two of America’s oldest moviemaking studios together. And HBO Max, titles ranging from Harry Potter to Sinners, and even networks like CNN find themselves under the same roof as Paramount+, CBS, and the likes of Top Gun and The Godfather.

All of them will come under the helm of billionaire David Ellison and his new co-CEO, Ynon Kreiz. That further concentrates power in an industry already run by just a handful of major players. Ellison’s Skydance bought out Paramount for $8 billion just last year, and set its sights on Warner—an even bigger fish—very soon after.

What followed erupted into a tumultuous, roughly yearlong fight over Warner’s fate.

Skydance Corp. emerges from one of the biggest tie-ups ever in the media and entertainment industry. Including billions of dollars in debt, the Warner acquisition amounted to nearly $111 billion.

“Today is a historic day, not just for Skydance but for our entire industry,” Ellison said in a statement Tuesday. “We couldn’t be more excited to get to work.”

Here’s a look at some of the key moments that got us here.

Netflix v. Paramount

The early days of Paramount’s quest for Warner turned into a messy bidding war.

Months after disclosing it was open to selling parts or even all of its business, Warner initially struck a studio and streaming deal with Netflix back in December. But Skydance-owned Paramount, which claimed Warner management “never engaged meaningfully” with its previous proposals, soon launched a hostile counterbid aimed at taking over the entire company—including networks like CNN and Discovery.

The Hollywood giants spent much of early 2026 in a heated back-and-forth over who had a stronger offer on the table, with Warner leadership repeatedly backing Netflix as its preferred suitor. But Paramount eventually upped its offer to buy all of Warner for $31 per share, and Netflix opted to bow out of the race. Warner and Paramount inked a mutual merger agreement by late February.

The response from Hollywood

Hollywood was closely watching the fight over Warner’s future. And from awards shows to online petitions, A-list celebrities and other creatives made their voices known.

In April, thousands of movie stars, writers, directors, and other professionals announced their “unequivocal opposition” to the Paramount-Warner merger. The open letter—which was signed by long-outspoken critics of the deal like Jane Fonda and Mark Ruffalo, as well as Hollywood heavyweights from Denis Villeneuve to J.J. Abrams—warned of fewer jobs and “less choice for audiences in the United States and around the world.”

Meanwhile, some other stars lined up to back Paramount as Ellison reiterated his commitments to the movies. At CinemaCon this past spring, the company debuted a glossy mini movie about the studio directed by Jon M. Chu and narrated by Tom Cruise—who ended the spot atop the iconic Paramount water tower with the words “the future is Paramount, and the future looks pretty great from here.” Director James Cameron also doubled down on his support of Ellison.

The prospect of a new Warner owner also loomed over awards season this year, from #BlockTheMerger pins to more subtle nods in acceptance speeches. When accepting her Emmy last month, Remarkably Bright Creatures actor Sally Field—who also signed the open letter in opposition to the Paramount-Warner deal—stressed that “unique storytelling matters” and “we can’t let those voices be silenced, or compromised or merged.”

Many industry critics were also outspoken when Netflix’s studio and streaming deal was on the table, with particular focus on the future of movies staying in theaters.

Trump and CNN

Trump has regularly attacked reporting he deems unfavorable at CNN (most recently attempting to bar the outlet from the White House altogether). And over the course of the Warner buyout, his administration wasn’t afraid to chime in about hopes for a new owner.

In December—days after Paramount launched its hostile bid for Warner—the president said that CNN spreads “poison and lies,” adding that “I think the people who have run CNN for the last long period of time are a disgrace” and “it’s imperative that CNN be sold.”

The White House took aim again at CNN in March, over the network’s coverage of the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran. At the time, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth told reporters that “the sooner David Ellison takes over that network, the better.”

Ellison has said editorial independence will be maintained at CNN, and under a since-finalized settlement with the states, the company also agreed to form a “News Editorial Independence Board.” But critics point to turmoil already seen at CBS under Skydance ownership—and aren’t convinced this new body will move the needle much, because Ellison is set to have ample oversight over appointments. Outside this board, however, the combined company is retaining Mark Thompson as CNN’s editor-in-chief.

Trump has separately continued to criticize CBS coverage under Skydance ownership. Still, the president has held a long relationship with the billionaire Ellison family. Paramount’s chief reportedly hosted a dinner in Washington in Trump’s honor back in April, on the same day Warner shareholders gave their green light for the merger. And in June, just two days after the U.S. Justice Department said it wouldn’t intervene in the deal, Ellison attended an Ultimate Fighting Championship match on the White House lawn for Trump’s 80th birthday (streamed by Paramount+).

Gulf money

To help fund its Warner buyout, Paramount racked up billions of dollars in financial backing from three Gulf countries: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. The Federal Communications Commission approved the company’s request for sizeable indirect ownership from those foreign investors.

Paramount previously disclosed it expected those funds to indirectly own nearly 50% of equity interests—but no voting rights—of what is now the larger Skydance. But the company asked for clearance of up to 100% to account for potential future investments, which the FCC granted, citing in part that access to more capital would strengthen the broadcast industry and was therefore “in the public interest.”

Critics—including the FCC’s sole Democratic commissioner, Anna Gomez—have called the move alarming and unprecedented. They argue that amount of money opens the door to behind-the-scenes influence.

The final antitrust fight

Paramount cleared antitrust hurdles for its Warner acquisition from regulators worldwide over the summer, including the Trump administration’s Justice Department.

But in July, Democratic attorneys general from 12 states—led by California’s Rob Bonta—sued to block the merger, alleging the combined company would “extinguish competition” and lead to fewer choices for consumers, particularly movie theatergoers and cable customers across the U.S.

The Writers Guild of America followed suit. And Paramount agreed to put its Warner buyout on ice well into next year so the challenges could head toward a larger antitrust trial.

Settlement agreements emerged in September. The states’ terms, eventually approved by a judge, include pledges from the company to increase film production in the U.S. over the next five years, commit millions of dollars to a fund aimed at supporting workers displaced by the merger, and again establish new editorial monitoring of CNN and CBS.

Settling these challenges marked a key hurdle ahead of closing the deal. Critics decried the deal as capitulating to corporate pressure and said the remedies were too weak.

—By Wyatte Grantham-Philips, AP Business Writer