Taking photographs used to be a careful, conscious act. Photos were selective, frozen moments in time carefully archived in albums and frames. Now, taking a photograph is almost as effortless and common as breathing – it’s something that people do all the time in the age of smartphone cameras with seemingly endless digital film. But […]
‘It’s a choice between a firefighter and a climate arsonist’: What the EPA might look like under Trump 2.0
The cover of Protecting the Environment: A Half Century of Progress contains a split photo, the left half showcasing the horrific smog of 1960s Los Angeles, the right showing the Cuyahoga River in 1952, polluted and on fire. This retrospective document, put together by the EPA Alumni Association in 2020, goes on to note that […]
Should you be worried about AI?
I’ve worked in AI for 13 years and I’ve encountered a lot of people worried about it. In my opinion, they are worried about the wrong thing. But their worries generally fall into two categories: Killer robots: When are they going to be here? Just how killer will they be? Do we stand a chance […]
Cards Against Humanity’s lawsuit against Elon Musk is a brilliant stunt that makes a serious point
Nobody does publicity stunts quite like Cards Against Humanity. The organization, whose namesake card game plays like competitive Mad Libs for Rick and Morty fans, has previously sent customers boxes of actual feces and dug an enormous hole in the ground—in both cases, as satirical commentary about Black Friday. The party game company clearly pride […]
What to know before you get a store credit card
When Mykail James was 19 and working a holiday job at Victoria’s Secret, she took out a store credit card with a $2,000 credit line. When her school break was over, she realized she could no longer afford the payments. After missing a few, she paid off the card only to find that her credit […]
The UN’s ‘Pact for the Future’ has been green-lit, here’s what’s next
The U.N. General Assembly adopted a “Pact for the Future” to meet the challenges of the 21st century. Now comes the hard part: uniting the world’s divided nations to move quickly to implement its 56 actions. U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres thanked the 193-member world body for approving the pact and unlocking the door for nations […]
Corporate America’s retreat from DEI is short-sighted—and just plain dumb
The dissonance is inescapable. Corporations like Lowes, Jack Daniels, and Harley Davidson retreat from DEI despite a drumbeat of reminders that their future customers and employees are the most diverse of our time. A human resources organization drops “equity” from its work, even as Gen Z views DEI as a workplace must-have. And yet, it’s […]
In its 50th year, Dungeons & Dragons is more popular than ever. Here’s why
When a promoter from Live Nation told Brennan Lee Mulligan that his Dungeons & Dragons series, Dimension 20, could play a show at Madison Square Garden, he couldn’t believe it. Literally. “There was a feeling of, You must be joking,” the creator recalls. “Like, that can’t be true.” Madison Square Garden is, after all, one […]
Poverty declined last year, but many Americans face economic hardship
The number of Americans living in poverty, according to the nation’s official definition, fell slightly to about 36.8 million in 2023, the Census Bureau announced on September 10, 2024. The data released also indicated that the poverty rate declined a little. However, an alternative way to measure poverty ticked up, as more people in the […]
This short quiz will reveal whether your company is using AI strategically
The conversation around AI today reminds me of the dot.com conversations we were having in the late ’90s, or the direct-to-consumer conversations we were having in the 2010s. And we’re seeing similar results, too: a proliferation of projects that nobody in the organization truly has their arms around. In some ways, that’s great—after all, innovation is […]