Have you ever taken a personality test? If you’re like me, you’ve consulted BuzzFeed and you know exactly which Taylor Swift song “perfectly matches your vibe.”

It might be obvious that internet quizzes are not scientific, but many of the seemingly serious personality tests used to guide educational and career choices are also not supported by research. Despite being a billion-dollar industry, commercial personality testing used by schools and corporations to funnel people into their ideal roles do not predict career success.

Beyond their lack of scientific support, the most popular approaches to understanding personality are problematic because they assume your traits are static—that is, you’re stuck with the personality you’re born with. But modern personality science studies find that traits can and do change over time.

In addition to watching my own personality change over time from messy and lazy to off the charts in conscientiousness, I’m also a personality change researcher and clinical psychologist. My research confirms what I saw in my own development and in my patients: People can intentionally shape the traits they need to be successful in the lives they want. That’s contrary to the popular belief that your personality type places you in a box, dictating that you choose partners, activities and careers according to your traits.

What personality is and isn’t

According to psychologists, personality is your characteristic way of thinking, feeling and behaving.

Are you a person who tends to think about situations in your life more pessimistically, or are you a glass-half-full kind of person?

Do you tend to get angry when someone cuts you off in traffic, or are you more likely to give them the benefit of the doubt—maybe they’re rushing to the hospital?

Do you wait until the last minute to complete tasks, or do you plan ahead?

You can think of personality as a collection of labels that summarize your responses to questions like these. Depending on your answers, you might be labeled as optimistic, empathetic or dependable.

Research suggests that all these descriptive labels can be summarized into five overarching traits—what psychologists creatively refer to as the “Big Five.”

As early as the 1930s, psychologists literally combed through a dictionary to pull out all the words that describe human nature and sorted them in categories with similar themes. For example, they grouped words like “kind,” “thoughtful” and “friendly” together. They found that thousands of words could be accounted for by sorting them between five traits: neuroticism, extroversion, conscientiousness, agreeableness and openness.

What personality is not: People often feel protective about their personality—you may view it as the core of who you are. According to scientific definitions, however, personality is not your likes, dislikes or preferences. It’s not your sense of humor. It’s not your values or what you think is important in life.

In other words, shifting your Big Five traits does not change the core of who you are. It simply means learning to respond to situations in life with different thoughts, feelings and behaviors.

Can you change your personality?

Can personality change? Remember, personality is a person’s characteristic way of thinking, feeling and behaving. And while it might sound hard to change personality, people change how they think, feel and behave all the time.

Suppose you’re not super dependable. If you start to think “being on time shows others that I respect them,” begin to feel pride when you arrive to brunch before your friends, and engage in new behaviors that increase your timeliness—such as getting up with an alarm, setting appointment reminders and so on—you are embodying the characteristics of a reliable person. If you maintain these changes to your thinking, emotions and behaviors over time—voila!—you are reliable. Personality: changed.

Data confirms this idea. In general, personality changes across a person’s life span. As people age, they tend to experience fewer negative emotions and more positive ones, are more conscientious, place greater emphasis on positive relationships and are less judgmental of others.

There is variability here, though. Some people change a lot and some people hold pretty steady. Moreover, studies, including my own, that test whether personality interventions change traits over time find that people can speed up the process of personality change by making intentional tweaks to their thinking and behavior. These tweaks can lead to meaningful change in less than 20 weeks, instead of 20 years.

Cultivating personality traits that serve you best

The good news is that these cognitive-behavioral techniques are relatively simple, and you don’t need to visit a therapist if that’s not something you’re into.

The first component involves changing your thinking patterns—this is the cognitive piece. You need to become aware of your thoughts to determine whether they’re keeping you stuck acting in line with a particular trait. For example, if you find yourself thinking “people are only looking out for themselves,” you are likely to act defensively around others.

The behavioral component involves becoming aware of your current action tendencies and testing out new responses. If you are defensive around other people, they will probably respond negatively to you. When they withdraw or snap at you, for example, it then confirms your belief that you can’t trust others. By contrast, if you try behaving more openly—perhaps sharing with a co-worker that you’re struggling with a task—you have the opportunity to see whether that changes the way others act toward you.

These cognitive-behavioral strategies are so effective for nudging personality because personality is simply your characteristic way of thinking and behaving. Consistently making changes to your perspective and actions can lead to lasting habits that ultimately result in crafting the personality you desire.

Shannon Sauer-Zavala is an associate professor of psychology & licensed clinical psychologist at the University of Kentucky.

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

Hurricane Helene crashed ashore late Thursday night in the Florida Panhandle as one of the strongest hurricane landfalls in American history.

Helene hit with sustained winds of up to 140 mph just south of Tallahassee. It was the first time such a strong hurricane made landfall in the Big Bend since detailed records began in 1851.

In Tampa Bay, storm surge rose to the highest levels in at least 80 years, shunting more than six feet of saltwater into one of the most flood-prone coastal zones in the world. Large swaths of the Big Bend region of Florida’s coastline were under mandatory evacuation orders.

For many people further inland, however, the agony is just beginning.

More than four million households were without power as of Friday morning across the Southeast from Florida to Tennessee and Virginia. Torrential rain and gusty winds combined to down trees and powerlines, cutting off communities and making rescues more difficult. Tropical storm and hurricane warnings blanketed the entire states of Georgia and South Carolina, a rarity for a storm so far away.

And in many inland communities, the water will keep rising for days.

Helene generated a conveyor belt of tropical moisture from record-warm Gulf of Mexico waters that slammed up against the southern Appalachian Mountains, producing record rainfall that poses disastrous consequences.

“Catastrophic and life-threatening flash flooding from Helene is likely,” wrote the National Weather Service in a bulletin for the southern Appalachian region. “We plead with everyone . . . to take warnings seriously. We cannot stress the significance of this event enough.”

As staggering as Helene’s coastal impact was, over the past decade in the United States, it’s inland freshwater flooding that has been far more deadly, accounting for about 60% of all hurricane-related fatalities since 2013.

More than 300 miles north of where Helene made landfall, Atlanta is in the middle of its wettest three-day period in more than 100 years, with nearly 10 inches of rain so far. Rescue crews worked in boats overnight to free people trapped in rising floodwaters amid a flash flood emergency, the most severe level of inland flood warning issued by the National Weather Service. 

Even further inland, in Asheville, N.C., the 48-hour rainfall total of 13.15 inches surrounding Helene’s landfall is more than five inches above what is expected to recur once every 1,000 years, making September 2024 the wettest month in the city’s history by a wide margin.

The fingerprint of climate change, fueled by fossil fuel burning, is evident in several of the factors that are making Helene especially dangerous away from the coastline.

In the hours before landfall, Helene rapidly intensified from a Category 1 to a Category 4 over exceptionally warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, including the infamous Loop Current that helped Hurricane Katrina rapidly intensify in 2005 on its way to devastate New Orleans. Over the past 20 years, the number of hurricanes rapidly intensifying in the Atlantic has more than doubled.

Helene’s rainfall totals are compounded by the fact that warmer air can hold more moisture than cooler air—about a 10% increase in rainfall can be directly attributed to the approximately 1.4 degrees Celsius of global warming that has already taken place.

Helene is an unusually large hurricane, “at the upper bound of hurricanes in terms of storm size” according to the National Hurricane Center. Additionally, after moving quickly inland, Helene is expected to slow to a stall over the Ohio Valley, prolonging the rainfall for several more days. These factors will also work to increase the storm’s impact, but are less directly connected to climate change.

Helene’s landfall continues an extraordinary streak of intense hurricane landfalls in the continental United States. Over the past eight years, Helene marks the eighth Category 4 or 5 hurricane landfall, as many as happened over the previous 57 years combined. This hurricane season is running slightly ahead of recent climate norms and continues the streak of highly active Atlantic hurricane seasons over the past decade.

While inland flooding of this magnitude from hurricanes is still rare, Helene could be a sign of things to come for the Southeast.

Similar events have taken communities years to recover from. In 2011, after Hurricane Irene swamped Vermont, the official federally funded recovery effort lasted two years. But farmland buried by the countless mudslides that storm brought could take a generation to be productive again. After Hurricane Florence dumped a month’s worth of rain in a few days on North Carolina in 2018, it took billions of dollars to get the state on its feet again. After enduring multiple flooding events, residents of the town of Fair Bluff completely demolished their downtown and relocated it to higher ground.

The problem is trickier in a rapidly urbanizing metro area like Atlanta, where underfunded stormwater infrastructure is compounded by the effects of heavier rainstorms, more parking lots, and fewer natural outlets for water to escape to.

As Spanish microbiologist Pilar Bosch was casting around for a subject to investigate for her PhD in 2008, she stumbled across a paper suggesting that bacteria, her field, could be used in art restoration, her mother’s own area of expertise.

At that same moment, her mother – Pilar Roig – was struggling to restore 18th-century paintings by Antonio Palomino in one of the oldest churches in Spain’s third city, Valencia.

She was finding it particularly difficult to remove glue that had been used to pull the frescoes from the walls of Santos Juanes church during restoration work in the 1960s.

“My mother had a very difficult problem to solve and I found a paper about bacteria used to clean frescoes in Italy,” Bosch, 42, said.

She did her PhD on that project. And more than a decade later, daughter and mother have joined forces on a 4-million-euro ($4.46-million) project, funded by local foundations, to use some of the techniques to restore the artworks in Valencia.

The microbiologist trains bacteria by feeding them samples of the glue which was made from animal collagen. The bacteria then naturally produce enzymes to degrade the glue.

The family team then mixes the bacteria with a natural algae-based gel and spread it on the paintings – which were taken from the walls in the 1960s, then nailed back on, still covered in glue.

After three hours, the gel is removed, revealing glue-free paintings.

“In the past, we used to work in a horrible manual way, with warm water and sponges that took hours and damaged the painting,” said Roig, now 75, whose father and grandfather along with other relatives also worked in art conservation.

Her microbiologist daughter has now joined in. “It certainly runs in the family,” Bosch said, as both stood in lab coats, supervising the restoration.

Bosch has also applied her use of bacteria to restoration projects in Pisa and Monte Cassino in Italy and in Santiago de Compostela in northern Spain. She is now training up cohorts of a different kind of bacteria to clear walls of spray-painted graffiti.

($1 = 0.8967 euros)

—Horaci Garcia and Eva Manez, Reuters

Writing by Inti Landauro.

As Hurricane Helene approaches the U.S. Gulf Coast, coming on the heels of another major storm two weeks ago, blackouts are all but certain in some areas. That carries extra risk for some people.

In New Orleans, Verna Lee and her husband Ronald Bailey, both 71, worry each time the lights go out, how long the batteries will last on the breathing machine Bailey relies on to keep his airways open at night. There is always that stressful decision to stay or to leave, with all the upheaval evacuation entails.

“Ron’s always a little more willing to stay but it’s like, he can’t,” Lee said. Two weeks ago when the lights went out during Hurricane Francine, “He was thinking he would just try to sleep sitting up,” she said. “When he lays down, he has to have that machine on to sleep because his breathing stops otherwise.”

Francine’s wind and rain lashed the dark neighborhoods, flooding them as Lee and Bailey almost decided to slog through hours of traffic to evacuate and stay with relatives in Texas.

Then they remembered their neighborhood church still had its lights on. Inside First Grace United Methodist Church they found an air-conditioned refuge, a place to plug in their devices. They were able to charge the breathing machine and go back to sleep in their own home.

First Grace is part of the Community Lighthouse Project, an initiative born of hurricanes, to provide essentials like functioning electrical outlets and air conditioning to people facing blackouts, by building out solar panels on church roofs. The nonprofit Together New Orleans founded the project to turn the buildings into microgrids, meaning they generate and store their own electricity when the grid is down. There are now nine operating in New Orleans with a plan to expand to 86 across the city and 500 across the state.

The buildings keep operating through blackouts because they’ve installed batteries that charge up from the sun. Even if the batteries get drawn down, they recharge when the sun comes out.

Such self-sustaining microgrids have great potential for many places in the world that are slammed by increasingly intense hurricanes and typhoons.

One of the Community Lighthouse Project’s founding members, Broderick Bagert, was motivated by his own searing experience.

His baby Isaiah was born with jaundice Aug. 21, 2012, just a few days before Hurricane Isaac hit. Doctors said the baby needed to be admitted to the hospital, but the storm was brewing in the Gulf. So they sent Bagert home with a light bed — a tiny container that exposes babies to blue light.

Then the power went out.

“I remember scurrying through the neighborhood, with a light bed under one arm and an eight-day-old child on the other,” Bagert said. He knew his sister had a generator and he made it to her house.

Isaiah made it through his jaundice.

But Bagert was left with frustration and outrage that communities like his on the frontlines of climate change have no safe spaces to go during a storm. Hurricane Ida came in 2021, 10 years after Isaac. Isaac had come seven years after Katrina. “It was like it just sunk in … they’re never going to do it,” he said about government officials building enough emergency shelters.

In the network of Community Lighthouses, First Grace has symbolic significance.

It was formed after Hurricane Katrina wrecked two churches in 2005 – one historically white and one historically Black. They merged because members felt they could do more for the community together. These days, the congregation includes immaculately dressed elders and tattooed hipsters in shorts, all rising to sway to the gospel choir on Sundays.

There are reminders of what came before: Images of the old Black church’s stained-glass windows are painted on the inner halls of First Grace, and across the street lies the stump of an old Confederate monument that the congregation advocated to remove.

Pastor Shawn Moses Anglim also helped found the network and remembers his heart sinking when he saw how the terracotta roof on First Grace’s sanctuary had been ripped off by Hurricane Ida. It made him passionate about providing a safe shelter during and after storms.

“We had no power for two weeks and it was hot,” said Anglim. “It’s like having an extra ten pounds of wet clothing and walking around in 90 degree weather. We’ve got to rethink this,” he remembers deciding.

Fast forward and two weeks ago, when Francine knocked out power, the church’s Tesla batteries kicked in, charged up by the solar panels on the roof. Text alerts notified the surrounding neighborhood and more than 100 people to show up.

Kids ran around with toy trucks and hula hoops. Parents caught a break and ate plates of jambalaya. Diego James, 14, plugged in his phone, played the church piano and helped distribute snacks. People could plug in dialysis machines. Others who didn’t know each other chatted around the outlets.

“It gave that real sense of community that is so vital in life, especially in a crisis,” Anglim said. “People care about each other.”

The state’s largest solar-plus-battery microgrid, New Wine Christian Fellowship, is in LaPlace, about a half hour drive west of New Orleans. New Wine is in St. John the Baptist Parish — the U.S. county ranked most vulnerable to climate change by the 2023 Climate Vulnerability Index. Pastor Neil Bernard has seen the impacts of climate change in his community, including homes destroyed by floods and health problems exacerbated by extreme heat. Bernard estimated during Francine, around 20 people came to stay overnight. He has room for 900 cots.

The Community Lighthouse Project has received $8.6 million from several cities in Louisiana, Sandia National Laboratory, and a congressional allocation secured by Congressman Troy Carter. Additional funding is in the pipeline and will bring the total to $13 million.

Arthur Lee is president of Bethlehem Lutheran Church, another microgrid. He said people in New Orleans are having to deal with power outages all the time, and they’re profoundly chaotic, even unsafe.

“When your power goes out, your world is shaken up, your loved ones are upset, you’re upset … everything is dark. But then they come to a safe beacon,” Lee said.

The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

—Isabella O’Malley and Jack Brook, Associated Press

Home Depot was about to launch something big — really big — when the pandemic hit in the spring of 2020: a 12-foot skeleton.

“There were a lot of internal discussions. It was like, is there going to be Halloween this year?” said Lance Allen, senior merchant of decorative holiday at Home Depot. “Are customers going to think this is in poor taste? Should we go forward with it?'”

Home Depot did. And the towering skeleton arrived at the perfect time.

“Nobody could possibly need a 12-foot skeleton, but everybody wanted a 12-foot skeleton,” Allen said.

The retailer’s gamble upped the game for decorations. A population stuck at home and wanting some semblance of community entertainment created a Halloween phenomenon that’s now bigger than any one store. (Others carry various versions of the larger-than-life skeleton.)

And as stores race to get the latest and greatest Halloween score out as soon as possible, superfans say it’s about time.

Halloween is celebrated earlier

Home Depot’s 12-foot skeleton is affectionately known by fans across the internet and globe as “Skelly.” When Skelly was launched, the thinking was that he’d be out for a week or two leading up to Halloween night, Allen said, the usual consumer behavior observed at the time.

But the pandemic changed that timeline.

“Everybody started decorating in early October for something to do,” Allen said. “And we’ve really seen a shift in the market where now people are decorating for Halloween how we’ve seen with Christmas historically, planning out decorations five to six weeks, two months ahead of time.”

Mak Ralston, a Halloween fanatic known as Haunt Former on YouTube, who posts Halloween videos year-round, has noticed the shift.

“There used to be a kind of a calendar as to when I would expect things to come out in stores,” Ralston said, noting that orange and black and witches and skeletons used to roll in at the start of September, maybe mid-August.

“This year, I saw some stuff in stores for Halloween in June, early July,” he said. “It’s never been earlier.”

For some, it’s always Halloween

“Some average people who aren’t as invested don’t realize that for people who are really committed to both Halloween and the horror culture, they’re in it to win it like all year,” Ralston said.

“I can post a video about a horror movie or about a Halloween mask that’s coming out in October in February, and people eat it up,” he said.

Nate Rambaud, known as That Guy Nate on Youtube, started his channel by posting videos of abandoned stores such as Toys R Us, a niche interest on the video-sharing platform. Now with more than 440,000 subscribers, his bread and butter is a more spooky niche. He posts videos touring Spirit Halloween locations, which often occupy abandoned stores.

Rambaud has been to well over 300 Spirit Halloween locations in all 50 states.

“Halloween is so easy to attach to. It doesn’t require anybody else whatsoever,” said Rambaud.

Christmas “kind of requires other people, your family. You’re out buying stuff for people. And then kids sit around and wait for Christmas — that’s really all they can do for Christmas,” he said. “But Halloween — anyone can associate with Halloween and you can do it any time all the time.”

As a result of the year-round party, Skelly’s had some work done for his fifth birthday. Allen said the new Skellys for sale this season will have more UV additive to hold up against the sun longer, along with a more durable resin mixture to withstand colder temperatures. And he now has a dog.

“People are taking the skeletons on dates. They’re going out to the beach, he’s playing in the sand,” Allen said. “We’ve seen him at weddings.”

Jacob Humphrey, an artist in Texas, helps moderate a Facebook group of Home Depot Halloween superfans. There is a little bit of healthy competition over decorations, he said.

“A lot of times people will say, ‘I know this is not as good as everyone else’s, but I wanted to share this,'” Humphrey said. Group members join to find like-minded fans, he said, “but let’s be honest, people want to show off.”

Why are so many people so wild about Halloween?

Perhaps it all has to do with a fundamental part of the holiday: children.

Humphrey was out painting his fence recently when a girl walked by. She told him his house always has the best decorations.

“I didn’t realize kids memorize that. And that’s really kind of a badge of honor,” Humphrey said. “Also, like, great, now I have no choice, I’m going to make sure I do a great job.”

Ralston recalled that growing up, he was the kid who carried around a skeleton instead of a teddy bear.

And Rambaud, whose videos showcase Halloween animatronics worth hundreds of dollars, remembers a simpler time from his childhood that helped spark his love for Halloween.

“My dad used to make what he would call a spook tunnel. He would take cardboard boxes, like refrigerator boxes, and he put them all together and made a maze that we had to crawl through,” he said. “That was our little haunted house.”

To Humphrey, the holiday’s appeal can be summarized this way:

“Halloween is an extrovert day for introverts,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you want to celebrate that?”

—Sallee Ann Harrison, Associated Press

Swedish fashion retailer H&M is banking on lower prices and a wider range of trendy clothing compared to basics to drive sales among cautious consumers in the crucial shopping months leading up to the end of the year.

Shoppers are already starting to browse for holiday items and H&M recently launched its homeware collection for the holiday season, CEO Daniel Erver said, adding that value for money will be critical as households are still under financial pressure.

H&M is the first global retailer to offer insights into its outlook for the upcoming holiday shopping season, a critical sales driver for the sector.

“We see a high search interest, actually, in holiday (products) already now,” Erver told Reuters in an interview, referring to online search trends.

He was speaking after the retailer ditched its hope for a 10% operating margin this year and reported weaker than expected third-quarter profit, but said it sees sales for September—the first month of its fourth quarter—jumping 11% compared to a year ago.

While H&M sells many cheap evergreen basics like $19.99 jeans and $7.99 T-shirts, Erver said it is shifting to a bigger share of trendy pieces that people will buy no matter the weather.

“Where we are shifting and doing the biggest leap is updating the assortment to make it more relevant, to make it in current fashion, updated aesthetics, that’s where we’re performing the best and that’s also the least weather-dependent,” he said.

Celebrity appeal

Shiny leather dresses with silver studs, knee-high boots, and mohair tops and skirts embellished with rhinestones all featured prominently in H&M’s autumn/winter collection modeled by pop star Charli XCX, who performed at H&M’s London Fashion Week launch two weeks ago, and supermodel Kate Moss’s daughter Lila Moss, among other celebrities.

A fluffy leopard print coat worn by Charli XCX in the advertising campaigns sold out in minutes, Erver told Reuters. He is betting that star power will boost H&M’s brand and justify the marketing splurge that is part of his turnaround strategy.

“The focus on fashionability, brand heat, and activating collections with collaborations has always been probably the strongest piece of H&M’s business, and basics have just become more and more competitive,” said Deutsche Bank research analyst Adam Cochrane.

Increasing marketing spending is “100% the right thing to do to reignite the H&M brand,” Cochrane added.

H&M will still have to use discounts to lure cash-strapped shoppers, though, and on H&M’s U.S. website many of the items in the autumn/winter collection were marked down between 15% and 42%. A burgundy synthetic leather skirt, slashed to $10.49 from $17.99, showed as sold out.

Overall U.S retail sales growth is expected to be muted during the holidays as prudent shoppers hold out for the best bargains, industry experts predict.

North America is a “more challenged” region for consumer demand, Erver said.

—Helen Reid and Marie Mannes, Reuters

A network of people and virtual currency exchanges associated with harboring Russian cybercrime were hit with sanctions on Thursday, in a government-wide crackdown on cybercrime that could assist Russia ahead of President Joe Biden‘s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

U.S. Treasury sanctioned alleged Russian hacker Sergey Ivanov and Cryptex — a St. Vincent and Grenadines registered virtual currency exchange operating in Russia. Virtual currency exchanges allow people and businesses to trade cryptocurrencies for other assets, such as conventional dollars or other digital currencies.

Treasury alleges that Ivanov has laundered hundreds of millions of dollars worth of virtual currency for cyber criminals and darknet marketplace vendors for the last 20 years, including for Timur Shakhmametov, who allegedly created an online marketplace for stolen credit card data and compromised IDs called Joker’s Stash. Ivanov laundered the proceeds from Joker’s Stash, Treasury says.

The State Department is offering a $10 million reward for information that would lead to the arrest and possible conviction of the two men and the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Virginia has unsealed an indictment against them.

Biden said in a statement announcing the sanctions Thursday that the U.S. “will continue to raise the costs on Russia for its war in Ukraine and to deprive the Russian defense industrial base of resources.”

He meets with Zelenskyy Thursday to announce a surge in security assistance for Ukraine and other actions meant to assist the war-torn country as Russia continues to invade.

State Department Spokesman Matthew Miller said, “We will continue to use all our tools and authorities to deter and expose these money laundering networks and impose cost on the cyber criminals and support networks. We reiterate our call that Russia must take concrete steps to prevent cyber criminals from freely operating in its jurisdiction.”

U.S officials have taken several actions against Russian cybercriminals since the start of the invasion in February 2022.

Earlier this year, Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control sanctioned 13 firms — five of which are owned by an already sanctioned person — and two people who have all either helped build or operate blockchain-based services for, or enabled virtual currency payments in, the Russian financial sector, “thus enabling potential sanctions evasion,” according to U.S. Treasury.

—Fatima Hussein, Associated Press

Parents in California who profit from social media posts featuring their children will be required to set aside some earnings for their minor influencers under a pair of measures signed Thursday by Governor Gavin Newsom.

California led the nation nearly 80 years ago in setting ground rules to protect child performers from financial abuse, but those regulations needed updating, Newsom said. The existing law covers children working in movies and TV but doesn’t extend to minors making their names on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram.

Family-style vlogs, where influencers share details of their daily lives with countless strangers on the internet, have become a popular and lucrative way to earn money for many.

Besides coordinated dances and funny toddler comments, family vlogs nowadays may share intimate details of their children’s lives grades, potty training, illnesses, misbehaviors, first periods—for strangers to view. Brand deals featuring the internet’s darlings can reap tens of thousands of dollars per video, but there have been minimal regulations for the “sharenthood” industry, which experts say can cause serious harm to children.

“A lot has changed since Hollywood’s early days, but here in California, our laser focus on protecting kids from exploitation remains the same,” he said in a statement. “In old Hollywood, child actors were exploited. In 2024, it’s now child influencers. Today, that modern exploitation ends through two new laws to protect young influencers on TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, and other social media platforms.”

The California laws protecting child social media influencers follow the first-in-the-nation legislation in Illinois that took effect this July. The California measures apply to all children under 18, while the Illinois law covers those under 16.

The California measures, which received overwhelming bipartisan support, require parents and guardians who monetize their children’s online presence to establish a trust for the starlets. Parents will have to keep records of how many minutes the children appear in their online content and how much money they earn from those posts, among other things.

The laws entitle child influencers to a percentage of earnings based on how often they appear on video blogs or online content that generates at least 10 cents per view. The children could sue their parents for failing to do so.

Children employed as content creators on platforms such as YouTube will also have at least 15% of their earnings deposited in a trust for when they turn 18. An existing state law has provided such protection to child actors since 1939 after a silent film-era child actor Jackie Coogan sued his parents for squandering his earnings.

The new laws will take effect next year.

The laws have the support from The Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, or, SAG-AFTRA, and singer Demi Lovato, a former child star who has spoken publicly about child performers abuse.

“In order to build a better future for the next generation of child stars, we need to put protections in place for minors working in the digital space,” Lovato said in a statement. “I’m grateful to Governor Newsom for taking action with this update to the Coogan Law that will ensure children featured on social media are granted agency when they come of age and are properly compensated for the use of their name and likeness.”

The new laws protecting child influencers are part of ongoing efforts by Newsom to address the mental health impacts of social media on children. Newsom earlier this month also signed a bill to curb student phone access at schools and ban social media platforms from knowingly providing addictive feeds to children without parental consent.

—Trân Nguyễn, Associated Press

Former President Donald Trump called for the criminal prosecution of Google over what he said was the tech giant’s bias toward his presidential opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, in online search results.

Trump appeared to be referring to a report released this week from the Media Research Center, a conservative group, that claims it found that Google search engine results displayed positive results about Harris more prominently than those for Trump when searching “Donald Trump presidential race 2024.”

Trump said in a post on Truth Social that if the Department of Justice does not prosecute Google, he will “request their prosecution, at the maximum levels, when I win the Election.”

“It has been determined that Google has illegally used a system of only revealing and displaying bad stories about Donald J. Trump, some made up for this purpose while, at the same time, only revealing good stories about Comrade Kamala Harris,” Trump wrote on his social media platform. “This is an ILLEGAL ACTIVITY.”

A spokesperson for Google said in a statement that the company does not manipulate search results to favor any candidate, and suggested the search term in question—the candidate’s name, followed by “presidential race 2024″—was actually pretty niche. “Both campaign websites consistently appear at the top of Search for relevant and common search queries,” the spokesperson said. “This report looked at a single rare search term on a single day a few weeks ago, and even for that search, both candidates’ websites ranked in the top results on Google.”

The former president has a long-standing feud with the tech giant, with multiple grievances. At one point, Trump falsely claimed that Google “manipulated” millions of votes in the 2016 election, and that a lack of Google autocomplete results about Trump and his attempted assassination is evidence of election interference.

Update: This story has been updated to include comment from Google.

The U.S. Justice Department on Friday charged three Iranian operatives with hacking former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in what the agency said was an attempt to interfere with the election in November.

The three men, all Iranian nationals residing in Iran, were charged with material support for terrorism, computer fraud, wire fraud, and identity theft for their roles in cyberattacks, according to the indictment.

The defendants allegedly targeted the email accounts of current and former U.S. public officials, journalists, and individuals associated with U.S. political campaigns. According to the indictment, the men used fake email accounts to trick campaign officials to click on links that allowed the hackers to steal internal information.

“The defendants’ own words make clear that they were attempting to undermine former President Trump’s campaign in advance of the 2024 U.S. presidential election,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at a news conference. “We know that Iran is continuing its brazen efforts to stoke discord, erode confidence in the U.S. electoral process, and advance its malign [sic] activities through the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], a designated foreign terrorist organization.”

Trump’s campaign revealed in August that it had been hacked by Iran. At the time, the campaign said hackers weren’t able to get any private information. However, several news outlets reportedly received documents that were allegedly stolen from the campaign.

Friday’s indictment was paired with sanctions by the U.S. Department of Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, while the State Department offered hefty rewards for information leading to the arrests of the defendants.

Iran has denied past allegations of election interference.

MNTN, a company that sells targeted TV advertising technology, may be working with Morgan Stanley on an initial public offering (IPO) as the firm considers its future.

MNTN has already expanded significantly in recent years acquiring Hollywood star Ryan Reynolds’s agency, Maximum Effort, in 2021, and raising $119M in a Series D financing in 2022. After the 2021 acquisition, Reynolds took over as chief creative officer.

Transitioning from a private to a public company allows the business to raise funds from public investors. It’s the bank’s job to set the IPO price, find out how in-demand the company is, and explore the best timing.

People familiar with the matter, who asked not to be identified, told Bloomberg the news and shared that the expected timeline for the changeover is early 2025. Per the article, the sources explained that the deal’s details are being worked out and that timing, as well as the banks involved, could still change.

Fast Company reached out to MNTN and Morgan Stanely to confirm the news but did not immediately hear back.

Reynolds, who spoke last week at Fast Company’s Innovation Festival, has a unique brand vision. He recently told Fast Company that the brands have similar visions, “acknowledging and playing with something that is happening in culture, in as close to real-time as humanly possible—there is almost no better way to create a groundswell of earned media attention for your company.”

With Reynolds at the creative helm, MNTN has shifted toward faster, cheeky ads, which are sometimes pushed out in just 48 hours. He calls it “fastvertising.” But fast or slow, the marketing software platform sees itself as redefining how advertisers can reach customers, making “running TV ads as simple as search and social and [helping] brands drive measurable conversions, revenue, site visits, and more,” as it details on the site.

“MNTN Performance TV is the world’s first and only Connected TV advertising platform optimized for direct-response marketing goals.”

Insomnia Cookies, the bakery brand best known for delivering warm cookies late into the night, is said to be on track to open a record 55 stores in 2024, with plans for another 1,800 bakeries in the U.S. alone over the next decade.

Now that’s a lot of cookies! (Or insomniacs?)

This week, Insomnia is celebrating the opening of its 300th bakery with a host of events and deals. In 2023, the late-night bakery chain expanded outside the U.S. to Canada and the U.K.

“This tremendous level of growth in such a short time wouldn’t be possible without our loyal Insomniacs and employees,” said Seth Berkowitz, Insomnia Cookies founder and CEO, in a company statement.

That growth is being fueled by a new partnership with Verlinvest, an international investment company, and Mistral Equity Partners, a New York City-based private equity firm.

So far, the bakery chain has opened 35 of its projected 55 U.S. stores in 2024, from New York to California, including five bakeries in the Golden State. And it has expanded its portfolio to include transit centers in New York’s Penn Station, and in the coming weeks, Washington, D.C.’s Union Station.

Earlier this year, Insomnia Cookies debuted its new global headquarters, a three-story building called, the Imagine What’s Possible Center(IWP) in Philadelphia’s Center City. The workplace includes an innovation lab and an expanded retail store within the flagship bakery.

On Saturday, September 28, “insomniacs” living near the newly opened Seattle bakery are invited to the grand opening event to celebrate late into the night with store giveaways and free cookies.

In 2018, JAB Holding, the privately held parent company of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and other foodservice brands, bought Insomnia Cookies for an undisclosed amount.

According to NASA, Crew-9 is scheduled for launch no earlier than 1:17 p.m. on Saturday, September, on a SpaceX Crew Dragon.

It will have just two astronauts on board: Commander Nick Hague, a U.S. Space Force Guardian, and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov. You can watch it on NASA’s YouTube channel, on NASA+, or on NASA’s website.

Typically, ISS rotation crews are four astronauts, but this launch is unique. Two astronauts, Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, were pulled off the flight to make room for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. These Boeing Starliner astronauts, whom NASA insists aren’t stranded on the ISS, need a new ride.

As a result, this flight has been delayed—it was initially scheduled for mid-August, but NASA delayed the launch when the Boeing Starliner management team realized they’d need more time to decide how to bring those astronauts home. It was rescheduled for September 24, then delayed to September 26, and now September 28. This is the first crewed launch from Launch Complex 40, and presumably, NASA needed more time to put the necessary launch infrastructure in place.

No immediate danger, but plenty of drama

Across fiction and nonfiction, space rescue missions have a rich history. NASA has often had contingency plans in the works for crewed spaceflight—modifying an Apollo capsule to potentially rescue stranded crews from the Skylab space station, keeping a Space Shuttle on the launch pad in case a risky final servicing mission for Hubble went awry. But it’s not often in history that these rescue spaceships launch—and that’s what we’re facing this week.

This isn’t a rescue in the traditional sense; Wilmore and Williams aren’t in danger, but the rule on the ISS is that any astronauts on board must have a way off the Space Station. Because Boeing Starliner undocked on September 6, right now, their only way home is a contingency plan that would see them as two extra astronauts on Crew-8 in makeshift seats strapped down to the cargo area. (Note that the ISS has been continuously occupied since 2000 and has never been evacuated, so it’s unlikely we’ll see this scenario in action.)

Once Crew-9 arrives at the ISS, Wilmore and Williams will assume the duties of the two remaining astronauts for the duration of the five-month mission. They are scheduled to return in February 2025, turning what was supposed to be an eight-day test flight into an eight-month-long stay aboard the ISS.

They say two is better than one. The Earth’s gravitational force is about to put that theory to the test. Beginning on Sunday, Earth will pull in what’s being described as a “mini-moon.”

This smaller mass is actually an asteroid that will hang out in our orbit for a couple of months before moving on by escaping gravity. This sounds like a once-in-a-lifetime event, but it’s actually happened before. Let’s break it down.

When did scientists discover this phenomenon?

NASA scientists first laid eyes on the rocky remnant with the help of the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS. This went down on August 7 and prompted further study. The asteroid’s predicted trajectory was then published in the Research Notes of the American Astronomical Society. Thankfully, this isn’t the beginning of an apocalyptic movie as it won’t hit the Earth. 

Where did this asteroid come from?

The asteroid has a name, 2024 PT5, and a home of sorts. It hails from the Arjuna asteroid belt, which has a similar orbit as Earth. Because of this, the asteroids sometimes travel as close to our planet as 2.8 million miles. When you combine this nearness and slow speeds of about 2,200 mph, the Earth’s gravity can cause it to come for a visit.

How big is this “second moon”?

Let’s compare the two moons. Our mainstay satellite’s diameter is around 3,474 kilometers. By contrast, 2024 PT5 is only 32 feet (about 9.75 thousandths of a kilometer) long. There’s a clear winner in the size category.

How can I see it?

Unfortunately, because 2024 PT5 is so small, you will not be able to see it with the naked eye or even amateur equipment. You need the professional stuff. Maybe NASA or other professional stargazers can use a good filter and post some epic pictures on Instagram.

Has this really happened before?

Although it sounds like science fiction, this has all happened before; in fact, it’s not even a rare occurrence. One asteroid named 2022 NX1 first came into Earth’s orbit in 1981 and liked it so much that it came back in 2022. Scientists predict that 2024 PT5 may come back in 2055. The night sky holds many wonders yet to be discovered.

As Google’s high-profile antitrust trial reaches the end of week three, the future of its gargantuan ad business is in flux. The director of intelligence at digital advertising watchdog Check My Ads, Arielle Garcia has been in every court session to cover the DOJ’s arguments and Google’s defense. As a veteran of the ad industry, she shares how the trial is poised not only to disrupt the digital ad landscape but also to affect democracy and journalism as we know it.

This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Bob Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with today’s top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.

Earlier this year, a federal judge ruled that Google’s search business is an illegal monopoly. The penalty phase is still to come. Meanwhile, last week, Google successfully challenged a $1.7 billion fine from European regulators in the wake of losing a different challenge against a $2.7 billion EU fine. In the midst of all that, Google’s the target of another U.S. antitrust trial about its ad business. You’ve been in Virginia covering that trial. For those who aren’t ad industry insiders, can you explain what the allegations are and how we’ve come to this place?

Yeah, so back in the old days, the way that ads were bought was that literally you’d have your agency team calling publishers and trying to buy ad space. Today, much of that is automated. And so what this trial is about is Google’s monopolization of the ad tech. What the DOJ is focused on, in particular, is they allege that Google has monopolized three separate markets within the ad tech industry. The first is publisher ad servers, which is what publishers use to manage their inventory. The second is advertiser ad networks, which are basically the advertisers’ buying tools, the ad exchange that connects the two. The last claim is that they tied their products together. Now, why does that matter?

The business model of the internet is digital advertising. So by controlling these tools that are used to buy and sell ads, Google’s effectively controlling the business model of the internet. They have an outsize say in what content gets funded and what doesn’t, and as newsrooms are shuttering. A lot of that has to do, as the DOJ alleges, with Google’s conduct.

I just want to make sure I understand. This is like Google is on all sides of these transactions, right? They are facilitating the buying on the part of advertisers. They are facilitating the placing of those ads, from advertisers to publishers. They’re running the marketplace in between. And in the process of doing that, the allegation is that they’re diverting that business to their own properties and, in some ways, devaluing other competition.

We haven’t even gotten to the diverting to their own and operated in this trial, although that could be a whole different episode, but this is more about how they’re extracting money from all sides along the way. They’re taking over 30 cents of every ad dollar that’s spent. That is an overcharge, the brunt of which is predominantly borne by publishers. And that’s kind of what’s at the core of the trial.

This is what’s driven their stock price up so much, a dominant business, which every business aspires to in certain ways, but it has gotten dominant to a point that it has negative implications for the industry.

And that’s democracy, ultimately, right? I was surprised because I didn’t think that we would necessarily hear that argument explicitly in court, but there was a very short deposition read where one of the witnesses talked about how basically a healthy digital ad market is central to democracy because of the fact that it funds journalism.

As you talk about the evidence at this trial, it sounds pretty damning and difficult for Google. One potential outcome could be the breakup of Google, which has been speculated about. How realistic is that?

I believe that it’s realistic. So what the DOJ proposed is the sell-off of, at a minimum, the sell side of their ad tech business.

So that’s the publisher ad server and like, so GAM, Google Ad Manager Suite, is inclusive of the ad server, and now the ad exchange, they tie them together.

So at least that resolves in their mind the conflict of interest. I think if Google thinks that they can get the remedy to just be the spin-off of the sell-side business, that’s something that they’ve been dangling since at least 2022. They just recently offered it in response to, I think it was publisher litigation in Europe or the U.K. the other day. So they’ve been preparing for that.

I do think that even they think that it’s quite likely that that could be an outcome. My hope is that it does not stop at just the sell side of the ad tech business, because in order to be future-looking we have to address Chrome, Android, and their broader plan.

Give us a picture of what’s at stake beyond the industry insiders for businesses that buy advertising, which many of our listeners are for consumers, and then for Alphabet investors, which is almost everybody these days through funds and retirement.

I think from an Alphabet investor perspective, I already read analysis about how a divestiture would actually benefit shareholders. Like they would spin off these businesses into businesses that are pretty big in and out. Like, they will be okay. For advertisers, this is so important. This is the opportunity to fix the broken incentive structures that advertisers have been paying the price for forever.

And to be honest with you, that’s the case whether or not Google has to divest the sell-side business, because this case, this trial, has thrown into the spotlight all of these things that are going to catalyze calls for regulation.

So for advertisers, this is an opportunity to seize control of your ad spend and to actually get some transparency into what you’re paying for and how your ads are performing. For the general public, fixing the digital ad business model is fixing the internet. So this is the first and biggest step to creating a healthy information ecosystem and a sustainable future for journalism.

The skeptic in me about all this thinks the advertising business has always been a little bit based on smoke and mirrors. Like you’re reaching a certain audience that isn’t quite there. And everybody knows that whether you’re talking about buying TV ads or buying what used to happen in the magazine business or now digital. I don’t want to side too much with Google, but it’s like, are advertisers holding digital channels to standards that they haven’t held any other media channel to?

My broader missive is marketers are paying for bad data to reach fake people on unsafe sites while newsrooms shutter and democracy hangs in the balance.

Doesn’t sound great when you say it that way.

We don’t know what Google actually has. So there’s the illusion that they have all of this great data. And so marketers are like, “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Then we’ll just trust you.” Every time you just trust them, the problem gets bigger and bigger. There’s only so much a magazine is misrepresenting.

There was one witness, a Google witness, who talked about how a conservative amount of ad dollars that don’t go to working media is 50 cents of every dollar. That’s conservative. So, I mean, the waste is just on a different scale, and it’s impossible to verify because Google is such a black box.

So what this is about, what there’s opportunity for, is shining some light in what were dark corners. What happens from there? I mean, it’s about empowering advertisers. It’s not going to miraculously fix everything, but it also paves a way for there to be incentives for other ad tech companies to compete on quality.

From the point of view of publishers and journalism, the trends over the last 10 years have been crushing. There just isn’t a reward for producing information that is trusted and deep; you don’t get financially rewarded for it.

And in the same way, there’s not an incentive for ad tech companies to actually be transparent, to actually vet inventory, to actually weed out clickbait. . . . And why? The why with that really, really starts with the norms that Google sets and the fact that Google can get away with it.

So, what happens from here with the trial? What are the next big moments we should be looking out for?

Google’s expected to wrap up its defense this week. Then there will be rebuttals, and then apparently there’s a break before closing arguments and then a verdict.

Is a verdict from a judge instantaneous, or can the judge take weeks, months, however long to make the decision?

The Eastern District of Virginia is known as the rocket docket and has absolutely lived up to its name. This judge, in particular, wants to waste no time. Two weeks in, she was already saying that this is dragging.

I don’t think it will take her very long to deliberate. I don’t see it taking her more than a few weeks, but we really don’t know.

It’s a tired, tired cliché, but if you’re like me, working smarter, not harder is truly the only way to live.

And if you use Windows 11 on the regular, you absolutely owe it to yourself to squeeze every last bit of time-savings out of it. Thankfully, there are plenty of ways to do just that. Here’s a handful of the ones I find most useful.

Snap Layouts

This one’s an absolute must for effortless organization, especially if you use multiple monitors.

Simply hover your mouse over the maximize button in the upper-right corner of any window to reveal different layout options. Then click on the zone where you want the current window to snap.

This feature is perfect for multitasking and keeping your desktop tidy.

Virtual Desktops

Create multiple workspaces for different projects by leveraging Virtual Desktops. To get started, press the Windows Key + Tab to open Task View, then click “New desktop” at the bottom of the screen.

Switch between desktops seamlessly by using Windows Key + Tab again or super quickly by hitting Windows Key + Ctrl + Left/Right Arrow. You can even drag and drop windows between desktops.

Windows key shortcuts

Mastering Windows key combinations is one of the best time-savers around. You’ll need to invest a bit of effort since there are so many of them—see the full list here—but doing so will pay off in spades.

Some helpful ones to get you started:

• Windows Key + I: Open Settings
• Windows Key + L: Lock your PC
• Windows Key + H: Open voice typing
• Alt + Tab: Switch between open apps
• Windows Key + N: Open notification center
• Windows Key + V: Open Clipboard history
• Windows Key + E: Open File Explorer

Focus sessions

Minimize distractions and keep your head in the game with focus sessions. Access the feature by going to Start > Settings > System > Focus.

From here, you can choose from a few options, including which distractions to turn off and how long you’d like your focus session to last.

Voice typing

This is my absolute favorite time-saver in the history of Windows time-savers right here, folks. Give your fingers a rest with Windows 11’s built-in voice typing feature.

When your cursor is in any text field, press Windows Key + H to activate voice typing. Start speaking, and watch as your words are transcribed automatically.

Say “stop listening” when you’re done or hit Windows Key + H again, and you’re good to go.

File Explorer tabs

Manage multiple folders efficiently with File Explorer tabs just like you can with web browser tabs.

Open File Explorer and click the + button next to the existing tab, or press Ctrl + T to open a new tab. Drag and drop tabs to rearrange them or right-click a tab for more options.

Customizable Start menu

Tailor the Start menu to your needs for quick access to your most-used apps and files.

Open the Start menu, click the “All apps” button, and then right-click on any app in there and choose “Pin to Start” to keep it readily available.

You can then rearrange pinned items by simply dragging and dropping them. Remove unwanted apps from this section as well by right-clicking on them and choosing “Remove from Start” to banish them.

New Zealand Prime Minister Christopher Luxon sparked debate on the future of work in his ountry this week when he ordered public service employees back to the office.

But Luxon’s edict neglects a broader transformation in work culture.

Work from home (WFH) arrangements have grown considerably over the past decade, propelled by an increase in dual-income households and rapid technological advancements.

The COVID pandemic acted as a catalyst for further change, proving that many jobs could successfully be performed remotely.

Our upcoming article in the New Zealand Journal of Employment Relations addresses the pros and cons of remote work. We highlight how a hybrid model—mixing days in the office with days working from home—can improve well-being, engagement, and productivity.

We found embracing a hybrid approach may lead to better outcomes as society shifts with technology and employment expectations. And, despite the prime minister’s demands on public service workers, it may be too late to go back.

Embracing flexibility

Under current rules, employees can request flexible working arrangements. Employers must provide valid reasons if they decline the request.

According to a 2023 survey from Human Resources New Zealand, 40% of HR professionals noted productivity gains as a critical advantage of WFH arrangements.

And some professional organizations have embraced work from home or hybrid work arrangements.

The New Zealand Law Association, for example, has emphasised the significant benefits of flexible work for their members, including increased employee engagement, productivity, and overall well-being.

A report from Te Kawa Mataaho Public Service Commission noted the public service’s success in delivering quality services during the pandemic while working remotely.

The commission’s current guidance on hybrid work arrangements supports flexibility that allows working from home to focus and working together when necessary.

Does WFH reduce efficiency?

Luxon argues forcing workers back to the office will promote efficiency. But there is little evidence suggesting New Zealand’s productivity has significantly declined with WFH or hybrid arrangements.

Instead, we found office-only arrangements risked introducing new inefficiencies for the government. These included new layers of permissions and reporting on arrangements that have already been agreed to.

The assumption that office work suits everyone is also contradicted by experiences during and after COVID.

During the first year of the pandemic, many workers felt the void of casual interactions that once sparked creativity. They also struggled with isolation. This was especially pronounced for caregivers, often women, who had to juggle professional duties with increased childcare responsibilities.

Despite this, a University of Otago survey conducted during the pandemic noted 67% of participants preferred a hybrid work model.

Many expressed optimism regarding remote work’s continuation, with significant portions reporting stable or increased productivity, although some struggled with home distractions.

And our research found taking a hybrid approach to work—with one or more days at home—reduced the risks from professional and social isolation and improved collaboration.

Opportunities to work at home some of the time also allowed time for focused work, reduced commuting time and improved well-being.

Boosting productivity from home

Luxon’s assertion that working from home is “not an entitlement” aligns with traditional views on work. These include the belief that time at a desk is a measurement of productivity, rather than measuring the outcomes from work.

However, a growing body of evidence indicates remote work can elevate both productivity and employee satisfaction.

Eliminating daily commutes allows employees to redirect time toward focused work, positively impacting job satisfaction and mental well-being.

Moreover, remote work fosters inclusivity, enabling organizations to source talent from a broader geographic area, which in turn enhances diversity and innovation.

A report from McKinsey & Company found businesses adopting flexible work arrangements are better positioned to navigate future uncertainties, sustaining or even boosting productivity.

A survey by the Australian Council of Trade Unions exploring WFH revealed nearly 48% of participants experienced enhanced productivity, attributed in part to the elimination of commuting.

However, it also highlighted challenges. Some 40% of respondents said they were facing longer work hours, which can lead to burnout. Addressing these issues is essential to maintaining employee well-being.

The future of work

Instead of enforcing strict office attendance, leaders should adapt to the changing work landscape.

Promoting flexible arrangements can foster a more productive and engaged workforce, ultimately benefiting New Zealand’s public service in today’s dynamic environment.

Balancing both office and remote work presents the most promising path forward.

Stephen Blumenfeld is a director at the Centre for Labour, Employment, and Work at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.

Chris Peace is a lecturer in occupational health and safety at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.

Joanne Crawford is a Worksafe New Zealand chair in health and safety at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.

Roya Gorjifard is a doctoral candidate at the School of Health at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.

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

Of all the hazards that hurricanes bring, storm surge is the greatest threat to life and property along the coast. It can sweep homes off their foundations, flood riverside communities miles inland, and break up dunes and levees that normally protect coastal areas against storms.

As a hurricane reaches the coast, it pushes a huge volume of ocean water ashore. This is what we call storm surge.

This surge appears as a gradual rise in the water level as the storm approaches. Depending on the size and track of the hurricane, storm surge flooding can last for several hours. It then recedes after the storm passes.

Water level heights during a hurricane can reach 20 feet or more above normal sea level. With powerful waves on top of it, a hurricane’s storm surge can cause catastrophic damage.

What determines how high storm surge gets?

Storm surge begins over the open ocean. The strong winds of a hurricane push the ocean waters around and cause water to pile up under the storm. The low air pressure of the storm also plays a small role in lifting the water level. The height and extent of this pile of water depend on the strength and size of the hurricane.

As this pile of water moves toward the coast, other factors can change its height and extent.

The depth of the sea floor is one factor.

If a coastal area has a sea floor that gently slopes away from the coastline, it’s more likely to see a higher storm surge than an area with a steeper drop-off. Gentle slopes along the Louisiana and Texas coasts have contributed to some devastating storm surges. Hurricane Katrina’s surge in 2005 broke levees and flooded New Orleans. Hurricane Ike’s 15- to 17-foot storm surge and waves swept hundreds of homes off Texas’s Bolivar Peninsula in 2008. Both were large, powerful storms that hit in vulnerable locations.

The shape of the coastline can also shape the surge. When storm surge enters a bay or river, the geography of the land can act as a funnel, sending the water even higher.

Other factors that shape storm surge

Ocean tides—caused by the gravity of the moon and sun—can also strengthen or weaken the impact of storm surge. So it’s important to know the timing of the local tides compared to the hurricane landfall.

At high tide, the water is already at an elevated height. If landfall happens at high tide, the storm surge will cause even higher water levels and bring more water farther inland. The Carolinas saw those effects when Hurricane Isaias hit at close to high tide on August 3, 2020. Isaias brought a storm surge of about 4 feet at Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, but the water level was more than 10 feet above normal.

Sea level rise is another growing concern that influences storm surge.

As water warms, it expands, and that has slowly raised sea level over the past century as global temperatures have risen. Freshwater from melting of ice sheets and glaciers also adds to sea level rise. Together, they elevate the background ocean height. When a hurricane arrives, the higher ocean means storm surge can bring water farther inland, to a more dangerous and widespread effect.

Anthony C. Didlake Jr. is an assistant professor of meteorology at Penn State.

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

When people tell the story about how AI changed the world, language models will be remembered as an important precursor to what came next: AI agents.

Automation and the AI systems that have been developed and implemented over the past several decades have created tremendous value in their ability to take automated and precise action based on decisions that have already been made.

Until now, however, the ability for AI systems to make decisions on their own has been limited to a handful of organizations with significant resources and top talent.

As the ability to create AI agents becomes ubiquitous through open-source tools and platform offerings from startups and cloud providers, this dynamic is beginning to flip. AI systems can now be taught how we make decisions.

But how exactly do we make decisions?

How we make decisions

The decision-making process typically flows as: new information, research, reasoning, decision, action, monitoring, and learning.

When the average knowledge worker gets new information through an email or message from a colleague, they research across internal and external documents (or team members) to get more context. Then they reason (or think through) what should or shouldn’t be done based on that new information together with the context they’ve uncovered in their research. The next step is to make a decision and take action, then monitor to see and learn from the result. For most organizations, this process is not recorded anywhere, varies significantly from person to person, and is not carefully examined on a regular basis (if ever).

Improving how we make decisions

When developing an automated workflow, a group of cross-functional team members carefully consider each step of that workflow and all of the factors and checkpoints the automation should account for as it executes each predetermined decision.

Developing AI agents is going to do the same thing for decisions that are not predetermined, by bringing cross-functional teams together to carefully consider how the AI agent should receive and prioritize new information, how it should research, how it should reason, and at what thresholds of confidence it should seek help from human experts or make decisions and take action on its own.

Consider how two colleagues preparing for an event would treat the same inbound email from a keynote speaker offering to present at the event. One of the colleagues might double-check the agenda, go to that speaker’s website, watch a speaker reel, consider how that speaker’s topic and energy would fit into the event, and decide to reply and offer to schedule time to connect. The other colleague might not like how the speaker reached out and choose not to reply. Despite being on the same team receiving the same information, two different colleagues might have wildly different criteria and processes for making decisions.

AI agents’ two promises for improving decision-making

AI agents have the potential to transform and augment how we receive new information, how we research, how we reason, and how we monitor and learn from the outcome of the decisions that we make.

In the event speaker example above, an AI agent connected to the team members’ inbox could double check the agenda, research the speaker, and make a recommendation to the team member before they’ve even read the initial email, with the speaker reel embedded into their message and a confirmation that the speaker’s fee is within the remaining event budget.

The process of developing AI agents will challenge and reconstitute our decision-making capabilities as experts and professionals. By documenting and examining how we research, reason, and make decisions together with our peers, we will discover our own weaknesses and strengths across each step of the decision-making process.

From this starting point, organizations can develop cross-organizational sharing of best practices for each step in the decision-making process, invest in books and training focused on decision making, and create individualized decision-making growth plans for team members that include learnings from risks taken, risks not taken, and ways to improve each step in the process.

This will form a foundation for discussion and learning about arguably the most important, least invested-in skill across our organizations and society: our ability to make good decisions.

Philippe De Ridder is founder and CEO of BOI (Board of Innovation), and Brian Evergreen is CEO of The Future Solving Company and author of Autonomous Transformation: Creating a More Human Future in the Era of Artificial Intelligence.

All major supermarkets and retailers that sell groceries, such as Kroger, Walmart, and Costco, give large amounts of food to food banks and pantries. In 2022, retailers donated close to 2 billion pounds of food across the United States, which amounted to $3.5 billion that year. The estimated value of donated food was a little less than $2 per pound in 2022.

Retailers donate products that are typically packaged, palatable, and safe for consumption, yet unsuitable for sale due to quality concerns, such as minor blemishes. Since these items can go a long way to feeding hungry people, donations represent one of the best uses of leftover or surplus food.

Donations are also technically acts of charity, and the companies responsible for them get tax breaks. This means that donations boost profits by lowering costs. There’s a second effect of donations on a store’s bottom line: They improve the quality of food on the store’s shelves and increase revenue from food sales.

As a supply chain scholar who studies food banks, I worked with a team of economists to estimate the effects of retail food donations. We used sales data for five perishable food categories sold by two competing retail chains, with stores located in a large Midwestern metropolitan area. We found that stores that remove items on the brink of expiration, donate them to food banks, and fill up the emptied shelf space with fresher inventory get more revenue from sales and earn higher profits.

Retailers donate 30% of what food banks give their clients

U.S. food banks, which have been operating for more than 50 years, give away over 6 billion pounds of food annually.

They get about 30% of that food for free from supermarkets and big-box retailers that sell groceries. Prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, retailers supplied more than twice as much food to food banks than the federal government did. The volume of food supplied by federal programs administered by the United States Department of Agriculture, such as the Emergency Food Assistance Program, have steadily increased since 2020, to now almost match the volume of food donated by retailers.

In 2022, for example, the network of more than 200 Feeding America member food banks procured about 2 billion pounds from retailers and almost 1.5 billion pounds from government programs.

The remaining 2.88 billion pounds of food were either purchased directly, provided by farmers, donated by food processing companies, or donated by people and organizations in local communities.

Despite several federal programs that help low-income people get food and the nation’s robust network of food banks and food pantries, nearly 50 million Americans are experiencing food insecurity. That means they can’t get enough nutritious food to eat at least some of the time.

Retail donation routines are established but inconsistent

When food on a store’s shelves is on the verge of expiration, store managers have three options. They can donate or discard it, or sell it at a discount.

Stores that regularly donate food have established routines for when they set aside about-to-expire food to give away. However, these routines are often inconsistent.

Many stores donate only on a seasonal basis or just give away certain kinds of food. For example, they might donate only meat, baked goods, or fruits and vegetables. In many cases, donations take a back seat to more immediate priorities, such as customer service.

Those realities can increase the likelihood that food will land at the dump instead of on somebody’s table.

Although millions of Americans struggle to find their next meal, close to 40% of food gets thrown out along the supply chain, as food moves between agricultural producers, factories, retailers, and consumers. This is largely due to logistical challenges: It’s hard to transport and distribute highly perishable food.

Discounts on food can undercut sales

Stores often prefer to sell food on the brink of expiration at a discount rather than donate it or throw it out due to the money they recoup that way. This option, however, also keeps the discounted food on the shelf, where it takes up valuable space that could otherwise hold fresher inventory.

Shelf space dedicated to the sale and promotion of full-priced products competes with that for price-discounted food. Stocking perishable foods that are starting to look iffy—such as bananas with brown spots sold alongside unblemished yellow bananas—could harm a retailer’s image if shoppers start to question the store’s quality.

In other words, if consumers make judgments based on all the produce that’s on display, then it may be better for stores if they don’t sell sad-looking bananas and instead just give them away.

My research team calls this practice “preemptive removal.” Increasing the average quality level of food on display does more than improve a store’s appearance. We used panel data with more than 20,000 observations, and we included 21 retail stores that compete in a similar market geography. The five fresh food categories were bakery, dairy, deli, meat, and produce.

Stores that donated food, instead of discounting it, may have made better use of the limited room to display fresher inventory. My research team found that food donations can increase average food prices by up to 1%, which corresponds to a 33% increase in profit margins. Profit margins for supermarkets and other food retailers are quite low and typically hover below 3%.

That means even a small increment in food prices, even a 1% bump up, can translate into significantly higher profits for retailers. At the same time, increasing the volume of retail food donations would get more food to people who need it, limit hunger, and reduce food insecurity.

John Lowrey is an assistant professor of supply chain and health sciences at Northeastern University.

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