It’s not science fiction anymore: New York City could, in the near future, see air taxis buzzing around the skies.

California-based Joby Aviation unveiled and showed off its electric air taxi—a small, five-seat helicopter with numerous rotors—at an event in New York City’s Grand Central Station on Thursday night. The air taxi, which the company claims can reach speeds of 200 miles per hour, has a range of 100 miles and a payload of 1,000 pounds. The company says the taxi may serve as a way to get people out of denser parts of the city and to, say, the airport, in a matter of minutes.

Giving the public the opportunity to catch a glimpse of the air taxi, which actually made a flight around Manhattan in 2023, may be one of the initial steps to conditioning New Yorkers to the sight and sound of the vehicles. And, it seems like the company is getting closer to making its dream of ubiquitous air taxis a reality, as it’s inked partnerships with bigger transportation companies, such as Uber, Delta Air Lines, and Toyota, and is raising a lot more money.

JoeBen Bevirt, Joby’s founder and CEO, speaking to the crowd at the event, discussed the company’s partnership with Delta Air Lines, signed in 2022, and its “blossoming partnership with Toyota, which, back in 2019, made the first investment, and embedded a lot of engineers with us,” he said. “Yesterday we announced that Toyota had leaned in—Toyota was already our largest shareholder, having invested $394 million. They’ve now committed to investing an additional $500 million into Joby.”

Dara Khosrowshahi, the CEO of Uber, was also on hand and likewise laid out a vision of relatively “effortless” transportation for New Yorkers to nearby airports. For instance, for those trying to make a flight out of John F. Kennedy International Airport—16 miles away, which can often take as long as an hour to reach by car. Instead of that lengthy journey, imagine summoning an air taxi on the Uber app in Manhattan, taking a seven-minute air taxi flight to the airport, and popping directly into a Delta terminal. That sort of scenario is the goal, Khosrowshahi said, and isn’t as far-fetched as it may sound.

“We thought that, probably in 2017 or 2018, there was the possibility of urban-air transportation,” he said. “The vision that [Bevirt] put forward, the passion that his team had, and clearly they’ve backed up that passion with incredibly hard work.” Khosrowshahi recalled that after meeting with Bevirt’s team several years back, he decided to partner with the firm. “We folded Uber Elevate into Joby. We became a partner and an investor, and our vision is to make [transportation] absolutely effortless for everyone.”

As for when, or if, air taxi travel becomes a reality? That’s still up in the air, as the company is in the process of getting certified through the Federal Aviation Administration, and building out areas where the air taxis could land and take off in the city. Eventually, through the partnership with Uber, passengers may be able to summon an air taxi for a relatively low price, compared to existing services like Blade.

But again, nothing is set in stone yet, even if it appears that we’re inching closer to seeing flying taxis frequenting the skies around Manhattan’s skyscrapers.

In the face of escalating climate challenges, the livestock industry is the focus of heated discussions, blamed for considerable greenhouse gas emissions and environmental decline. Yet, the livestock industry is indispensable, as our global food system must serve 10 billion people by 2050, while bridging nutrition gaps that leave 200 million children malnourished each year.

However, the threat of animal disease often stands between livestock producers and meeting sustainability goals. When livestock are sick, the animals produce less while requiring more water, feed, and other resources to return to health. And it means other animals must be raised to meet consumer demand. This leads to wasted emissions that increase the overall environmental footprint of production.

That leaves us with only one choice: to find innovative solutions to make the livestock industry more sustainable. Through sustainable production, livestock can become a powerful ally in combating climate change and bolstering food security, driving carbon sequestration, and enhancing biodiversity.

Animal health tools

The good news is, we already have vaccines and other animal health tools that can make the livestock industry more sustainable. Research shows that protecting and successfully treating animals against diseases and other health-related issues can curb the livestock industry’s greenhouse gas emissions. For example, vaccinating cattle against East Coast fever reduces emissions by up to 40% in East African countries, according to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the UN. And according to research firm Oxford Analytica, a 10% decrease in global livestock disease levels in a given year can lead to an 800-million-ton decrease in the industry’s overall emissions—roughly equivalent to the average annual carbon footprint of 117 million Europeans.

Consider too, that animal health today is as much about farming data as it is about animals. In addition to science-driven medicines and vaccines, it requires innovation using data-driven insights to help farmers make everyday decisions like how to breed their animals, what to feed them, and which ones should be part of their herd’s future. On-farm diagnostic tools, for example, help producers detect potential health problems such as mastitis in dairy cows before their next milking—and use this information to deliver more targeted therapy only to cows that need it.

Genetic testing is another breakthrough in on-farm data. By combining herd records with genetic evaluations, dairy producers can make better predictions on issues such as greater mastitis resistance, milk production, fertility, and all the traits that are economically and environmentally important for a healthier and more sustainable herd. By integrating digital and data analytics with traditional medicines, vaccines, diagnostics, and genetics, livestock veterinarians and producers can effectively address an animal’s entire lifecycle—to predict, prevent, detect, and treat illnesses effectively with the right solution at the right time.

The global community’s role

The global community is finally taking note of how addressing animal health can play a role in conversations around climate change. With animal health at the forefront of discussions at COP28 in Dubai, FAO urged nations to “protect animal health . . . and increase coverage of livestock vaccination” to accelerate global climate action.

As the CEO of a leading global animal health company, I believe there are essential steps countries can take to improve the health of animals for a more sustainable food supply. Through proactive and preventative vaccination and robust surveillance systems that help us respond to disease outbreaks, we can start to implement these powerful tools to raise the bar on the health of animals and improve the sustainability of the livestock sector.

Some posit that eliminating the global livestock industry would address the methane problem entirely. With deeply ingrained cultural practices around the world, however, this change would take decades to implement. Moreover, the FAO has noted that improving animal health tools, technologies, and nutrition could achieve a remarkable 35% reduction in emissions, compared to just a 4% reduction from eliminating livestock. This highlights the significant potential for innovation within the livestock industry to make a positive environmental impact.

Solutions already exist

Time is not on our side when it comes to solving climate change, but the solutions to ensure healthier animals—and to make dairy and meat production less carbon intensive—already exist. Governments need to guarantee accessibility by removing trade and regulation barriers that make efficient livestock production too expensive or unavailable in local markets. Emerging economies, where the incidence of disease is higher (and in turn, emissions intensity is greater), should prioritize animal health as a strategy to reduce the carbon footprint. Albania, Burundi, the Gambia, and Sri Lanka, have already taken the lead, adding animal health in their Nationally Determined Contribution (NDCs) strategies. More countries should follow their lead.

As world leaders convene for important gatherings like the UN General Assembly and COP29 to discuss the best ways to control rising temperatures, they need to commit to policies that will make for healthier animals as an immediate opportunity to mitigate climate change. Our planet and its people depend on it.

Kristin Peck is CEO of Zoetis.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has a new title: world’s second richest person. The Facebook founder has officially surpassed Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. 

The businessman’s net worth reached a whopping $206.2 billion, making him more than $1 billion richer than Bezos. Both men still trail Elon Musk by around $50 billion, according to the Index.

This year has been one of drastic growth for Meta, which owns Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. As shares of Meta Platforms Inc. have been rising this year, most dramatically in the second quarter, when they grew by 23%, so have the CEO’s. On Thursday, the stock closed at an all-time high of $582.77, meaning Zuckerberg, who has a 13% stake in the company, saw his net worth take a leap, too. 

This year alone, the CEO’s net worth has risen by $78 billion. With that, he has jumped not one but four spots on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.

Between 2022 and 2023, Meta was going through some major upheaval, including multiple rounds of massive layoffs, which saw at least 21,000 employees exiting the company to cut costs. Zuckerberg explained at the time that the layoffs were part of the brand’s “Year of Efficiency.” In a blog post, he wrote about streamlining operations and making a more efficient, better tech company. 

“A leaner org will execute its highest priorities faster,” he explained. “People will be more productive, and their work will be more fun and fulfilling. We will become an even greater magnet for the most talented people. That’s why in our Year of Efficiency, we are focused on canceling projects that are duplicative or lower priority and making every organization as lean as possible.”

In recent years, the company has leaned hard into AI, which seems to be a massive a major part of the brand’s growth this year. Even as the company’s costs grew in the second quarter, so did its revenue. Meta’s daily active users increased 6.5% year-over-year to 3.27 billion this year, proving that the company is still a social media giant, paving the way for other apps. 

Jeffrey Wlodarczak, a senior analyst at Pivotal Research Group, explained Meta’s success in a note to clients this week called “In Zuck We Trust.” In it, he explained how the company’s AI initiatives, both for advertisements that target customers, and otherwise, have paid off. He wrote, “In a world that is constantly changing, fueled by the rapid development of AI, we feel comfortable that Zuckerberg can successfully navigate Meta to the win.”

Wlodarczak added, “In our opinion, Instagram/Reels/Stories will eventually emerge as the dominant social platform globally (ex-China), partly at the expense of Facebook, given we believe they already have the best product with the ability to layer on new enhancements/products to drive quick uptake.”

And in case you were wondering, here are the current top 10 richest people in the world:

1. Elon Musk $256B 
2. Mark Zuckerberg $206B 
3. Jeff Bezos $205B
4. Bernard Arnault $193B 
5. Larry Ellison $179B 
6. Bill Gates $161B 
7. Larry Page $150B 
8. Steve Ballmer $145B 
9. Warren Buffett $143B 
10. Sergey Brin $141B 

America’s employers added a surprisingly strong 254,000 jobs in September, easing concerns about a weakening labor market and suggesting that the pace of hiring is still solid enough to support a growing economy.

Last month’s gain was far more than economists had expected, and it was up sharply from the 159,000 jobs that were added in August. And after rising for most of 2024, the unemployment rate dropped for a second straight month, from 4.2% in August to 4.1% in September, the Labor Department said Friday.

The latest figures suggest that many companies are still confident enough to fill jobs despite the continued pressure of high interest rates.

In an encouraging sign, the Labor Department also revised up its estimate of job growth in July and August by a combined 72,000. Including those revisions, September’s job gain — forecasters had predicted only around 140,000 — means that job growth has averaged a solid 186,000 over the past three months. In August, the three-month average was only 140,000.

“There’s still more momentum than we had given it credit for,” Stephen Stanley, chief economist at the banking company Santander, said of the job market. “I would call it solid — certainly not as explosive as what we were seeing last year or the year before, when we were catching up from the pandemic. But the pace of job growth overall is very healthy.”

The September job gains were fairly broad-based, a good trend if it continues. Restaurants and bars added 69,000 jobs. Healthcare companies gained 45,000, government agencies 31,000, social assistance employers 27,000 and construction companies 25,000. A category that includes professional and business services added 17,000 after having lost jobs for three straight months.

Average hourly raises were solid, too. They rose by a higher-than-expected 0.4% from August, slightly less than the 0.5% gain the month before. Measured from a year earlier, hourly wages climbed 4% in September, up a tick from a 3.9% year-over-year gain in August.

The economy’s progress in taming inflation led the Federal Reserve last month to cut its benchmark interest rate by a sizable half-point, its first rate cut in more than four years, and said further cuts were likely in the coming months. The Fed said it wanted to ease the cost of borrowing to help bolster the job market. In light of Friday’s strong jobs report, the Fed is now likely to reduce its key rate by more typical quarter-point increments.

“The September jobs report shows a nice bump in labor demand at the beginning of the fall,” said Bill Adams, chief economist at Comerica Bank. “The U.S. economy is growing solidly in 2024 even as inflation slows to near the Fed’s target.”

The resilience of the economy has come as a relief. Economists had long expected that the Fed’s aggressive campaign to subdue inflation — it jacked up interest rates 11 times in 2022 and 2023 — would cause a recession. It didn’t. The economy kept growing even in the face of ever-higher borrowing costs for consumers and businesses.

Most economists say the Fed appears to have achieved the once-unlikely prospect of a “soft landing,” in which high interest rates help vanquish inflation without triggering a recession.

The economy is weighing heavily on voters as the Nov. 5 presidential election nears. Many Americans are unimpressed by the job market’s durability and are still frustrated by high prices, which remain on average 19% above where they were in February 2021. That was when inflation began surging as the economy rebounded with unexpected speed and strength from the pandemic recession, causing severe shortages of goods and labor.

The public’s discontent with inflation and the economy under President Joe Biden has been a political burden for Vice President Kamala Harris in her race for the White House against former President Donald Trump.

The jobs report for October, which the government will issue four days before Election Day, will likely be muddied by the effects of Hurricane Helene and a strike by Boeing machinists.

Across the economy, though, most indicators look solid. The U.S. economy, the world’s largest, grew at a vigorous 3% annual pace from April through June, boosted by consumer spending and business investment. A forecasting tool from the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta points to slower but still healthy 2.5% annual growth in the just-ended July-September quarter.

While most U.S. companies are still cautious about hiring, some say they’re struggling to find workers. At Overthrow Hospitality, which operates 11 vegan restaurants in New York, Drew Brady, the chief operating officer, has stopped requiring job applicants to have restaurant experience.

Brady is seeking applicants who have a passion for food and a sense of the theatrical. His hourly staff now includes actors, students and foodies.

It’s difficult, he said, to find experienced restaurant managers. His latest crop includes a former school principal and a server who had no management experience.

“I can teach you how to manage a restaurant, but I can’t teach you how to care,” said Brady, whose restaurants employ between 100 and 150 workers.

The new approach, he said, appears to be succeeding, and he plans to maintain it even if more experienced applicants become available.

“The circumstances pushed us here,” Brady said. “But because of them, the light bulb went off. It’s a lesson in adaptation.”

Given Friday’s robust hiring report, economists say the Fed will almost certainly cut its benchmark rate in November by a modest quarter-point, after its larger-than-usual half-point reduction in September. The healthier the job market appears, the less aggressive the Fed would need to be in easing borrowing costs. The policymakers would want to avoid easing credit so fast as to reignite inflation pressures.

“The bottom does not appear to be falling out of the labor market,” said Jason Pride, chief of investment strategy at Glenmede.

After Friday’s jobs report was released, Wall Street traders priced in a sharply higher likelihood of a quarter-point, rather than a half-point, rate cut at the Fed’s November meeting: 93%, up from 68% on Thursday.

At Otis AI in New York, founder Miguel Guerrero said he’s optimistic that Fed rate cuts, which should lead to lower borrowing costs across the economy, will make it easier for startups like his to obtain financing to expand and hire.

“There’s a lot more optimism in the startup ecosystem for getting more funding,” he said. Otis AI helps companies advertise online.

After a round of tech industry layoffs last year, Guerrero said, “It’s easy for companies to find top-level talent right now.”

Yet the availability of experienced tech workers can make it difficult for younger applicants to find work. For a startup, Guerrero said, “it doesn’t make sense to put an entry-level person in there. You’re not going to have time to bring them up to speed.”

—Paul Wiseman, Associated Press economics writer

Anne D’Innocenzio and Christopher Rugaber contributed to this report.

Since June, a mounting number of companies have pulled back on their corporate commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. Tractor Supply and John Deere were some of the first companies to do so, reversing some of their DEI policies and pulling sponsorship of Pride events and other “social or cultural awareness” events. In the months since, several others have followed suit—including Harley-Davidson, Lowe’s, and Ford—and revoked their participation in the Human Rights Campaign’s Corporate Equality Index, which evaluates companies on how inclusive they are of LGBTQ+ employees.

Now, Toyota is joining their ranks, as the latest target of an anti-DEI push spearheaded by conservative activist Robby Starbuck. The automaker will no longer sponsor LGBTQ+ events and plans to “narrow our community activities to align with STEM education and workforce readiness,” according to a Bloomberg report.

Like other companies, Toyota will also no longer participate in the Corporate Equality Index. In a letter announcing these changes to employees and dealers, Toyota referenced a “highly politicized discussion” of corporate DEI efforts, Bloomberg reported.

As with other companies, this about-face seems to have been catalyzed by Starbuck’s online campaign against Toyota. The activist drew attention to Toyota’s DEI policies and support for LGBTQ+ employees in a social media post last week, encouraging customers to share their concerns with the company. (Toyota had previously said that Starbuck’s post only prompted a handful of queries from employees, dealers, and customers, calling the effect “negligible.”)

While Toyota and other companies seem to be caving to public pressure, employers across corporate America have quietly taken similar steps in recent years. Since the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in 2023, conservative activists have set their sights on the workplace, bringing lawsuits over claims of reverse discrimination.

As Fast Company has previously reported, some companies had already started pulling back on their DEI commitments prior to 2023. In the aftermath of the affirmative action ruling, however, the growing fear of litigation has prompted many others to make more substantial changes to their DEI policies and alter recruitment programs that were intended to promote diversity. It’s little surprise that in this climate, companies like Toyota are more vulnerable to campaigns to dismantle their DEI efforts.

The Supreme Court left in place Friday two Biden administration environmental regulations aimed at reducing industry emissions of planet-warming methane and toxic mercury.

The justices did not detail their reasoning in the orders, which came after a flurry of emergency applications to block the rules from industry groups and Republican-leaning states. There were no noted dissents.

The high court is still considering challenges to a third rule aimed at curbing planet-warming pollution from coal-fired power plants.

The regulations are part of a broader effort by the Biden administration aimed at curbing climate change that includes financial incentives to buy electric vehicles and upgrade infrastructure.

The industry groups and states had argued the Environmental Protection Agency overstepped its authority and set unattainable standards. The EPA said the regulations are squarely within its legal responsibilities and would protect the public.

The Supreme Court has shot down other environmental regulations in recent years, including a landmark decision that limited the EPA’s authority to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from power plants in 2022 and another that halted the agency’s air-pollution-fighting “good neighbor” rule.

The methane rule puts new requirements on the oil and gas industry, which is the largest emitter of the gas that’s a key contributor to climate change. A lower court previously refused to halt the regulation.

Methane is the main component in natural gas and far more potent than carbon dioxide in the short term. Sharp cuts in methane emissions are a global priority to slow the rate of climate change.

The methane rule targets emissions from existing oil and gas wells nationwide, rather than focusing only on new wells. It also regulates smaller wells that will be required to find and plug methane leaks.

Studies have found that smaller wells produce just 6% of the nation’s oil and gas but account for up to half the methane emissions from well sites. The plan also calls for a phased-in requirement for energy companies to eliminate routine flaring, or burning of natural gas that is produced by new oil wells.

The states challenging the rule called the new standards “impossible to meet” and said they amounted to an “attack” on the industry.

The mercury rule, meanwhile, came after a reversal of a move by the Trump administration. It updated regulations that were more than a decade old for emissions of mercury and other harmful pollutants that can affect the nervous system, kidneys and fetal development.

Industry groups and conservative-leaning states argued emissions were already low enough, and the new standards could force the shuttering coal-fired power plants.

The EPA said the updates are needed to protect public health.

—Lindsay Whitehurst, Associated Press

Jenna Ortega has made her feelings known about a viral TikTok trend that involves a plush doll of her Wednesday Addams character.

The trend sees TikTok users posting videos of themselves flipping the dolls’ hair inside out so the character appears bald. “Just doing Gods work,” a TikTok user posted over a video showing the doll’s hair being flipped inside out. 

Department stores are already fed up with the trend, which started circulating last week. A poster written in capital letters and an exasperated tone, read “Do not flip Wednesday’s hair, you will be asked to leave.” The poster can be seen above a basket of plush dolls, many of whom have already fallen victim. The TikTok user who posted the video, viewed 2.9 million times, captioned it, “oh theyve had ENOUGH.”

Jenna Ortega, who is set to star in the second season of Wednesday airing in 2025, was forced to weigh in and defend the dolls. “Please don’t,” she pleaded on social media.

But that hasn’t stopped some fans. “If not flippable why make flippable,” one person commented under the video. “I get it cause some poor employee just about to finish their 12-hour shift probably turned down that isle and just broke down,” another added.

They were right. In yet another video, an irked retail worker picks up doll after doll, painstakingly flipping the hair back the original way. “Me every day I come to work because y’all won’t leave wednesday alone,” the text over the video reads. 

Even if her efforts are ultimately futile, Ortega is appreciative. “This is so cute,” she commented.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether it should be more difficult for workers from “majority backgrounds,” such as white or heterosexual people, to prove workplace discrimination claims.

The justices took up an appeal by Marlean Ames, a heterosexual woman, seeking to revive her lawsuit against the Ohio Department of Youth Services in which she said she lost her job to a gay man and was passed over for a promotion in favor of a gay woman in violation of federal civil rights law.

The Cincinnati, Ohio-based 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided last year that she had not shown the “background circumstances” that courts require to prove that she faced discrimination because she is straight, as she alleged.

She brought her lawsuit under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the landmark federal law banning workplace discrimination based on traits including race, sex, religion and national origin.

Since the 1980s, at least four other U.S. appeals courts have adopted similar hurdles to proving discrimination claims against members of majority groups, largely in cases involving white men. Those courts have said the higher bar is justified because discrimination against those workers is relatively uncommon.

But other courts have said that Title VII does not distinguish between bias against minority and majority groups.

A Supreme Court ruling in favor of Ames could provide a boost to the growing number of lawsuits by white and straight workers claiming they were discriminated against under company diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

The court will hear arguments in the case in its new term, which begins on Monday, and a decision is expected by the end of June.

Lawyers for Ames and the Ohio agency, which oversees the confinement and rehabilitation of juvenile felony offenders, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ames was in charge of ensuring the agency’s compliance with a federal law designed to deter sexual assaults in prisons. She has said that despite receiving positive feedback for her job performance, she was demoted to her old job in 2019 and had her pay cut by nearly $20 an hour.

Ames has said she was replaced by a younger gay man, and that later in 2019 she was denied a promotion she had sought that went to a gay woman.

She sued the department in 2020. An Ohio federal judge dismissed the case last year, saying she had not shown the “background circumstances” to support her discrimination claim.

The 6th Circuit upheld that decision last December. The 6th Circuit said that background circumstances can include evidence that a member of a minority group, such as a gay person, made the challenged employment decision, or data showing a larger pattern of discrimination by an employer against members of a majority group.

—Daniel Wiessner, Reuters

Good news: The northern lights, or aurora borealis, could be visible this weekend in many parts across the country.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) forecasts the possibility of prime viewing late Saturday into Sunday, with the aurora possible over many Northern states and some of the Lower Midwest to Oregon—and even farther south, if you’re viewing through a camera or phone.

The aurora borealis is the result of a “strong” geomagnetic storm (G3), that ranks 3 out of 5 on NOAA’s severity scale. However, that forecast could change.

If stronger than expected, a G4 solar storm (4 out of 5 on NOAA’s scale) would make the aurora visible down to Alabama and up to Northern California. And again, people even farther south could capture the dancing lights on their cameras and phones.

A geomagnetic storm occurs when a coronal mass ejection (CME), an eruption of solar material, reaches Earth and causes swaths of blue, green, and purple in the sky.

This weekend, it could also cause “limited, minor effects to some technological infrastructure . . . but mainly mitigable,” according to NOAA. About 20 years ago, also in October, geomagnetic storms disrupted over half the spacecrafts orbiting Earth, as well as airline communications, and damaged a satellite.

Normally, the best place to see the northern lights is around Earth’s poles—in places like Iceland and northern parts of Sweden, Finland, Norway, Russia, Canada, Alaska, and Southern Greenland—not over the contiguous U.S. But we’re currently in a period of increased northern lights activity, which is likely the result of an 11-year sun cycle peaking through October.

But don’t worry, even after the peak, NOAA predicts activity will remain high into 2025 and 2026.

You can track the aurora on NOAA’s page, where the agency is providing updates.

Elon Musk is set to attend Donald Trump’s campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday, marking an even deeper show of the billionaire’s support for the former president and his shift to the right.

It’s a significant location, as Trump is returning to the scene of the July assassination attempt. “I will be there to support!” Musk said on X about the rally. Trump’s campaign also confirmed the appearance in a news release.

Musk had once been careful to avoid openly suggesting he favored one political candidate over another. But he has actively embraced and amplified more right-wing viewpoints in the past few years, donating large sums to Republican candidates and taking on increasingly radical viewpoints. He officially endorsed Trump in July, after gunshots broke out at his Pennsylvania campaign rally that killed one attendee and injured two others.

The former president has said that if reelected, he would appoint Musk to lead a government efficiency commission. Musk later responded: “I look forward to serving America if the opportunity arises. No pay, no title, no recognition is needed.”

Musk’s shift to the right follows a broader trend of high-profile people in Silicon Valley throwing their support behind Trump. While the vast majority of Silicon Valley is likely still voting Democrat, a number of notable venture capitalists and tech executives are now backing Trump and pointing to issues in San Francisco and the broader Bay Area that they attribute to left-wing policies.

For example, investor and Trump booster David Sacks exaggeratedly blamed “Democrat rule” for turning San Francisco into “a cesspool of crime, homeless encampments, and open drug use,” during his remarks at the Republican National Convention.

Facebook owner Meta announced on Friday it had built a new AI model called Movie Gen that can create realistic-seeming video and audio clips in response to user prompts, claiming it can rival tools from leading media generation startups like OpenAI and ElevenLabs.

Samples of Movie Gen’s creations provided by Meta showed videos of animals swimming and surfing, as well as videos using people’s real photos to depict them performing actions like painting on a canvas.

Movie Gen also can generate background music and sound effects synced to the content of the videos, Meta said in a blog post, and use the tool to edit existing videos.

In one such video, Meta had the tool insert pom-poms into the hands of a man running by himself in the desert, while in another it changed a parking lot where a man was skateboarding from dry ground into one covered by a splashing puddle.

Videos created by Movie Gen can be up to 16 seconds long, while audio can be up to 45 seconds long, Meta said. It shared data showing blind tests indicating that the model performs favorably compared with offerings from startups including Runway, OpenAI, ElevenLabs and Kling.

The announcement comes as Hollywood has been wrestling with how to harness generative AI video technology this year, after Microsoft-backed OpenAI in February first showed off how its product Sora could create feature film-like videos in response to text prompts.

Technologists in the entertainment industry are eager to use such tools to enhance and expedite filmmaking, while others worry about embracing systems that appear to have been trained on copyright works without permission.

Lawmakers also have highlighted concerns about how AI-generated fakes, or deepfakes, are being used in elections around the world, including in the U.S., Pakistan, India and Indonesia.

Meta spokespeople said the company was unlikely to release Movie Gen for open use by developers, as it has with its Llama series of large-language models, saying it considers the risks individually for each model. They declined to comment on Meta’s assessment for Movie Gen specifically.

Instead, they said, Meta was working directly with the entertainment community and other content creators on uses of Movie Gen and would incorporate it into Meta’s own products sometime next year.

According to the blog post and a research paper about the tool released by Meta, the company used a mix of licensed and publicly available datasets to build Movie Gen.

OpenAI has been meeting with Hollywood executives and agents this year to discuss possible partnerships involving Sora, although no deals have been reported to have come out of those talks yet. Anxieties over the company’s approach increased in May when actor Scarlett Johansson accused the ChatGPT maker of imitating her voice without permission for its chatbot.

Lions Gate Entertainment, the company behind The Hunger Games and Twilight, announced in September that it was giving AI startup Runway access to its film and television library to train an AI model. In return, it said, the studio and its filmmakers can use the model to augment their work.

—Katie Paul, Reuters

Dawn Chmielewski contributed to this report.

Conspiracy theories have a habit of spiking following natural disasters, and Hurricane Helene is no exception. As the death toll topped 200 on Friday morning, the conspiracy theorists are out in full force spreading misinformation about everything from voter manipulation to a geoengineered industrial land grab.

One theory that has gained the most traction online is the idea that the storm was not a natural occurrence but instead engineered to devastate North Carolina and create access to the land for lithium mining. 

“Can I say what I find suspicious as shit?” said one user in a video that totaled more than 1.8 million views before it was removed. “That one of the areas affected by Hurricane Helene is the world’s largest lithium deposit, and the DOD just entered into an agreement with this company right here to mine lithium for electric cars starting in 2025. Now that area is completely devastated.”

Another user encouraged viewers to look up the theory for themselves, adding, “Just look up flooding and lithium and discover the rabbit hole you go down.” The video had more than 204,900 views before it was also deleted.

Richard Rood, a climate professor at the University of Michigan, says that Hurricane Helene “is a recurring type of weather event, influenced by accumulation of heat due to greenhouse gas increases. We have made the storm more dangerous with the extra heat and moisture it has due to global warming.” 

However, he points to a history of scientists talking about weaponizing weather. “This was right after World War II. It was an idea that died its natural death due to its impossibility—really, its ridiculousness,” he says. “It does, however, leave a seed for conspiracy theories.”

These claims have also taken off outside TikTok. “As the United States government and its buddies in the central banking corporate crime syndicates stand to make billions and trillions of dollars off of these lithium deposits that are underneath towns underneath homes, underneath schools, and they can’t get access unless the land is somehow completely cleaned off and available for mining, what better way to do that than by washing away the people who live there and all that they own, and blaming it on climate change?” prominent right-wing conspiracy theorist Stew Peters says in a video.

Another prominent theory plays off the idea that the path of destruction is hitting Republican areas hardest. “Don’t worry guys, weather modification isn’t real! It’s just a coincidence that Hurricane Helene is one of the most devastating ‘inland damage storms’ in history and that hundreds of pro-Trump counties are being massively impacted during the most important election of our lifetimes,” influencer Matt Wallace posted alongside video footage of flooding. The post received 11.8 million views, despite being swiftly debunked.

“This is a rhetorical tactic with political intent,” says Rood. “It is meant to be divisive, to raise conflict.” He also adds, “And, if it was meant to impede the ability to vote, it was likely a massive failure. Probably more pro-Harris voters were affected in Asheville and Boone than pro-Trump voters in surrounding counties.”

Republicans need not fear, however: Donald Trump is coming to their rescue—at least, according to a clearly AI-generated image of the former president wading through flood waters, wearing an orange life vest. “I don’t think FB wants this picture on FB,” reads the post’s caption. “They have been deleting it.” The image originally circulated on Meta and was debunked by Lead Stories and PolitiFact. Perhaps that’s why it’s being deleted . . . just a thought. 

A lament about the demise of AM radio has been rising in the halls of Congress.

Several automakers, most notably Tesla and Ford, have decided to stop putting AM radios in their electric vehicles. They claim their electric motors interfere with the audio quality of the signal and insist that FM and satellite radio are enough.

Given that people who listen to radio tend to primarily do so while driving, a trend like this could threaten the commercial viability of the over 4,000 AM stations currently broadcasting in the U.S.

The radio industry has been fighting back, lobbying for legislation that would force carmakers to install AM radios as a matter of public interest. These efforts led to the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act being deliberated in both houses of Congress.

U.S. Sen. Ed Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat who sponsored the bill in the Senate, described free AM radio as “an essential tool in emergencies, a crucial part of our diverse media ecosystem, and an irreplaceable source for news, weather, sports, and entertainment for tens of millions of listeners.”

As a media historian, I welcome hearing AM radio described as a public utility, particularly after decades of free-market orthodoxy dominating discussions of its fate.

The story of a new medium

When AM—short for “amplitude modulation”—arrived at the turn of the 20th century, it was championed as a revolutionary technology that could bring a nation together in time and space. Over the next decade, engineers developed new technologies such as uniwave arc transmitters to send the signal and vacuum tubes to help amplify it upon reception, so that first voices and then music could be heard over AM broadcasts.

While early radio amateurs harnessed its potential to connect and inform, the era of unlicensed amateur broadcasting ended during World War I due to fears that the new medium might be misused to spread foreign propaganda or divisive content.

After KDKA went on the air in Pittsburgh as the first licensed commercial station in November 1920, AM radio stations popped up across the nation, serving local audiences a wide variety of formats. Houses were now filled with the sounds of news, baseball games, radio dramas or crooners singing popular music. Radios flew off the shelves to meet the demand.

Because listening stokes the imagination in unique ways, broadcasters—and the advertisers that paid to access audiences—found new ways of using radio to capture listeners’ attention.

By the 1930s, AM radio was a dominant form of mass media in America, served by networks of stations—NBC, CBS and Mutual—with both local and syndicated programming. While commercial interests saw radio as a means to generate profit, a growing chorus of advocates viewed radio as a public utility that should be made to serve the public interest.

That public conversation inspired the Communications Act of 1934 and the creation of the Federal Communications Commission, which was charged with ensuring that licensed stations abide by certain standards.

These standards flowed from an ongoing debate at the FCC about the public interest obligations of radio broadcasters. In the late 1930s, the agency started requiring licensed stations to remain neutral in matters of news and politics. The “no-editorializing spirit” of the Mayflower decision compelled the FCC in 1949 to establish its fairness doctrine later that year.

The emerging regulatory oversight helped check America’s first radio demagogue, Father Coughlin, whose conspiratorial tirades were heard by some 30 million listeners. Over the course of several years, Coughlin’s refusal to comply with regulatory guidelines—combined with fear of sponsor backlash—caused him to be dropped by radio networks.

Radio comes along for the ride

The sounds of AM radio started accompanying drivers in their cars in the late 1920s.

The vehicles of that era featured closed cabins that protected drivers and passengers from weather and noise. People who listened to music on their home radios embraced the idea of listening while driving. Companies such as the Automobile Radio Corporation promoted expensive Transitone radios that ran on a 6-volt battery with the tagline, “You’re never alone with a Transitone.”

In 1930, General Motors began installing radios in its new Cadillacs. Chrysler advertised luxury cars factory-wired for owners to install Transitones. Now, drivers traveling on America’s vast and growing national highway systems could do so while listening to the radio.

As the decade progressed, factory-installed radios—mounted on the floor, with controls on the dash and speakers above the windshield—were touted as a way to enhance the driving experience. As a Philco radio commercial from 1934 put it, “You wouldn’t be without a radio at home—why be without one in your car?”

By 1940, at a time when 61% of Americans listened regularly to news on the radio, 20% of cars in the U.S. had built-in radios.

Corporations capture the airwaves

In the 1950s, transistor technology made it possible for smaller radios to be installed in the dashboard of over half of the cars on the market.

But now, drivers had a different technology they could tune into: FM radio.

Short for “frequency modulation,” this spectrum—though it required more power—was less prone to static and offered better sound quality. The early days of FM were characterized by innovation and vibrant local programming. But that gradually ceded to commercial pressures as big media companies consolidated their power. Slowly but surely, music programming shifted away from AM to FM.

By the mid-1980s, the once robust conversation about radio serving the public interest was muted by lobbyists and politicians who pushed for deregulation that would boost profits. One by one, rules requiring broadcasters to devote set amounts of time to public affairs programming, rules that limited the number of stations in a media market that a company could own to seven, and news and public affairs programming guidelines such as the fairness doctrine all fell like pawns to an industry fixated on profit.

The FCC and Federal Trade Commission shrugged as big corporations bought up and consolidated radio stations, reducing local programming and replacing it with syndicated content beamed in by satellite.

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 gave it all away, effectively ceding decisions about the future of AM and FM radio to corporate interests and asking almost nothing in return.

Over the next two decades, America’s radio stations would be gobbled up by a handful of conglomerates such as Clear Channel, now known as iHeartMedia. The majority of AM stations, especially those in rural areas, where people spend a lot of time listening in their cars, prioritized right-wing talk shows.

And though radio demagogues such as Rush Limbaugh and his many imitators salvaged the profitability of AM radio, there are huge swaths of rural America where the captured spectrum serves as a delivery system for monotone partisan programming that sounds a lot like Father Coughlin in the 1930s. Instead of providing farm reports, emergency information and local news to cultivate an informed citizenry, now most corporate-owned AM stations air divisive, grievance-filled infotainment that serves the needs of ownership.

On the road, again

It doesn’t have to be that way.

The FCC once asked stations to serve the public interest in exchange for their licenses, a regulatory quid pro quo that generated a broader range of programming that better served communities.

It’s possible to take that road again. Just look at Low Power FM community radio, which emerged as a nonprofit answer to industry homogenization designed to serve the public interest.

Freed from corporate control, homegrown Low Power FM community radio boosts local democracy by offering a microphone to local musicians and a diverse range of commentators, voices often denied access to commercial radio. Stations can apply for Low Power FM community radio licenses; though the reception range is very limited, the number of stations serving communities ranging from Iuka, Mississippi, to the Umatilla Indian Reservation in Oregon, has doubled in the past decade to over 1,500.

AM radio could be used similarly.

If Congress and the FCC are going to frame AM radio as an essential public service, I believe it should once again push for public interest standards in exchange for a license. Only then will AM radio live up to the spirit animating the AM Radio for Every Vehicle Act.

In other words, if the U.S. government is going to tell automakers to install AM radios as a matter of public interest, shouldn’t they also ask broadcasters to demonstrate they are worthy of the public’s trust?

Matthew Jordan is a professor of media studies at Penn State.

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

On February 3, 2023, a train carrying chemicals jumped the tracks in East Palestine, Ohio, rupturing railcars filled with hazardous materials and fueling chemical fires at the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

The disaster drew global attention as the governors of Ohio and Pennsylvania urged evacuations for a mile around the site. Flames and smoke billowed from burning chemicals, and an acrid odor radiated from the derailment area as chemicals entered the air and spilled into a nearby creek.

Three days later, at the urging of the rail company, Norfolk Southern, about 1 million pounds of vinyl chloride, a chemical that can be toxic to humans at high doses, was released from the damaged train cars and set aflame.

Federal investigators later concluded that the open burn and the black mushroom cloud it produced were unnecessary, but it was too late. Railcar chemicals spread into Ohio and Pennsylvania.

As an environmental engineers, I and my colleagues are often asked to assist with public health decisions after disasters by government agencies and communities. After the evacuation order was lifted, community members asked for help.

In a new study, we describe the contamination we found, along with problems with the response and cleanup that, in some cases, increased the chances that people would be exposed to hazardous chemicals. It offers important lessons to better protect communities in the future.

How chemicals get into homes and water

When large amounts of chemicals are released into the environment, the air can become toxic. Chemicals can also wash into waterways and seep into the ground, contaminating groundwater and wells. Some chemicals can travel below ground into nearby buildings and make the indoor air unsafe.

Air pollution can find its way into buildings through cracks, windows, doors and other portals. Once inside, the chemicals can penetrate home items like carpets, drapes, furniture, counters and clothing. When the air is stirred up, those chemicals can be released again.

Evacuation order lifted, but buildings were contaminated

Three weeks after the derailment, we began investigating the safety of the area near 17 buildings in Ohio and Pennsylvania. The highest concentration of air pollution occurred in the 1-mile evacuation zone and a shelter-in-place band another mile beyond that. But the chemical plume also traveled outside these areas.

In and outside East Palestine, evidence indicated that chemicals from the railcars had entered buildings. Many residents complained about headaches, rashes and other health symptoms after reentering the buildings.

At one building 0.2 miles away from the derailment site, the indoor air was still contaminated more than four months later.

Nine days after the derailment, sophisticated air testing by a business owner showed the building’s indoor air was contaminated with butyl acrylate and other chemicals carried by the railcars. Butyl acrylate was found above the two-week exposure level, a level at which measures should be taken to protect human health.

When rail company contractors visited the building 11 days after the wreck, their team left after just 10 minutes. They reported an “overwhelming/unpleasent odor” even though their government-approved handheld air pollution detectors detected no chemicals. This building was located directly above Sulphur Run creek, which had been heavily contaminated by the spill. Chemicals likely entered from the initial smoke plumes and also rose from the creek into the building.

Our tests weeks later revealed that railcar chemicals had even penetrated the business’s silicone wristband products on its shelves. We also detected several other chemicals that may have been associated with the spill.

Weeks after the derailment, government officials discovered that air in the East Palestine Municipal Building, about 0.7 miles away from the derailment site, was also contaminated. Airborne chemicals had entered that building through an open drain pipe from Sulphur Run.

More than a month after the evacuation order was lifted, the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency acknowledged that multiple buildings in East Palestine were being contaminated as contractors cleaned contaminated culverts under and alongside buildings. Chemicals were entering the buildings.

Contaminated water can cause contaminated air

The creek that flowed through town became heavily contaminated by the spill. More than 43,000 fish died downstream, and chemicals traveled 270 miles (435 kilometers) down the Ohio River.

As tainted water flowed downstream, light chemicals like butyl acrylate naturally left the creek and entered the air by a process called volatilization.

Unnaturally however, the equipment used for cleaning the creeks also transferred chemicals from the water into the air. Residents near aeration equipment, which injects air into water, in part to help fish survive, complained of odors entering their homes and experiencing health problems. Our study shows the chemicals in the air may have been up to 2 to 25 times higher near these aerators.

Over the four-month study period, rain and the actions of contractors increasing and decreasing water flow also stirred up the creeks, releasing more chemicals into the air.

Steps to protect public health in future disasters

As with past disasters, what happened in East Palestine offers many lessons for communities.

One of the most important is for communities to demand an exposure pathway diagram immediately after a chemical incident occurs. An illustration can help the community recognize potential threats, whether from the air or from culverts beneath their buildings, and see where testing and guidance are needed.

Monitoring the health of people exposed to the chemicals is also crucial. Because so many people became ill in and around East Palestine, and because testing overseen by government agencies did not pinpoint the exact conditions responsible for the illnesses, we recommend long-term medical monitoring for those affected.

People closest to the disaster site – those who lived in, worked in or visited buildings that became contaminated – likely experienced the greatest exposures. Railroad workers, government workers, cleanup workers, visitors and residents in Ohio and Pennsylvania were among those reporting health problems. Norfolk Southern and one contractor were cited for failing to protect workers from exposure.

Indoor building contamination can be a long-term problem. Just like with wildfire smoke, affected buildings need to be professionally cleaned because the chemicals can remain for months.

Building exteriors also need to be decontaminated. Chemicals may continue to be released from surfaces into the air.

There is also a need for better methods and evidence-based policies to rapidly identify chemical exposures. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, months after approving the use of handheld air testing devices to screen homes, determined that those chemical detectors could not have reliably alerted to butyl acrylate at all levels that can cause health problems. Not all the chemicals spilled were monitored for in buildings.

For complex disasters, we recommend calling in experts from outside the responding agencies and companies involved to provide the needed specialized expertise.

Andrew J. Whelton is a professor of civil, environmental and ecological engineering at Purdue University.

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

Ten years ago, four Buzzfeed staffers took the site’s pivot to video as an opportunity to film themselves trying things they’d never done before. With a video of them trying on women’s underwear that went viral, the Try Guys were born.

Since then, the guys—Zach Kornfeld, Keith Habersberger, Eugene Lee Yang, and Ned Fulmer—have risen to internet fame, branched off from Buzzfeed, toured a live show globally, and grown their content scope to include roughly two dozen series. The core group of Try Guys has also shrunk—Fulmer departed the group in 2022 after he was discovered to be having a relationship with an employee, and Yang left earlier this year to pursue his own projects.

As the two remaining original members, Kornfeld and Habersberger are marking a decade in business by moving the Try Guys in a new direction—forming an independent streaming service. Launched in May, 2nd Try was partially started to offset waning revenue from advertising and brand deals as YouTube gets increasingly crowded.

Kornfeld and Habersberger sat down with Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies podcast to discuss how they’re trying to bring an existing audience to a new platform, expanding the Try Guys orbit, and attracting new fans while hanging on to longtime viewers. This is a condensed and edited version of the conversation.

After making content for YouTube and even TV networks for the past decade, how are you viewing the content the Try Guys will put on 2nd Try?

Zach Kornfeld: It’s definitely a new era. We filmed Eugene’s farewell season and introduced the expanded cast, and we wanted it to have that feeling of a full chapter break. We’re going to be making a bunch of different shows, highlighting new voices, making things beyond what we could with just Keith and I in the starring role.

In every interview, we like to give a big shout-out to Dropout and Sam Reich. They were people we looked at as really forging the path for this type of model. And we saw within what they were doing an opportunity for us to do what we do best. We think we’re at our best when we’re making big shows.

At the same time, streaming is an uphill battle in a lot of ways. You’re charging $5 per month or $50 per year. That’s on the lower end of streamers, which should help with adoption. What are your main goals and benchmarks in this first year?

ZK: There are obviously benchmarks and numbers we’d love to hit, and at the end of the day, there is the commerce side of making art, right? You can’t just make stuff because it’s cool. You gotta pay for all the people who work here. But we’re also trying to really prove to our audience, “Hey, we are investing in this relationship over time just as we hope you invest in us.”

It’s an interesting time to try and get into streaming. Every major streamer seems to be struggling mightily. They’ve become too bloated. Their prices are too high, both for the consumer and also for what they are spending. So we’re trying to stay incredibly nimble. We are trying to create sustainably. I don’t ever expect, honestly, that 2nd Try is going to take over our business. But if it can be a stabilizing force, if it can remain 10%, 20%, 30%, 40% of our business, that will help weather the storm from all the shit that’s going to come. 

The ad market is going to change. The algorithms are going to change. All of these things that are out of our control will happen, but if we can have a place where we are directly connecting with our audience and making stuff that they love, that they value, that reflects their values as people, we now stand a chance to be here five years from now.

You’re planning to still publish videos on YouTube and program for 2nd Try. Part of the value that Dropout had was its CollegeHumor back catalog that reduced churn rate to a huge extent. Are you worried that by doing both you’re upping your production costs and potentially bifurcating your audience?

Keith Habersberger: I’m sure we could do it a lot of different ways, and we talked about a lot of different ways to do it, but found that this was the best for our growth. We still need to keep giving them stuff and we still need YouTube right now as our big platform, because if we didn’t have that, we wouldn’t be able to afford [streaming]—we need it all.

ZK: I also want to clarify for your audience what our philosophy has been, which is that anything that we have been giving to our audience for free needs to continue that way. So there are shows that people have built up a relationship with over the last 10 years. We have Eat the Menu that comes out once a month. Without a Recipe is someone’s favorite show. To take that away from them would feel really disingenuous. I think it would feel like Lucy pulling the football out from Charlie Brown. 

But what we can do is make new shows and we can have seasons of shows where we say, “Hey, here’s an episode to a new thing we’re making. Isn’t it cool? Come on over.” And hopefully, over time, we can then build up that catalog where the new shows are really what’s pulling people over as opposed to the old.

How has that been working so far?

ZK: We are only three months into 2nd Try. We have a lot to learn. It is not at a place yet where it is buttressing our company. It is something that we are investing into because we believe in it.

Our new stuff is outperforming and outpacing the classic stuff. Right now three of our top five watched episodes on 2nd Try are from one of our new shows, Escape the Kitchen, which is an escape room where people have to solve riddles and puzzles to get each step of a recipe. One of our other shows, Trolley Problems, which is brand-new, I think has five episodes in the top 10.

That’s a really promising sign, and for something like this to work, it is going to entirely depend on our ability to prove it. If we are just resting on our laurels of the past 10 years and saying, “Hey, you loved what we made? Now pay for it,” that is never going to work. We have to make new great stuff and we have to keep making new great stuff. We have to be innovative and prove to the audience again and again, year after year, “We are making things right now that you love, come on over, it’s worth supporting.”

Many leaders are perplexed when their people don’t do what they want. They usually blame it on the employee. But that is not always the case. When employees don’t do what you want, it comes down to one or more of these three things that you as the leader are doing wrong. 

You are not being clear on what you actually want 

Leaders often think employees should intuitively know what they want. That is very seldom the case. Of course, that may be true in the day-to-day activities of a well-defined job description. But in a constantly changing world, your team needs to be flexible. They will often need to implement unusual or unique never-been-tried ideas.

So you need to lead your team in many different directions. You should not expect people to somehow know what those directions are. When your people don’t know what you want, it is always because you failed to communicate.

Remember the three Cs of critical communications: clear, concise, and compelling. Be very clear in communicating your expectations. Be concise. Now is the time to be very precise. Tell your people exactly what you want. Don’t speak in generalities. Then ask them to repeat it back to be sure they are clear. Finally, your message should be compelling enough to motivate them to action. 

You aren’t permitting them to say, “I don’t know” 

Leaders also mistakenly assume people know how to do what they want, especially in a new situation. When they don’t know how to do what you want, they may be hesitant to admit it. Permit them to not know.

Always ask them if they know how to do it. Then listen very carefully to what they say. They probably won’t say “I don’t know” because they feel that admission would expose them to criticism. They will more likely say they do know even if they don’t. Ask probing, but not threatening, questions to discover areas they may be deficient in. Don’t leave the conversation until you are satisfied they’re clear and know how to do the assignment. 

And speaking of not knowing, now is a good time to reskill your workforce. Whatever they know today, it won’t be good enough for tomorrow. The rapidly evolving world of generative AI will highly likely obsolete your workforce if you aren’t constantly reskilling them.  

You don’t allow them to disagree

Sometimes, people simply don’t want to do what you want. They usually won’t tell you that because that could be insubordination. They just nod their heads but then passively ignore what you asked of them. Or they execute the assignment in a half-hearted way guaranteed to fail.  

Often, they disagree with your request, but won’t tell you that. In this case, if you know they disagree with it, you should ask them why—and then listen closely. They may have legitimate concerns about your request that deserve consideration. They may be right in their objections. In that case, you should reconsider and change direction.  

They may not do what you want because they don’t like you. This is more common than you think. Should a leader be likable? No. Should a leader be respected? Absolutely. If your people don’t like or respect you, that is a big problem. And that problem is yours. Don’t blame them because you are a leader not deserving of respect. You need to work on that before you can expect people to follow you. 

They may not do what you want because they want you to fail. This is more common than you might think. People sometimes want you to fail so they can get your job. People sometimes want you to fail just to make you look bad. People sometimes want you to fail so they don’t look bad. If that is the case, you need to replace them. There is nothing else you can do about an employee who wants you to fail.  

Sometimes, they fear they will look bad because you didn’t use their idea. Especially if your idea works and theirs doesn’t. Always be mindful of peer pressure. People always want to look good in front of their coworkers. If you aren’t going to use one of their ideas, don’t make a big deal out of it. Perhaps you could tell your team that the employee had a promising idea, but you just didn’t use it.  

Never assume that your employees are all-knowing. Many times, they are not. And most times, it is not their fault. It’s yours. Don’t just ignore the warning signs. Employees that “don’t do,” or “don’t know how to do” what you need can lead to all kinds of business problems, potentially even disasters. 

Social media and the internet are getting the blame for much of the youth mental health crisis, but for LGBTQ+ youth they may provide an important source of social connection.

Hopelab, a company that invests in improving youth mental health, surveyed more than 1,500 LGBTQ+ teenagers and young adults ages 13 to 22. (The study does not have data on how the group’s social media behaviors compare to non-LGBTQ+ youth.)

The organization found that social media, AI chatbots, and parasocial relationships (one-sided relationships with celebrities or fictional characters) may offer important opportunities for connection and support. Here are the key highlights:

The internet creates opportunities for parasocial relationships

More than half of respondents said they use the internet several times a day, 36% almost constantly. More than 60% of respondents said they’ve interacted with their favorite content creator and 38% said they’ve received a reply.

In general, respondents favored niche content creators over mainstream celebrities.

Parasocial relationships are important to LGBTQ+ youth

Nearly 40% of LGBTQ+ youth reported strong engagement with a media figure. Some 54% reported having strong parasocial support, meaning they trust a media figure and perceive them as helpful.

That feeling of connection may help with embracing their identity—62% of trans respondents who reported strong parasocial support also reported having strong trans pride compared to 46% with low parasocial support.

LGBTQ+ youth are on the fence about AI chatbots

Some 40% of respondents said they’ve talked to an AI chatbot over several days as if it were a friend, but 44% said they would not be open to talking with an AI chatbot. Talking to a chatbot as if it were a friend was most common among males versus females (50% vs. 43%), and more widespread among trans and nonbinary respondents than cisgender (53% vs. 42%). Respondents in rural areas used them more than those living in suburban and urban areas (42% vs. 37%).

In follow-up interviews, respondents noted that chatbots always respond to messages. However, they felt that over time chatbots worsened social skills because they felt chatbots allow people to avoid having difficult conversations.

Interviews with people taking the survey revealed an overall desire for connection with other LGBTQ+ youth, especially among those with families who aren’t accepting of their sexuality or gender identity.

“I feel like I’m hated less online than [in] my own house because of my gender, and it’s crippling,” one trans interviewee told Hopelab. “I feel more accepted by people online who are trans like me than my own family.”

You can probably think of a time when you’ve used math to solve an everyday problem, such as calculating a tip at a restaurant or determining the square footage of a room. But what role does math play in solving complex problems such as curing a disease?

In my job as an applied mathematician, I use mathematical tools to study and solve complex problems in biology. I have worked on problems involving gene and neural networks such as interactions between cells and decision-making. To do this, I create descriptions of a real-world situation in mathematical language. The act of turning a situation into a mathematical representation is called modeling.

Translating real situations into mathematical terms

If you ever solved an arithmetic problem about the speed of trains or cost of groceries, that’s an example of mathematical modeling. But for more difficult questions, even just writing the real-world scenario as a math problem can be complicated. This process requires a lot of creativity and understanding of the problem at hand and is often the result of applied mathematicians working with scientists in other disciplines.

As an example, we could represent a game of sudoku as a mathematical model. In sudoku, the player fills empty boxes in a puzzle with numbers between 1 and 9 subject to some rules, such as no repeated numbers in any row or column.

The puzzle begins with some prefilled boxes, and the goal is to figure out which numbers go in the rest of the boxes.

Imagine that a variable, say x, represents the number that goes in one of those empty boxes. We can guarantee that x is between 1 and 9 by saying that x solves the equation (x-1)(x-2) . . . (x-9)=0. This equation is true only when one of the factors on the left side is zero. Each of the factors on the left side is zero only when x is a number between 1 and 9; for example, (x-1)=0 when x=1. This equation encodes a fact about our game of sudoku, and we can encode the other features of the game similarly. The resulting model of sudoku will be a set of equations with 81 variables, one for each box in the puzzle.

Another situation we might model is the concentration of a drug, say aspirin, in a person’s bloodstream. In this case, we would be interested in how the concentration changes as we ingest aspirin and the body metabolizes it. Just like with sudoku, one can create a set of equations that describe how the concentration of aspirin evolves over time and how additional ingestion affects the dynamics of this medication. In contrast to sudoku, however, the variables that represent concentrations are not static but rather change over time.

But the act of modeling is not always so straightforward. How would we model diseases such as cancer? Is it enough to model the size and shape of a tumor, or do we need to model every single blood vessel inside the tumor? Every single cell? Every single chemical in each cell? There is much that is unknown about cancer, so how can we model such unknown features? Is it even possible?

Applied mathematicians have to find a balance between models that are realistic enough to be useful and simple enough to be implemented. Building these models may take several years, but in collaboration with experimental scientists, the act of trying to find a model often provides novel insight into the real-world problem.

Mathematical models help find real solutions

After writing a mathematical problem to represent a situation, the second step in the modeling process is to solve the problem.

For sudoku, we need to solve a collection of equations with 81 variables. For the aspirin example, we need to solve an equation that describes the rate of change of concentrations. This is where all the math that has been and is still being invented comes into play. Areas of pure math such as algebra, analysis, combinatorics, and many others can be used—in some cases combined—to solve the complex math problems arising from applications of math to the real world.

The third step of the modeling process consists of translating the mathematical solution into the solution to the applied problem. In the case of sudoku, the solution to the equations tells us which number should go in each box to solve the puzzle. In the case of aspirin, the solution would be a set of curves that tell us the aspirin concentration in the digestive system and bloodstream. This is how applied mathematics works.

When creating a model isn’t enough

Or is it? While this three-step process is the ideal process of applied math, reality is more complicated. Once I reach the second step where I want the solution of the math problem, very often, if not most of the time, it turns out that no one knows how to solve the math problem in the model. In some cases, the math to study the problem doesn’t even exist.

For example, it is difficult to analyze models of cancer because the interactions between genes, proteins, and chemicals are not as straightforward as the relationships between boxes in a game of sudoku. The main difficulty is that these interactions are “nonlinear,” meaning that the effect of two inputs is not simply the sum of the individual effects. To address this, I have been working on novel ways to study nonlinear systems, such as Boolean network theory and polynomial algebra. With this and traditional approaches, my colleagues and I have studied questions in areas such as decision-making, gene networks, cellular differentiation, and limb regeneration.

When approaching unsolved applied math problems, the distinction between applied and pure mathematics often vanishes. Areas that were considered at one time too abstract have been exactly what is needed for modern problems. This highlights the importance of math for all of us; current areas of pure mathematics can become the applied mathematics of tomorrow and be the tools needed for complex, real-world problems.

Alan Veliz-Cuba is an associate professor of mathematics at the University of Dayton.

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

For decades a small, landless tribe in Northern California has been on a mission to get land, open a casino, and tap into the gaming market enjoyed by so many other tribes that earn millions of dollars annually.

The Koi Nation’s chances of owning a Las Vegas-style casino seemed impossible until a federal court ruling in 2019 cleared the way for the tiny tribe to find a financial partner to buy land and place it into a trust to make it eligible for a casino.

Now the tribe of 96 members has teamed up with the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, which owns the biggest casino in the world, and is waiting for U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to decide whether the 68-acre parcel the tribe bought for $12.3 million in Sonoma County in 2021 is put into trust.

Placing the land into trust would allow the Koi to move closer to building a $600 million casino and resort on prime real estate in the heart of Northern California’s wine country.

The decision comes as the U.S. government tries to atone for its history of dispossessing Indigenous people of their land, in part through a federal legal process that goes beyond reinstating ancestral lands and allows a tribe to put land under trust if it can prove “a significant historical connection to the land.”

The Koi Nation, a Southeastern Pomo tribe whose ancestors lived in Northern California for thousands of years, faces mounting opposition from other tribes and even California Governor Gavin Newsom over its plans for the Shiloh Resort and Casino, which would include a 2,500-slot machine casino and 400-room hotel with spa and pool.

If approved, the casino would be built near Windsor, about 65 miles north of San Francisco, near two other Native American casinos a few miles away: Graton Resort and Casino in Rohnert Park and River Rock Casino in Geyserville.

The money generated would allow tribal members a better life in one of the country’s most expensive regions, including educational opportunities for young tribe members, said Dino Beltran, vice chairman of the Koi Nation’s Tribal Council.

“It has taken us years to be on the same playing field as every other tribe in the United States and now the same tribes that have established themselves are against us. It’s a very sad thing,” Beltran said.

Among the most vocal critics of the Koi Nation’s project is Greg Sarris, chairman of Graton Rancheria, a federation of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo people with more than 1,500 members. The tribe’s casino is the biggest in the Bay Area and is undergoing a $1 billion expansion.

Sarris, who last year was appointed by Newsom to the University of California Board of Regents, said the Koi Nation are Southeastern Pomo people whose ancestral home is in Lake County, about 50 miles northeast of the project site.

The tribe, Sarris said, is not linguistically, culturally, or historically connected to Sonoma County and he accused the tribe of cherry-picking land that already draws tourists.

“They are claiming that part of their deep historical connection is they had a family member in the early 20th century who lived in Sonoma County,” Sarris scoffed.

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, enacted by Congress in 1988, sets rules for how and where Native American tribes can operate casinos, and generally limits them to ancestral lands that have been returned to the tribe.

But the law also makes a “restored lands” exception for federally recognized tribes that do not have a reservation—or rancheria, as they are called in California—to build a casino outside their ancestral land if the tribe can show historical and modern connections to the area where the gambling facility will be located. The land also has to be near where a significant number of tribal members reside.

“Generally speaking, tribes cannot game on any land that is taken into trust after 1988 but there are important exceptions to that general prohibition that are meant to be fair to tribes that did not have land in 1988,” said Kathryn Rand, an expert on tribal gaming law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’s International Center for Gaming Regulation.

Before white colonizers arrived in California, Koi Nation’s ancestors lived on an island in Lake County and traded with other tribes in Northern California, according to the tribe’s website.

In 1916, the U.S. government approved land in Lake County for Koi Nation’s rancheria about 28 miles north of the proposed casino site. The land was eventually declared uninhabitable by the Bureau of Indian Affairs because of its rocky terrain and many Koi families moved south to neighboring Sonoma County, mainly to Sebastopol and Santa Rosa, where the tribe is now headquartered.

Four decades later, the federal government took that land and sold it for an airport, leaving the tribe landless. After a lengthy court battle, a federal judge in 2019 ruled the Koi Nation had the right to pursue buying land for a casino.

Michael Anderson, a Koi Nation attorney, said a historic trail used by the tribe from the Clear Lake basin to Bodega Bay, on Sonoma County’s Pacific Coast, runs through a portion of the property, which supports the legal requirement of having a “significant historical connection to the land.”

Anderson said their legal case is strong. But “the politics is a whole different thing,” he added.

Sarris, whose casino gives millions to small, non-gaming tribes and has become a major donor to California politicians, said the Koi Nation has previously tried to get land under trust to open a casino in Solano and Alameda Counties—both in the San Francisco Bay Area—and accused the tribe of “reservation shopping.”

Anderson said the term was offensive and Sarris is simply trying to protect his lucrative casino from competition.

“This is about market protection, that’s the heart of it,” Anderson said.

Newsom and local politicians also oppose the project along with the Dry Creek Band of Pomo Indians, who operate River Rock Casino.

Newsom’s office sent a letter last month to Bryan Newland, assistant secretary of Indian affairs for the Department of the Interior, urging him not to move forward with the Shiloh casino project and another proposed casino in the Bay Area, saying the governor is concerned the department is not considering other sites for the casinos and approving them would “stretch the limits of the ‘restored lands’ exception.”

The department is weighing three other land trust applications under the “restored lands” exception, including one by the Scotts Valley Tribe that wants to build a casino in Solano County. In Oregon, the Coquille Indian Tribe wants to open a casino in Medford, about 170 miles south of its tribal headquarters and closer to the California border.

Casino-owning tribes are pushing back on both. The Guidiville Rancheria tribe in Northern California has applied but has not yet identified land for their project, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Haaland will consider several factors in making her decision, including opposition to the casinos, said Steve Light, an expert on tribal gaming policy at the UNLV International Center for Gaming Regulation.

But the secretary also will take into account whether the casino will help with “tribal self-determination, tribal self-governance, and tribal economic development, job creation and resources for the tribe,” he said.

Of the 574 federally recognized tribes, 110 are in California. According to the American Gaming Association, there are 87 tribal casinos in the state, making California the largest tribal gaming market in the country.

“With 40 million people in California,” Light said, “this is presumably still an untapped market, but one that is increasingly competitive.”

This story has been updated to correct the name of the law that regulates tribal casinos. It is the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

—By Olga R. Rodriguez, Associated Press

Messaging apps are one of the most frequently used apps on our phones. There’s probably not a day that goes by when most people don’t hear a ding alerting them to a new text. There’s also no shortage of messaging apps. But when it comes to the juggernauts, there are two: Meta’s WhatsApp and Apple’s Messages, the latter of which just got a big update in iOS 18.

So, how do the two apps now compare in 2024? We’ll explore this, based on five criteria: user interface, compatibility, useful features, fun factor, and privacy & security.

User Interface

Most users like their apps to have clean, uncluttered interfaces that are easy to navigate.

Without a doubt, Apple’s Messages app fulfills these requirements. When you open the app, you are immediately presented with its minimalist interface, which clearly shows a list of all your chat threads. You have a search bar at the top and can quickly tap on any thread to see its contents. Further, there is a single + button that opens a menu that lets you quickly add a photo, audio message, or location to the chat in a few taps.

WhatsApp’s user interface, on the other hand, is more convoluted. At the bottom of the app is a toolbar with five buttons: Updates, Calls, Communities, Chats, and Settings. These “Updates” and “Communities” additions can make WhatsApp feel more like a social network than a dedicated messaging app. Because features such as these are built into WhatsApp, the app is naturally more bloated.

Winner: Apple Messages

Compatibility

For a messaging app to be useful, you need to have someone to chat with. That means your friends must be using the same messaging technology as you are.

This is where Apple loses some points. If you have an iPhone, you can exchange SMS and RCS messages with people on other devices with Apple Messages. But you can only send iMessages—Apple’s proprietary version of the text message—to owners of other Apple devices, including iPhones, iPads, and Macs. iMessages (the blue bubbles and all the cool abilities that go with them) are officially limited to Apple products.

Apple doesn’t make its Messages app for Android devices. That means if you want to use just a single messaging app and be able to take advantage of all its features in every conversation, you better make sure all your friends and family are iPhone owners.

WhatsApp, on the other hand, is available on both iPhones and Android devices. That makes it super easy to communicate with the full feature set of the app with anyone, no matter what type of phone they have.

Winner: WhatsApp

Useful Features

When it comes to features, both WhatsApp and Apple’s Messages offer many of the same. For example, both apps let you send your location, photos, videos, and more with a few taps. Both apps also feature built-in GIF libraries, so you can easily insert the perfect GIF into your conversation at any given moment. 

Both apps also support emoji reactions, so you can quickly slap with a “thank you” hands on their message without having to literally spell out your appreciation. Both apps also let you unsend and edit messages—a truly useful feature.

But Apple Messages also offers some useful features that WhatsApp lacks, such as the ability to schedule an iMessage to be sent at a later time. WhatsApp doesn’t offer this kind of functionality. Apple Messages also offers a safety feature called Check In that allows Messages to automatically notify your chosen contacts when you arrive home on time—or don’t.

Yet WhatsApp also offers some features that Apple’s Messages does not: the ability to archive messages, for one. In WhatsApp, you can store message threads in an archive, so they don’t clutter up your main chat screen. This is handy when you don’t want to delete a thread (say, the one with your electrician), but you don’t constantly need to see it in your main chat list, either.

Yes, archiving is an exceptionally basic feature—but that’s what makes its absence from Apple Messages so baffling, especially given how useful chat archiving is. WhatsApp also includes some other nice utilitarian features including the ability to star important messages so you can easily find them later.

Winner: WhatsApp

Fun Factor

INSERT ART “applemessagesfun.png”. Caption: Apple’s Messages app offers plenty of fun effects.

I’m the type of person who just likes to send and receive plain old messages without any fluff. However, I know many people who like to use messaging apps to express their moods or send messages with some added pizazz.

And when it comes to adding pizazz to your messages, Apple’s iOS 18 update to Messages offers a lot. Not only can you bold, italicize, underline, and strikethrough text now, but you can add animation effects to individual words in your text message—like making the word grow big or small, making it shake or explode, as well as making it ripple and jitter and more. 

Other visual flairs you can add include making a chat bubble show up on the recipient’s screen under so-called “invisible ink” (but really, it looks like digital glitter that they must wipe away to see the message). There are also full-screen effects you can apply, such as making confetti rain down on the recipient’s screen when you send them a congratulations text.

WhatsApp lacks any of these types of animated effects, so if fun factor is your thing, there’s a clear winner here.

Winner: Apple Messages

Privacy & Security

The great news is that both WhatsApp and Apple’s Messages feature strong end-to-end encryption—even for chat backups in the cloud (if you enable it). This means that no one, not even Meta or Apple, can read your messages.

But Apple’s Messages offers two benefits over WhatsApp. The first is that WhatsApp still requires you to give it access to your contacts on your phone if you want to see the names of the people you are texting in the app instead of just their phone numbers. There is no technical reason why WhatsApp needs to require this. The app allows people to choose display names, and it would be simple for the company to make these display names the default for what a user sees if they don’t grant access to their contacts.

The second reason is that though WhatsApp and Apple’s Messages are both end-to-end encrypted, that encryption only helps protect against today’s threats—not threats from advanced quantum computers tomorrow. To counteract quantum computer threats (quantum computers may one day be able to break today’s encryption in minutes), Apple has added post-quantum cryptographic protocol level 3 (PQ3) to Messages. That means your iMessages today will still be protected against quantum attacks tomorrow.

WhatsApp currently lacks any kind of post-quantum cryptographic protocols.

Winner: Apple Messages

WhatsApp vs. Apple Messages: And the winner is…

Based on the above criteria, the winner is Apple Messages. The app offers an uncluttered, easy-to-navigate interface, has several fun text and chat effects, and has the most advanced security protecting your messages that is available today.

Still, WhatsApp is no slouch. It has feature-parity with Apple Messages in all of the areas that really count, like unsending and editing messages. It also has basic features that Apple Messages lacks, like archiving. And its biggest strength will always be something Apple refuses to offer: cross-device support. No matter if you have an Android or iPhone, you can send and receive WhatsApp messages.