In the Cow Hollow neighborhood of San Francisco, at the corner of Union and Webster Streets, sits a small gift shop that many visitors might stroll past. The Andon Market doesn’t have the widest assortment of products, favoring the open spaces you’d be more likely to find in an Apple store. And on its opening day, the store’s manager neglected to schedule any workers to open the doors. That kind of mistake would embarrass most founders. Andon Market’s founder felt no shame. It found, the founder felt nothing at all. The store was conceived and launched by artificial intelligence. Welcome…
Author: Staff Writer
QUESTION: A follow-up. Will Socrates survive you? Have you taught anyone else how to program AI as you do? PB ANSWER: The lawyers are working on creating a 501(c)(3), which is a specific tax-exempt status granted by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) to nonprofit organizations operated exclusively for religious, charitable, scientific, or educational purposes. This status, defined in section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, provides significant federal income tax exemptions, which are vital in my case. When Scotty beams me up, the IRS could claim that Socrates is worth $100 billion and demand that my heir pay tax on…
Many tech observers initially believed the software engineers would become scarce in the face of AI. But that hasn’t turned out to be the case—in part due to the power of human ingenuity. “Software engineers are spending less time coding,” says Aneesh Raman, the chief economic opportunity officer at LinkedIn, who just published the book Open to Work: How to Get Ahead in the Age of AI. “But now they’re getting to build things in a way they couldn’t before. They’re going into conversations with clients and customers. Or they’re thinking about the ethical implications of what they build.” In…
What most people fail to understand is that governments do not lose control overnight. They lose it gradually, and then they respond in stages. First comes rising debt. Then comes higher taxation. When that fails to produce the expected revenue, the next step is not reform. It is restriction. We are now entering that phase where governments begin tightening their grip on capital. It starts subtly. Expanded IRS reporting requirements. Increased scrutiny on bank transactions. Lower thresholds for what is considered “suspicious activity.” These are not random policy decisions. They are part of a broader shift toward monitoring and ultimately…
Issa Rae is a Hollywood success story. Her web series The Mis-Adventures of Awkward Black Girl launched her career in the early 2010s, leading to her HBO series Insecure and now her production company Hoorae Media. Through all her projects, Rae has been praised for her authentic portrayal of Black women’s lives—but at a recent panel, Rae said that the entertainment industry is no longer interested in celebrating diversity. Shifting tides in the film industry While speaking at TheWrap’s Creators x Hollywood Summit last Wednesday, April 8, Rae pointed out a troubling trend she’s seeing on the production side of…
What we are witnessing across the United States is not just people relocating. It is the migration of income itself, and the numbers now confirm the scale. According to the latest IRS data, California lost $11.9 billion in adjusted gross income in a single year, while New York lost $9.9 billion. At the same time, Florida gained $20.6 billion, Texas gained $5.5 billion, and states like South Carolina and North Carolina each gained roughly $4 billion. This is not theoretical. This is measurable capital movement, and it is accelerating. The critical point is that the IRS is not tracking opinions…
“We’re all on the same page.” You’ve said it. Your team has said it. And somewhere between that meeting and getting the work done, things went wrong. Steve, the CEO of a fast-growth financial startup, thought his leadership team was perfectly aligned. After months of planning, they all agree on one goal: becoming AI-centric. But that illusion of alignment fell apart the moment Steve brought me in. Operations thought “AI-first” meant efficiency—eliminating as many jobs as possible. Marketing saw it as a cool slogan, not a real change in how they worked. Product Management thought AI should inform decisions, but…
One of the greatest mistakes Western policymakers repeatedly make is assuming that other cultures think the same way they do. They approach international conflicts through a secular lens of power, economics, and negotiation. But when dealing with Iran, they are confronting a political system deeply intertwined with religious ideology. When an Ayatollah or senior clerical leader is killed, the event does not necessarily weaken the movement. In many cases, it strengthens it. In Shiite Islam, the concept of martyrdom sits at the center of religious identity. The defining event for the Shia world was the death of Imam Hussein at…
A California company has recalled more than 3.1 million bottles of lubricating eye drops because it had not properly tested—and thus could not prove—whether the products were sterile. These products are sold under several names at major retailers across the country. The company, K.C. Pharmaceuticals, initiated the recall on March 3, 2026. I am a clinical pharmacologist and pharmacist who has assessed risks of poor-quality manufacturing practices and lax oversight for prescription drugs, eye drops, dietary supplements, and nutritional products in the United States for many years. This recall is very large, potentially affecting over a million people. Using nonsterile…
A few years ago, I started noticing a pattern. Every time a major publication or LinkedIn thread took on AI in hiring, the framing was almost always the same: hype on one side, existential alarm on the other. The talent leaders I actually talk to have more nuanced opinions than that, but those narratives still shape the conversation in ways that hold organizations back from building the hiring processes their people and candidates actually deserve. After spending the last decade building AI-powered hiring tools and working alongside the talent teams implementing them, I’ve had a front-row seat to the gap…