“I Love Gay People” I once had a coworker I’m going to call Maggie. And Maggie loved gay people. I know that, because she explicitly told me when she learned I was gay, probably six months into working together. Up to that point, Maggie and I had collaborated on a few projects, but were in different departments and didn’t socialize outside of work. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me you were gay!” she exclaimed, before sharing how much she loved going to drag shows, shopping, and watching Bravo with “her gays.” She then demanded to know my favorite Real…
Author: Staff Writer
China has now openly declared that it believes it has the legal right to pursue people beyond its own borders under its new Ethnic Unity Law, which takes effect on July 1. Beijing insists the law is “legitimate, lawful, necessary, and feasible,” and argues that every nation has the right to suppress separatism. The legislation extends legal liability to individuals and organizations outside China accused of undermining what Beijing defines as “ethnic unity” or promoting separatism. This is no longer simply domestic legislation. It is a declaration that China intends to extend its legal reach far beyond its own borders.…
Right now, I have 628 unread emails in my work inbox. That’s in addition to seven unread Signal messages, a few unopened Telegrams, dozens of texts coming in (both personal and professional), and a whole separate Google work suite to contend with for another professional project, with an impossible number of comments appearing daily within the documents therein. Let’s not forget the various other apps required for work—Asana, Slack, Gusto—not to mention the two-factor authenticators needed to log into them. Together, the cacophony of buzzes and pings these apps elicit constitutes a very normal way of working in 2026. In…
Gold has now fallen below $4,000 an ounce for the first time since November 2025, and suddenly everyone is proclaiming the bull market is dead. On June 24, spot gold fell to an intraday low of approximately $3,973.79, breaking below the $4,000 level for the first time in seven months. On June 25, gold remained under pressure, trading around $3,982.49. From its January record high near $5,595 an ounce, gold has now declined more than 28%, approaching the 30% correction our computer models had been pointing toward. Markets move in cycles, not straight lines. A correction of this magnitude frightens…
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. Why Emma Pierson’s essay is causing such a stir Emma Pierson’s recent essay in The Atlantic, “I’d Rather Risk Cancer Than See AI Move This Fast,” has naturally stirred up strong opinions in the artificial intelligence community this week. The accelerationists on X, in particular, seemed triggered by it. Pierson is an AI researcher who teaches machine learning in the vaunted computer science program at the University of California, Berkeley. She also carries a…
The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge just delivered another reminder that inflation has not been defeated. The Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Price Index rose 4.1% year-over-year in May, the highest annual reading in three years, after climbing 0.4% during the month alone. Even stripping out food and energy, the so-called “core” PCE increased another 0.3% in May and now stands at 3.4% annually, still nearly double the Fed’s mythical 2% target. This is now the third consecutive month that inflation has accelerated rather than cooled. Meanwhile, consumer spending increased another 0.7% during May despite prices continuing to rise. People are…
Computer scientist Louis Castricato was in his eighth year studying large language models—the artificial intelligence technology behind chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude—when he started to feel like he was hitting a dead end.“We basically have passed the point of doing real fundamental LLM research,” Castricato said. “Now it’s just applications.”The researcher quit his doctoral studies at Brown University and started a new company, called Overworld. Its ambition is in its name: AI that can understand and navigate a world, not just words.There’s still plenty of money to be made from AI chatbots—investors are counting on it as they commit trillions…
Many Americans have one thing on their minds when it comes to Fourth of July travel this year: What’s the best bang for the buck? That question is leading people to some unexpected places to ring in the U.S.’s 250th birthday, according to a report released this week by Expedia. Compared with last year, searches using budget filters have surged 1,265% during the six-week window bookending the July 4 holiday, the Seattle-based company found. In addition to the surge in budget-related searches, travelers are also looking to stretch their dollars by using rewards, choosing all-inclusive stays, or considering off-the-beaten path…
The National Park Service has a new policy about reporting deaths that happen in some of the nation’s most wild places. According to a memo issued in December and recently viewed by The Washington Post, park staff and other workers are no longer authorized to confirm details about injuries and deaths that befall the park’s more than 300 million annual visitors. Serious accidents and fatalities are uncommon but not unheard of in the parks, which host droves of tourists and a huge range of outdoor activities, from peak bagging and sport climbing to whitewater rafting. Historically, the National Park Service…
Meta is reversing its decision to reassign 7,000 employees to different AI-focused units, like the Applied AI (AAI) task force, to help train the company’s models, one month after those plans were announced. According to an internal memo obtained by Business Insider, Meta explained that it would now “defer to each individual’s choice” on whether to join the task force. The email was sent to employees who had been “drafted” to the AAI task force, Business Insider reported. “As I emphasized before, personal agency will remain at the heart of all opportunities at Meta: We will support employees in whatever…