There have been five 1 in 1,000-year floods” this summer alone in the continental U.S.
Heavy rains have poured over Texas, North Carolina, New Mexico, Illinois, and Florida over the past months causing streets to flood, homes to suffer irreparable damage, and people to lose their lives, loved ones, and pets.
The death toll alone in Texas is at 135 as of July 25, as search efforts begin to end with only three more persons still missingthe result of over three weeks of searching.
The 0.1% chance of these floods occurring makes their recent frequency alarming. This, coupled with other recent flash floods across major East Coast states like New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey and projected flash floods in central and southwestern U.S., makes for increasingly unsettling future forecasts.
But are these weather patterns actually out of the normor are these floods becoming more common?
How rare are 1,000-year floods?
The phrase “1 in 1,000-year floods” comes from the fact that statistically, floods of that intensity and destruction are likely to happen once every 1,000 years (or a 0.1% likelihood). In 2024, there were 35 1,000-year floods across the U.S. and more than triple that number of 100-year floods, which have a statistical probability of happening 1% of the time.
As far as I’m aware, if we tracked 1 in 1,000-year flood events over time, you wouldnt necessarily see a discernible increase in the number of events per year, says Allie Mazurek, a climatologist at the Colorado Climate Center. However, on a more general scale, we are expecting to see more extreme precipitation events in a warmer climate.
An interactive map from the Colorado Climate Centerwhich is updated in near real-timetracks high precipitation events across the country. It combines past research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Atlas 14, a precipitation frequency data interface, to track high-precipitation events from 2002 to today in every state but Washington and Oregon (their data has yet to be updated on NOAA’s precipitation server).
The data sets visually depict the number of 1,000-year heavy precipitation rates from 2002 to 2024. Each year follows similar patterns and frequency. But that doesnt mean rainfall and subsequent flooding isnt intensifying. Mazurek says there are two factors at play for these natural disasters: the frequency in which rain falls, and the intensityhow much it rains in a short amount of time.
According to independent climate research group Climate Central, 88% of 144 locations across all nine climate regions in the U.S. have experienced a 15% increase in hourly rainfall intensity since 1970. Nearly two-thirds of those locations experienced at least a 10% increase in the same period.
Mazurek says these trends come down to one primary effect of climate changehumidity.
Rising temperatures create wet air
Essentially, when you have warmer temperatures, that allows more water to exist in the vapor phase, and therefore, you get more water up in the atmosphere, Mazurek said. Then when you get a thunderstorm, there is more water available to it when it starts to precipitate and make rainfall. If youre adding more water to the atmosphere, you’ll get more rainfall as a result.
Climate Central says that for every single Fahrenheit degree of Earth warming, the air holds 4% more moisture. Give that the Earths temperature has risen by roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the preindustrial era, there’s simply often more water available to create intense rainfall.
So while the statistical probability of these floods occurring won’t change, their severity could get worse
Mitigation and adaptation
Flash floods arent expected to subside anytime soon this summer, with Accuweather meteorologists warning that additional flooding events can be expected due to this summers continued trend of high precipitation predictions.
I think there’s definitely more work that all of us together could work on for extreme rainfall and flood events from meteorologists to emergency managers, Mazurek said. We all obviously have more work to do communicating those kinds of events and keeping people safe. I think that is still a very active area of research.
However, with recent Trump administration changes to climate policy, emergency weather cuts at NOAA, and the dismantling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), these efforts may become more and more difficult, even as climate-driven natural disasters increase.
“We expect kind of both sides of the extremes to get more extreme, Mazurek said. Heavy precipitation, extreme rains, flooding events, as well as drought. They each work off their own feedback.”
Back in 2015, Microsoft claimed our attention spans had dropped to eight secondsshorter than that of a goldfish. No ones definitively proven it, but it feels about right in the age of TikTok. Ten years later, goodness knows how long were able to hold it.
Its one of the major social shifts of our lifetimes, and its one that a new generation of start-up brandsand their investorshave jumped on. These “dopamine” brands, such as Starface, Graza, and Poppi, provide younger generations with striking visual hits to draw them in with an instant high. Their packages, messages, and social content all pop, their drops sell out in minutes, and their fans queue virtually just to get their hands on them. Those limited drops, seasonal flavors, and unexpected collabs fuel hype and scarcity. These arent just products; theyre events.
But with every dopamine hit comes a comedown, and many challenger brands are now struggling with staying power. Meanwhile the legacy brands languish on the sidelines, wondering what to make of it all as a chunk of their audience is tempted away. Theres a lot to learn in creating fresh news for these classic heroes, but they shouldnt feel threatened by the dopamine gang; rather, they should see an opportunity in it. If youve got iconic assets and built emotional trust over decades, youre more than halfway there. The nudge is to deliberately disrupt yourself by bringing ideas in from the outside, while finding ways to retain what it is people love about you at the core.
Packaging is a powerful touchpoint to do it. Its your shop window, your sensorial hook, your cultural signal. When you get it right, it should create not just fleeting excitement, but a deep connection that creates a lasting memory. Here’s how to do dopamine design, without right.
Inject hype at the edges, dont break the system
Limited editions are an obvious, and often fruitful, place to start, but legacy brands can sometimes get overexcited here. Often there is a temptation to create disruption by sidelining the rule book and going crazy with the new news. When limited editions arent rooted in what people already love about the brand, they land as lazy, insincere. They often fall flat with consumers, who see straight through it. Smart design evolves from whats already there; celebrate the core brand essence by coming from a place of authenticity, then create the disruptive newness.
So, when Jaffa Cakes was developing a limited-edition flavor, they began by acknowledging the product truth: the joy is in the jammy center. To make it feel more special than the established orange, an unexpected idea came about in cola-bottle flavor. This delivered an exciting dose of “Im not sure thatll work” intrigue mixed with reassuring nostalgia for the consumer.
Crucially, we restrained ourselves with the packaging design in responding to this. We retained the existing layout and the brand’s visual consistency, while dramatizing the new story within it to create something new. Its a simple but effective technique, all too often brushed aside in favour of total “pack takeover” disruption.
Short-term impact, long-term value
Limited editions from brands work best when they riff on the thing people already love about them, whether it be format, flavor, origin story, or something else.
These kinds of designs dont just deliver a momentary dopamine hit. When a drop gets it right, it builds trust and respect with consumers. Moreover it builds a momentum that has a positive halo effect back into the main brand.
Look at Johnnie Walkers Squid Game Limited Editionanother entry from a brand that continues to cross-pollinate categories to deliver the unexpected. Here its bringing popular culture in to give its audience exactly what they never knew they needed. While the launch design felt dopamine, the core pack design confidently fused both brands’ assets together with mutual respect and consideration. It was a wisely thought through approach and showed us that the brand can deliver both quality whisky and moments of playful humor simultaneously. The total effect of such one-offs is that the entire brand benefits from them.
Collaboration should amplify, not dilute
The Heinz x Absolut collaboration was a good example of how good design can multiply brand value. Its success lay in both brands celebrating their distinctive assets in tandem in the launch collateral (Heinzs silhouette and red tones, Absoluts bottle shape and stripped-back typography).
[Photo: Absolut Vodka/Heinz]
The creative ideavodka pasta saucewas playful, but it was the campaign work and the packaging that sold the credibility, where the two brands came together in a way that felt creative and made sense for each partner. The most effective collaborations arent necessarily about giving each brand equal space, or one giving way for the other. Its putting egos aside to create something entirely new together, the genius child of both.
Legacy brands at the center of culture
Legacy brands dont need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant, but they do need to stay alert to whats happening around them. Packaging is a hugely impactful area to showcase this. It is the most visceral, sensorial, and tangible touchpoint a brand can have. A good idea at the heart can be taken to the next level when form, finish, and feel are also taken into account.Legacy brands should be more confident in the strength of their assets. Changing them creatively just a little can a have a powerful outcome. Building both brands assets through co-respect can help place a brand in the center of culture effectively enough for the audience to reappraise it on a deeper, more lasting level. It can reenergize products and brands, putting them in front of new audiences who will become the next generation of loyalists. A design that is oversaturated in dopamine can have the opposite effect, creating confusion around your brand’s identity, leaving your crowd alienated and cynical.
The key is to build from what people already know and love. Thats what gives brands the permission to try something new on their packaging, and the credibility to be taken seriously when they do. Once youve cracked the code in an authentic way and succeeded at it, the stage is set for a future of endless creativity that people will come back for time and again.
Its been more than six months since record-breaking wildfires destroyed thousands of homes in the Los Angeles area. So far, few homes have been rebuilt. On one barren block in Altadena filled with vacant lots, no new homes have started construction yet. But one of the first homes that will break ground on the street is using technology to help the rebuilding process move faster.
Later this summer, a mobile micro factory will roll up to the lot and begin using robots to build walls, roofs, and flooring panels while a construction crew lays the foundation. Other components, like bathroom pods with all of the fixtures preinstalled, will be built off-site and delivered for assembly.
Cosmic, the startup building the house, first launched building sustainable accessory dwelling units (ADUs) with a streamlined process designed to cut time and cost. Last year, the team started designing a larger, fire-resistant single-family home in Northern California. When the disaster hit L.A. in January, the company sped up its work to develop mini factories for the fire zone.
[Photo: Cosmic Buildings]
Modular construction isnt new. But Cosmics approach, with compact manufacturing units that travel to the building site, avoids the expense of developing larger factories. (Katerra, one high-profile startup, reportedly spent $150 million on its factory before going out of business.)
My core belief is that conventional prefab doesnt work, says Sasha Jokic, Cosmic’s founder. We saw the billions of dollars invested in the prefab industry . . . you need to keep the lights on, and its super hard to do it, given the costs of operating the factory. A typical factory is also constrained to a specific geography, since it isnt economical to deliver more than around 300 miles away.
Instead, Cosmic wants to bring modern manufacturing directly to each site. Its first micro-factory is now sitting on a lot in Pacific Palisades, where the company is working on permits for another house in that fire zone. The factory will travel back and forth between the Palisades and Altadena.
The construction system is around 10 times faster than traditional construction, Jokic says. It also uses around 60% less labor, which may help it avoid disruptions. The construction industry in Southern California already had a labor shortage; the current threat of immigration raids also means that some people now feel afraid to come to work.
[Photo: Cosmic Buildings]
The company also uses technology for the design process. For the house in Altadena, for example, it used software to design a house to the clients specifications in seven days. Really, the breakthrough technology is that its AI-driven, Jokic says.
The company, he says, can instantaneously create a code-compliant plan designed specifically for the site and the client’s needs. And because the software will only output designs that the company knows it can build, it’s easy to provide accurate timelines and pricing information.
For families affected by the fires, the company is offering design services for free. The cost of homes is roughly 30% less than traditional construction, Jokic says.
The clarity of the process helped convince the Altadena homeowners to move forward. The family, a couple with a young child, had lived in their previous housea 1923 craftsmanfor a decade. The old house needed repairs, the family had nearly completed a renovation when the fire happened.
After the fire, they wanted to rebuild differently. We talked to five other architects, and I just felt so overwhelmed by the idea of starting from scratch and going through the rebuilding process again, says homeowner Justin Lieb. The renovation was so overwhelming and exhausting.
They also liked the homes features, which go beyond the fire safety requirements in the building code, from fire-resistant walls and roofs to sprinklers. The all-electric house is also as energy efficient as possible, so it can make the most of the solar panels on the roof. Being as self-sufficient and ecologically conscious as possible was a big appeal to us, Lieb says. A gray water system helps recycle water. They also chose to install an EV charger, though they havent yet purchased an electric car.
[Photo: Cosmic Buildings]
Software also helped the permit application process go quickly, and the team had filed everything to the city within around 20 days. As we continue improving the system, really the plan is that this is going to be instantaneousbasically 24 hours turnaround for the concept design, and two days for the permitting, Jokic says.
The company handles the permitting process. For the Altadena house, it just got approval from the local planning department. Now, it needs approval from the citys building and safety division, which has committed to a 30-day review timeline. Then construction can begin.
The company is now working through the permitting process for four families in the fire zone. Ultimately, they have the capacity to build as many as 150 to 180 homes over the next 12 months, says Jokic. For every 10 homes they build, they have committed to build another for free for an underinsured family in the fire zone, in a project they call the 1:10 Initiative.
“Given that we can build much faster and lower cost and anyone else on the market, we definitely saw an opportunity for us to donate a portion of our revenue to build for people who [can’t afford it],” Jokic says.
Jokic, who grew up in war-torn Yugoslavia, says that the idea of providing affordable, quality housing has motivated his life’s work. “This is really a deeply personal experience,” he says. “And just being able to help people who are struggling to get their homes back, that’s what really matters at this point.”
Costco is well-known for its no-questions-asked return policy. Now some shoppers are taking it upon themselves to test the limits of that policy.
Returning my slime stained carpet to Costco, one TikTok user posted earlier this month.
Costco offers customers an unlimited grace period to return most purchases for a full refund, earning the wholesaler a top-six spot among stores with exceptional return policies, according to a 2023 ranking by U.S. News and World Report.
While the customer received a full refund for the ruined rug, the comments section on the TikTok video was divided. That’s embarrassing for you, one person wrote. This just seems wrong, another added.
For others, its simply about getting their moneys worth. I could be mad but in this economy . . . hell yeah, one comment read. Even Costco employees chimed in. Our upper management has said Costco makes way too much money. [T]hey would rather take the hit than lose a member, one wrote. Customer satisfaction at the end of the day.
What if the rug is in perfect condition but you just dont like it anymore? No problem. Another TikTok user returned a rug bought over a year ago because it no longer matched their aestheticand received a full refund.
@brooke_mydlo Ive always wondered how good costcos return policy is. Today I found out. #costco #momlife #costcofinds #costcoreturn original sound – brooke_mydlo
Costcos return policy is not only open-ended in terms of time frame, but it also doesnt clearly define the condition items must be in upon their return to the store. One person returned a broken couch four years after buying it. Another brought back a half-eaten chicken bake. Both were refunded in full. This is why we cant have nice things, one person commented.
This isnt the first time customers have pushed the policys boundaries. One notable return made headlines in 2018 when a woman brought back her dried-up Christmas tree in January.
Extreme as it may seem, the policy supports Costcos membership model. Kudos for Costco, the couch-returner said at the end of his video. Youve got me as a client for life now. Research shows that restrictive return policies can cost retailers business, whereas positive return experiences often lead to more purchases.
Still, that doesnt mean the customer is always right. Of the $685 billion in U.S. retail merchandise returned in 2024, $103 billion was attributed to return/claims fraud or abuse, according to a 2024 report from Appriss Retail and Deloitte.
Just because you can, doesnt always mean you should.
There’s an air of panic in the media world. The specter of AI has been looming large for a couple of years now, but the threat now appears to be solidifying. Publishers are reporting that search traffic is in free fall, and there’s overwhelming evidence that AI chatbots give very little in terms of referrals. What to do about “Google Zero” has gone from a theoretical destination to a reality that the media world must contend with.
Of course, panicking is never a good strategy. But pivoting can be, and there’s been no shortage of that lately. Both Wired and The Verge announced this week a stronger push into newsletters, one of the more reliable ways to connect directly with readers. When Business Insider recently announced layoffs, it also said it would invest in live events. And even publishers that already charge for subscriptions are doubling down on them: Newsweek will launch new types for both consumers and businesses, and The Guardian now has a new, cheaper tier for readers who want to opt out of personalized ads.
While AI may be the impetus behind a lot of these changes, they’re all directionally pushing toward building direct relationships with audience members. That is smart, but at a more basic level, they’re appealing to human desires that go beyond just getting informationa task AI fulfills very effectively. Offerings like newsletters, memberships, and events give a sense of belonging, encourage reading habits through consistency, and emphasize voiceeither that of the brand or the individual writer.
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Within all this is the beginnings of a post-Google content strategy for media. But really, it’s only half a strategy because it only accounts for humans. Much of internet activity in the future will be the result of bots, whether they’re hoovering up data to inform AI models or acting as agents on behalf of individual users. Data from TollBit indicates bot crawling is already comparable to what the big (non-AI) search engines dowhen everyone has their own AI agent, I would wager it will be the majority. Any forward-looking content strategy needs to take into account both humans and machines.
The new organic audience
Let’s start with the people. A few months ago, I hosted a webinar on the types of content that are most resilient to AI summarization. AI does a great job of summarizing news, but it struggles with voice and unique perspectives. The consequence: If you want good opinion and analysis, you’ll need to click through. Visual and interactive content is poorly conveyed by AI. And because AI is well known to hallucinate sometimes, anything that might inform a crucial decision for a readerlike context for health, legal, or financial decisionswill likely motivate readers to check the original source.
Certainly, memberships and subscriptions are important mechanisms to build a loyal audience, but they also need to be centered around something readers can’t get anywhere else. That usually means narrowing the lens of focus rather than widening it. Niche subjectseven within a more general brandwill typically see higher engagement and more loyalty than general ones.
Then there’s the stickiness of interactivity. One thing that emerging media platforms like Substack and TikTok do well is encouraging direct conversation between content creators and audience members. But being interactive doesn’t always have to be so hands-on: Semi-automated features like polls, quizzes, and games are all effective habit-buildersand cannot be substituted by AI.
Rise of the machines
If you think about it, there’s a kind of a “well, duh” quality to all the reports that confirm people don’t click through to sources when they use AI. (Pew Research just put out another, by the way.) That’s because removing the need to click is largely the point. Why go and read a whole bunch of articles when bots can do it for you?
But that reveals the other side of the coin: Bots are now doing the searching and the clicking, and that activity is traceable, measurable, and potentially monetizable. In other words, the inevitable rise in bot traffic represents both an unprecedented threat and a massive opportunity.
First, there’s the obvious idea of charging bots to scrape your site. Putting in paywalled endpointswhere AI bot operators pay a small fee to access contentmay work, especially now that Cloudflare is leading the charge in empowering website owners to block bots. However, it greatly depends on the scrapers acting in good faithand even if they do, it’s doubtful if the fee per scrape that publishers charge would ever be enough to build a sustainable business.
What could help is winning the next SEO war: AIEO, or artificial intelligence engine optimization. Being one of the primary sources in an AI Overview or a ChatGPT answer might not seem like much of a prize, given the low click-through rates. But if you pair it with both a pay-per-crawl mechanism and a content strategy that focuses on the AI-resilient content types discussed earlierthe ones that have a higher chance of audiences seeking them outthe benefits could end up being more than mere bragging rights.
This kind of AI-first content strategy does require a more sophisticated approach. You’d have to make use of the full search and AI toolbox, including things like Google snippets to ensure AI crawlers highlight the most enticing parts of your content without giving the store away, and MCP servers that can ensure bots have diect access to the content you green-light for them. While that can be technically cumbersome, the market is already adapting, with AIEO specialists like Scrunch AI offering one-stop-shop packages that essentially make a bot-friendly copy of your website so that crawlers can feast while humans enjoy your regular site.
Smaller, better . . . robot-ier?
The truth about the future of media is that the audience, the human audience, will be smaller for pretty much everyone. As more people get their information from AI portals, publishers will need to make the most of the few people who come directly to them. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Going small can ultimately be part of a healthier brand of journalism, as I argued in my very first column.
But the parallel trend is that the bot audience is rising fast, and it undoubtedly will be a dominant force in the way information is distributed. Harnessing that force will be essential for the media. And though there are still a lot of unknownsthe best practices, the legal framework, even the potential rewardsat least it’s easy to see what not to do: wait.
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Its true that personal ambition fuels success. But we can reach a dangerous tipping point when healthy drive becomes hyper-ambitiona compulsive cycle of excessive striving that becomes self-defeating.
Unlike healthy ambition that energizes you, hyper-ambition can leave you perpetually unsatisfied, overextended, and grinding to exhaustion. The cost isnt just personalhyper-ambition eventually undermines the very professional success it promises.
Heres how to recognize if youve crossed into the danger zoneand take practical steps to realign toward healthy ambition.
1. You Feel Like Youve Never Achieved Enough and Are Never Satisfied
Are you on a professional achievement treadmill, immediately shifting focus to your next goal after hitting a milestone?
While accomplishments and rewards can provide short-term satisfaction, the challenge to getting into such a rhythm is that you may pursue goals without considering what you truly want. This can catch up to you when you realize youve met external expectations but never connected to your internal motivation, leaving you dissatisfied.
Putting all your attention against the pursuit of professional validation can also lead to ignoring key areas of ones life that affect long-term happiness and well-being, such as your personal relationships, your health, and activities that fulfill and restore you.
To realign to healthy ambition, orient your goals toward internal motivation firstits a better predictor of engagement and success. Research has shown that putting attention and focus on personal success linked to fulfillment, satisfaction, and happiness begets external success, while the opposite focus doesnt hold true.
Start with your values: test if a goal is aligned with what is important and matters to you, rather than solely meeting external expectations. Academic studies have shown that aligning our goals with our values leads to more satisfaction, higher persistence, and more goal attainment.
Expand your ambition to include meaningful life goals and challenge what success truly means in your life. Studies confirm that once our basic needs are met, more income, wealth, or possessions dont correlate with lifelong happiness. Plus, Gallup research finds that well-being isnt tied just to career or finances, but also encompasses physical, social, and community well-being.
2. You Feel Constantly Over-Extended and Frustrated You Cant ‘Do It All’
Do you say yes to every opportunity without strategic prioritization, then feel stretched thin and frustrated by your inability to pursue them all effectively?
This suggests you either think more is always better, leading to overload and overwhelm, or you may not have an approach to help you choose where to put your time and attention when faced with seemingly equally valid goals.
To shift toward focusing on what matters, use strategic methods to make conscious choices. Create and visualize a goal system by identifying your core priorities and mapping how other goals connect. This can reveal if youre pursuing too much, show how aligned actions serve multiple goals, and reduce perceived friction between supposedly competing goals. You can maximize goal attainment by creating these positive connections, minimizing conflicts, and better understanding trade-offs you may make.
When faced with choices, apply the urgencyenergy filter. Ask, What has urgency, and do I have energy for it? This reveals several strategies:
Prioritize: Commit to high-urgency, high-energy ambitions
Reinterpret: For high-urgency, low-energy goals, find ways to achieve the same outcome with less time and effort
Postpone: Back-burner lower-priority ambitions
Let go: With self-compassion, release goals that no longer serve you
Learn to compromise wisely by focusing on what matters at this time rather than trying to do everything.
3. Youre Grinding Hard All the Time Without Recovery
How often do you find yourself compulsively working, putting in excessive hours without recovery time, leaving you exhausted?
Operating in a persistent high-performance mode leads to unproductive stress, causing your physical and mental health to suffer. Ironically, your productivity declines and your work suffers, too.
To break this pattern, be strategic about managing your effort and prioritizing recovery.
Our ambitions arent created equal. Be discerning about the effort put against your goals by asking three key questions:
Aspiration: How good do I want to be at this?
Determination: What is worth the hard work?
Motivation: How much effort do I want to put in and whats required?
Additionally, manage perfectionism. Be conscious about where you apply excellence and give yourself permission to say this is good enough for lower-stakes areas.
Finally, make recovery a leadership imperative. Doris Kearns Goodwin, the celebrated presidential biographer, has said: The most underappreciated leadership strength is the ability to relax and replenish energy. Research shows we paradoxically neglect recovery practices when we need them most. We need a deliberate plan to sustain ourselves for the work that matters and to prioritize time to psychologically disconnect from work.
Sustainable success comes from strategic ambition, not hyper-ambition. The idea that you have to choose between being ambitious and being well is a false choice. The goal shouldnt be to eliminate ambition, but to keep it in a healthy zone where it energizes rather than depletes youallowing you to achieve what you really want both professionally and personally.
The YIMBY (yes in my backyard) movement has achieved remarkable growth in the past few years, uniting people across the political spectrum who share a common belief: It should be easy to build more housing. You can find shared interests among unlikely alliances when you step out of political tribes. People who label themselves as socialists and capitalists are standing at town hall podiums to support and promote abundant housing. High fives! Hooray for unity, right?
Insert record scratch. Socialists and capitalists have economic worldviews that are incompatible with each other. There’s definitely consensus about the ends (plenty of homes), but the means will be hotly debated. The clash was inevitable, and the recent book by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, Abundance, has keyboard warriors starting to realize there are a host of competing opinions on how to get past the gatekeepers who would have homes remain scarce.
You might think something as apolitical as a townhouse wouldnt be a lightning rod for a populist left-versus-right debate. The reason is economics. Considering the surge in populism in recent years, its worth understanding why economics, not neighborhood character, is at the heart of the argument.
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The Socialist YIMBY
Socialist YIMBY advocates believe housing should be universally accessible, treated fundamentally as a human right rather than a commodity to be bought and sold for profit. Prominent democratic socialists, like New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani and Minneapolis mayoral candidate Omar Fateh, argue for “decommodifying” housing, where the government would guarantee homes. Market forces are not part of the equation. A socialist YIMBY is going to want state-managed housing solutions, price controls, rent freezes, and strict regulations on private ownership. Mamdani even said hed be open to the abolition of private property if it meant getting people places to live.
Socialist YIMBYs build their case on fairness, social justice, and community stability. They argue that a free market creates disparities, displaces vulnerable populations, and commodifies essential human needs. The belief here is that removing profit motives from housing reduces speculation, stabilizes communities, and ensures housing stability and equity, prioritizing human dignity and communal well-being above private gain.
The Capitalist YIMBY
Capitalist YIMBY advocates believe in leveraging market mechanisms. To them, the root cause of housing shortages lies in artificial restrictions imposed by zoning laws, burdensome permitting processes, and other bureaucratic interference. Their economic rationale hinges on the concept of supply and demand, and prices as crucial signals.
Capitalist YIMBYs argue that when the price of a type of home goes up in an area, it signals to developers, investors, and builders that demand is high and supply low. Rather than suppressing these signals through artificial price controls, they propose getting rid of laws that prohibit housing and streamline approval processes in order to spur rapid and flexible housing production. They argue that robust competition among builders and investors inherently leads to diverse housing options, lower overall costs, and more innovation in housing solutions.
The Perplexed YIMBY
A person is standing at the philosophical crossroads to abundant housing and two fellow YIMBYs are giving conflicting directions: We have to go left. No, we have to go right.
Socialists look at capitalist solutions as inherently exploitative, always creating more inequalities, and they believe profit motives are what make homes too expensive. Capitalists look at socialist solutions as inevitably leading to inefficiencies, housing shortages, and stagnation.
When Ive asked people about their take on this conflict, a common response is something like Well have enough homes for everyone if building regulations are relaxed and the government is in charge of low-income housing. I believe thats wishful thinking, since it brings us right back to the fundamental disagreement on economics. A capitalist will say, There is a market for small and modest housing, so get the government out of the way. The socialist will say, We dont believe you.
I truly believe that populists on the left and the right want there to be enough homes for everyone. But its also clear that the populist left and right will forever treat each other like theyre living in a cartoon or comic book. Im the good guy and youre the bad guy. In spite of their shared interest in abundant housing, the socialist YIMBYs and capitalist YIMBYs are never going to agree on the means to the end.
The best first step is something both sides claim to support: getting rid of the local regulatory barriers that are preventing anyone from building a granny flat, a townhouse, a duplex, etc.
Legalize housing and lets see where that takes us.
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Get up. Start work. End work. Eat dinner. Get a few things done. Sleep. Rinse and repeat.
Sometimes it can feel like weeks, months, or even years, fly by without feeling like much has happened.
As a time management coach, I help clients make many tasks in life automatic so that they can accomplish more in less time and with less effort. To optimize our efficiency and effectiveness, routine is a necessary part of our lives. The only issue is when youre so systematized that youre not fully experiencing the joy and meaning in your life. Youre just checking things off the list.
But what if there could be some simple, accessible ways to slow down the passage of time and fully engage in your life? Im here to offer you good news: There are.
With these three simple tricks, you can start to feel like youre experiencing your days instead of speeding through them.
Savor the Little Things
Lifes simple, everyday moments can be incredibly satisfying, if you let them. But so often, were rushing through an activity or multitasking through it so much so that it simply passes us by.
Researchers encourage mindful attention where you take notice of whats happening in familiar experiences to sensitize yourself to the joy they offer.
Ive found that some small, intentional choices can make a big difference in my life. One ritual that Ive incorporated when the weather is nice is to sit outside during lunch and eat without doing anything else in particular. This little break to just stop and notice the grass, the trees, the flowers, the birds, and anything else around me helps me to fully experience the beauty of the season.
Another choice that Ive made is when I hold my daughter at night before bed to keep my phone away from me. Its not a very long timejust about 10 minutesbefore I lay her down in her crib for the night. Although the time is short, I find its some of the moments that I stop and appreciate the gift of her precious life the most. Shes growing so quickly, and I dont want to miss out on enjoying my daughter because Im doing something else while Im with her or always trying to head on to the next activity.
How about you? Is there an area where you could stop multitasking and more fully enjoy the precious moments around you?
Sprinkle in Novelty
Another way to extend the feeling of time is to sprinkle in dashes of the out-of-the-ordinary that break up your routine. When youre only doing your habits, your brain blends together the experiences from day-to-day. But when you do something distinctive, you experience the novelty effect where your brain has a higher state of attention and stores the experience as a separate and distinct memory.
This could look like signing up to attend larger events like going to a new work conference or taking a vacation to explore a different locale. Or you can add in novelty in much smaller ways throughout your weeks to help you feel like life isnt passing by in a blur.
On the professional side, small moments of novelty could look like adding in some networking lunches or events where you connect with new people and see new places. Or it could look like learning a new skill that you havent tried your hand at before. Or it could look like setting up your computer at a new coworking space or coffee shop.
On the personal side, you could attend a local festival instead of watching Netflix, check out a new restaurant in town instead of going to the place where youre a regular, or try out a new workout class instead of going to the one youve attended for years.
Its completely fineand even goodto have routines and do standard things you enjoy. But mixing up your experience every once in a while can help you slow down your subjective experience of time.
Is there some novel experience you could insert in your life this week?
Stop Trying to Keep Up
In a time not so long ago or far away, there were no smartphones, no apps, and no streaming services. And life was well, good.
Another way to slow down time is to take away the pressure that just because you could do something that you should. Just because someone you follow posted something doesnt mean you need to read it. Just because some major world event is happening doesnt mean you need to be an expert on it. Just because a new season of a show came out that you like doesnt mean you need to watch it nowor ever.
Most of the content created in the world is entirely optional for you to read or consume. Letting go of the need to engage 24/7 can dramatically increase your feeling of being relaxed and like you have more time.
In my personal life, Ive placed boundaries on social media use. I dont even have accounts on some social media apps, and for the ones where I do engage, I try to limit myself to a few times a week. When I get the itch to engage more often, I try to pick up a book instead. Its a lot more satisfying to get through a relevant book than to scroll endlessly through a feed.
Do you pressure yourself to keep up on content where you dont have an actual responsibility to engage? If so, how could you lower your standards to open up more time and space to just be?
A lot of life is routine. Thats not a bad thing. But by trying out these strategies, you can slow down your perception of time and experience deeper satisfaction in the moments.
Not long ago, leaders largely steered clear of the rough-and-tumble of politics. They inhabited a culture of impartiality, and for the most part stayed in their lane, rising now and then when called upon to offer observations about their specific sectors.
Those times are over.
We now live in an era of CEO activism, where shareholders, employees, and consumers expect corporate leaders to take a stand on issues far beyond their core industryissues like immigration, DEI, or gender rights.
Whereas before, hardly anyone outside of their industry could pick a chief executives out of a lineup, todays business leaders from Howard Schultz to Bill Gates to Elon Musk are household names, with the ability to influence public discourseand policywith a single tweet.
For a business, there are distinct advantages to taking a political stand. At the same time, there is a fine line between brand enhancement and brand destruction. In this climate, how can a leader be transparent about her or his belief system without alienating anyone?
Rewards and Risks
First, its hard, if not impossible, to reveal your belief system without alienating someone. Its almost a given: audiences and stakeholders these days may demand a political stand, but they can also be thin-skinned and easily offended when they dont agree with that stand.
For the leader, the key is to avoid alienating significant portions of the constituencies and stakeholders responsible for the companys ultimate success: shareholders, employees, and consumers.
When it comes to affiliating openly with a political figure or party, there can be advantages, such as privileged access and perhaps the ability to favorably influence policy direction. That said, there are also risks. Some of them are obvious: political fortunes are volatile, and public opinion is fickle, both of which can spell trouble for an aligned business. Political leaders have many priorities, and can shift their own positions on a dime, leaving a company that has publicly pledged allegiance with a case of whiplash. They are also prone to scandal, leaving aligned brands exposed to public outrage.
Moreover, while there are certainly dangers in speaking out, silence can also have negative consequences in the public eye.
Its important to realize that political parties, personalities, even movements come and go. Leaders are in this for the long haul; they should want their company to prosper for more than one election cycle.
Recent events demonstrate the power of public opinion. The Trump administrations executive orders against diversity and inclusion initiatives split the business communities. Target rushed to align with the new directives, but Costco remained true to its own DEI stance. As a result, consumers punished Target and rewarded Costco.
Staying true to the core
Remember that politicians are paid to be politicians. Executives are not. Leaders are paid to ensure a company grows and prospers far into the future. That might mean rubbing elbows with those in power, or even contributing to campaigns, but it does not have to mean selling the soul of your identity, i.e. politicizing the brand or dragging a companys image (along with you) for the sake of a small short-term advantage. Reputations are hard to rebuild, and customers, once lost, are hard to reclaim.
While a leaders personal beliefs may inform actions both private and professional, there are a few basic principles that can act as guardrails, providing the freedom to be transparent while preventing the leaders viewpoints and actions from creating conflicts and harming the companys fortunes.
1. Focus on values, not politics
Nobody expects an executive and a workforce of thousands to agree on every issue. But a leader can set the tone by emphasizing core organizational values rather than personal political opinions. Companies are strongest when they articulate and consistently adhere to a clear set of valuesregardless of shifting political winds.
2. Tie beliefs to business mission
As a leader, you are a steward of your companys missionnot a political spokesperson. If your personal convictions align with your businesss purpose, express them in a way that supports that mission. If they dont, reflect on whether your current role aligns with your values. A CEO thrives when personal belief and business purpose reinforce one another.
3. Build credibility through consistency
While political trends are fickle, brand trust is built over time. Consumers reward companies that consistently uphold their stated commitmentswhether to sustainability, product quality, or inclusion. Consistency is credibility.
4. Respect dissent, invite dialogue
Foster a culture where respectful disagreement is welcome. Employees should feel safe expressing differing opinions without fear of retaliation. Provide spacesforums, listening sessions, anonymous feedback toolsfor difficult conversations to happen constructively. Diversity of thought is a strength, not a liability.
5. Be strategic
If you choose to speak out, do so with intention. Consult your communications team, evaluate stakeholder impact, and conduct a risk-benefit analysis. As Harvard Business Review contributors Aaron Chatterji and Michael W. Toffel advise: Select issues carefully, reflect on the best times and approaches to get involved, consider the potential for backlash, and measure results.
Whos doing it right?
A number of well-known CEOs have made a point of voicing their beliefs, and have not suffered for it. On the contrary, they have developed a leadership style that manages to be both values-informed and advantageous from a business standpoint.
1. Satya Nadella (Microsoft). Nadella openly discusses empathy and his Hindu faith, speaking often of caring for his son with special needs. He is upfront about his personal values of humility and purpose, but does not impose these upon the firm directly, emphasizing instead organizational culture and customer impact. Under his watch, Microsoft has quadrupled its market capitalization.
2. Dan Schulman (former CEO, PayPal). Schulman has been vocal in support of social justice and economic inclusion, which he links to his personal Jewish ethical values. PayPal pulled out of North Carolina to protest anti-LGBTQ legislation, a move that was criticized by the right but rewarded by stakeholders, with shareholder returns remaining strong.
3. Rose Marcario (former CEO, Patagonia). Markarios Buddhist beliefs and environmental ethics were strongly aligned with Patagonias corporate mission. So when the company sued the Trump administration over its intention to dismantle and sell off national monuments, it mobilized the companys core outdoor audience and strengthened the brand, with increases in both consumer loyalty and profits.
4. Ken Frazier (former CEO, Merck). In 2017, Frazier resigned from President Trumps American Manufacturing Council following the administrations tepid response to the white supremacist marches and ensuing violence in Charlottesville, Virginia. Fraziers action was see as deeply principled, and Mercks shareholder value was not damaged. Other CEOs (UnderArmour, Intel, et al) followed suit, in part because Fraziers action created a public demand for moral leadership.
Finding balance
In the end, leaders must balance their own need to reveal their personal beliefs with the greater good of the organization. This is both an internal and external journey that requires a high degree of reflection as well as an appreciation for the complexity of the company and its role in both the market and society.
Its an extremely challenging time to be a leader, but also an exciting one.
One of the best predictors of your happiness at work is whether you have colleagues that you are close with. You dont necessarily need to be friends with your colleaguesthat is, you may not want to hang out with them outside of workbut you do want to have people you feel you can talk with and share your experiences.
Unfortunately, many people feel like they dont have anyone at work that they know well at all. Workplaces have gotten more efficient, and so there is less time for people to engage in small talk that solidifies their relationships with others. In addition, even at workplaces where everyone is working on-site, there are still many meetings done via videoconference, so it is hard to connect with your colleagues before or after to say a few words.
If youre feeling lonely at work, there are a few things you can do.
Make space and time for relationships
Developing better relationships with your colleagues may seem like a waste of time, but it isnt. Not only does it help to predict workplace satisfaction, but having close colleagues also helps to build trust.
Some amount of trust building involves demonstrating to people that you will carry out tasks that you promised and do your work well. But, a lot of trust is built through relationship development. You tend to trust people you know well. When you let people in on details of your life, youre showing some vulnerability, which also builds trust.
Indeed, when you think about it, the people you are closest to in your life are people you share a lot of your life with. They know what you like, what you want, and what you have done. They have shared good times and bad. That sharing influences trust in the workplace as well, and so it is valuable to set aside some time to build your relationships with others.
Take some initiative
When youre feeling lonely at work, you may also feel rejected by others. You may look around and see other people having conversations and wonder why nobody has talked with you. You might even start to wonder if there is something wrong with you that is preventing other people from wanting to engage with you.
Rather than wallowing in the feeling that you dont deserve to be close to your colleagues, do something about it. Invite a colleague for coffee or lunch. Bring in pictures of your kids, pets, plants, or the products of your hobbies. Create chances for people to get to know you better.
Over the years, I have collected and built a variety of Lego models. I have brought the finished models to my office, and I display them there. They are there in part because I think they are fun. But, they are also here to generate conversations when people come to my office. It creates a light moment to talk about something unrelated to work that builds my relationship with colleagues. It is a small thing, but I think it has an impact.
Build a group
For many people, it can be awkward to try to build relationships with one person at a time. If youre socially awkward, you may not want to have sustained conversations but you would still like to feel that youre part of a team.
In that case, you might want to find or start a group at work that gets together on occasion around an activity to build a community. Use lunch hours once or twice a month to start a book club or take time before or after the workday to do a volunteer effort. A group that has a common goal is a great way to feel connected to your team. That spirit can feed back on the workplace.
Constructing a group like this is different than the traditional team building activity that workplaces often create. Those activities are often forced on a group. They are done once. They may be fun, but they dont create anything sustaining. The groups I am suggesting are intended to persist over time to develop a set of relationships and lay down a collection of memories that ultimately create a more cohesive workplace.
