Its a tough time to be an adult online in the U.K. right now. Last week’s passage of the Online Safety Act, a law aimed at shielding children from inappropriate (read: adult) content, has brought about a version of the internet that feels more like being back in school. You now essentially need a hall pass, in the form of official ID or a live selfie, to go almost anywhere.
The U.K. government clearly aimed the Online Safety Act at restricting access to porn websites. But the laws broad requirementsespecially around age verification and content moderationare sweeping up other parts of the web, too.
Because of this, its a great time to be a VPN provider. Usage of these services, which route traffic through other countries to disguise a users location and prevent tracking, has jumped more than 1,000% in the days following the acts passage.
Its no wonder VPN downloads soared in the U.K. over the weekend, says Kate Ruane, director of the Free Expression Project at the Center for Democracy & Technology. Privacy and free expression are human rights, and governments should protect them by passing laws to enhance peoples privacy and free expression rights, not endanger them.
Theres growing concern that the new rules are causing more harm than they prevent. In trying to keep children away from harmful content, the government may have inadvertently pushed tensor even hundredsof thousands of people toward tools that make lawful tracking and oversight far more difficult. Critics argue the implementation has been more performative than effective, with little meaningful enforcement behind the measures.
Even those who represent VPN providers are surprised by the sudden surge in interest. The surge in VPN usage weve observed across the U.K. is a direct response to the Online Safety Acts extensive controls and age verification requirements, says Alexey Kozliuk, chair of the VPN Guild, an industry group.
VPNs remain legal in the U.K., but their sudden rise in popularity appears to have taken the government by surprise. Officials are reportedly considering restrictions on advertising the services. While VPNs can offer a layer of privacy, not all are trustworthyespecially free options, which may come with risks like data tracking, harvesting, or malware. Users should look for transparent privacy policies, a strict no-logs policy, robust encryption, and a proven track record, Kozliuk says.
Cybersecurity experts share that concern. The purported benefit of protecting private data by avoiding submission to a third-party age verifier is compromised if instead they entrust another third party with their browsing data, says George Loukas, professor of cybersecurity at the University of Greenwich. Of course, there is a variety of more and less reputable VPNs with and without no-logs policies, but I insist that VPNs should be used as cybersecurity tools, not for circumvention of restrictions, he adds.
Graeme Stewart, head of public sector at Check Point Software, notes that the U.K.s rush to VPNsand the governments potential pushbackputs the country in dubious company alongside China, Russia, and Iran. That should tell you everything, he says. People are turning to VPNs because they dont trust the system, and who can blame them?
This summer’s best evening light show is taking place tonight, so don’t forget to go outside and look up. Although the Perseid meteor shower doesn’t peak until next month, tonight is forecast to be the best time to view stars shoot across the night sky. Here’s why, and what to know about the upcoming meteor showers.
What is a meteor shower?
Meteor showers, or shooting stars, occur as Earth passes through the trail of dusty debris left by a comet, according to NASA. Meteor showers are usually named after a star or constellation close to where the meteors first appear.
What’s happening tonight?
Late each summer, the Perseids, and the lesser-known Delta Aquariids, meteor showers appear. This year, they’re forecast to run steadily from late July through early August.
The first of the showers, the Southern Delta Aquariid and the Alpha Capricornids, are set to peak tonight, Tuesday, July 29, into tomorrow morning, Wednesday, July 30, according to the Associated Press.
Visibility should be good because the moon is only about a quarter full, and sky-watchers could see some 20 to 30 meteors per hour, astronomer Nick Moskovitz of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona told National Public Radio.
Perseid meteor shower set to peak in early August
Meanwhile, the Perseid meteor shower is forecast to peak on Tuesday, August 12, into Wednesday, August 13, right after a full moon, meaning bright moonlight will likely obscure the view at its peak.
NASA viewing tips for meteor showers
Our friends at NASA offer these general tips for watching meteor showers:
Find a viewing spot away from city or street lights.
Lie flat on your back with your feet facing east. You may want to bring a blanket or a lounge chair.
Look up, taking in as much of the sky as possible. After about 30 minutes in the dark, your eyes will adapt and you will begin to see meteors.
Be patient. The show could last awhile, so you have plenty of time to catch a glimpse.
Ancestry has acquired the home-movies-and-photos digitizer service iMemories, a bet by the genealogy company that subscribers who spend their money on DNA kits and pour their time into building family trees will be further enticed by visual storytelling that weaves all those details together.
The transaction will combine Ancestry, which has more than 3.7 million subscribers and generates over $1 billion in subscription revenue annually, with iMemories, the Netflix of old family memories that has more than 100,000 paying subscribers and has digitized over 100 million memories from VHS videotapes, photo prints, DVDs, and other video formats. IMemories was also featured on the 2023 list of Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies.
The goal is to bring all family storytelling together into one spot, says Howard Hochhauser, Ancestrys president and CEO, in an interview with Fast Company.
Terms of the transaction werent disclosed, although Hochhauser says it is Ancestrys largest acquisition in terms of revenue.
Blending records with memories
By integrating iMemories’ content into Ancestrys platform, the combined company will build on a strategy spearheaded by Hochhauser to connect 10,000 terabytes of Ancestry data detailing birth records, marriages, deaths, military service, and immigration with archival family photos and videos.
Over time, Ancestry says it will utilize artificial intelligence to weave together visuals from iMemories and Ancestrys own bank of user-uploaded content, as well as AI-created images, to produce short films that can tell family lore stories.
When a consumer sees a photo versus say, a U.S. census, they retain better, higher engagement, higher retention, says Hochhauser, who first joined Ancestry in 2009 as chief financial officer and has served as an executive at the company for an initial public offering in 2009, a going-private transaction in 2012, and the 2020 sale to asset manager Blackstone.
Turning dusty records into audio
This week, and separate from the iMemories transaction, Ancestry is launching a beta AI-enabled pilot to around 500 users that can create audio files from the documents found on Ancestry. Hochhauser says these assets can be especially compelling for younger consumers. He shares an anecdote of how his own 18-year-old son showed little interest in an ancestors written tale of fighting in World War II.
But when the text was converted into audio, Hochhauser says his son was on the edge of his seat when learning about a great uncles experience in battle, including throwing grenades and eventually earning a Purple Heart. Thats pretty powerful, Hochhauser says. And so thats the direction we are taking the company.
Hochhauser says prior to the iMemories deal, Ancestry conducted research that found that 40% of its users said they wanted to have a digitization and storage service offered by the company. It also polled non-Ancestry users and found that a third of them shared the same sentiment.
AI is speeding up history
Ancestry is also leaning on AI to speed up the process of digitizing census data. Thirteen years ago, in 2012, when the U.S. Census Bureau released records for every living person in the country for the year 1940, it took the company nine months and millions of dollars to digitize all of that information. But when the 1950 files were released in 2022, technology had advanced to the point where Ancestry could use computer vision and AI to transcribe the files within nine days, without any manual labor.
The company is using AI in a similar manner to comb through records from France, Belgium, and other foreign markets.
Privacy concerns loom large
The Ancestry-iMemories transaction does come at a heightened moment of consumer anxiety concerning the data protection of personal DNA information held by genomics companies. The 2023 data breach of rival 23andMe, which later fell into bankruptcy, inflamed fears about who would gain control of genetic information when one of these genealogy companies falters.
People’s confidence has been shaken, in Big Tech overall, and also in consumer genomics, says Dr. Brandon Colby, the founder and CEO of Sequencing.com, a biotech company that performs whole genome sequencing. The need to be extra obvious about transparency is really important. There’s no room for people to go and assume that we’re trying to do something shady.
Sequencing stresses the companys Privacy Forever commitment to consumers, which details that it sells no data to pharmaceutical companies, government agencies, or other outside parties, which is how some genomics companies generate revenue. Colby says Sequencing generates revenue from monthly subscriptions and by selling reports it produces based on genome sequencing that can show consumers details about their reaction to medications or offer tips on better sleep or nutrition strategies.
Hochhauser echoes a similar refrain at Ancestry. Users control their own biological samples and DNA data, and have the freedom to delete that information from the service if theyd like. The same approach will be taken with the AI-related content that may be generated from iMemories data. It is up to users how they want to share it, he says.
We are a family history company, Hochhauser says. Consumers own their data, control their data, and we have multifactor authentication, as an example, and lots of different security protocols in place to protect and preserve data.
Seated across a table from me at a rented loft near Wall Street in late July, Beyond Meat CEO Ethan Brown is digging into a bowl of Beyond Ground, his companys latest product, which debuts July 29, goes on sale via the company’s website in August, and promises more protein per serving than beef. But this isnt just any product demo; its a company overhaul.
With this launch, Beyond Meat is becoming merely Beyond and turning its focus away from mimicking animal proteins to letting plant-based proteins speak for themselves. The radical move is cultural, agricultural, and financial, and Brown wasnt shy in discussing how Beyond now lets the company compete across the grocery store, teasing what products hes developing, explaining how Silicon Valley money helped shape the public’s ambivalence toward alt meat, and sharing how studying Roman gladiators has influenced Beyonds new direction.
Brown, who started the company in 2009 and took it public in a celebrated 2019 IPO, is so committed to Beyonds rebrand and its new product that he has been consuming Beyond Grounds main ingredientfava beansas his primary source of daily calories. I gotta let my body be my argument, he says, riffing on a famous quote by physician-philosopher Albert Schweitzer that greets Beyond employees who open the company manual.
In an era when protein is suddenly being stuffed into everythingfrom chips to waffles to sodasBrown says he began to wonder: If youre the best in the world at making plant proteins, why confine yourself to the center of the plate?
Without pressure to mimic the exact flavors and textures of beef, chicken, or pork, and without being limited to the center of the plate, or to the dinner table at all, he realized Beyond could get fanatical about the plant proteins themselves. And that will be why people reach for the Beyond brand, he predicts. Not for a facsimile, but something authentically us.
The company won’t be sunsetting its existing products anytime soon. And last summer it debuted a line of Sun Sausages that was already a step in the veggie-forward direction.
But now, for the first time in Beyonds history, it is offering a product that is stripped down to four clean ingredients: the fava beans, potato starch, water, and psyllium huskfiber from a desert herb prized for its ability to help control cholesterol, blood sugar, and, most crucially, protein absorption. A 1/4-pound serving of Beyond Ground contains 140 calories, 4 grams of fiber, 1.5 grams of fat, zero cholesterol and saturated fat, and no added oils. It has 27 grams of protein, more than a serving of beef.
From Beyond Meat to ‘Beyond’
Beyond Meat launched a new industry in 2009 in order to leverage the magic of science to serve plant proteins that would not only taste like burgers and chicken nuggets, but actually surpass them in health and sustainability. Two years later, Impossible Burger surfaced and became its chief rival, initiating a race to offer vegans and everyone else hoping to eat less meat the most satisfying alternative at cookouts across the country. Their burgers bled, whereas companies before them (Quorn, Gardein, MorningStar Farms) sold vegetable patties that had corn kernels poking out or looked like Spam.
For a decade, the burgers, chicken, ground beef, meatballs, and sausages from these two companies filled grocery meat aisles and restaurant chain menusfirst in America, then slowly overseas. But lately sales have fallen, causing a different new period for the category generally and Beyond in particular, as the sole publicly traded player. Worth almost $12 billion following its 2019 IPO, Beyonds valuation has hovered at or below $500 million since 2023. Impossible Burger has raised close to $2 billion to date; CEO Peter McGuiness told the Wall Street Journal last month that the company is not yet profitable.
Several factors have contributed to the broader sectors declineproduct fatigue, taste expectations going unmet, questions about processed ingredients. Impossible Foodss McGuinness, whos taken flak from vegans since warning a month ago that, to drum up more business, I may do a hybrid burger thats 50% beef, believes that the alt-meat industry has done a lousy job with outreach, describing their messagings premise as equating to If you ate meat, you were a Neanderthal and adding: We were insulting meat eaters.
But one theory he shares with Brown, and one I previously wrote extensively about for Fast Company, is that two of Americas most powerful industriesmeatpackers and the pharmaceutical giantsfelt so threatened by the categorys quick rise that they stoked fears about plant-based burgers posing health risks, and it kind of worked. (Big Pharmas interests boil down to the fact that farm animals receive well over half of all human antibiotics produced.) Attack ads blasting vegan meat products as ultra-processed imitations, asking if they differed from dog food, and arguing they contained chemicals that doubled as laxatives went viral as Instagram and TikTok memes.
But Brown also points one finger backwards, partway at least. After grabbing Silicon Valleys attention, he says the plant-based meat category morphed into “something that was different from its origins. He says hes grateful, because we received a lot of funding, but Beyonds raison dtre quickly evolved into more of a lab thing and a technology thing.
To develop Beyond Meats inaugural productdubbed Chicken-Free StripsBrown worked closely with the leading agriculture departments at the University of Missouri and the University of Maryland, two big land-grant universities. He also built rapports with farmers in the Midwest and Saskatchewan. But once the fake chicken started fooling Mark Bittman, investors from Bill Gates to Ev Williams and Biz Stone started doling out money to scale the disruptive technology. Ultimately, Brown says, it diverted consumers focus from [the realization that Beyonds plant-based meat] is closer to the field than the factory-farmed ingredients they’re used to eating.
The irony is that, despite so much doubt being cast on alt-meat ingredients, the way people eat toay is, if anything, more prepackaged and tech-addled than ever. And thats why Brown believes this moment is just right for Beyonds redemption arc. He says his epiphany ranks among the most profound discoveries hes made in life, driving him to invoke Albert Schweitzer yet again, this time the passage Schweitzer wrote in Africa following a freak hippopotamus encounter that led to an “iron door” of understanding opening that showed him the path forward.
The younger crowd might just call it a surge of galaxy-brain clarity. I thought, What were great at is making protein, he tells me. So, instead of thinking about a simple replacement for animal protein, what if you just thought about your daily protein consumption, and I started to try to replace as much of that as I can with plant protein, any form that I could?
Enter the gladiators
Fava beans, Brown says, are just the start. If you want something thats a ground product, here you have it, Brown says. (Beyond says three flavors will join the original variety in August: chipotle pineapple, Korean barbecue, and Tuscan tomato. The main product by itself is very neutral, reports Chris Petrellese, who runs Sweet Simple Vegan with his wife, Jasmine Briones and tested an early sample; he made it the star of a casserole and could imagine it being dehydrated into jerky or even blended it into smoothies.)
Going forward, Brown says, the company can serve an occasion versus trying to mimic an animal. Youll see us come out with things like, maybe, lentil sausage. Or chickpea hot dogs.
Brown hints at a specific new product that hes labored to develop for a while now but wont reveal: a packaged good totally unlike Beyonds previous offerings, destined for grocery store center aisles instead of the meat case. It boasts 30 grams of protein per serving and no fat, and Brown devours the product constantly (calling it cr-r-r-razy good).
Beyond is all but certain to pursue a post-workout product, something Brown seems to tease as we worked through our Beyond Ground tasting. He stresses how much reading hes done lately on Roman gladiators. And then, while rattling off the agronomic virtues of fava beanshow theyre good nitrogen fixers, dont require fertilizer, and regenerative by defaulthe lets slide that they also have this amazing and romantic [link to] gladiators!
It turns out that bone analysis has revealed that Romes elite athletes ate a mostly vegetarian dietof fava beans, red lentils, and barley. That a decadent, ill-fated society cheered as these powerful warriors fell in the amphitheater surely widens their underdog appeal.
As Brown requests an extra bowl of Beyond Ground to consume by itself during the tasting, I note that he himself fits the part as someone whos 6-foot-5 and fit. He once told Mens Health he enjoys bench press because theres an element of not being sure you can do it.
The rise in recent years of fitness culture, wellness marketing, and protein-forward products has propelled a pivot from three square meals a day toward what are often called intentional eating occasionspost-workout recovery snacks, meal-replacement shakes, even intentionally not eating (for 18:6, the Warrior Diet, etc.). A whole generation is learning to pick foods based on their function and ratio of macros, meaning the strategic tally of fat to carbs to seemingly exponentially more protein, playing to what the New York Times recently called retails protein arms race.
For Brown, this represents an opportunity to claim new territory. He argues that the crowd craving red meat, collagen keto snacks, and extra-protein milkmaybe with a side of tradwifeis chasing a false nostalgia for a natural America that has been undone by industrial agriculture.
In his view, it was a Big Meat/Big Pharma industrial complex that killed the same agrarian ideal people believe they’re tapping into when they purchase a bag of bison liver chips. Theres a longing for animal protein because we associate it with simpler times, Brown says. But how its being delivered to us is not [simple]. He is positioning Beyond as far as possible from an agricultural system that has shown itself willing to decimate the land, reengineer the livestock, and market the outcome as something pure and authentic.
Magic beans
As Beyond repositions itself to be an anytime protein source, its poised to compete directly against a new generation of recovery snack brands. Market research firm Mintel has said from 2013 to 2024, the number of food and beverage products carrying a high protein label quadrupled. A new survey released by Bain, titled Peak Protein? Not Even Close, found that 44% of Americans want to increase their protein intake even furthera 10-point jump from 2024.
Recently valued at $725 million, Davidco-created by RXBars founder and relentlessly plugged by podcaster Andrew Hubermanhas released a new product that is nothing but raw, frozen cod, sold in $50 four-packs, perhaps as a dramatic way of proving how well its popular bars stack up in terms of protein content. The presumed stunt shows how companies are scrambling for consumer attention. Brown is unfazed.
Right now, the protein industry largely consists of one product category created for the clean-eating protein purists who reject fake food and carefully scour labels, and a second category for the protein-maxxers who, in a single day, might devour Kodiak Frozen Power Waffles (12 grams of protein), Wilde chicken-breast chips (13 grams), a Bucked Up protein soda (25 grams), and a Fairlife Core Power shake (26 grams). The fewest number of ingredients that any of these products contains is 10and thats the soda. The highest number is 28. Among them are gums, gels, and substances such as bovine collagen hydrolysate and acesulfame potassium.
Yet a third group is emerging that wants clean, thoughtful high-protein ingredients of the sort Beyond just relaunched to focus on. The companys fava beans actually come from one family farm in Munich, North Dakota. Five generations of Zimmers have worked this land. Just last week, Brown stood with them amid their fava rows. He called up a photo for me to see. That field used to have cattle, he says, gesturing to the tableau of green now sprouting up in all directions. Then he segues into the wolves, bison, and elk that were wiped from these plains, casualties of an extractive farming style farming that in turn helped trigger the Dust Bowl.
Later, Brown puts it more directly in an email. We can restore nature, he writes. But first we have to give it a chance to live again.
The U.S. has an important choice to make regarding agriculture.
It can import more people to pick crops and do other kinds of agricultural labor, it can raise wages enough to lure more U.S. citizens and immigrants with legal status to take these jobs, or it can import more food. All three options contradict key Trump administration priorities: reducing immigration, keeping prices low and importing fewer goods and services.
The big tax-and-spending bill President Donald Trump signed into law on July 4, 2025, included US$170 billion to fund the detention and deportation of those living in the U.S. without authorization. And about 1 million of them work in agriculture, accounting for more than 40% of all farmworkers.
As the detention and deportation of undocumented immigrants ramps up, one emerging solution is to replace at least some deported farmworkers with foreigners who are given special visas that allow them to help with the harvest but require them to go home after their visas expire.
Such guest worker programs have existed for decades, leading to todays H-2A visa program. As of 2023, more than 310,000 foreigners, around 13% of the nations 2.4 million farmworkers, were employed through this program. About 90% of the foreign workers with these visas come from Mexico, and nearly all are men. The states where the largest numbers of them go are California, Florida, Georgia and Washington.
As a professor of Latin American politics and U.S.-Latin American relations, I teach my students to consider the difficult trade-offs that governments face. If the Trump administration removes a significant share of the immigrants living in the U.S. without legal permission from the agricultural labor force to try to meet its deportation goals, farm owners will have few options.
Few options available
First, farm owners could raise wages and improve working conditions enough to attract U.S. citizens and immigrants who are legal permanent residents or otherwise in the U.S. with legal status.
But many agricultural employers say they cant find enough people to hire who can legally work at least without higher wages and much-improved job requirements. Without any undocumented immigrant farmworkers, the prices of U.S.-sourced crops and other agricultural products would spike, creating an incentive for more food to be imported.
Second, farm owners could employ fewer people. That would require either growing different crops that require less labor or becoming more reliant on machinery to plant and harvest. But that would mean the U.S. could have to import more food. And automation for some crops is very expensive. For others, such as for berries, its currently impossible.
Its also possible that some farm owners could put their land to other uses, ceasing production, but that would also necessitate more imported food.
Trump administrations suggested fixes
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins has predicted that farm owners will soon find plenty of U.S. citizens to employ.
She declared on July 8 that the new Medicaid work requirements included in the same legislative package as the immigration enforcement funds would encourage huge numbers of U.S. citizens to start working in the fields instead of losing their health insurance through that government program.
Farm trade groups say this scenario is far-fetched.
For one thing, most adults enrolled in the Medicaid program who can work already do. Many others are unable to do so due to disabilities or caregiving obligations.
Few people enrolled in Medicaid live close enough to a farm to work at one, and even those who do arent capable of doing farmwork. When farm owners tried putting people enrolled in a welfare program to work in the fields in the 1990s, it failed. Another experiment in the 1960s, which deployed teenagers, didnt pan out either because the teens found the work too hard.
It seems more likely that farm owners will try to hire many more foreign farmworkers to do temporary but legal jobs through the H-2A program.
Although he has not made it an official policy, Trump seems to be moving toward this same conclusion.
In June, for example, Trump said his administration was working on some kind of a temporary pass for immigrants lacking authorization to be in the U.S. who are working on farms and in hotels.
Established in 1952, numbers now rising quickly
The guest worker system, established in 1952 and revised significantly in 1986, has become a mainstay of U.S.agriculture because it offers important benefits to both the farm owners who need workers and the foreign workers they hire.
There is no cap on the number of potential workers. The number of H-2A visas issued is based only on how many employers request them. Farm owners may apply for visas after verifying that they are unable to locate enough workers who are U.S. citizens or present in the U.S. with authorization.
To protect U.S. workers, the government mandates that H-2A workers earn an adverse effect wage rate. The Labor Department sets that hourly wage, which ranges from $10.36 in Puerto Rico to about $15 in several southern states, to more than $20 in California, Alaska and Hawaii. These wages are set at relatively high levels to avoid putting downward pressure on what other U.S. workers are paid for the same jobs.
After certification, farm owners recruit workers in a foreign country who are offered a contract that includes transportation from their home country and a trip back assuming they complete the contract.
The program provides farm owners with a short-term labor force. It guarantees the foreign workers who obtain H-2A visas relatively high wages, as well as housing in the U.S. That combination has proven increasingly popular in recent years: The annual number of H-2A visas rose to 310,700 in 2023, a more than fivefold increase since 2010.
Possible downsides
Boosting the number of agricultural guest workers would help fill some gaps in the agricultural labor force and reduce the risk of crops going unharvested. But it seems clear to me that a sudden change would pose risks for workers and farm owners alike.
Workers would be at risk because oversight of the H-2A program has historically been weak. Despite that lax track record, some unscrupulous farmers have been fined or barred from participating in the H-2A program because of unpaid wages and other abuses.
Relying even more on guest farmworkers than the U.S. does today would also swap workers who have built lives and families north of the border with people who are in the U.S. on a temporary basis. Immigration opponents are unlikely to object to this trade-off, but to immigrant rights groups, this arrangement would be cruel and unfair to workers with years of service behind them.
Whats more, the workers with guest visas can be at risk of exploitation and abuse. In 2022, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Georgia described conditions for H-2A workers at an onion farm the government had investigated as modern-day slavery.
For farm owners, the downside of ramping up guest worker programs is that it could increase costs and make production less efficient and more costly. Thats because transporting Mexican farmworkers back and forth each year is complicated and expensive. Farm groups say that compliance with H-2A visa requirements is cumbersome. It can be particularly difficult for small farms to participate in this program.
Some farm owners have objected to the costs of employing H-2A workers. Rollins has said that the Trump administration believes that the mandatory wages are too high.
To be sure, these problems arent limited to agriculture. Hotels, restaurants and other hospitality businesses, which rely heavily on undocumented workers, can also temporarily employ some foreigners through the H-2B visa program which is smaller than the H-2A program, limits the number of visas issued and is available only for jobs considered seasonal.
Home health care providers and many other kinds of employers who rely on people who cant legally work for them could also struggle. But so far, there is no temporary visa program available to help them fill those gaps.
If the U.S. does deport millions of workers, the price of tomatoes, elder care, restaurant meals and roof repairs would probably rise substantially. A vast increase in the number of guest workers is a potential but partial solution, but it would multiply problems that are inherent in these temporary visa programs.
Scott Morgenstern is a professor of political science at the University of Pittsburgh.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The complexities and controversies of workplace romances are well knowntheyre the topic of countless sitcom jokes, and we bet you can certainly recall a salty saying or two about the often ill-advised practice. And, of course, the whole topic just splashed across the headlines when two senior executives from the startup Astronomer, both married to other people, were caught on a kiss cam at a Coldplay concert.
But data from a recent survey shows that many workers, even though theyre aware of the emotional and professional risks of workplace relationships, just cant seem to keep their hands off each other.
Zety, a Polish online résumé company, surveyed over 1,000 U.S. workers as part of its Modern Workplace Romance Report, Newsweek notes. The data on workplace romances is startling: 79% of respondents said theyd had long-term workplace romances. Thats nearly eight in 10 peopletake a glance around your office and see if the gossip youve heard lines up with this stat. More concerningly, since it raises numerous ethical issues, 32% of people said theyd dated a boss or superior.
86% of people in the survey also think the surge of hybrid and remote working driven by the pandemic has made it easier for work-based romances to happen possibly because theres less risk of being seen by co-workers if youre simply not in the office. And 94% of respondents also said emojis and GIF files were a boon for workplace flirting, while 79% said theyd bungled sending flirty contacts by sending them to the wrong person.
Perhaps the most obvious statistic in the Zety survey is nonetheless interesting simply because of the giant figure involved: 91% of U.S. workers said theyd used flirting or charm to boost their position at work. Thats over nine in 10 people, most likely including folks in your office.
Newsweek also quotes data from a different survey, from anonymous workplace chat app Blind, that found that among over 8,000 American respondents, human resources staff were the group most likely to have had workplace romances. Thats a curious piece of data, especially in context of a 2018 report that surveyed 150 HR executives, finding that one-third of office romances end with someone being fired.
Zetys data doesnt necessarily imply that workplace romances are illicit affairs of the caught-on-Coldplay-kiss-cam kind, of course, and neither does Blinds data. But some of the statistics should worry leaders of almost any company.
Conscious of the emotional disruption that workplace romances can cause, to say nothing of the legal complexities that may arise if a manager is accused of favoritism because theyre romantically involved with a subordinate, many workplaces have strict policies on the issue.
But, as the saying goes, love will find a way, and Zetys data shows that despite employers commonly banning or restricting workplace relationships, people just keep having them. Newsweek notes that an earlier survey by Resume Genius found 72% of people whove had workplace romances dont inform management or HR about them despite the Blind data on the romantic risks confessed by HR employees.
Many experts have penned pieces advising on the thorny matter of office romances (many with a simple dont do it! slant). But why should you care about this?
The Coldplay concert drama again turned a spotlight onto the issue of work relationships, which means it might be a good time to refresh your companys policies, and maybe even reissue them to your staff so theyre aware of whether relationships are permitted, or if they should notify managers of a relationship and so on.
But you may also not want to overreact: Some other recent data shows that fewer people are having work romances now than in previous decadespossibly echoing other research that shows the traditional workplace bestie is also a fading phenomenon.
By Kit Eaton
This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister publication, Inc.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
Pronatalismthe belief that low birth rates are a problem that must be reversedis having a moment in the U.S.
As birth rates decline in the U.S. and throughout the world, voices from Silicon Valley to the White House are raising concerns about what they say could be the calamitous effects of steep population decline on the economy. The Trump administration has said it is seeking ideas on how to encourage Americans to have more children as the U.S. experiences its lowest total fertility rate in history, down about 25% since 2007.
As demographers who study fertility, family behaviors, and childbearing intentions, we can say with certainty that population decline is not imminent, inevitable or necessarily catastrophic.
The population collapse narrative hinges on three key misunderstandings. First, it misrepresents what standard fertility measures tell us about childbearing and makes unrealistic assumptions that fertility rates will follow predictable patterns far into the future. Second, it overstates the impact of low birth rates on future population growth and size. Third, it ignores the role of economic policies and labor market shifts in assessing the impacts of low birth rates.
Fertility fluctuations
Demographers generally gauge births in a population with a measure called the total fertility rate. The total fertility rate for a given year is an estimate of the average number of children that women would have in their lifetime if they experienced current birth rates throughout their childbearing years.
Fertility rates are not fixedin fact, they have changed considerably over the past century. In the U.S., the total fertility rate rose from about 2 births per woman in the 1930s to a high of 3.7 births per woman around 1960. The rate then dipped below 2 births per woman in the late 1970s and 1980s before returning to 2 births in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Since the Great Recession that lasted from late 2007 until mid-2009, the U.S. total fertility rate has declined almost every year, with the exception of very small post-COVID-19 pandemic increases in 2021 and 2022. In 2024, it hit a record low, falling to 1.6. This drop is primarily driven by declines in births to people in their teens and early 20sbirths that are often unintended.
But while the total fertility rate offers a snapshot of the fertility landscape, it is not a perfect indicator of how many children a woman will eventually have if fertility patterns are in fluxfor example, if people are delaying having children.
Picture a 20-year-old woman today, in 2025. The total fertility rate assumes she will have the same birth rate as todays 40-year-olds when she reaches 40. Thats not likely to be the case, because birth rates 20 years from now for 40-year-olds will almost certainly be higher than they are today, as more births occur at older ages and more people are able to overcome infertility through medically assisted reproduction.
A more nuanced picture of childbearing
These problems with the total fertility rate are why demographers also measure how many total births women have had by the end of their reproductive years. In contrast to the total fertility rate, the average number of children ever born to women ages 40 to 44 has remained fairly stable over time, hovering around two.
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Americans continue to express favorable views toward childbearing. Ideal family size remains at two or more children, and 9 in 10 adults either have, or would like to have, children. However, many Americans are unable to reach their childbearing goals. This seems to be related to the high cost of raising children and growing uncertainty about the future.
In other words, it doesnt seem to be the case that birth rates are low because people are uninterested in having children; rather, its because they dont feel its feasible for them to become parents or to have as many children as they would like.
The challenge of predicting future population size
Standard demographic projections do not support the idea that population size is set to shrink dramatically.
One billion people lived on Earth 250 years ago. Today there are over 8 billion, and by 2100 the United Nations predicts there will be over 10 billion. Thats 2 billion more, not fewer, people in the foreseeable future. Admittedly, that projection is plus or minus 4 billion. But this range highlight another key point: Population projections get more uncertain the further into the future they extend.
Predicting the population level five years from now is far more reliable than 50 years from nowand beyond 100 years, forget about it. Most population scientists avoid making such long-term projections, for the simple reason that they are usually wrong. Thats because fertility and mortality rates change over time in unpredictable ways.
The U.S. population size is also not declining. Currently, despite fertility below the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman, there are still more births than deaths. The U.S. population is expected to grow by 22.6 million by 2050 and by 27.5 million by 2100, with immigration playing an important role.
Will low fertility cause an economic crisis?
A common rationale for concern about low fertility is that it leads to a host of economic and labor market problems. Specifically, pronatalists argue that there will be too few workers to sustain the economy and too many older people for those workers to support. However, that is not necessarily trueand even if it were, increasing birth rates wouldnt fix the problem.
As fertility rates fall, the age structure of the population shifts. But a higher proportion of older adults does not necessarily mean the proportion of workers to nonworkers falls.
For one thing, the proportion of children under age 18 in the population also declines, so the number of working-age adultsusually defined as ages 18 to 64often changes relatively little. And as older adults stay healthier and more active, a growing number of them are contributing to the economy. Labor force participation among Americans ages 65 to 74 increased from 21.4% in 2003 to 26.9% in 2023 and is expected to increase to 30.4% by 2033. Modest changes in the average age of retirement or in how Social Security is funded would further reduce strains on support programs for older adults.
Whats more, pronatalists core argument that a higher birth rate would increase the size of the labor force overlooks some short-term consequences. More babies means more dependents, at least until those children become old enough to enter the labor force. Children not only require expensive services such as education, but also reduce labor force participation, particularly for women. As fertility rates have fallen, womens labor force participation rates have risen dramaticallyfrom 34% in 1950 to 58% in 2024. Pronatalist policies that discourage womens employment are at odds with concerns about a diminishing number of workers.
Research shows that economic policies and labor market conditions, not demographic age structures, play the most important role in determining economic growth in advanced economies. And with rapidly changing technologies like automation and artificial intelligence, it is unclear what demand there will be for workers in the future. Moreover, immigration is a powerfuland immediatetool for addressing labor market needs and concerns over the proportion of workers.
Overall, theres no evidence for Elon Musks assertion that humanity is dying. While the changes in population structure that accompany low birth rates are real, in our view the impact of these changes has been dramatically overstated. Strong investments in education and sensible economic policies can help countries successfully adapt to a new demographic reality.
Leslie Root is an assistant professor of research at the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder.
Karen Benjamin Guzzo is a professor of sociology and director of the Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Shelley Clark is a professor of sociology at McGill University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
Spain’s black olive exporters, subject to harsh tariffs since U.S. President Donald Trump’s first term, are warning it will be difficult to survive an extra 15% they now face under the European Union’s latest trade deal with the United States.
EU goods now face import tariffs of 15% half of Trump’s threatened rate, but much more than Europeans had hoped for after striking a trade deal with Trump on Sunday.
Spain, the world’s top table olive exporter, has seen its share of the U.S. black olive market plummet from 49% in 2017 to 19% in 2024 after Trump imposed tariffs of more than 30% at the request of Californian olive growers.
The measures only affected black olives and don’t apply to green olives, olive oil or semi-processed olives.
Spanish farmers have taken steps to increase green olive sales and to diversify their markets since the tariffs were first imposed, but warn the additional increase will be hard to swallow.
“It would be unviable (for black table olives),” said Eduardo Martin, secretary of Asaja, a Spanish local farmers’ association in southern Seville province, a region that produces the most olives.
The initial trade measures coincided with a severe drought that forced Spanish producers to cut around 400,000 work shifts for pickers out of a total of 2.5 million, according to industry estimates. Sales of Spanish black olives to the U.S. dropped by 70% in the first year.
“The worst was the first year,” said Gabriel Cabello, president of Andalusia’s Federation of Agricultural Cooperatives in Seville province. “In the second year, we learned that this was here to stay and that we had to do things differently.”
To mitigate losses, Spanish exporters shifted focus to Europe and the Middle East, regions with a tradition of consuming table olives. They also ventured into Asian markets, while switching to shipping more green olives to the U.S. because they are subject to lower tariffs.
Tariffs also spurred innovation, with some Spanish exporters selling black olives stuffed with salmon or cheese for the first time, which helped boost sales in Europe and Asia, Cabello said.
Still, the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture estimates it has lost 239.6 million euros ($278.51 million) in black olive sales since the tariffs were introduced, nearly a third of the 707 million-euro total export value from the last harvest.
WEATHERED THE STORM
Among the 25 Spanish exporters active before the tariffs, only four major players remain, according to Asemesa, Spains Association of Table Olive Exporters.
Agro Sevilla, one of the larger players with the financial resources to lobby the U.S. for lower rates, expanded green olive exports and managed to reduce black olive tariffs to 10% from 31%. The company successfully demonstrated that they received fewer European subsidies than the U.S. had estimated. Its U.S. sales have been gradually growing since 2023.
“We cannot give up on the world’s largest consumer market for black olives,” said Agro Sevilla CEO Julio Roda.
In a twist, Aceitunas Guadalquivir, another major Spanish olive producer, acquired Bell-Carter Foods, one of the two leading U.S. companies that had advocated for the tariffs, according to a statement issued in 2022.
The company is among several Californian companies that have imported raw olives from Spain, which are exempt from the tariffs, according to Asemesa.
Aceitunas Guadalquivir did not reply to a Reuters request for comment about such exports.
“When California has low production, they import raw olives to finish processing them in the United States, mostly from Spain,” said Asemesas Secretary General Antonio de Mora.
Spain exported 6,300 tonnes of semi-processed olives in 2024 alongside 36,000 tonnes of green olives and 9,800 tonnes of black olives.
The U.S. measures failed to bolster domestic growers.
Imports of table olives surged by 40% in the first eight months of 2024 compared to the same period in 2017, trade data shows, with Egypt, Portugal, and Turkey increasing exports the most.
Spanish exports of green olives to the U.S. grew by 18% during the same period, partially offsetting a decline in black olive exports.
However, Spanish producers remain concerned about the new tariffs.
“It’s like adding rain to wet ground,” Asaja’s Martin said.
($1 = 0.8603 euros)
Additional reporting by Miguel Gutierrez
Corina Pons, Reuters
Health-related stocks are not having a good day. First, Americas largest health insurance provider, UnitedHealth Group (NYSE: UNH), saw its stock drop more than 4% this morning after the company announced disappointing second-quarter results and a full-year 2025 forecast that concerned investors. And now, the Danish pharmaceutical giant Novo Nordisk A/S, whose shares (NYSE: NVO) trade on the New York Stock Exchange, is seeing its stock price plunge, too.
Currently, NVO shares are down more than 20% at the time of this writing. But unlike UnitedHealth Group, Novo Nordisk has not reported its most recent quarterly results. So whats sending its shares lower? Heres what you need to know.
Novo Nordisk cuts full-year 2025 guidance
The main driver of Novo Nordisks significant share price fall today is the companys announcement that it is revising its previously published sales growth and operating profit growth for its full fiscal year 2025.
On May 7, Novo Nordisk stated that it expected full-year fiscal 2025 sales growth to be between 13% and 21%. At the same time, it said it expected its operating profit growth to be between 16% and 24%.
Now, however, the company had drastically cut both forecasts. Novo Nordisk now says it expects full-year fiscal 2025 sales growth to be between 8% and 14% and operating profit growth to be between 10% and 16%.
In a statement, the company said its lowered sales outlook for 2025 is driven by lower growth expectations for the second half of 2025.
This lowered growth is due to lower growth expectations for its GLP-1 weight loss and diabetes drugs, Wegovy and Ozempic, in the U.S. market.
For Wegovy in the US, the sales outlook reflects the persistent use of compounded GLP-1s, slower-than-expected market expansion and competition, the company said. It added that as far as Ozempic was concerned, the updated outlook is negatively impacted by competition in the U.S.
Novo Nordisks main competitor in the GLP-1 arena is the American pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly, who makes the drugs Mounjaro and Zepbound.
Novo Nordisk names new CEO
Besides revising its 2025 growth forecasts downward, Novo Nordisk also made another announcement today: It named a new CEO.
However, this announcement probably had little to do with the stocks fall this morning. Back in May, Novo Nordisk announced that its longtime CEO Lars Fruergaard Jrgensen would be stepping aside. At the time, the company cited its declining share price as one of the reasons for the CEO shakeup. It also said Jrgensen would stay on as CEO until a successor was found.
Now, one has been. Today, Novo Nordisk announced that Maziar Mike Doustdar will be assuming the position of president and chief executive officer, effective August 7, 2025. Doustdar is currently the companys executive vice president of international operations.
Announcing Doustdars ascent to the CEO role, Novo Nordisk chair Helge Lund said: This is an important moment for Novo Nordisk. The market is developing rapidly, and the company needs to address recent market challenges with speed and ambition. I believe Novo Nordisk will build on its strengths as a global leader in obesity and diabetes, and Mike has a clear vision of how to unlock the full potential of the opportunities ahead.
Doustdar will officially take over as CEO one day after the company reports its second quarter 2025 results on August 6.
Novo Nordisk shares have fallen dramatically since last summer
While the GLP-1 drugs Wegovy and Ozempic have been a massive source of growth and profits at Novo Nordisk in the first half of this decade, recently, the company has faced increased competition in the GLP-1 marketplace, which has partly contributed to investor concerns.
Partially as a result, Novo Nordisk stock has steadily declined since last summer. Over the past year, NVO shares are down more than 57%. And since the beginning of 2025, the companys share price has declined more than 35%.
As of the time of this writing, NVO shares are down just over 20% this morning to $55.17 per share.
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Heres a stat that would likely make financial adviser and radio personality Dave Ramseywho has long advocated for Americans to pay off their mortgages early as a key pillar of his debt-free philosophyat least somewhat pleased: A staggering 39.8% of U.S. owner-occupied housing units in 2023 were mortgage-free, marking a new high for this data series. Thats up from 39.3% in 2022 and 32.8% in 2010.
Among the 85.7 million U.S. homeowner occupied households, 34.1 million are mortgage-free. The other 51.6 million have an outstanding mortgage.
So why did I say itd only make Dave Ramsey somewhat pleased?
Well, the reason is that a higher percentage of Americans are mortgage-free isnt necessarily because so many are paying off their mortgages faster. Instead, it reflects a powerful underlying demographic shift: the aging composition of the American population.
As Americans live longer, the U.S. fertility rate declines, and the massive baby boomer generation ages into their senior years, the U.S. population has skewed older. Since older homeowners are more likely to have paid off their mortgages, the aging composition of the American population means a larger share of homeowners are achieving mortgage-free status each year.
The other thing is that when older Americans sell their house and buy another home, theyre more likely to rollover their equity and purchase that next home in all-cash.
Given that most demographic forecasts expect the composition of the American population to continue shifting upward in age, the share of mortgage-free households could also continue rising in the years to come. The wild card? If reverse mortgages get more popular and more older Americans take on mortgage debt again to tap into their equity.
