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Nothing says summer more than a trip to the beach, and for many people, that includes the perfect summer read. If you’re looking, here’s some good news: After a decade of downsizing, partly due to Amazon’s rise combined with changes in consumer behavior, bookstores are backwith Barnes & Noble leading the renaissance with a major expansion, on track to open over 60 new bookstores in 2025 alone, according to a spokesperson for the bookseller. The retailer currently runs approximately 600 bookstores nationwide, as well as BN.com online. Halfway through the year, Barnes & Noble told Fast Company it has already opened 23 bookstores in 2025. “[We] are enjoying a period of tremendous growth as the strategy to hand control of each bookstore to its local booksellers has proven so successful,” a spokesperson for Barnes & Noble said. “We are experiencing strong sales in existing stores and have been opening many new stores as a result.” In the early 2000s, Barnes & Noble opened 30 stores or more a year, but simultaneously closed about half that number too, according to The Wall Street Journal. By 2013, a decade later, it was on track to close about a third of its brick-and-mortar retail stores, and would continue shrinking over the next 10 years. But by 2023, consumer demand was back, and the bookseller started ramping up again. As Fast Company previously reported, the resurgence is thanks in large part to social media, in particular, TikToks #BookTok. But some credit also goes to a rise in so-called third spacesplaces people are flocking to post-pandemic that are neither home nor work, as Americans seek real connection amid an epidemic of loneliness now plaguing our nation (especially among Gen Z). As Americans spend more time at home and on their devices, many now have fewer friends (particularly men) and fewer social outlets. But many new bookstores today are opening with a cafe or even a bar to allow for more interaction, like New York City’s Book Club Bar and Bibliotheque, or (my personal favorite) Boston’s romance novel bookstore, Lovestruck Books. “Bookstores are a social spot to gather and offer that third space that online shopping cannot provide,” Barnes & Noble told Fast Company. “Our booksellers are knowledgeable and can provide a dedicated customer service to the in store shopper.” Heres a list of locations where Barnes & Noble has already opened new stores, as well as a list of states where it will be opening new locations in 2025. New Barnes & Noble locations opened in 2025 Pennsylvania: 2935 Concord Rd, York, PA 17402 720 W Lancaster Ave. Bryn Mawr, PA 19010 Virginia: 9840 Brook Rd, Glen Allen, VA 23059 1961 Chain Bridge Rd, Tysons, VA 22102 8139 Stonewall Shops Square, Gainesville, VA 20155 Arizona: 2011 E. Camelback Rd, Phoenix, AZ 85016 Connecticut: 775 Main St S., Southbury, CT 06488 1145 High Ridge Rd., Stamford, CT 06905 Washington: 10330 59th Ave. Southwest, Lakewood, WA 98499 775 NW Gilman Blvd, Issaquah, WA 98027 1140 Bellevue Square, Bellevue, WA 98004 Ohio: 3708 W. Dublin-Granville Road, Columbus, OH 43235 5501 Dressler Rd. NW, North Canton, OH 44720 Illinois: 9 Jackson Ave, Naperville, IL 60540 Florida: 13123 N. Dale Mabry Hwy, Tampa FL 33618 151 N US Highway 1, Tequesta, FL 33469 4149 Tamiami Trail N., Naples, FL 34103 New York: 301 Walt Whitman Rd., Huntington Station, NY 11746 Nebraska: 7949 Towne Center Pkwy, Papillion, NE 68046 Michigan: 2236 E. Beltline Ave NE, Grand Rapids, MI 49525 Texas: 12850 Memorial Drive, Houston, TX 77024 California: 2475 Sand Creek Rd, Brentwood, CA 94513 Colorado: 550 Marshall Rd, Superior, CO 80027 Barnes & Noble locations expected to open in the second half of 2025 A spokesperson for Barnes & Noble told Fast Company that the company has signed leases to open additional stores in the following states: Pennsylvania New Hampshire Washington South Dakota Texas Massachusetts Tennessee New Jersey Kansas Minnesota Maryland California Louisiana Florida Idaho Michigan Colorado Ohio District of Columbia
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E-Commerce
Rural hospitals in the U.S. already operate on a razors edge, but new cuts to Medicaid in the Republican appropriations bill could tip many of them into failure. The Republican megabill that the House just passed in a 218-214 vote is a massive piece of kitchen sink legislation, extending Trumps tax cuts and allocating hundreds of billions for immigration enforcement, among the presidents priorities. To pay for all of that spending, the bill will slash programs that make up the federal safety net by the largest amount in decades, mostly through major cuts to Medicaid. Medicaid is the joint federal and state health insurance program that millions of low-income Americans rely on for healthcare coverage. As of March of this year, 71 million people in the U.S. were enrolled in Medicaid, which also extends coverage for pregnant people, elderly adults, and Americans with disabilities. An estimate from the Congressional Budget Office expects about 12 million people will lose their Medicaid coverage under the legislation. Among its major changes, the bill would cut $1 trillion in funding from Medicaid over the next decade and add new eligibility restrictions that require able-bodied adults up to age 65 to work 80 hours per month to qualify. Older Americans between ages 50 and 64 could be hit hardest by the new work requirements, according to analysis from the UC Berkeley Labor Center. That set of aging adults is too young to be eligible for Medicare but face the challenge of juggling work with chronic illness and disability, two factors that contribute to plunging employment numbers after age 50. Rural hospitals hit hardest Beyond shrinking the number of Americans covered by Medicaid, the bill would also place a cap and a gradual set of reductions on the taxes that states charge healthcare providers to pay for their share of Medicaid. Those taxes are a big piece of what makes the system work, and any changes risk destabilizing an already fragile healthcare system. Limits to state reimbursements are anticipated to further imperil hospital and clinic funding, particularly in rural areas where a larger share of the population relies on Medicaid. In those areas, an increased number of people without healthcare coverage and preventive care also means more patients showing up in emergency rooms. In Nebraska, nearly half of our rural hospitals are currently operating in the red, Nebraska Hospital Association president Jeremy Nordquist said. This change would pull the rug out from under them, leading to a loss of critical patient services and putting the health of our communities at risk. On Tuesday, Senate Republicans added more funding for rural hospitals to compensate for funding losses after a push from Maine Sen. Susan Collins, whose state stands to be slammed by the cuts due to a large rural population that relies on Medicaid. An earlier version of the bill allocated $25 billion to rural hospitals over five years, a number that was doubled to $50 billion in the final version. Whether the $50 billion fund will be enough to offset a rural healthcare crisis is about to become a live social experiment with steep stakes. At least one hospital that’s closing its doors in the state is already blaming Trumps signature legislation. Nebraskas Community Hospital just announced the closure of a clinic in the rural southwest Nebraska town of Curtis, which serves 900 people locally. Unfortunately, the current financial environment, driven by anticipated federal budget cuts to Medicaid, has made it impossible for us to continue operating all of our services, many of which have faced significant financial challenges for years, Community Hospital CEO Troy Bruntz said. Over a million could lose coverage According to the National Rural Health Association, the bill is expected to reduce Medicaid funding for rural hospitals by 21% while leaving more than a million rural residents without coverage. While the Senate Finance committee proposal has made some cuts deeper than the House-passed bill, both are certain to lead to more hospital closures and reduced access to care for rural residents, exacerbating economic hardship in communities where hospitals are major employers, the association wrote in a report exploring the rural impacts of the bill. An analysis by the Urban Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation found that hospitals would be down $321 billion over the next decade if changes in the less severe House version of the bill went into effect. On top of that, hospitals could be hit with $63 billion in additional costs from handling a larger base of uninsured patients, including those seeking emergency services. The cuts to Medicaid are controversial, even among some of the lawmakers that ultimately supported the bill, which the Senate approved on Tuesday. Do I like this bill? No, said Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, who cast a decisive vote for the legislation after securing special carve-outs for her state. I know that in many parts of the country, there are Americans that are not going to be advantaged by this bill. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries attempted to push back Republicans self-imposed July 4 deadline by filibustering the massive legislative package, speaking on the House floor for eight hours and 44 minutes. With Jeffries record-setting critique wrapped up, Democrats could no longer delay the inevitable vote on Trumps so-called One Big Beautiful Bill, which passed the House on Thursday afternoon.
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E-Commerce
An interstellar object called 3I/ATLAS is passing through our solar system this year, NASA announced yesterday. Today at 6 p.m. ET, you can see it for yourself, thanks to a livestream from the Virtual Telescope Project. 3I/ATLAS is the third interstellar object ever detected within our solar system, following Oumuamua in 2017 and 2I/Borisov in 2019. These objects moved quickly through our solar system, giving astronomers limited time to study themjust two weeks in Oumuamuas case. However, scientists currently expect 3I/ATLAS to continue getting brighter and more visible until September 2025, giving astronomers and interested nonscientists more chances to see it themselves. This is a tremendous step forward and a tremendous opportunity, says Teddy Kareta, a postdoctoral researcher at Lowell Observatory in Arizona and press officer at the American Astronomical Societys division for planetary science, tells Fast Company. And if the public is excited about it, the astronomers are twice as excited. It’s a really big deal. ‘The building blocks of planets’ The object was discovered by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS). One of the observatories affiliated with this NASA-funded system, El Sauce Observatory in Chile, first spotted it in photos taken July 1. So far, astronomers think its a comet, an icy body that appears to have a tail due to gas and dust trailing behind it. Comet movements are largely predictable, and NASA is confident the object is merely passing by us. The comet poses no threat to Earth and will remain at a distance of at least 1.6 astronomical units (about 150 million miles or 240 million kilometers), NASA wrote in a statement about the objects discovery. Scientists study interstellar objects the same way they study the comets and asteroids that form closer to home, asking what the objects are made of and how they formed. But for interstellar objects, the answers to these questions yield answers about what the universe is like outside our solar system, ultimately giving us a better idea of whether our solar system is rare in some way and if intelligent life on Earth is alone in the universe. These [interstellar objects] are the building blocks of planets from other planetary systems, Kareta says. That lets us ask really fundamental questions about why our solar system looks the way it does. How and when to see the object as it zips by Beyond the philosophical questions this object lets us ask, it is also an opportunity to see something truly out of this world. The Virtual Telescope Projects livestream will show imagery from telescopes in Italy starting at 6 p.m. ET today (Thursday, July 3). You can watch from the VTP’s website or on YouTube. And even if you miss the livestream, it wont be your last chance to see the object. Scientists predict even amateur astronomers might be able to see the object with their telescopes as the object gets closer to the sun and brighter. It might require you getting up early or staying up late, Kareta says. But youre seeing light reflected off of something that formed around another star . . . What a wild experience. Because these objects are so rarely detected and such a recent area of study, astronomers from different disciplinessuch as those who study exoplanets and those who study comets or asteroidscome together to study them. Thats where the best and most interesting science gets done and when you can push the envelope in a way that doesnt just matter to me and my research group, but to tons of people across the world, Kareta says.
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E-Commerce
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