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Call it the day the music died. On December 31, 2025, MTVs last music-only stations shut down forever. The last video played on MTV Music in the U.K. was “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggleswhich was also the first video ever played on the original MTV channel in the United States back in 1981. Thats a good 44 years of music history, bookended with a song that explores the theme of technology changing the way people experience art. Its beautiful, in a way: A song that mourns the end of the radio age is played to mourn the end of another era. If you, like me, enjoy having random music videos on in the background while you workor even just having them available to tune in when you need to tune outyou might think youre out of luck. Fortunately, the ever-inventive internet is here with an answer. This tip originally appeared in the free Cool Tools newsletter from The Intelligence. Get the next issue in your inbox and get ready to discover all sorts of awesome tech treasures! Bring back the glory days If you want that old feeling backof turning on the TV and watching whatever crazy music video comes up while you work, or maybe just as an occasional distraction from productivitytheres a website just for you. MTV Rewind recreates the experience of watching MTV in any decade, thanks to a database of thousands of videos. It’s the 80s and 90s all over again on the MTV Rewind web experience. Youll need all of two seconds to get started. Just head to the site and start watching. Waiting for you is a slew of playlistsall shuffledfor the 1980s, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s. There are also channels for classic MTV shows like Yo! MTV Raps and Headbangers Ball. So much comforting nostalgia and killer music. The collections of music were curated using the Internet Music Video Database, a resource potentially worthy of its own write-up. All told, there are over 30,000 videos split between all the various channels, meaning you can leave this on for a long time and never see the same video twice. I love that theres no recommendation algorithm and basically no way to control things. That really brings back the experience of watching TV and seeing things youd never otherwise seek out. You can click the Next button if you really hate the first song that plays, though. MTV Rewind is splendidly simpleby design. Oh, and theres one more channel worth mentioning: It plays the music videos MTV broadcast on its first day in order, complete with a few of the original VJ segments. Its an admirable internet attempt to both resurrect and modernize TV history. MTV Rewind is just a websiteno apps, no downloadsso it works instantly and easily on any device. Its completely free, and there are no ads (except some retro ones sprinkled in for the fun of it). The developer says this is a pure passion project, with no plans for monetization or ads, though you can donate to help keep it that way. Treat yourself to all sorts of brain-boosting goodies like this with the free Cool Tools newsletterstarting with an instant introduction to an incredible audio app thatll tune up your days in truly delightful ways.
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E-Commerce
Stress isnt just an occasional visitor in our livesits more the houseguest who never got the hint to leave. Between economic uncertainty, workplace upheaval, rounds of layoffs, and the delightful unpredictability of daily life (surprise traffic jams, anyone?), most of us are living in a near-constant state of low-grade panic. But heres something most people dont realize: resiliencethe ability to stay calm, flexible, and creative in the face of stressisnt just an inborn trait. Its a skill. One that can be learned, practiced, and strengthened. And some of the most effective tools for doing that come not only from the world of business or psychology, but also from improv comedy. I stumbled on this connection over a decade ago. During the day, I worked with startups and leadersafter hours, I practiced and performed improv. Eventually, I noticed the overlap: The same tools that help improv comedians thrive on stage can help anyone navigate the unscripted, often absurd, realities of modern work and life. And research backs this up. A study I conducted in collaboration with neuroscientist Dr. Ori Amir found that improvisational activities improve creativity, confidence, and even sleep, some of the key elements of resilience. Here are three specific improv-inspired practices I use myself and share with leaders, teams, and individuals navigating change, uncertainty, and desiring a new way to cope with lifes stressors. Theyre deceptively simple but surprisingly effective, precisely because they work with the brains stress response, not against it. The ‘Yes, And’ Mindset: From Resistance to Resourcefulness Weve all been there: The project scope changes at the last minute. The client scraps months of work. The market tanks overnight. The instinctive reaction? Resistance. Frustration. Freeze mode. Thats not just emotional, its neurological. When our brains perceive a threat (even a calendar invite titled urgent), the body shifts into fight, flight, or freeze mode, flooding us with cortisol and narrowing our focus to survival. In improv, the foundational rule is Yes, and. It means accepting whats happening (even when its not what you wanted) and building from it. Its not about blind agreement; its about acknowledging reality so you can move forward instead of staying stuck. From a nervous system perspective, Yes, and mimics emotional acceptance and acts as a regulatory tool: It signals safety to the brain by reducing resistance, which helps shift you out of survival mode and into a more flexible, solution-oriented state. Consider this real-world example: When the pandemic hit, many restaurant owners faced ruin. Some who thrived, like those who pivoted to pop-up markets or meal kits, were effectively practicing Yes, and. They acknowledged reality and improvised forward. Next time stress hits, try this: Literally say to yourself, Yes, this is happening. And heres one thing I can do. Even identifying one small action helps break the paralysis of overwhelm. Fire Your Inner Judge: Quieting the Critical Voice That Blocks Action One thing that keeps people stuck in stress is an overactive inner critic. In improv, theres no time for the voice in your head that says Thats a stupid idea or Youll mess this up. You have to act before you overthink. In every workshop I lead, including one for a Fortune 500 team navigating layoffs, the first thing I ask everyone to do is fire the judge. Everyone pictures their inner critic, then, together, on the count of three, we say whatever needs to be said to let go of judging the activities were about to do, judging each other, and judging ourselves. The effect? Most people report feeling both lighter and sharper, because theyve bypassed the internal filter that often fuels stress and indecision. This isnt just theatrical. Its neurological. Research shows that self-criticism is associated with higher anxiety, while reducing it through self-compassion improves emotional regulation and cognitive flexibility. Softening judgment creates the conditions for clearer thinking and more effective action. If It Feels Weird, Do It: Using Unusual Actions to Ground and Reframe One of the fastest ways to disrupt a stress spiral is to do something that feels slightly ridiculous. In improv, weird is where the magic happens. The unexpected action, like walking backward while giving a speech, or delivering a toast in gibberish, pulls us out of autopilot and into the present. It breaks habitual thinking and creates space for a new response. When we do something weird, it works in two ways: First, it grounds us. Movement or gesture helps regulate our emotions and the nervous system. Second, it primes the brain for possibility. Engaging in unexpected behavior temporarily loosens our grip on the way things are, which makes space for the way things could be. Its a reset button for the brain. Heres one weird three-minute exercise to try. Start pointing at objects around you and naming them out loud. Point to a table and say table, a plant and say plant. Do this for 30 seconds. Now shift: point at objects and label them with anything they are not. Point to a chair and say giraffe, a laptop and say birthday cake. It feels silly, and thats the point. Research shows that simply naming what we see or feel can calm the nervous system by shifting attention to the present moment. Combined with deliberately disrupting automatic thinking (even by saying the wrong word), we loosen cognitive rigidity and open the door to more creative problem-solving. I’ve led this exact exercise with executive teams navigating pressure, and every time, it opens the room. People laugh. Shoulders drop. Ideas start flowing. Weird works. These tools arent about turning you into a comedian. Theyre about building a more responsive, resilient nervous system, and one that can meet chaos with curiosity instead of collapse. Stress may be the houseguest who never leaves, but improv is how you learn to live with it, laugh with it, and maybe even dance with it. Try one of these practices the next time stress hits, and you might just surprise yourself.
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E-Commerce
Spotify’s most senior engineers dont type code anymore. In fact, they have not written a single line of code since December, co-CEO Gustav Söderström revealed during a recent earnings call. Its not that theyve stopped working. Instead, through a combination of Claude Code and Spotifys specialized internal system Honk, engineers can now develop new features simply through Slack. As a concrete example, an engineer at Spotify on their morning commute from Slack on their cell phone can tell Claude to fix a bug or add a new feature to the iOS app, Söderström told analysts on the company’s Feb.10 earnings call. And once Claude finishes that work, the engineer then gets a new version of the app, pushed to them on Slack on their phone, so that he can then merge it to production, all before they even arrive at the office. Söderström said the new AI-fueled developmentswhich he traced to the December release of Antropics Claude Opus 4.5 within Claude Codeare just the beginning in how it will deploy these tools to build new features. The company has been on a big push of new user tools, adding more than 50 new features in 2025, most of which launched in the past few weeks. Söderström credits the combination of Claude Code and Honk with speeding us up tremendously,” noting that it’s changed how developers operate. Certainly [before AI tools,] I spent my entire vacation coding rather than being on holiday, and I think most people in tech did, Söderström said regarding the release. He isnt alone. A few weeks ago, the head of Anthropics Claude Code, Boris Cherny, shared that he also hasn’t written any code in more than two months. Across the rest of the company, he says pretty much 100% of code is also AI-generated, in a post on X. At Davos last month, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted a year from now AI will be handling most or all of software engineering work from start to finish. “I think we will be there in three to six months, where AI is writing 90% of the code. And then, in 12 months, we may be in a world where AI is writing essentially all of the code,” Amodei said at a Council of Foreign Relations event, Business Insider reported. That timeline is looking increasingly realistic given that Spotify is s just one example. Pinterest is another. In the companys most recent earnings call on Feb. 12, CEO Bill Ready revealed roughly half of itsnew code is now AI-generated. Even as AI does the lion’s share of coding, developers are focused on learning quickly and refining their approach, according to Soderstrom. “The tricky thing right now is that if this was the end of the change, you could say this is what happened. Now let us retool for this,” Söderström explained. “The tricky thing is that we are in the middle of the change, so you also have to be very agile.” Söderström’s AI bullishness wasn’t entirely echoed among professional developers, some of whom took the opportunity to get a joke in. Its true, Epic Games programmer Ryan Fleury wrote on X. In fact, I was under the impression that Spotifys best developers hadnt written a line of code since 2014.
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E-Commerce
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