In 1951, Langston Hughes wrote the now-canonical poem “Harlem (What Happens to a Dream Deferred?).” It became the inspiration for Lorraine Hansberry’s 1959 play A Raisin In The Sun, which depicted a black family’s experience in mid-twentieth century Chicago. Now almost 60 years later, the U.S. State Department’s website, ShareAmerica, is once again citing the “dream deferred” reference, but not for the sake of literature or drama. Rather, it’s how the website described Mar-a-Lago’s struggle to gain designation as a National Historic Site. In a blog post published earlier this month, ShareAmerica also dubbed President Trump’s favorite Florida private club “the winter White House.” The U.S. Embassy in the U.K. even copied and pasted the post.

Oddly promotional, sure, but is it ethical ? In plain terms, probably not.

“It’s clear cut,” says Kathleen Clark, a professor of law at Washington University, arguing that the post violates government ethics regulations. The rules clearly state that federal employees shall not use public office for the endorsement of any product or service, explains Clark. And the blog post seems quite clearly to be an endorsement of Mar-a-Lago.

It’s unclear why a website managed by the State Department would publish such a post. (We reached out for comment and will update if we hear back.) In fact, the entire piece is a bit of a mystery—a mid-length piece of content churn describing the resort as Trump’s “Florida estate.” Posted on April 4, it teases the meeting Trump was about to have with Chinese president Xi Jinping.

The post then details the history of the Mar-a-Lago estate. Describing how it was built by socialites in the 1920s to be a lavish meeting spot for international VIPs, it launches into a gripping story of love and loss. Mar-a-Lago’s genesis is one of Gilded Age extravagance, we’re told, but it was ultimately forgotten. The resort long sought the attention of public officials but to no avail! Then—wait for it—Donald Trump buys it in the 1980s, restores it, and makes it the private palace it is today. In a major plot twist, Trump gets elected president. Now, the resort is fulfilling its decades-long dream to be a haven and meeting place for the world’s illuminati and also Donald Trump.

The blog post is just one of many on the ShareAmerica page, but it’s by far the most brazen in its Trump brand promotion. After reading it, Clark wondered if the administration either doesn’t know or doesn’t care about the separation of private and public business, citing a history of apparent conflicts. She brings up Kellyanne Conway’s endorsement of Ivanka Trump’s brand on national television, which resulted in an uproar. But the White House council’s response, says Clark, was to make “excuses for Conway.” There was “no indication that they took any disciplinary action in any way,” she adds, “or that they recognize that apparently [Conway] hadn’t been trained adequately.”

Perhaps that’s really what’s going on here. The blog’s author—Leigh Hartman, who has written dozens of posts for the government site—may have just not received adequate training. All the same, Clark, as a legal scholar, reiterates just how glaring this issue is. And that’s not just a case of an ethics expert nitpicking over certain obscure legal clauses. “It’s not just some technical rule,” says Clark. “It’s specific expression of a very general rule” that government officials should not use public office for private gain.

These public sites, Clark says, are “for the people.” And Trump’s private resort is most definitely not.

Update: Following the public outcry, the Department of State has taken down the post. An official provided Fast Company with this state:

“The intention of the article was to inform the public about where the President has been hosting world leaders. We regret any misperception and have removed the post.” 

Of the 3,500 species of mosquitoes around the world, only 20 to 25 species carry diseases, like malaria and Zika, that affect humans. But it’s hard to know where those species are at any given time, and current methods–trapping insects and bringing them to a lab for analysis under a microscope–can only happen in a limited way.

Researchers at Stanford University are testing another method: using volunteers with cell phones to record a mosquito’s annoying buzz. Because the sound of a particular species’ buzz is unique, it’s possible to then use machine learning to identify each species and plot it on a map.

By better understanding where disease-carrying mosquitoes are, it becomes easier to target them.

“I think one of the aspects of this is on a planetary scale, we have absolutely no idea where mosquitoes are, how far they go, how that changes with climate change…this real-time data coming from the ground is the most important thing for policy, but also locally trying to figure out where they’re breeding,” says Prakash. “If you think about the resources that we have, they’re very limited. We need precision attacks on mosquitoes rather than spraying everything around and spoiling resources.”

It’s a looooong way from Bros Icing Bros. The Tribeca Film Festival tonight officially announced Smirnoff Ice’s Chris Fonseca: Keep It Moving, directed by Zachary Heinzerling, as the winner of the second annual Tribeca X Award, the top prize for “excellence in creative, original and authentic storytelling that is sponsored or underwritten by a brand.”

The film, created with agency 72andSunny, beat out an impressive line-up of finalists, including BMW Films’ The Escape, starring Clive Owen and created by Neil Blomkamp, For Every Kind of Dream from Square, Kenzo’s The Realest Real directed by Carrie Brownstein, and more.

The winner was chosen by a jury that included Hearst COO Joanna Coles, CCO, Creative Artists Agency CCO and co-head of marketing Jae Goodman, directors and comedy legends Tim & Eric, former J. Crew president and creative director Jenna Lyons, and Upworthy CEO Eli Pariser. And since this is related to marketing… the judging also included a proprietary A.I. solution developed by Celtra, that the festival says provided quantitative creative analysis based on performance data and insights from hundreds of thousands of video advertising campaigns powered by Celtra’s creative management platform.

“There was something special in Keep It Moving that resonated unanimously with the group,” Lyons said in a statement. “The message was not only important and poignant – it was expressed with beautiful imagery as well as a unique play on sound that allowed the viewer for a brief moment to possibly imagine what it might be like to live in Chris’ world. It was moving and beautiful as well as inspiring.”

This year the number of entries for Tribeca X tripled to reach 600. Tribeca Enterprises CEO Andrew Essex says he hopes its a signal that more brands are taking seriously the role that great content can play in a well-rounded marketing strategy.

“It is a time where people are thinking about the implication behind something like The Lego Movie, to know there is a sequel in play, and that other brands are communicating in a way that’s designed to attract an audience rather than repel them,” says Essex. “I think it’s a symptom of some very large, secular changes within the industry.”

And let’s face it, the more brand content like this, maybe the less crappy ads there will be for us all to be subjected to. Dare to dream, people. Dare to dream.

In Kenya, where a three-year-long drought was declared a national disaster in February, getting a drink of water can mean walking five miles or more to a well that may or may not be dry. A new device under development now shows how someone in a future drought–or the hundreds of millions of people who lack access to clean drinking water in everyday life–could have water at home. Even in the middle of a desert, the device can pull water from the air, powered by nothing but sunlight.

In a prototype of the device developed by researchers from the University of California-Berkeley and MIT, a small outdoor box is filled with a custom material called a metal-organic framework, filled with tiny pores designed to capture water. At night, the box can be opened up, and as cool night air flows in, the material grabs and holds water molecules.

“Essentially, it’s tailored so that it’s an exceptionally good sponge,” says Evelyn Wang, an associate professor of mechanical engineering at MIT and coauthor on a new paper about the device in Science. “It can capture a lot of water from the humid environment around it, and kind of soak it up in this material.”

During the day, when the box is closed, sunlight heats it up, releasing the water as vapor onto a condenser below. Clean drinking water comes out the bottom.

Technology to pull water from the air isn’t new, but this approach could make it feasible for dry climates. Another technique, called fog harvesting, works only if there’s fog. It’s also possible to use a generator to cool down air below the dew point and collect drops of water, but in extremely dry air, that process takes so much electricity that it becomes impractical. The new device doesn’t need any electricity at all, only ambient sunlight.

“The opportunity here for us is that we’re really trying to address a need in areas where there really are much more arid conditions, and in the desert, where the relative humidities are down to 20%,” Wang tells Fast Company. “Our technologies, we believe, can extract the water and produce clean drinking water–and do it passively, which is also an important aspect when you’re in these remote areas and infrastructure is very limited.”

The prototype, which is roughly the size of a tissue box, can harvest 2.8 liters of water (a little more than half a gallon) in one day from dry air. The next step for the researchers is making it big enough to supply all of the drinking water a small family might need, and optimizing the design to maximize the capture and release of water.

“We think we can scale it up pretty readily in the next few years to be the size of a carry-on suitcase,” she says. “With that kind of scale, we envision that we could potentially provide water for a household of four, about 12 to 15 liters of water.”

An even larger version could potentially supply water for showers, laundry, and other uses beyond drinking water. In drought-prone regions like California, the technology might eventually help houses disconnect from city infrastructure.

The next step for the researchers is to work on how to manufacture the sponge-like material, which has only been produced in the lab, at a large scale. “It’s definitely possible,” says Wang. “It’s just a matter of implementing it and doing it.”

Blockchain is big news in the finance world right now. A complicated database system that’s an integral part of Bitcoin, Blockchain creates time-stamped, secure blocks of data that can’t be altered. The finance world loves it: Both IBM and Microsoft are building major blockchain partnerships designed to make it easier for financial institutions to adopt the technology.

As a fintech tool, blockchain is only about a year old, but it holds major potential for banks and other institutions to protect customers and reduce overhead. This could simultaneously drive down costs for consumers and raise corporate profits.

The system’s secure data blocks make it much easier to verify money transfers and the parties involved at a given time. But because there’s a limited number of finance people conversant in blockchain, many consulting agencies are working on helping clients get up to speed with the system. The IT consulting and outsourcing firm Synechron, for instance, offers software packages called Accelerators that integrate blockchain into transactions like mortgage lending and global payments. Fast Company spoke with Synechron’s CEO Faisal Husain about what blockchain means for the finance world.

Fast Company: Why is blockchain important for the financial world?

FS: In simple terms, let’s talk about how certain things work in today’s world. For example, if you think about securities trading, stock trading, foreign exchange, money transfers, or buying a home—all of these transactions take many days to complete. Stock trading typically takes three days to complete. Really, it takes so long for these transactions to complete because many different actors are involved in the whole chain. The person who wants to make the trade, the brokerage, the investment bank . . . it goes on and on.

Each one of them has their own record-keeping system, like a database or a ledger. They get the data, then store it in their own format or record-keeping system, they work on it, and they pass it to the next person down the chain.

With blockchain, however, each party can have their own record-keeping system that is linked with everyone else’s. It’s automatically kept in sync, and everything is instant. It’s all automatic. There is no chance for mistakes when things are passed, and less requirement for an incredible amount of back-office operations to make sure data is stored correctly. That’s why it’s called a distributed ledger: Each person has their own record-keeping system, but it is plugged into everyone else’s.

The second big thing about blockchain is how highly, highly secure it is. There is incredible trust and confidence in a blockchain system. For a blockchain system to work, it needs to be distributed around a wide number of computers. Even if you hack into one computer, you have to hack into more than 50% of the systems in the network. That’s virtually impossible.

The third feature is smart contracts. These are contracts that can be placed on the blockchain that execute at certain events. They get you to a point where you and I can transact with each other and any middle party we both trust. With smart contracts, if we both agree to that on a blockchain, that creates more efficiency.

FC: How has large financial institutions’ adoption of blockchain played out so far?

FS: It’s still in its early stages. One can argue that Bitcoin . . . was the first big blockchain project. But for banks and financial institutions, it’s still early. There’s a big project in Australia with the Australian Stock Exchange, which is the first big runout.

FC: What are Synechron’s blockchain accelerators, and how do they help companies adopt blockchain?

FS: Our contribution to blockchain is that we built six applications that we call accelerators. They focus on specific business scenarios like straight finance, money transfer, know your customer, and margin management. We applied blockchain to these business situations and brought the promise of blockchain to them, which means much faster and secure transactions that require less manpower to run them. We actually built the applications and showed them to the marketplace, the industry, and our clients.

While there’s a lot of talk and hype about blockchain, very, very few people are building substantial applications for it right now. Our applications are comprehensive, and clients just need to modify them to their particular enterprise.

FC: Is there a big talent pool of financial specialists with blockchain knowledge?

FS: No. It’s a new market, which means that the technology is new, and there’s a steep learning curve. It’s complex stuff! The talent market is very thin, which is one of the values we provide. We’re a consulting company and a technology company that has invested significantly in blockchain. We built it up to benefit our clients. We’ve retrained and invested at least six months of training in a team of 50-100 technologists and analysts in blockchain at our own cost. That was our investment to learn and master technology.

FC: What does the future hold for blockchain?

FS: Payments! I think the current model of transferring money is quite antiquated. It’s too long, and there are too many people involved across the chain. Also, when you look at areas like trade settlements and securities trading, the model can be reduced to a few hours in both the middle office and back office.

Also, trade finance. Trade Finance involves financing global trade and is a highly fragmented industry. It brings together the bank financing the trade as well as corporate players involved in the trade supply chain, such as the shipping company, credit rating agency, and insurer. Since there is no single view of trade finance across banks, there is a challenge where one company can approach multiple banks with a letter of credit and fraudulently receive funds from multiple banks using the same letter of credit.

This is known as the “double-spend issue.” Blockchain can give these parties a single view of the transaction on a distributed ledger, and use smart contracts combined with digital payments for a full, straight-through process.

Additionally, if mortgages and title deeds can be made electronic and on a blockchain, which is highly secure, the time it takes for the process, which can be 45-60 days to buy a house, could significantly go down. The length of time it takes for the appraisal, legal checks, title checks, and insurance would all be reduced.

There’s also a process called KYC [Know Your Customer, a system used by banks to verify customer identity] that holds promise as well. Right now, each bank stores their own KYC data. With blockchain, they could reduce the amount of investment they make in KYC data and share that data among themselves.

Over the last few years, KYC utilities have emerged to help banks and brokers manage the cost of compliance and other applications. While these banks have helped to standardize best practices, the fragmented KYC utility market leaves banks sharing their data with multiple utilities. Bringing KYC data onto blockchain helps create a centralized view of that data, minimizing or illuminating the need to share it with multiple utilities. Banks can also then maintain the ability to own their KYC data and potentially monetize it in a future Blockchain marketplace.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Kickstarter made it easy to support an aspiring entrepreneur. Now Americans can take it one step further: Don’t just support an entrepreneur, invest in them. In May of 2016, Title III of the JOBS Act went into effect, making it legal for anyone to invest in a private company, opening up investing in willing startups to any American. Now, you don’t need a million dollars to join a fundraising round, you can help a company you believe in–and get a small ownership stake–for just $500.

A wide range of platforms have sprung up to help facilitate this transaction. But while it’s been nearly a year since the new law was passed, equity crowdfunding hasn’t skyrocketed. Manny Fernandez, a Silicon Valley angel and founder of DreamFunded, an equity crowdfunding site for accredited and non-accredited investors, says that a lack of information, awareness, and some common misnomers have prevented the space from flourishing. “When online dating launched, people didn’t hop on it and love it immediately. Many thought it wasn’t their style, because they preferred meeting people in person. Equity crowdfunding is like online dating for investors and startups. It will take time to catch on,” he tells Fast Company.

DSTLD, a Los Angeles-based apparel brand, has raised $1.75 million from 1,698 investors through equity crowdfunding on SeedInvest, one of the biggest raises by a fashion brand using this mechanism. It hopes to hit at least $2 million before closing the campaign.

“A lot of companies end up taking shortcuts to appease the hungry growth machine that is venture capital. This is a very viable alternative to that path,” says Mark Lynn, cofounder of DSTLD. Individuals can invest in DSTLD for upwards of $500; the largest, so far, has been $50,000. He encourages other brands with a consumer-friendly product or service to consider it.

“Let’s be clear, it’s not an easier way to raise money. It’s just a different way to raise money,” he says. “But if you have a product that’s exciting to the public with an interesting story, this is a great way to connect with customers, market yourself, and fundraise simultaneously.”

It’s that trifecta–of engaging with customers, building brand recognition, and funding the company–that attracted Chicago-based Aristotle Loumis to try equity crowdfunding as well. He runs Ellison Eyewear, a direct-to-consumer brand, which sells handmade sunglasses produced in a family-run workshop in Greece. The company has a give-back program to support cataract surgeries in India through their sales.

The bonus, however, he says, is the ability to share that raise publicly and thus market yourself to not just angels, but everyday consumers as well. Title III made it legal to publicize a fundraising effort. Rather than keeping it behind closed doors, companies can openly solicit for funds from anyone. But there are some challenges.

It’s not easier, Lynn explains, because like any fundraising, it involves extensive hours of marketing the company, liaising with potential investors, and filling out paperwork to meet regulations. For instance, companies looking to raise more than $500,000 must undergo a financial audit by an independent third party.

In addition, payment methods are still limited: only ACH or wire transfers. Credit or debit cards are not allowed. Lynn learned that the hard way. DSTLD and SeedInvest signed on with FirstData, a credit card processing and payments company, to accept their first batch of investments on the site. However, FirstData froze the transactions. “They had never seen anything like that before, transactions for an equity crowdfunding site. So we were in limbo for a month because we couldn’t process the payments,” Lynn recalls.

The charges were ultimately reversed, and SeedInvest and DSTLD apologized for the glitch. Investors, Lynn says, were understanding and many came back to invest. “But it is a hassle, particularly if someone wants to make a small investment.”

While DSTLD and Ellison Eyewear are both consumer-facing companies, Rabble, a new equity crowdfunding platform, is focusing on solely impact: Any company with a social or environmental mission and a financial return will be eligible to raise money on their site.

Their first venture is a real estate project in Detroit, seeking $535,000. David Alade and Andrew Colom left real estate and banking in 2014 to start a company that would redevelop blighted neighborhoods in Detroit. They raised $2.2 million in equity to fix up 40 housing units. Now, they want to extend that model to single family homes. The duo have purchased 65 homes for $10,000 to $50,000 each. They want to use the funds raised for renovation work.

Detroit, in particular, allured Rabble for two reasons: The city’s recent renaissance with a revival of small businesses, artists, and makers, and secondly Umber Bawa, founder of Rabble, says, “the city itself presents a very attractive investment opportunity because for decades it has been challenged with bankruptcy, racial tension, political corruption, poverty, and crime, which has in turn led to population decline and declining property values.” The new homes will be affordable, he explains, and help bring life back to blighted neighborhoods. So this deal checks both boxes: impact and financial return.

In equity investments, backers get a percentage of the financial upside of a given project. For debt arrangements, backers get a fixed figure on a quarterly or a semi-annual basis (details vary for each project). Equity crowdfunding was designed to level the playing field, make it easier for everyday Americans to put their money where their mouth is, and share wealth creation.

But sharing wealth creation can also mean sharing wealth destruction. Before letting a project on its platform, Rabble performs due diligence in three categories: project feasibility (the track record of a team, ability to meet development targets); financial risk (ability of team to meet or exceed financial performance); and impact (social or environmental positive impact).

However, Bawa warns: “Not all platforms have stringent diligence processes, so investors should investigate the level of diligence each team undertakes prior to making an investment of any kind.”

Bottom line, investing is a risky business, particularly in early-stage companies, and equity crowdfunding doesn’t mitigate that risk. What it does do is make it easier to tap into new pools of capital, says Fernandez of DreamFunded: “I really want to make it easier for people to raise money who are not connected to the Valley, and equity crowdfunding has the means to do that. You don’t have to be sitting here [in the Valley] to find deals or fundraise anymore.”

The list of winners are in for the 21st annual Webby Awards.

Presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, the Webby Awards has been dubbed the “internet’s highest honor,” receiving 13,000 entries from 70 countries worldwide this year alone. Beyoncé, Lady Gaga, Google, and Planned Parenthood are just a few of the wide-ranging winners who will accept their awards on May 15 during a ceremony hosted by comedian Joel McHale.

Below are some of the Webby Award winner highlights:

• Planned Parenthood: Best Charitable Organization/Nonprofit Website
• Sandy Hook Promise, “Evan”: Best Viral Marketing (Advertising, Media & PR) and Best Short Form Branded Content (Film & Video)
• The Messy Truth with Van Jones: Best News & Politics Series (Film & Video)
• Squarespace: Best Web Service & Application (Websites)
• FactCheck.org: Best Political Blog/Websites (Websites)
• Merriam-Webster Redefines Twitter: Best Writing (Social) and Best Education & Discovery (Social)
• Giphy: Messaging (Mobile Sites & Aps), Best Comedy–Branded (Film & Video), and NetArt (Websites)
• Airbnb: Best Travel App (Mobile Sites & Apps)
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Social Video for the Met 360 Project (Social)
• Lady Gaga: Integrated Campaign (Film & Video) and Branded Content (Advertising, Media, & PR) for the Lady Gaga + Intel Performance
• Jimmy Kimmel Live!: Best Comedy: Long Form or Series for Mean Tweets (Film & Video)
• Coldplay: Best Music Video for “Up&Up” (Film & Video)
• The Ellen DeGeneres Show: Best Celebrity/Fan Social Presence (Social)
• Deadpool: Best Social Media Campaign (Advertising, Media, & PR), Best Social Content and Marketing (Social), and Best Digital Campaign (Advertising, Media, & PR)
• Serena Williams’s Match Point: Best Mobile Advertising and Best Use of Native Advertising (Advertising, Media, & PR)
• Women of the Hour Podcast with Lena Dunham: Best Lifestyle Podcast (Podcasts & Digital Audio)
• ESPN Films: Best Sports Channel and Network for 30 for 30 Shorts (Film & Video)
• BuzzFeed: Best News App for the BuzzFeed News App (Mobile Sites & Apps) and Best Interview/Talk Show for Another Round (Podcasts & Digital Audio)
• Game of Thrones: Best Overall Social Presence
• Kendrick Lamar: Best Video Remixes/Mashups for “Swimming Pools (Drank)” (Film & Video)
• Spotify: Best Streaming Audio and Best Music App (Mobile Sites & Apps)
• Under Armour, “Rule Yourself: Michael Phelps”: Best Viral (Branded) Entertainment (Film & Video)
• HBO Now: Best Streaming Video (Mobile Sites & Apps)
• Gimlet Media: Best Podcast Drama for Homecoming (Podcasts & Digital Audio)
• Pokémon Go: Best Use of GPS or Location Technology and Best Experiential & Innovation (Mobile Sites & Apps)
• Who Is Mr. Robot: Best Television Website

Find the full list of winners here.

Yesterday was a busy one for Shea Moisture. A social content campaign the brand launched late last month suddenly caught fire. But not the good kind of fire, more like the dumpster kind.

One video in particular, featuring four women talking about their struggles with self-confidence as it relates to their hair, drew the ire of Shea Moisture’s primarily African American consumer base for excluding them from the conversation. The video is part of a series of up to 40 the brand created with agency VaynerMedia, profiling more than 20 different influencers.

By last night the brand had issued a full apology across all its social channels and pulled the ad. “Wow, okay – so guys, listen, we really f-ed this one up. Please know that our intention was not – and would never be – to disrespect our community, and as such, we are pulling this piece immediately because it does not represent what we intended to communicate.”

Wow, okay – so guys, listen, we really f-ed this one up. Please know that our intention was not – and would never be – to disrespect our community, and as such, we are pulling this piece immediately because it does not represent what we intended to communicate. You guys know that we have always stood for inclusion in beauty and have always fought for our community and given them credit for not just building our business but for shifting the beauty landscape. So, the feedback we are seeing here brings to light a very important point. While this campaign included several different videos showing different ethnicities and hair types to demonstrate the breadth and depth of each individual’s hair journey, we must absolutely ensure moving forward that our community is well-represented in each one so that the women who have led this movement never feel that their hair journey is minimized in any way. We are keenly aware of the journey that WOC face – and our work will continue to serve as the inspiration for work like the Perception Institute’s Good Hair Study/Implicit Association Test that suggests that a majority of people, regardless of race and gender, hold some bias towards women of color based on their textured or natural hair. So, you’re right. We are different – and we should know better. Thank you all, as always, for the honest and candid feedback. We hear you. We’re listening. We appreciate you. We count on you. And we’re always here for you. Thank you, #SheaFam, for being there for us, even when we make mistakes. Here’s to growing and building together…

A post shared by SheaMoisture (@sheamoisture) on Apr 24, 2017 at 2:11pm PDT

Shea Moisture parent Sundial Brands co-founder and CEO Richelieu Dennis says as the brand broadens its consumer market, it cannot forget or even appear to forget its core audience.

“It just shows the level of love and passion people have for the brand, and how much they want to make sure it continues to stand for them, even as it starts to broaden its audience, they want to make sure they’re not left behind,” says Richelieu. “And that’s clear to us. We need to make sure we spend the time engaging with that community, encouraging them, and letting them know that just because we’re growing doesn’t mean they’re less important. in fact, they become more important because they’re the ones who have always advocated for us.”

He says he recognizes the larger issue here, that goes far beyond a haircare product. The racial stereotypes that have impacted black women, and their lack of representation in media and advertising, were not adequately taken into consideration. “To equate their struggles with hair to those of other women, is in their minds trivializing their struggles, and we can’t forget that,” says Richelieu. “The people who are unhappy here aren’t necessarily saying they don’t like white women. What they are saying is, for decades they’ve been underserved and white women have plenty of products on the shelves and advertising aimed at them, and that we should keep our focus on our audience, and not lose that focus just because we’re broadening our audience.”

In hindsight the brand should’ve been more conscious of featuring more examples of its core consumers’ hair types, as well as made sure the individual videos were more clearly shared as part of a larger series.

“What we should’ve done is maybe a mini-documentary to tell the whole story, then take snippets from that for social posts,” says Richelieu. “We could’ve said, let’s do many more hair textures instead of just two or three. There are definitely lessons here and we’re not perfect, we’re not always going to get it right. But what we are always going to do is learn from it.”

As the brand continues to talk to its fans, navigating the fall-out from the social media storm, its chief executive remains optimistic and has found a silver lining.

When the competition for a job is tough, sometimes you need to get a little creative to stand out. An August 2016 CareerBuilder survey found that some people take that to the extreme.

One survey respondent said an interviewee arrived for an October interview dressed in a Halloween costume. Another bought a first-class upgrade to sit next to the hiring manager on a transatlantic flight.

Career coach Cheryl Palmer says that such antics can backfire. A video that’s meant to be funny can turn into a viral embarrassment. Offbeat stunts can brand you as “not a culture fit.” And delving into people’s backgrounds or sitting next to them on an airplane can be unsettling. “These things must be in good taste,” she says. “If it’s too far out there, or if it’s so zany people think they can’t take you seriously, you’re actually hurting your chances,” she says.

Clearly, there’s a fine line between impressing a hiring manager with your out-of-the-box thinking and leaving them wondering if they should call the authorities. But with a little creativity—and common sense—it’s possible to make yourself memorable.

Do Your Research

When Simon Poulton, director of digital intelligence at digital marketing agency Wpromote wanted to land a job at the agency, there was just one problem: He had no agency or client-facing experience. Knowing he would have to prep well for the interview, he began to dig into the agency’s website and history. He scoured blog posts by agency personnel, social media profiles, and articles about the company.

He noticed that Wpromote had just gone through a rebranding. And from their social media posts, he also noticed that their team seemed to eat a lot of treats from a bakery called SusieCakes. He asked the bakery to design cupcakes with the company’s new logo on them. He used the cupcakes during the interview to segue into his enthusiasm for the brand and his “attention to detail from a client-service perspective,” he says.

After the interview, the team began posting photos of the cupcakes on social media, which caught the CEO’s attention. Poulton earned an interview with the executive team and was offered a job, even though he lacked some of the skills the company thought it needed. Through his creative cupcakes and service-minded approach in his interviews, he landed the job. “I’m sure it was the cupcakes that sealed the deal!” he says.

Consider Visual Aids

Corporate communications professional Craig Brown had studied with career expert Eric Kramer, author of Active Interviewing: Branding, Selling and Presenting Yourself to Win Your Next Job. He adopted Kramer’s idea to create a presentation about himself. The approach is simple: Use skills required and language from the job description or ad to create a short sales presentation for yourself in PowerPoint. Hone in on five or six key points and make the case for why your skills and achievements are a perfect match. The first time he presented this way, he did an old-school PowerPoint presentation. Today, he says he would be more likely to use a tablet, which would be more tech-savvy.

“It felt a little awkward at first,” he says about his initial presentation. But the proof is in the results: Brown has used this approach to land three plum jobs companies like Pep Boys, Bayer HealthCare, and Barclays.

Publish Before The Interview

Hiring managers routinely check social media profiles and conduct a search of the individual’s name. So check out the search results on your name and clean them up if you need to, says executive development expert Bonnie Hagemann, founder of Executive Development Associates. In addition, for at least a few weeks before the interview, post interesting public blog and social media content that relates to the job you’re seeking. It’s a good way to impress a would-be employer with your knowledge, she says.

According to the CareerBuilders suvey, “Tweeting, blogging, and commenting about things you know builds up your credibility online. When an employer searches your name after an interview, you want them to find a knowledgeable individual who can fit well into their company.”

Be A Little Bold

SEO consultant Adam White loved the TV show The Profit on CNBC. Eager to get the attention of the show’s star, Marcus Lemonis, he wrote a tongue-in-cheek article entitled, “Why The Profit Is The Worst Show On TV.” He used humor to make the point that the show had inspired his interest in helping other businesses. He paid $5 to promote the article on Facebook to fans of the show.

The piece was shared more than 200,000 times and caught the eye of Lemonis himself, who shared it with his followers and made a mobile billboard out of the headline. White contacted to Lemonis and pitched his SEO services, with his viral post as evidence of his capabilities and creativity. He took over the management of Lemonis’s SEO shortly thereafter and worked for him for roughly a year before expanding his own consulting business.

White says he had nothing to lose in this case, which allowed him to be a bit bolder than others who might be gunning for a job they really need. Palmer advises keeping those circumstances in mind. Focus on activities that will showcase your expertise, while also remembering the tempo of the industry. You might be able to get away with a little more in creative services than in banking, which is typically more conservative, she says.

“Look around at what people typically do and what they’re rewarded for. Seeing what others have done will give you an idea of what will go over well,” she says.

Shortly after I was hired to be a columnist for Time’s website, I was asked to write about a book called The Confidence Code. Having actually been recruited and hired as a columnist, one would assume there’d be certain things I was capable of, such as writing a column. But this was my first column as a “columnist,” and I was rattled.

I labored over my introduction, writing and rewriting, deleting and retyping, cutting, pasting, moving sentences around, moving them around some more, then spending the next 10 minutes command–Z’ing my way back to where I’d started. Eventually, hunched over my sad desk (kitchen table) in my office (living room), clad in my freelancer’s uniform (pajamas), I decided I had no business having a column at all. In fact, I was pretty sure my new contract would be revoked by the end of the week.

It wasn’t—but the irony was that the book I was supposed to write about was about imposter syndrome, or that crippling sense of self-doubt that women often feel in the face of challenge, which in this case was the very thing that was making it impossible for me to complete the task at hand.

“Imposter syndrome” wasn’t coined as a term until the 1970s, but it’s safe to assume women have always felt it: that nagging feeling that, even after you’ve just done something great, maybe you actually don’t deserve the praise.

Imposter syndrome affects minority groups disproportionately: women, racial minorities, the LGBT population—or as Valerie Young, the author of a book on the topic, The Secret Thoughts of Successful Women, explains, people who have the pressure of “accomplishing firsts.” It’s common among high achievers, creative people, and students, and it persists in college, graduate school, and the working world.

Imposter Syndrome Comes In Multiple Flavors

That feeling comes about in different ways, though. Here’s a quick sampling:

Being absolutely 100% sure you’re going to fail. Even Sheryl Sandberg, the unflappable COO of Facebook, has said she often feels this way. As she described it in Lean In, “Every time I was called on in class, I was sure that I was about to embarrass myself. Every time I took a test, I was sure that it had gone badly. And every time I didn’t embarrass myself—or even excelled—I believed that I had fooled everyone yet again. One day soon, the jig would be up.”

Feeling like a complete fraud. Every so often, even when we’ve “made it,” we’re somehow unable to shake the feeling that it’s all smoke and mirrors, that we’ve still got everyone tricked, that at any moment we’ll be found out and exposed. Three days before this manuscript was due to my editor, when I was alone in my apartment, running on no sleep, I remember walking into the bathroom and thinking to myself: Why would anybody actually want to read about a bunch of experiences that are just . . . my own? To which my editor, also a woman, later replied, “I constantly ask myself the same question about my editing.”

Devaluing your worth—even as somebody else is actively supporting it. In my case, that recently manifested as me talking somebody out of giving me money for work. “Why don’t I just do it for free?” I wondered. To which a male friend—who happened to be in the room where this phone conversation was happening—practically shook me. “Jessica! Just take the money!” he said. (At which point I said yes.)

Underestimating your experience or expertise. I was talking about this very thing with a friend who is a teacher, and in the next breath she told me about a job that she was being recruited for, followed by, “But I’m totally not qualified.” (They had recruited her!) Another woman I interviewed—a postdoctoral engineering student named Celeste—told me that while she was working as a mechanical engineer, a supervisor once noted in her review that she wouldn’t call herself an engineer. “I didn’t realize I told my coworkers I wasn’t an engineer when I was,” Celeste said. “And I think, for me, it was an excuse just in case I made mistakes.”

Seven Ways To Fight The Feeling

So how do you combat imposter syndrome, in all its pernicious forms? Here are a few strategies you can use.

1. Find a wingwoman. Talk to a colleague or friend: Has she felt like an imposter, too? Knowing this is a thing that others feel will help make it just that: a thing, but not your thing. If you feel that doubtful voice begin to creep inside your head, repeat: “It’s not me, it’s the imposter syndrome talking.”

2. Squash negative self-talk. Ask yourself what evidence exists that you are any less qualified than anybody else to do this work. Now ask what evidence exists that you are just as qualified—or even, I daresay, more qualified—to do the job. Make a list of at least 10 things.

3. Stop letting screw-ups hurt your self-confidence. When women screw up, they question their abilities or qualifications. (“What did I do wrong?”) But when men screw up, they more often point to bad luck, poor work, or not enough help from others—in other words, outside forces. Remember this: even the best athletes screw up, the best lawyers lose cases, the best actors star in busts. Don’t let failure destroy your confidence.

4. Psych yourself up. The words you say to yourself can actually change the way you see yourself—boosting confidence during a nerve-racking event. So write yourself a sticky note or talk to yourself in the mirror. Tell yourself you are as fan-fucking-tastic as your male coworkers, and forbid yourself from falling back on excuses like luck to explain away your successes.

5. Visualize success. Olympic athletes do it; so do military officers. Visualize precisely how you’ll navigate the situation—successfully—before it happens.

6. Overprepare for the task at hand—just to preempt any potential feeling of fraudulence or insecurity. German chancellor Angela Merkel has said she does this to overcome her doubts. Managing director of the IMF Christine Lagarde acknowledges that she overprepares regularly. As Lagarde has explained it, “When we work on a particular matter, we will work the file inside, outside, sideways, backwards, historically, genetically, and geographically. We want to be completely on top of everything, and we want to understand it all, and we don’t want to be fooled by somebody else.”

7. Unsubscribe from doubt. In his book Originals, Adam Grant describes two kinds of doubt: self-doubt—which causes you to freeze up—and idea doubt, which can actually motivate people to work on refining, testing, or experimenting with a good idea. Try to turn self-doubt into idea doubt by telling yourself, it’s not that I’m crap, it’s that the first few drafts of any idea are always crap—and I’m just not there yet.

Seven Famous Impost-Hers

This article is adapted with permission from Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace by Jessica Bennett. Copyright © 2016 by Jessica Bennett. Published on September 13, 2016, by Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

A few years ago, I managed to receive 1,000 emails between boarding a plane in San Francisco and landing in New Orleans five hours later. Maybe 40 of those 1,000 were emails that I needed to respond to, but given the overwhelming volume in my inbox, a lot of them ended up going unanswered. I’m not the only one with that problem. 2.6 billion people send over 200 billion emails every single day. Filters help organize things a bit, but now a new email app is bringing in the big guns to tackle the problem: artificial intelligence.

Called Astro, the app essentially offers many of the same features as previous aspiring inbox-zero apps. You can snooze messages you see so they surface at your convenience, mute particular senders, and set a priority inbox that surfaces those emails from VIP senders that otherwise might end up buried amid Bed Bath & Beyond coupons. What makes Astro different is how it creates that priority inbox.

Just like other programs, you can designate people you’d like to prioritize. Astro takes care of that automatically by putting a few people in there based on whom you’re chatting with on a regular basis. For instance, the algorithm might notice that I’m chatting with a new person a lot about planning a friend’s upcoming birthday party and prioritize their emails. If I forget to respond to an email discussing cake flavors or party decorations, Astro can also pay attention to that, and a few days later send me a chat message suggesting I follow up.

Rather than assume you’re one of those rare individuals who’s proactive with your settings, Astro handles all of its organization using a bot that makes suggestions to help you reach the bottom of your inbox faster. Sort of like a traditional chat conversation, the bot shows up by the side of your inbox on desktop and is located behind a button in the mobile app. And it’s pretty useful.

For instance, it noticed that I no longer open emails from Fry’s, something I subscribed to back when I was in the market for a new television, and sent me a chat message suggesting that it unsubscribe me from the list and archive all the messages I’ve received from the company. Last week someone emailed me trying to set a meeting time, and Monday morning I received an email suggesting I respond to the message, even specifically noting the question: “What time is good for you?” Each thing individually is pretty minimal, but together, you’re able to streamline your inbox by answering just a few questions.

In addition to organizing, Astro can also do things like let you know that someone has opened an email you sent them, or schedule emails you write late at night to be sent during working hours so they don’t go MIA.

And it’s only just the beginning for Astro’s founders. Their goal is to ultimately bring the service to more platforms. It’s been in beta for Mac and iOS for the past month, and today the company is launching on Android, with support for Android Wear and Kindle Fire. It also hopes to launch an Alexa app in the near future to bring voice into the mix as well.

The service currently supports Gmail and Office 365 accounts, and you can add as many accounts as you’d like to the same unified inbox to keep everything organized at once. You can sign up to take the beta for a spin yourself on the company’s website.

Growing up, I was unbeatable at H-O-R-S-E, the basketball game kids play when’s only one hoop and just a few around. Basically, everyone gets a chance to skin a basket from a certain spot or in a certain way, then each subsequent player’s got to follow suit. I’d invite friends to come play in my driveway after school. When the game got close, I’d pretend to have a new idea: “Hey — I wonder if I can make a shot from way back on the grass off one bounce? Ha! Wouldn’t that be crazy?!” I’d really sell it.

Then I’d drain the shot and win, every time. My poor victim had no idea I’d taken that shot hundreds of times. Maybe thousands. That I knew exactly which crack in the driveway to aim for, and that if I threw the ball hard enough off that crack, I couldn’t miss — our worn-down backboard would deaden every shot, and the ball would drop right in. I’d even named the shot after one of my favorite Knicks players at the time, Rolando Blackman: You weren’t beating me when I broke out the “Rolando Crackman.”

Your startup idea probably won’t work any better than my friends’ efforts to replicate the Crackman back then. That’s not news — you know that 95% (or whatever that number is) of startups fail. What is news is why you’ll fail. After being pitched 571 idea-stage, pre-product startup pitches in the past 24 months — most as applications for my pre-product accelerator — I’m convinced it’s not just because “startups are really hard.”

Startups are hard, obviously, but the majority of founders make them impossible. You’re doomed from day one because you’re starting with the wrong thing. You never had a shot.

It’s not your fault. The way most people think about startup ideas is fundamentally wrong. And the right way — like any startup theory worth its salt — is counterintuitive. You’ll only have a handful of opportunities to completely immerse yourself in a project, so you need to identify the ones that give you an unfair advantage.

I’m here to help you find your Rolando Crackman.

Related link: Your Startup’s First Thousand Decisions Don’t Matter (But These Two Do)

“Whisper Ideas” Are Your Enemy

ClassPass for meditation studios isn’t a bad idea. I got pitched ClassPass for meditation studios the week before last (the founder gave me permission to tell this story in this post). I’ve been pitched this idea before, and theoretically it could work. It certainly sounds like something that would exist.

ClassPass for meditation is what I call a “whisper idea,” because whenever founders pitch them to me, they lean in real close. They’re the category that includes Waze for crowded bars, Waze for parking spots, an app for daily wardrobe recommendations, an app for groups of friends to date each other, and about 50 other Uber/Waze/Airbnb-for-X variations. I’d guess that 90% of the ideas I hear are whisper ideas.

And I hear them in hushed tones. A founder and I are usually at a coffeeshop, they’ve usually asked me to sign an NDA, and they’re always giving everyone in the place the side-eye emoji. Founders who possess whisper ideas never know who’s listening.

This particular founder was razor sharp. McKinsey and HBS. I listened as she rehashed conversations she’d had with customers on both sides of the market—people who ran meditation studios and people who meditated. Everyone was on board.

She’d saved for a year and had recently hired a development shop to build version 1.0,  an app that would allow customers to subscribe to the monthly service and book classes at participating studios. The back end would even play nice with the studios’ existing booking software. Her plan was to start with 10 studios in the West Village of Manhattan in order to prove the concept. Next, she’d raise a seed round and expand. Validate, raise, expand, hire, grow. Rinse, repeat.

She nailed the pitch. It all sounded so . . . logical. And that’s why whisper ideas are so dangerous. In your non-startup life, logical is good. Incremental growth is good. Overwhelming external validation is good. When this founder told her friends about her ClassPass for meditation idea, they validated it. “Act fast,” they said. “This is the one.”

Founders working on whisper ideas never think the risk is in the idea. The biggest risk is always speed. They tell themselves it hasn’t been built yet because no one has thought of it yet. ClassPass was obvious after the fact; this will be, too.

When your biggest differentiator is simply “no one has thought of this yet” — well, you whisper.

Related link:How To Test That Brilliant Idea As Soon As It Hits You

The Idea Hourglass Is Your Friend

I visualize every startup idea as an hourglass filled with sand.
The minute you start pursuing an idea, you flip that hourglass over. The sand is the amount of time you’ve got to build something meaningful. The amount of sand you start with varies — it’s based on a bunch of inputs like founder, domain expertise, team, market, funding potential/needs, key insight, and customer. The more unique or elite your advantage is in any of those categories, the more sand goes in the hourglass.

The goal of your startup idea is to maximize your initial portion of sand. Which is the polar opposite of a whisper idea. You aren’t picking an idea you need to execute fast, you’re picking an idea that allows you to build slow. The holy grail is when your hourglass has more sand than anyone else’s possibly could if they chose to pursue something similar. No need to whisper if you’re the only one who can do it.

This approach brings up two big questions:

1. Why do I need so much time?

“Why is slow good?” you might be wondering. “I thought I was supposed to ‘move fast and break things?'”

Slow is good because the first version of your product will be wrong. So will the second, third, and probably fourth. Even if you’re the most qualified person in the world, it’ll take a long time to build the right thing. It took ClassPass three years to find their way to a product that resonated.

The sand in your hourglass buys you the time to make mistakes. When there’s a lot of it, you don’t need to spend precious time learning the nuances of the market or customer or problem; you know more about this than anyone. So instead you get to spend your time figuring out the hard, unpredictable stuff. You get to build slowly—to focus on a small group of people, build something small and specific they love, then expand. Because you know how to segment customers and what small product will add value.

Founders with whisper ideas can’t do this. They soon realize that they don’t have enough time to learn the nuances of the customer needed to build something small, simple, and useful. So they build something big and hope it resonates — ClassPass for meditation. Their margin for error is zero. Which leads to that second question . . .

2. Does this mean I can only start something in a space where I’m already an expert?

If you want to give yourself the best shot at success, yes.

I subscribe to the so-called “growth mind-set,” which is all about staying open to learning new things, so it pains me to say that founders should only pursue ideas in areas where they already have overwhelming expertise. But that’s how it goes! You’ll need to learn a ton as you build. You’ll need all your energy focused on learning the nuances of a space, not the space itself.

Of course, you can also hire for this. You may have some insight into the consumer side of the lunch-delivery business. If you want to leverage that insight, you better partner with someone who has food-sourcing knowledge and experience with that supply chain, or you’ll end up spending all the sand that insight provided you on learning the nuances of the industry.

The startup idea you pursue should be one you’ve been unconsciously preparing for your whole life. It should be about your strengths, not just a gap you see in a market. What are you, uniquely, incredible at? What do you know that no one else does? The first thing you should ask yourself when you have an idea is, “Why am I the best person to start this?”

If you ever find yourself sitting in a coffeeshop, quietly pitching your startup idea while side-eyeing everyone else within earshot—stop. Whisper ideas never work. But there’s undoubtedly an idea that you’re the best person in the world to pursue. One that you can scream from the rooftops. Find it.

It was while performing onstage at New York’s famed Gotham Comedy Club that Dave Scott realized comedy was more than just tough—it was bad business.

The former CEO of Marketfish, a VC-backed data management platform startup, always wanted to pursue his passion of comedy. After selling his company in 2013, he did just that. Scott left Silicon Valley to try his hand in the late-night club circuit in Manhattan. It was fun—he found himself touring with Janeane Garofalo and hanging with Amy Schumer (“before she got huge,” he clarifies)—but he wasn’t making any money.

“If you’re a comedian, expect to be at this for five or 10 years before you become [successful],” says Scott. “Until then, it’s really harsh . . . the distribution method that exists for musicians don’t exist for comedians.”

The frustration over the inability to disseminate his jokes beyond 20 people a night led Scott to found Laugh.ly, the first streaming app built solely around stand-up comedy. Launched last August, the startup offers thousands of hours of comedy from well-known comics like Louis CK, Daniel Tosh or Sarah Silverman, current breakouts like Hannibal Buress and Ali Wong, as well as up-and-coming acts. There are two listening options—one that’s ad-supported and free of charge or a premium service for $3.99 per month.

The app is intended for die-hard comedy fans looking for obscure albums as well as casual fans in the need of a midday lift. Users can search two to five-minute tracks and full albums by topic, comedian, or discover new talent based on humor preferences, be it dry, dirty, family-friendly or observational. If you skip or favorite a track, the algorithm learns your sense of humor, helping you craft a personalized playlist.

Laugh.ly also patented a speech-text algorithm which scans for text (and profanity) within a joke so one can filter for subject matter. For example, search for “hot pocket” and be led to Jim Gaffigan’s famous rant. Or search “Trump” and stumble upon John Mulaney observing the tycoon is “what a hobo imagines a rich man to be.”

In a way, it sounds like Spotify for jokes. That’s because Scott modeled his company on what the music industry offers artists—a functioning distribution model. It wasn’t too long ago that exact model once catered to comedians.

During radio’s heyday, musicians and comedians alike benefitted from airplay, securing them exposure and thereby album and ticket sales. You could walk into any record store and purchase a Rolling Stones record alongside a Steve Martin album.

“Standup comedy is an audio format and it was created and perfected on radio,” says Scott of legendary comics like Jack Benny, Jackie mason or Richard Pryor. The latter didn’t do his first video till the late ‘70s. The concept of people watching stand-up comedy, says Scott, is a relatively new phenomenon. “I’m not even convinced video is the best way to listen to comedy,” he asserts.

Today, however, “comedy has no outlet like radio,” bemoans Scott. Once consumers began downloading content, albums made way for single sales. Shortly thereafter, streaming took hold, opening the market for companies like Spotify and Pandora. Popular artists understood that people didn’t need to buy the full cargo when they could rent one hit.

“But you can’t do that for comedy,” says Scott. “What are gonna do—sell a joke? [Charge] 99 cents a joke?”

The airwaves changed, leaving comedy behind. The only existing media market lies with video; HBO, Showtime, and more recently Netflix all invest in comedy specials (with $200 million dollars spent this year alone). But that only services the top tier of comedians.

“Now imagine you’re one of the 4,000 comedians who doesn’t have a Netflix special,” says Scott, asserting, “we want to bring audio distribution back.”

The Competition

There are plenty of places to consume comedy: You can hop on YouTube, sort through various streaming channels, or listen to thousands of podcasts devoted to the genre. But those, says Scott, fail at two functions: search and curation.

Half of podcasts are comedic, with established podcasters like Marc Maron or Chris Hardwick leading the way. Plenty of content exists—either by the podcast distribution outlet or via the comedian’s personal app—but most do not contain topic categories. Not to mention, the majority of comedic podcasts are in interview format, not stand-up.

Sirius XM now has nine comedy channels, increasing from two just a few years ago. Comedy is the satellite radio company’s no. 2 most-listened-to category after Howard Stern. “But you can’t take it with you,” Scott says. “It’s made for the car.”

YouTube boasts thousands of comedy act clips, but Scott describes it as a “jack in the box” experience: not everything if there in full, quality is generally poor, and you’re not guaranteed you’ll find what you’re looking for. HBO Go, meanwhile, only represents 5% of its comedy catalog at any given time.

Not to mention, less than half top comedian’s output, like of Aziz Ansari, is even available in video format.

“What if I really want to study great [comedic acts] by comedians like Robin Williams or Eddie Murphy? There was no easy way for me to do that,” says Scott. “It’s like a roulette wheel as to whether you’ll get to see the special you’re looking for.”

Spotify, meanwhile, does feature comedy and playlist options, but cherry-picked only the top comedians from the major labels, resulting in 2,000 hours and 130 albums. In comparison, Laugh.ly carries 700 comedians and 18,000 hours of comedy. This equates to over 200,000 tracks.

There are other stand-up comedy apps on the market, including Comedy Central or the aptly named Stand Up Comedy app, but both specialize in video, not audio, in limited quantities. Laugh.ly aims to be the destination with the most comprehensive and organized comedy library. And more than that, it wants to reintroduce the American consumer to the pleasure of listening to comedy albums.

“We believe there’s a comedian out there for everyone,” he says, “and if they give us a chance, we can help them find their comedian.”

Rethinking The Industry

Scott began working on what would become Laugh.ly in 2013, collaborating on the app with the very first designer for Spotify. But he put the project on the back burner in 2014 after taking a job offer as CMO at Livefyre, a company that specializes in user-generated content tools. When that company was sold two years later, Scott dusted off his business plan to revisit his passion project. He moved back to San Francisco and started recruiting developers with a simple, if not trite, pitch: “The world needs more laughter, it’s the world’s oldest medicine.”

Scott then reached out to the three companies that essentially control most music industry catalog rights: Sony, Warner Music, and Universal. Combined, the trio owns 20 percent of all comedy catalogs. The other 80 percent belong to mom and pop labels like Uproar Entertainment or the comedians themselves. He personally reached out to those as well.

“If music is an oligopoly, then comedy is more a democracy,” says Scott.

When Scott went to the big three, he was met with puzzled executives who all echoed the same sentiment: “‘Huh, no one’s ever asked for these back catalogs before,’” recalls Scott. The old comedy albums were languishing on the shelves.

With the individual artists, Scott cut direct deals, offering them 50% revenue of all advertising and subscription proceeds. He says nearly all were enthusiastic about the prospect of building their business and expanding their audiences. Only 5%, says Scott, have their own TV shows or cable specials. Laugh.ly gives them the ability to directly upload albums straight to the app.

“We’re putting money into the pockets of working comedians,” says Scott.

The team finished the product within six months. Two weeks before launch, this past August, Laugh.ly won the TechCrunch Startup Battlefield competition and overnight, says Scott, the app’s waiting list went from zero to 10,000 users. The week following launch, Apple iTunes Store editors featured it. Within 30 days, Laugh.ly had 100,000 downloads.

In December, Laugh.ly announced it secured a $2.25 million seed round and staff increased to a total of 14. In February, the startup partnered with some of the biggest comedy clubs in the nation, including Gotham Comedy Club, to live stream comedic events and comedy festivals straight from the stage.

Today, Laugh.ly boasts 200,00 installs, with the active user consuming an average of 51 minutes per session. In March, users consumed over 5 million minutes of comedy. There’s a subset of 1,000 hardcore users, whom Scott describes as “comedy nerds,” who listen to approximately 117 minutes per session. Of those folks, he says, some ended up being recruited to curate content, test early builds, and “shape the future of the app,” in exchange for free premium services.

According to the company’s research and recent user survey, the average Laugh.ly user is male, 27, and college educated. The no. 1 time listeners use the app is between the hours of 7:00-9:00 p.m., presumably as a way to wind down after work while multitasking other activities like cooking dinner or working out.

The second most popular time was the commute home, right after 5:00 p.m., with the third belonging to the commute en route work. Basically, Laugh.ly is the glass of wine following a long day.

“What we found [from user feedback] is how important laughter is as a means of therapy and stress relief,” says Scott.

Moving forward, Laugh.ly will extend into the heavily saturated market of comedy podcasts. The company intends to incorporate 100 comedy podcasts before introducing their own. Podcasts, says Scott, have become mainstays of the comedy industry.

“We want to be the audio comedy destination no matter what that comedy is, and you can’t be the comedy destination if you don’t have everything,” explains Scott, “and podcast is a large part of that.”

Essentially, Scott wants, as he puts it, “everything and the kitchen sink,” when it comes to audio comedy. That means further down the line Laugh.ly will likely even sell tour tickets straight from the app. “Being able to bridge that gap between live tours and comedy is gonna be the last mile for us,” he says.

“You can get comedy anywhere,” says Scott, “but we are the only app that’s solely dedicated to standup comedy in audio format . . . We have the full story.”

I once worked at a company that held positivity as a core value. Employees were so encouraged to remain positive all the time that I was once reprimanded by my boss at this company for posting a personal tweet about wanting to stay in bed one cold weekend morning. Apparently, positivity extends so far as always being happy to get out of bed, even when it’s cold outside, it’s not a workday, and your bed is toasty warm.

I thought I was a fairly positive person in general before I joined that company. But that experience made me think I’m more of a cynic. Being positive about everything all day long just didn’t come naturally to me.

In fact, it turns out few of us can be positive every minute of every day—even if it’s just while we’re at work. And the side effects of a workplace that enforces positivity (and, as a result, the suppressing of any negative emotions) can be downright dangerous.

Why Suppressing Negative Emotions Is Worse Than Venting Them

Perhaps the most dangerous effect of a workplace culture focused on positive emotions is that none of us are positive all the time. Which means to fit in at work we end up suppressing our negative emotions.

Much worse than venting, suppressing negative emotions is bad for our health. One study found people who suppressed anger had a three times higher risk of heart attack than those who let their anger out.

Studies of people in rehab and addiction treatment facilities have also found suppressing negative thoughts can be harmful. Those who suppressed thoughts relating to their addiction and cravings tended to harbor more of those thoughts overall. Suppressing addiction-related thoughts also made study participants have stronger stress reactions to cues relating to their addictions.

Other research has found suppressing negative emotions can lead to emotional overeating, and emotional exhaustion. And suppressing thoughts tends to lead to an effect called dream rebound, where the more those thoughts are suppressed, the more likely they are to show up in dreams later.

The Downsides Of Positivity

It might seem counterintuitive to talk about the downsides of being positive, but there are two main ways positivity can lead to negative effects: when we’re overly positive, or when we’re trying to be positive always. And though studies have shown benefits to a positive attitude, experts say the link between positivity and better health or wealth is generally undemonstrated, and we’re lacking any proof of positive emotions causing any related benefits.

On the other hand, research has shown too much positivity can lead people to be less motivated, pay less attention to detail, be more selfish, and indulge more in risky behaviors like binge drinking and overeating.

One reason positive emotions lead to risky behavior is because we tend to equate happiness and safety. When we feel happy and connected to others, we’re also likely to have higher oxytocin level. Often called the “cuddle hormone,” oxytocin makes us feel safe, and tends to peak when we’re feeling close to others emotionally and physically. With higher levels of oxytocin in our bodies, we feel more safe, and thus pay less attention to danger. While that might have meant being vulnerable to predators for our ancestors, today it’s more likely to mean indulging in risky behaviors like unsafe sex or binge drinking.

Other studies have found we’re more gullible when we’re in a good mood. Researchers used films to put people in good or bad moods before surveying them on their thoughts about common urban myths. Those in positive moods tended to be more likely to believe urban myths, rather than questioning their validity.

This shows that there could be negative effects on employees’ critical thinking skills if they’re always suppressing negative emotions.

It’s not just feeling positive that has downsides, either. Forcing people to feel happy when they don’t can also have bad side effects.

Research has shown positive affirmations (e.g. saying “I am loved” or “I am strong” to yourself) actually backfire when used by people with low self-esteem. Rather than buying into the affirmations, these people tend to believe the opposite even more strongly than they did before.

So if being positive all the time is a bad idea, what benefits can we get from negative emotions?

The Benefits Of Negativity

While negative emotions can obviously hinder our performance and communication in some cases, they exist for a reason. Negative emotions alert us to danger, whether physical, emotional, or social, and help us solve problems.

Anger, in particular, has also been shown to improve creativity. When researchers put subjects into an angry or sad mood before testing their creativity, they found angry participants came up with more creative solutions (and more solutions overall) when given problems to solve.

When we’re feeling a little down, researchers have also shown we pay more attention to social cues, helping us get along better with others. We also tend to treat others more fairly when we’re not feeling at our best.

And pessimists have the upper hand when things go badly, too. One study showed pessimists are less prone to depression when dealing with a negative life event, such as the death of a friend.

Finally, negative people have been shown to have better negotiation and decision-making skills, more stable marriages, lower risk of heart attack, longer lives overall, and even more wealth.

None of this is to say there’s anything wrong with positive emotions. We all love to feel happy, excited, and motivated.

The issue is the growing tendency for workplaces to force constant positivity on employees. To be human is to have negative emotions, and if we try to suppress them, nature has a way of making sure they get out somehow—even if they have to pop up in our dreams.

This article originally appeared on RescueTime and is reprinted with permission. 

It’s not easy to communicate excitement around energy efficiency because it’s all about HVAC upgrades, incremental improvements to boiler systems, and LED lightbulbs. But with the Better Buildings Challenge SWAP–an Apprentice-style energy efficiency face-off in which teams from two organizations try to find wasted energy in the other’s operations–the Department of Energy makes a good show of it. Watching teams of energy professionals nitpick each other’s facilities is surprisingly good viewing, even if the made-for-TV rivalry and portentous voiceover feels too much like The Apprentice at times.

The first installment last year saw Whole Foods take on Hilton Worldwide, before a second pitted the Air Force Academy against the Naval Academy. The latest turns to cities, with Boston taking on Atlanta. Teams from each city visit a range of properties, including airports, libraries, water treatment works, and streets. They find faults in corridor airflows, rhapsodize about rooftop solar panels, and needle each other about phantom light fixtures and the height of heating fans. It’s great fun.

The serious point, says Maria Vargas, head of the Department of Energy’s Better Buildings program, which commissions the web series, is to show how organizations can learn from each other. “Hopefully by seeing real world situations and obstacles, SWAP provides a place for people to learn and feel empowered about making energy efficiencies,” she tells Fast Company. “There’s money investment involved here and people are naturally risk-averse. Seeing other cities do it, and seeing the investments work out, is good information to have.” The first two SWAP series have been viewed about 2 million times on YouTube.

Started by the Obama Administration, the Better Buildings program looks to spread efficiency to the nation’s commercial stock, including offices, schools, and city works. Buildings in total account for at least one third of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions and in many cases there’s good money to be had from the cost savings earned from efficiency upgrades. The U.S. spends $200 billion to operate its commercial property, Vargas says, and frequently older buildings can deliver 20% savings just from doing basic things, like installing better lighting, heating systems, or windows. “A lot of organizations will say they’re energy efficient, but when you probe it a little, you find they’ve done one building or they’ve changed some lights. We’re pushing a deeper, more thorough approach,” she says.

Stephanie Stuckey-Benfield, Atlanta’s chief resilience officer, says appearing in the SWAP helped her learn a few useful things, including how Boston does procurement of energy-efficiency technology. It also made her jealous that Georgia doesn’t have Massachusetts’s regulatory framework, including energy-efficiency targets and a Renewable Energy Portfolio Standard that requires utilities to increase their use of renewables over time. The lack of such measures in Atlanta makes funding projects harder, she says.

“The city of Atlanta is a bit of bubble where we get [energy efficiency]. That’s not the case with the rest of the state necessarily,” she says in an interview. “We still have some climate deniers that we have to grapple with.”

Austin Blackmon, Boston’s chief of environment, energy, and open space, says having outsiders inspect your facilities can reveal “things even in buildings that were renovated not long ago.” Atlanta’s snoopers identified unnecessary lighting in Boston’s library buildings where natural daylight would suffice, for instance.

“With some of the challenges we’re seeing at the national level, it’s more important than ever that cities work together,” he tells me. “Energy efficiency is really difficult to argue against. It’s all about making America more competitive. If we can use energy more efficiently, we can create more jobs and have more resources available for all Americans.”

Vargas says she doesn’t know if Trump’s proposed budget cuts will see the end of SWAP. She hopes to do one more episode before the axe falls, if that’s what happens. Trump’s budget proposal for 2018 calls for a 5.6% cut at the DOE compared to 2017–about $1.7 billion. The biggest casualty so far is the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E), an internal technology incubator for early-stage energy projects. Trump has said the private sector should fund such work and research funding may already be tapering off. One SWAP costs about $200,000 to produce, Vargas says.

Trump has also issued executive orders culling the Obama Administration’s energy efficiency programs, so perhaps SWAP’s prospects aren’t great. Trump’s attitude to energy in general–including his encomiums to coal–show a man caught in an older time, rather than with the possibilities of doing more work with less power, and producing less pollution while you’re doing it. But then, even if he doesn’t understand the future of energy, Trump does comprehend reality shows. So maybe he’ll tune into SWAP.

You’re probably familiar with the advice to not talk about politics at work. But the etiquette around participating in political activities outside of work can be a little more hazy. Whether it’s attending a protest or publicly tweeting at a politician, your political activities can have a major impact on your job.

Related:Brands In The Age Of Trump: A Survival Guide

Of course, the right to participate in political activities is a key part of living in a democracy, and ideally, attending a rally shouldn’t really impact your professional prospects. Corporations, however, are free to come up with their own policies, including limiting some political participation.

To find out what employees should know about how taking part in political activities can affect their job, Fast Company contacted two workplace experts. Here’s what they told us.

Get A Feeling For Where Your Company Stands From The Start

Lynn Taylor, workplace expert and author of Tame Your Terrible Office Tyrant: How to Manage Childish Boss Behavior and Thrive in Your Job, says that ideally, the best time to figure out whether or not your political activities could cost you your job is right before you start. “So many people right now are looking for positions, and I suspect that not many of them are even thinking about this. It’s not even on their radar because they’re just focused on what the best job is, what the best salary is, where can I get the best opportunity for growth—but they can be out of a job if they’re politically active.”

Related:The Unexpected Political Influence Your Boss Has On Your Vote

She recommends that job candidates should check out sites like Glassdoor, talk to people they might know at the company, or speak directly to HR or recruiters to find out as much as they can about the workplace culture and what’s deemed acceptable or not.

For those currently employed, Taylor suggests checking out the company handbook to find out what policies they have—if any—on employees and political participation. “Look around you,” Taylor says. “What’s the treatment of others who are politically active?

“If you just keep your ears to the ground, it’s amazing how much information you can find out that would otherwise go under the radar. And while you’re at the job, it doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t go on social media and still do your due diligence and see what’s being said about the company.”

Freedom Of Speech Doesn’t Always Apply In The Workplace

Political activism is a privilege, but the workplace doesn’t always see it that way. As a private citizen, what you say with regards to your political views—as well as how you express them—is constitutionally protected under the First Amendment. But this protection doesn’t always necessarily extend to guarantee of employment in the workplace—private organizations can make their own rules, and in some cases that includes regulating what you can and can’t say in the office.

Edward Yost, an HR expert from the Society for Human Resource Management, tells Fast Company that recently, the National Labor Relations Board—the government agency that enforces the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)—has taken the stance that an employer cannot take disciplinary action based on an employee’s social media posting, unless it threatens the organization in some way. This rule, however, doesn’t give employees a blanket protection to make controversial political statements on social media.

Employment At Will Makes It Possible For You To Get Fired For Any Reason

Yost and Taylor both point out that most U.S. workers operate under the employment-at-will doctrine. “An employer can terminate an employee without justification,” Yost says. So in fact, if an employer wants to fire you because of your political activities, they’re just not allowed to say that’s the reason for terminating your employment.

Taylor says, “Whether you decide to sue your employer later because you weren’t fired for any legitimate reason is a separate matter. Because you could almost be fired for any reason, you have to be a little cautious and realize that free speech is not—unfortunately—the case once you’re employed.”

It’s important to note that the NLRA applies to private-sector employees only; federal and government employees are excluded. However, Taylor notes that as a government employee, you’re likely to have more protections, provided that your actions aren’t disruptive to the workplace.

Be Aware Of State Regulations

Being aware of state regulations (and possibly additional protections) is also an important factor to consider when you’re thinking about whether attending a protest might impact your job. California, for example, grants employees certain protections when it comes to participating in political activities. States like Colorado and New Mexico also provide some protection, according to an article in Law360.

Taylor explains, “There are a lot of states that are more politically progressive than others. It’s a moving target in some cases. It really depends on what state you’re in and what you’re doing in those states.”

Have Your Own Litmus Test

Ultimately, both Taylor and Yost urge employees to devise their own litmus test before they take part in any political activities that can potentially jeopardize their jobs. Both note that the heightened political climate is likely to make this an ongoing issue for both employees and employers.

Taylor says, “If you want to be completely conservative, you keep a low profile. That said, a lot of people want to express their political views.” 

She continues, “You have to keep not only your current job but also your well-being intact at work, and not introduce another level of stress into your job because you feel conflicted about the need to express your views. That’s something that nobody really needs on top of producing good work.”

Yost says that ultimately, employees need to be aware of what they consider to be important. For him, if his values or beliefs have the potential to “negatively impact” his career in an organization, then that’s a strong sign that his current workplace is probably not the right one for him. 

Look, up in the sky. It’s…a taxi! That could become reality in six to 10 years if Uber fulfills its vision of a flying cab system. Ahead of its Uber Elevate Summit in Dallas today, the ride-hailing giant shared exclusively with Fast Company its plans for urban air travel—expanding on ideas included in a white paper published last year. They include the choice of cities to start testing the technology and the initial lineup of five aircraft makers it will task with building economical, four-passenger, electric craft that will—eventually—fly themselves. (Uber is live-streaming the three-day conference from the Elevate Summit home page.)

Whether they are helicopters, quad copters, or space-age airplanes, all the craft will have to be capable of vertical takeoff and landing, called VTOL, in order to fit into mini-airports, known as vertiports, spread around cities. And they will have to be quiet enough to take off and land near homes and offices without driving people crazy.

Convincing Cities

That last challenge could be the greatest one of all—at least in the U.S., where a hodgepodge of local, state, and federal agencies all have to get on board and convince the public that the technology is safe and not too intrusive. In Dubai, it should be easier to get it started. “It’s a monarchy, so they have the ability to move very quickly with things that they get behind strategically,” says Jeff Holden, Uber’s chief product officer. “The certification of machinery and the approach to getting the aircraft through could be a much faster path [than in the U.S.].”

In fact, Dubai has already green-lit a program by Chinese drone maker EHang (unconnected to Uber) that will start sky taxi flights in July. Dubai hopes to have at least a demonstration Uber vehicle ready to show off in three years when it hosts the 2020 World Expo. “We’re still not exactly positive what we’ll deploy there,” says Holden. “It could be a simple demonstrator; it could be something further along.”

In the U.S., Uber has won over the mayors of both Dallas and Fort Worth. “Every part of this marketplace, we’re seeing tremendous growth, says Dallas Mayor Michael S. Rawlings. “So it’s going to need innovative transportation answers.” Dallas-Fort Worth is one of the largest urban areas in the U.S., and it’s also an airplane-friendly town. “We have a history of aviation,” says Rawlings. “We have American Airlines, Southwest, Bell Helicopter, so many.”

Uber has pitched Elevate as a cheap alternative to building new roads and expanding public transit. But Rawlings isn’t buying that, saying Dallas has to be “multi-modal,” with many ways to get around. He touts the construction of a high-speed rail link to Houston, for instance. “Anytime there’s innovation in the marketplace, I don’t think anybody truly knows the results of these things, or the costs,” he says. “We’ve got to be multimodal—there’s no question—in this city.”

The likely plan in all cities is to locate vertiports on top of buildings. “It’s anything from residential structures to office structures that have roof space they can use,” says Holden, “or structures they can build or add onto.” Uber’s concept illustration for Dallas shows a plane landing atop a parking garage, but Holden says there might be vertiports on the ground, too. Rawlings is receptive, noting that Dallas already accommodates a lot of airports. “I think we’ve been able to negotiate that very well,” he says. “There are issues, and we’ll just have to deal with those issues as they arise.”

Air Taxi Makers Announced

Given Uber’s demand for quiet VTOL aircraft, its first batch of manufacturers includes some unexpected choices. They include Dallas-based Bell Helicopter, military and civilian plane maker Aurora Flight Sciences, glider and small plane maker Pipistrel Aircraft, jet manufacturer Embraer, and private plane maker Mooney. Absent from the list are companies with craft that seem to perfectly fit Uber’s vision—even as portrayed in its conceptual drawings—such as Airbus (with its Vahana plane), Joby Aviation, and Lilium. All three have tilting wings or engines that point down for VTOL and then rotate parallel to the ground to fly like regular planes.

Related link: Airbus Is About To Build A Self-Flying Robo-Taxi

“Each of these partners that we’ve chosen brings something special to the table,” says Holden. “Bell has actually built these kind of aircraft before,” he says. “Embraer [has] done large-scale manufacturing, which is going to be a new thing that we introduce to the aviation industry as a result of Elevate.” Holden says that more companies may also join up. In fact both Airbus and Lilium will be speaking at Elevate.

The tilting wing or propeller design seems to be the favorite of Mark Moore, Uber’s director of aviation engineering, who joined the company in February after 32 years at NASA. Electric planes and tilt-wing craft were two of Moore’s main research projects before he left the agency. Helicopters seem to be inherently noisier and less energy-efficient (for reasons I explained in a previous story). Holden sounds more open to other designs. “We’re not telling any of the aircraft manufacturers, ‘You must build this design,'” he says.

Like A Private X-Prize

Uber’s Elevate program is a bit like an X-prize—competitions run by governments or nonprofits that push competitors to solve a bunch of really difficult challenges. (Pipistrel, in fact, won the NASA-CAFE Foundation 2011 Green Aviation Prize for energy efficiency, which was funded by Google.) But instead of teams competing for prize money, it’s companies competing for lucrative deals with Uber. (And with a near $70 billion valuation, Uber can throw lot of money behind projects.) In fact, not getting on Uber’s short list could be a huge disadvantage to aircraft makers, since that’s where the big money is.

“Right now there’s vehicle [makers] developing all sorts of different approaches,” says Mark Moore, “going in any direction because, frankly, we have these brand new…technologies in electric propulsion, in autonomy that let us design aircraft differently.”

Of the companies announced by Uber today, Aurora is probably the closest to Moore’s vision. Its LightningStrike design, funded by the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), will have 24 propellers encased under four wings that tilt from downward to rearward positions. LightningStrike is a military craft; but clearly Aurora thinks it can adapt the technology for other planes. Currently, the LightningStrike is just a model plane-size prototype, whereas Lilium just flew a full-scale plane with a similar design. Aurora also makes autonomous drones and helicopters for the military and an autonomous twin-engine civilian plane—key technologies for robo taxis.

It will be interesting to see how all of these companies tackle the noise problem. “My fear…is that there are hundreds of millions of dollars being invested in potential sky taxis whose noise signature will disqualify them from commercial use,” says Brien Seeley founder of the Sustainable Aviation Foundation, which is not affiliated with Uber.

“I think there’s more to be learned about how much noise, what it means, and how we’re going to work flight patterns,” says Mayor Rawlins. “So it’s probably premature for me to opine on that.”

Related link: Uber’s Flying Car Chief Talks Noise Pollution And The Future Of Sky Taxis

The challenge will be most difficult for helicopters, whose giant, fast-spinning rotors send whooshing and rumbling sounds over a large area. But a bunch of buzzing little propellers—on planes like the LightningStrike—could also be awfully loud compared to traditional planes with just one or two bigger, slower-moving props. “If a company heavily invests in that kind of vehicle, and the other company brings out a fixed-wing [plane] with very slow, quiet-turning windmill, someone’s going to lose economically in a big way,” says Seeley.

Technology might improve vertical-takeoff craft, though, says Seeley, who has proposed an X-prize to develop an ultra-quiet plane (no louder, from 130 feet away, than the sound of nearby conversation.) “Its tendency is to be more noisy,” he says, of vertical-takeoff planes. “And yet, it offers so many advantages that if the noise demon can be slain in the small-rotor world, it’ll be the champion.”

Holden says that Uber aims to see planes (or copters) go into mass production in six years, with the goal of establishing large-scale service in about a decade. For that to happen, manufacturers will have to move fast. “To take an electric plane through the certification process is easily a five-year process right now,” says Yolanka Wulff. “And that only gets you to the point of being able to [start to] manufacture those planes.”

Not Your Typical Uber Driver

Uber’s ultimate goal is to have fleets of taxis that fly themselves. But given the challenge of getting self-driving cars on the roads, it could take even longer to get self-flying taxis in the sky. “Certification for autonomy will be a long process, simply because it hasn’t been done,” says Holden, adding that, “Software in general is not one of the areas where there’s an efficient certification path.”

Uber’s taxis will start service with fully certified commercial pilots, who may be the company’s first full-time drivers. Such aeronautics pros aren’t very cheap, however, or very common; and neither will the initial flights be. “I don’t think it will be a crazy premium,” says Holden. “I think it will be something that a lot of people will seriously consider, but it won’t start as an everyday [service].”

This is a familiar pattern for Uber, whose car service also started as a luxury offering, says Holden. But prices dropped as more cars got on the road and as riders were able to split costs using Uber Pool. (Billions of VC funding to subsidize rides have helped, too.) Uber is planning on taxis with room for four passengers, plus a pilot. “It’s very much like a car, and it works very well for pooling,” says Holden. The goal is to make using Uber—on land and in the air—cheaper than owing a car.

“This is kind of a vision right now,” says Mayor Rawlings, “so it’s hard for me to really commit exactly to what the benefits to everybody are, and to whom it’s a benefit. I’ll reserve the final pitch [to voters] until I understand it a little bit better.”

Related link: Here’s Why South America Is Getting Helicopter Ride-Sharing Before The U.S.

As soon as professional pilots take to the air, Uber will start refining the technology to replace them. “Our approach is to initially have piloted aircraft but run autonomy software in parallel,” says Holden. “And that way we can look at what the autonomy would have done in comparison to what the pilot actually did.”

Uber hopes the next phase will be to employ semi-autonomous planes driven by lightly trained pilots. “It’ll be more demanding than getting a driver’s license but far less demanding than getting a helicopter pilot’s license,” says Holden. You probably won’t see people doing it for just a few hours a week, as some Uber car drivers work.

This intermediate stage may not last long, as the end goal is to do away with pilots—although Uber isn’t predicting how soon planes will be able to fly themselves. In other words: Those pilots could someday experience the same anxiety and rage felt by Uber car drivers that they’ll eventually be replaced by robots.

Student loan collectors have become notorious in recent years for abysmal service and allegedly illegal practices. With trust in these market giants hitting new lows, fintech startup CommonBond has decided to make its move into the sector. Today the New York-based company announced that it will start lending directly to undergraduate and graduate students at all nonprofit higher education institutions.

“Education finance is a massive industry, and we’ve just begun to scratch the surface,” says cofounder and CEO David Klein. Student loan debt passed $1.3 trillion last year, and continues to rise.

CommonBond, like Earnest and SoFi, made its name as a refinancing solution for borrowers who had graduated from top colleges and universities. Since its 2013 launch, the company has funded over $1 billion in loans.

But on the side, unlike its competitors, CommonBond has been offering direct student loans to MBA students at a select group of schools, including Dartmouth and Yale. At those campuses, to Klein’s surprise, the company quickly became the top private lender.

Klein attributes the rapid growth to CommonBond’s attentive customer service and slick modern technology. “This is something that a lot of people are clamoring for,” he says.

Now he and his team will have a chance to test that theory more broadly. Their loans will now be available to undergraduate and graduate students across the country, with the exception of those enrolled in for-profit or online-only institutions. Variable rates will be as low as 2.87% and fixed rates as low as 5.50%, for borrowers who enroll in auto-pay.

In addition, CommonBond has built tools to facilitate the involvement of a cosigner, which has been a pain point in traditional systems. (Parent co-signers will also help reduce CommonBond’s risk.)

Klein plans to first target students at those campuses where CommonBond has already been lending to MBAs, and expand from there. When financial aid offices send students information regarding their financing packages, CommonBond will be listed as an eligible private lender.

In the meantime, CommonBond’s competitors are moving beyond student loan refi; SoFi, for example, has introduced mortgages. Klein has similar aspirations—just not quite yet.

“It’s a safe bet that in 2018 you’ll see us expand beyond education finance,” he says. But for now: “We believe in the value of focus.”

In early January, the artist and technologist Daniel Howe opened an email from Google informing him that his three-year-old ad-blocking app, AdNauseam, had just been banned from the company’s Chrome Web store. Overnight, he discovered, the free app’s 60,000 users had lost access to the app on Google’s popular browser, and all comments, ratings, reviews, and statistics had vanished.

Ads are the economic powerhouse of the internet, supporting much of its “free” content and services, this website included. But they are also easy to hate, making the internet distracting, ugly, slow, and more costly to use. This partly helps explain the demand for ad blockers: Installations grew by 30% last year to 615 million computer or mobile devices, or 11% of the world’s online population, according to estimates by Page Fair, an industry group.

Google and its parent company, Alphabet, which dominates the market for online ads and made an estimated $79 billion from them in 2016, has taken a largely hands-off approach to the potentially existential threat of ad blockers. And, according to recentreports, it now plans to include “ad-filtering” software pre-installed in Chrome—an “if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em” approach to making the web less annoying.

But AdNauseum isn’t like the other ad blockers: It takes a more activist approach. Rather than just concealing them, the app sends noise into the system by automatically clicking on ads in the background, muddling efforts by advertisers and ad networks like Google’s to determine your preferences and your identity as you browse the web. Alan Toner, a policy consultant at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who studies ad blocking, calls AdNauseum affectionately, “a piece of agitprop theater” designed to “creatively protest the surveillance mechanism behind advertising.”

“No Clarity At All”

Google, however, didn’t complain about AdNauseum’s approach to protesting ads. Instead, it pointed to a developer agreement that gives the company “the right to suspend or bar any Product from the Web Store at its sole discretion,” and offered a more prosaic reason for the ban:

An extension should have a single purpose that is clear to users. Do not create an extension that requires users to accept bundles of unrelated functionality, such as an email notifier and a news headline aggregator.

Baffled, Howe wrote back to ask Google how this rule applied to AdNauseum. In a second email, a company representative explained that an extension should not perform both blocking and hiding ads. In an email, a Google spokesperson confirmed to me that the company’s single-purpose policy was the reason for the app’s removal, not because it automatically clicked on ads, but wouldn’t comment further.

To Howe and his cofounders, designer and activist Mushon Zer-Aviv and NYU information science professor Helen Nissenbaum, this explanation is hard to accept at face value. Many ad blockers, including uBlock, Adblock Plus, Adblock, and Adguard, both hide and block ads, trackers, and malware, and yet all of these are allowed in the Chrome Web store; AdNauseum had been in the store for two years.

Instead, the team suspected a simpler motive behind Google’s decision: AdNauseum directly conflicts with the way that the company makes most of its money.

Alok Bhardwaj, the founder of the Epic browser, which has had its own privacy-related clash with Google, said Google’s explanation reflected “strained logic.” But he also said that AdNauseum’s click-all-the-ads approach raised the threat of ad blockers by an order of magnitude.

“If there’s considerable doubt over whether an ad click is legitimate or not, that’s a big problem for Google charging for ad clicks,” he wrote in an email. “It could undermine Google’s business model more severely than plain ad blockers, so it’s probably their thought to ‘nip it in the bud.'”

“The official reasons offered for their exclusion have been so generic as to provide no clarity at all,” Toner said. “Its exclusion needs an explanation.”

Ads Aren’t Just Ugly: They’re Invasive

Google’s decision to ban AdNauseum was only the latest salvo in an ongoing war over online advertising. The industry and publishers have recently been fighting back against ad blockers, for instance, by requiring visitors to disable them if they want to view a page. In August, Facebook announced it was blocking anti-ad software across its platform. And while AdNauseum is the first desktop ad blocker Google has blocked, it has previously banned mobile apps like anti-tracking tool Disconnect and ad blocker AdBlock Fast from its Android Play Store, citing a rule that says one app can’t interfere with another.

The ad industry also knows that ads can be a nuisance, and it’s taking pre-emptive measures to make them more palatable—or, in Google’s case, to block the unpalatable ones. “We feel like there are a lot of challenges in advertising. There are a lot of wrong ways,” Darin Fisher, vice president of Chrome engineering, told CNet last year. But “if publishers and advertisers do ads the right way, it can be great for the users and for the ecosystem.”

But Google’s positions also point to a crucial disagreement at the heart of the ad war: What makes ads such a nuisance to begin with?

Advocates insist that ads aren’t just ugly, annoying, and bandwidth-sucking: They pose a risk to privacy, as the networks of software behind ads—cookies, trackers, and malware—watch not only where you go on the web but, through your phone and your purchases, what you do in real life. This data, which helps data brokers better understand you, includes everything from your health to your shopping and financial habits to your political and religious views.

But privacy is largely missing from Google’s discussion of problematic ads, says Howe. By avoiding mentioning AdNauseum’s actual intent, Google’s explanation for banning it echoes the advertising industry’s discussion of web ads, which focuses on aesthetics rather than privacy.

“Google does not want the ad-blocking debate to be about surveillance and civil liberties because it has very weak arguments to make there,” he wrote in a post on the blog of Princeton’s Center for Information Technology Policy. Instead, “it would like to keep the debate to the economics and aesthetics of ads…”

Google’s ad filter would be based on standards drawn up last month by The Coalition For Better Ads, a global coalition of advertisers cofounded by Google and including industry groups, publishers like Facebook and The Washington Post, and advertisers like Proctor & Gamble and Unilever. (Apple, which permits third-party blockers on its Safari browser, and Mozilla, which includes anti-ad features in its Firefox browser, are not part of the Coalition.) The new guidelines urge the rest of the industry to stop using the kind of annoying ad formats that have fueled the rapid rise of ad blockers, like pop-ups, auto-play video ads, and full-screen ads. But the standards do not mention tracking or user privacy.

“By banning AdNauseam and then rolling out its own ad blocker, Google is now trying to prevent anyone else from drawing the line in the sand when it comes to which ads are presented to the user,” Zer-Aviv said. Google would be “leveraging its near monopoly in the ad and browser markets to forcefully exclude any competition that does not align with its model of ‘acceptable ads,’ be it other ad networks, the Do Not Track standard, or privacy initiatives like our own.”

Google’s advertising business depends upon tracking more than ever. A little-noticed change to the company’s privacy policy last year gave it the ability to track users’ web activity across a majority of sites and apps. (In a concession to privacy, the company also now allows users to change their default settings to “opt-out of ad personalization.”)

Google’s ad blocker could give the company more leverage over advertisers and other ad blockers that have recently launched so-called “Acceptable Ads” programs, which permit some ads to be shown that are deemed to be “non-intrusive.” Google and other major ad networks already pay to participate in AdBlock Plus’s acceptable ads program, which provides the bulk of revenues for Eyeo GmbH, the company that makes the app.

A Google ad filter could also effectively suppress a new Do Not Track standard. The older standard is essentially an automated request from your browser, asking the websites you visit to refrain from tracking you. The new version of DNT, developed by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, is dynamic: It asks websites not to track you and it knows if they comply.

In its most recent update, AdNauseum permitted sites that complied with the Do Not Track policy to display ads to users, and refrained from clicking on those ads. (Because Google does not comply with DNT, the app blocked Google resources such as Doubleclick.net and Google Analytics.)

Howe thinks the new DNT feature may have contributed to Google’s decision to boot AdNauseum from the web store.

The standard may be threatening to Google, Howe wrote in his blog post, “perhaps because it could represent a real means for users, advertisers, and content providers to move away from surveillance-based advertising.” If enough sites adopt Do Not Track, “there will be significant financial incentive for advertisers to place ads on those sites, and these too will be bound by DNT, as the mechanism also applies to a site’s third-party partners. And this could possibly set off a chain reaction of adoption that would leave Google, which has committed to surveillance as its core business model, out in the cold.”

Toner, of the EFF, said “it does seem like a strange coincidence” that AdNauseum was banned soon after it integrated support for the new DNT standard. Privacy Badger, the EFF’s own Chrome app that blocks cross-site trackers, also supports the new DNT standard, but it has not encountered problems with Google, he said.

Cable companies are also seeking a piece of the marketing pie on which Google, Facebook, and other digital media giants are already feasting. The bill President Trump signed last month to repeal privacy rules for internet service providers will allow those companies to collect and sell customers’ browsing data to third parties without their express consent.

The playing field is growing ever more sophisticated too, as companies combine web data mining with personality behaviors gleaned via Facebook to better profile consumers and target them with ever more persuasive ads, be it for pop stars or politicians. “We think that ISPs should not be helping track their users,” said Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and programmer at EFF.

Nor do most Americans, according to a survey by YouGov and the Huffington Post. Seventy-one percent of the public—and 72% of Republicans—believe the FCC’s privacy rules should have gone into effect (see the interactive chart below). Some states, meanwhile, including Minnesota and Washington, are contemplating new privacy rules to pick up the slack.

Users who want privacy from ad tracking can use a variety of free and subscription-based software to defend themselves. Toner suggests installing tracker blockers like Privacy Badger, Disconnect and uBlock, beefing up ad-blocker software with the Easyprivacy filter, and turning off Acceptable Ads in AdBlock Plus or AdBlock for Chrome. Browsers like Firefox, Epic, or Brave also include ad blocking and anti-tracking features.

Meanwhile, new technologies for ad blocking, including a prototype “perceptual” ad blocker developed by researchers at Princeton and Stanford, promise even more effective ad blocking in the future. And despite Google’s ban, AdNauseum still works in Firefox and Opera, while enterprising Chrome users can manually install the app in developer mode.

New Privacy Laws

Legal changes are also on the horizon. A new set of rules in the European Union called the General Data Protection Regulation, scheduled to go into effect in May, will require all companies serving the region’s more than 500 million residents to receive explicit consent from those users for ad targeting or risk paying prohibitive fines—as much as 4% of their global revenues.

The impact of the EU rules on ad targeting could be global, and could dovetail with efforts by some advertisers to improve the way they distribute ads. Currently, the complex ecosystem of online ads is rife with click fraud and distribution schemes that make it hard for advertisers to know if ads are actually being viewed and what kind of content their ads are appearing next to. Building more transparency and simplicity into the system could benefit not only readers but advertisers and publishers too.

Even after the new EU laws, privacy proponents are likely to continue trying to build better blockers, and companies like Google will keep trying to make that work difficult—or build their own.

Google will likely maintain the upper hand. To Zer-Aviv, the company’s banning of AdNauseum was less about compliance with rules (the policy that Chrome apps should not have “multiple functionality”) than about a show of force. He interpreted Google’s “multiple functionality” argument as trying to “force us to compromise our software’s security”—by requiring the app to remove its malware-blocking features—”so we can be easily discredited.”

But in recent weeks, the team decided to change course: It amended AdNauseum so that it would not block malware, in order to meet what they thought was compliance with Google’s policy.

Again, the app was rejected. In another email, Google cited the app’s “multiple functionality” as a problem, Zer-Aviv said. “I think this pretty much seals the question about Google’s sincerity on the reasons for the ban against AdNauseam.”

As he and his cofounders argue, real progress in online privacy isn’t about the option to see less annoying ads: It would require corporate policy and government regulations to align to give users an option to fully opt out of online tracking if they want to. Until that happens, anything less isn’t much of an option at all.

With additional reporting by Alex Pasternack.

Right now, someone with depression has only two clinical options: antidepressants (that often don’t work particularly well) and therapy. But there soon may be a third possibility: a vaccine that could prevent depression rather than attempting to treat it after the disease occurs.

Neuroscientist Rebecca Brachman is working on the development of a drug that increases resilience to stress–and because exposure to stress can trigger depression, the drug could help prevent the disease. Before someone enters a high-stress situation, they could take a dose of the drug.

While in a doctoral program at Columbia University, working with neurobiologist Christine Denny, Brachman studied the effects of giving mice an injection of ketamine, the drug known as special-K. When the mice were later put through a series of stressful situations, they were less depressed, less afraid, and more social than a control group. That effect lasted at least a month, long after the drug had left a mouse’s system.

Through her startup, Brachman is working on developing a related drug that could be used as a “resilience enhancer” to protect against depression.

“It’s important because we don’t have any cures,” Brachman tells Fast Company. Anti-depressants aren’t fully effective (and for some people aren’t effective at all, or can stop working over time), and can cause unpleasant side effects. The preventative drug would also have the advantage of potentially needing only one dose. From testing, the researchers know that the preventative effects of ketamine last at least a month, and may last longer.

“Preventative interventions, especially if they give a long lasting protection, have a much higher likelihood of making it to underserved communities,” she says. “That’s why when people go into Africa they bring vaccines. It’s easier to get governments to invest, and it’s easier to administer if it only needs to be done once.”

It’s possible that the drug, or a variation of it, could also be potentially be used to prevent addiction, OCD, bipolar disorder, or a variety of other mental illnesses. “It’s a whole new field–preventative psychopharmacology,” Brachman says.