In rural Polk County, Nebraska, Jim Carlson’s fifth-generation farm happens to be directly in the proposed path of the Keystone XL pipeline. Now, roughly a month before a key state hearing over permits that would be needed to build the pipeline, Carlson is part of a group planning to install solar panels on his farm in the same spot where the pipeline would go.

The installation is part of Solar XL, an advocacy campaign currently crowdfunding solar installations along the route of the pipeline in Nebraska.

In March, the Trump administration issued a permit for TransCanada, the company behind the pipeline, to build the part of the pipeline that crosses the U.S.-Canada border, reversing Obama’s rejection of the permit in November 2015. The pipeline, which also crosses through Montana and South Dakota before linking up with an existing pipeline in Steele City, Nebraska, also has approvals in the other two states.

In Nebraska, most landowners in Keystone’s proposed path have already signed contracts with TransCanada; the company started making those deals in 2009. “Before there was any public education about this pipeline or what tar sands even is, TransCanada was using bullying techniques, essentially going to landowners saying if you don’t sign this today, then we’re taking your land through eminent domain and you don’t get any money, which is, of course, a lie on both accounts,” says Kleeb. But a group of 90 farmers and ranchers resisted, and have been fighting the project for eight years. They are now part of a last stand against the pipeline, which is intended to carry 830,000 barrels of oil a day from Canadian tar sands to refineries in Texas.

Farmers and ranchers objecting to the pipeline say that it risks a spill that would contaminate water supplies–including the Ogallala Aquifer, one of the world’s largest sources of groundwater.

The solar installations will send power to Nebraska’s public utility. “We are tying these systems back into the Nebraska grid,” says Kleeb. “It’s a very true statement that these three small solar projects will provide more energy for the state of Nebraska than the Keystone pipeline ever will since the Keystone pipeline doesn’t provide energy to Nebraska.”

The installations are also an attempt to make a point about job creation. Though Trump cited jobs as a reason for green-lighting Keystone, the project would primarily create temporary jobs, and only around 50 permanent positions. The solar and wind power industries, by contrast, are among the fastest-growing sources of new jobs.

Kleeb is optimistic that the permits could be denied. “I think everybody has always counted us out,” she says. “They look at us as a conservative red state who would be traditionally giving the green light to big oil. But we’re an ag state. We have a very different way of looking at land and water and a different way of looking at politics. I feel good about our chances. We stopped it this far, right? It’s been rejected twice before with Nebraska really being at the heart of that resistance. So we feel good about our chances.”

Writing a cover letter that shows off your personality might feel like a high-risk, high-reward strategy. Chances are, if you stick with outdated advice and lean on classic go-to lines, you won’t have to worry about saying anything that will make you look bad.

But, if we’re being honest, playing it safe isn’t going to help you reach your goals, either. You want the hiring manager to call you in for an interview. And if your application’s forgettable, that’s probably not going to happen.

With that in mind, you’ve got to add some personality. And you know that, to you, it’s going to read a little strange to you no matter what (just because it’s different). So, if you’re feeling uncertain whether or not it’s working, ask yourself the following questions:

1. Am I Being Rude?

Clearly, you’d never talk down to the hiring manager on purpose. But sometimes, in an effort to lighten the tone, applicants end up doing that by accident.

Related:How To Embrace The Most Embarrassing Part Of Your Resume 

One of the reasons a line like “I hate writing cover letters and you hate reading them…” doesn’t land is that you’re making an assumption.

Maybe the hiring manager does like reviewing materials. Maybe he’s in HR because he’s passionate about connecting the right people with a company he believes in. I’ve personally read hundreds of cover letters and I’ve enjoyed those with powerful stories, with an anecdote that made me feel like I knew the candidate better, and with accomplishments that made me think: This person could be exactly who we’re looking for!

You don’t want to kick things off by minimizing what the other person does. So, skip any lines that combine “you and I both know…” and then putting down the whole process.

2. Am I Sharing The Right Stuff?

Another reason those kinds of lines don’t work is that they’re not actually injecting any personality. If you were meeting someone new and describing yourself, I doubt you’d fold in, “Also, you should know I hate writing cover letters.”

Whatever you share should say something about who you are–something you actually would share with a new contact.

The good news is: This means you can cut anything that makes it sound more personable, but that you’d never actually say.

As far as what to add in its place, ask…

3. Am I Still Highlighting My Skills?

There’s no reason that sections with personality should distract from the rest (where you actually sell your abilities). These lines should add to the story you tell–and make it even stronger. Realizing this can be a game-changer.

So, let’s say you have two activities that jump to mind: cooking and binge-watching Netflix.

Related:How To Channel Your Weekend Hobbies Into Weekday Productivity 

Consider including the one that speaks to whatever skills are most relevant for the job. In other words: What’s your approach to cooking? Do you meticulously measure every single ingredient, which underscores your obsession with organization and strict processes? Or do you just wing it, which speaks to your creativity? Either way, a line that says I’m so obsessive about organization [or, experimentation] that it carries over to my #1 hobby…makes a compelling, memorable point.

Or, it could be your Netflix obsession is worth mentioning (seriously!). Say, if you’re applying for a social media role, and you participate in tons of hashtag chats, mentioning how it grew your follower base could be a great way to show that you “get” Twitter.

The biggest mistake I’ve seen people make with this approach is taking it too far. It’s one thing to add personality to your cover letter, and another to skip spell check or not even mention how you’d be a fit for the open role.

So, even if your examples get a little unconventional, follow all of the other cover letter rules–like tailoring it to the position and using proper spelling, punctuation, and grammar. (Here’s a great guide to proofreading it yourself.) Close attention to these details will show you that you still care enough to submit something polished, and that’s the very best way to stand out.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission. 

More From The Muse:

• 3 Cover Letter Tips For People Who Haven’t Written One In Forever 
• 5 Cover Letter Guidelines That People Still Think It’s OK To Ignore 
• 5 Signs You’ve Gone Right Over The Top On Your Cover Letter 

Facebook Live is coming to virtual reality. Or, more accurately, VR is coming to Facebook Live.

Today, three months after Facebook officially launched its social VR platform Spaces, it is introducing the ability to shoot and broadcast live video from inside Spaces, either to users’ Facebook friends or publicly to the whole world.

The idea is fairly simple. Spaces allows up to four people–each of whom must have an Oculus Rift VR headset–to hang out together in VR. Together, they can talk, chat, draw, create new objects, watch 360-degree videos, share photos, and much more. And now, they can live-broadcast everything they do in Spaces, much the same way that any Facebook user can produce live video of real life and share it with the world.

For Facebook, this is one more move geared toward showing what’s possible in virtual reality, and, hopefully, inspiring more people to try it out and, eventually, buy headsets and VR content. Just this week, for example, Oculus–which Facebook bought in 2012 for what turned out to be $3 billion–announced a temporary $200 price cut on the Rift, lowering the cost of the headset and an included set of Touch controllers to $398.

“The whole point of this,” says Mike Booth, the head of product for Facebook Spaces, “is that this is a social building block. We’re trying to create an ecosystem, and experiment with different things, to come up with fun things to do with each other in social VR. We want to communicate clearly that VR is for everyone….that [everyone] can participate, and see all the awesome things you can do in VR.”

One-To-Many

When Facebook first launched Spaces, it enabled live Messenger video chats between users in VR and those in the real world. That quickly became one of the most popular things people do in Spaces. But that is one-to-one, meaning only one person on the outside could view the video. By implementing full Facebook Live functionality, everyone can tune in, opening up a wide variety of possible interactive scenarios.

For example, Booth talked about people in Spaces playing charades, or Pictionary, with people over Facebook Live. And a video touting the new feature shows a student visiting a computer science teacher during VR office hours, and other students tuning in via Facebook Live to watch the professor explain a complicated function.

That video also showcases how a popular feature of Facebook Live–letting viewers comment in real time–has been expanded into an only-in-VR tool: Those in Spaces can grab a comment and instantly turn it into a sign that everyone watching from the outside can see.

“The point is that right now, a lot of things that people talk about VR [being for], that we can blow up robots, or chase zombies,” Booth says, means “they think of VR being for hard-core gamers. But the killer app in VR is other people.”

That approach, of course, helps to explain why Facebook–the world’s largest social network–would spend billions of dollars on a nascent virtual reality company. Over time, it imagines countless ways that people will utilize VR to communicate and share the moments, and artifacts of, their lives. VR is, Booth says, “the ultimate communication device.”

It will likely be some time before VR is, in fact, that ultimate communication device. Although some analysts have pegged virtual reality as a $38 billion industry by 2026, adoption has been fairly slow, and usage rates even among owners of the five most popular non-Google Cardboard headsets–the Rift, HTC’s Vive, Samsung’s Gear VR, Google’s Daydream View, and Sony’s PlayStation VR–have been fairly low.

According to SuperData Research, consumers had purchased about 7.7 million total of those five VR headsets by the end of the first quarter of 2017. But the Rift was in fifth place, according to SuperData, with 264,000 units sold since launch, compared with 495,000 for its closest competitor, the Vive, 1.18 million for the PSVR, and 5.3 million for the Gear VR, which is powered by Oculus software. Those modest sales numbers may have inspired Oculus to slash the price of the Rift this week.

Of course, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has cautioned Wall Street to be patient with the adoption of VR, arguing that while people may want virtual reality to quickly become a truly mainstream consumer technology, it could take as much as 10 years for that to happen.

How To Implement Live?

Live video is just one of a large collection of tools at Facebook’s disposal, and Booth says that implementing the feature in Spaces was a fairly quick process. The challenging part, though, was figuring out how to best utilize the tool in VR.

The approach that Facebook’s Social VR team settled on was to give Spaces users a tablet that they can grab and use as their camera. They can move it around, capturing anything and everything that’s going on in VR, even hanging the tablet in “mid-air,” Booth explains, all of which will then be broadcast live. The default is that video is only shared with users’ Facebook friends, but that can be changed to broadcast it to everyone, just as anyone can do with Facebook Live in the real world.

Booth says he’s looking forward to the many unexpected things that Spaces users will do with live video. Already, in tests, many people have used it to share their VR karaoke sessions. “The big reason for me that I’m excited to put [this] out is that it’s another building block” for social VR and the unanticipated ways people use it, Booth says. “I love to be surprised.”

When Gyudeog Kim started working in the shoe industry in the 1990s, developing designs for Nike and Reebok at a production plant in South Korea, he couldn’t stop thinking about glue. “The first time I went to the production line to see my designs being manufactured, even though there was ventilation, the painful smell of toxic adhesives nearly made me faint,” he says. “It was even more shocking that workers at the production line work eight hours a day within that space.”

More than two decades later, industrial-strength glues that expose workers to chemicals like toluene, methyl ethyl ketone or benzene–which can lead to illness, or in the case of extreme exposure, even death–are still a problem. (Benzene, a carcinogen, may be less commonly used now than it was a decade ago). Several manufacturers have committed to phasing out toxins in their products, partly by using different adhesives; Nike’s contract manufacturers now use 96% less petroleum-based solvents per pair of shoes than they did in the 1990s because they have shifted to water-based adhesives. But Kim, who now also runs a shoe consulting business, took these initiatives a step further: he designed a shoe that doesn’t use any glue at all. A strap, made from a recyclable, rubbery material, snaps into the tread of the outsole through a puzzle-like design, and holds the shoe in place with laces. Consumers assemble the final pieces of the shoe, called Ki Ecobe, themselves, rather than workers in a sweatshop.

“Going modular with the design and creating a self-assembled shoe has many advantages,” says Kim, who was inspired by origami and traditional Korean footwear. “First off, and most importantly, it takes no more than five minutes to assemble your own shoe, unlike normal shoes and sneakers that require cheap third world labor, harsh adhesives, and an average of 30 minutes per shoe to be assembled in a factory. So it’s actually much faster and more efficient to assemble your own shoes, and can eventually reduce the cost, similar to flat-pack furniture.”

Factory workers still sew together the slipper-like inner part of the shoe (which can be worn alone at home) and are necessary for some other processes in production. But the work is less damaging to their health. “Our goal in making this shoe was not to replace factory workers with robots, rather, to improve the factory workers lives by eliminating the worst of the processes in the shoe manufacturing industry,” Kim says.

Because the strap can easily be removed, if part of the shoe wears out, it’s possible to replace that part rather than the whole shoe, reducing waste. The shoe can be also be recycled more easily than a typical shoe for the same reason. “The reason most shoes are hard to recycle is that they are made of many different materials all glued together,” he says. “Taking them apart to properly dispose of each material is very difficult, so most just end up in landfills.” Ki plans to give customers a discount for returning worn-out shoes for recycling, and then reuse the materials, as much as possible, in the next production run.

The startup is currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter, and is already working on another glue-free design. “We aim to build the Ki brand around this glue-free, sustainable philosophy,” Kim says.

We all know that our smartphones are as powerful as desktop computers from a few years ago, and even supercomputers from a few decades ago—and now they’re on the verge of teaching themselves to become even smarter and more competent. Today, image-recognition AI company Clarifai debuted new software that allows mobile apps to do machine learning—the actual training of models—right on smartphones, going back to at least the iPhone 5, with no cloud server farm required.

Understanding the significance of this development requires us to unpack some jargon. Tech companies frequently talk about apps that use machine learning—showing enough images or other data to an artificial intelligence program until it starts to discern important patterns, such as what a hamburger patty and bun look like. That’s how apps like Dog Breed Identifier or Food Calorie Counter, for instance, can identify what you point the phone’s camera at.

Related:Your Smartphone Is Becoming An AI Supercomputer

Very few apps do the actual training on phones: Apple’s Photos app being a prime example for its limited ability to learn that, for instance, a particular face is yours or your friend’s. Clarifai introduced an app called Forevery in 2015 with similar capabilities. Apple’s upcoming iOS 11 has a component called Core ML that allows developers to add inference capability, but not training, to their apps. Google has taken a similar step with Android, announcing software called TensorFlow Lite for Android developers.

But with today’s release of software called Mobile SDK (software developer kit), Clarifai is letting developers build training for aspects of images and videos into any app. Clarifai’s CEO Matthew Zeiler explained the difference to me in an email: “You can train faces in . . . Apple Photos, but that’s it. With Clarifai’s Mobile SDK, we allow developers to train models on any set of concepts in their own apps (for example, a Lamborghini from a Ferrari, or a frappuccino from a latte, etc.) completely on device.”

Clarifai is releasing a preview version of its software for iOS today, with an Android version to come soon. Zeiler says he’s gotten the Mobile SDK to work on devices as far back as an iPhone 5. “We hope to test the limits to see if we can support earlier generations,” he tells me.

There really is a Christmas in July—for Amazon, at least. Tuesday’s Prime Day bonanza was the global sales monolith’s “biggest day ever,” beating out last year’s event and reinforcing it as a de facto new shopping holiday. The company said sales soared 60% over 2016’s event, and even beat out Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Limited to its Prime members, Amazon sold 2 million toys, 1 million pairs of shoes, and 90,000 televisions. This year’s top sellers included the Echo Dot, Instant Pot pressure cooker, and a 23andMe DNA test.

And to think, it all started on a whim. The first Prime Day was held in 2015, when the company was looking for a way to celebrate its 20th Anniversary. For its 10th Anniversary, Amazon held a concert with Bob Dylan and Norah Jones at its campus that was broadcast out to the world. That was great and all, but for its 20th, it was looking to do something much bigger.

“We said, well, we don’t really want to celebrate a birthday for us, we want to celebrate a birthday for our customers,” Doug Greeley, vice president of Amazon Prime, told Fast Company in November.

He says that when they started brainstorming ways to do something special for Prime members, a day of deals seemed like a natural fit. The company didn’t start planning the day until well into the beginning of 2015, in part because it wasn’t completely convinced that a “Prime Day” sale should coincide with its July birthday.

“Once we saw how big it was, I have to admit, many of us were surprised,” Greeley says. The day turned into a global event, with people logging on around the world. The success prompted Amazon to not only hold the event the following year, but to move up its planning for the next Prime Day to the very next day.

Judging by the hype around this year’s event, it’s an event that’s only going to get bigger. More new members joined Prime yesterday “than on any single day in Amazon history,” the company said. Amazon didn’t provide hard numbers in terms of dollars, but the surge in Echo Dot sales bodes well for it.

“Prime members bought seven times more Amazon Echo devices globally than on Prime Day 2016,” the company says, making it the “best-selling product from any manufacturer in any category across Amazon globally.”

The Echo Dot is a speaker that uses Amazon’s proprietary Alexa voice assistant. One of its primary functions: getting members to buy more stuff.

Electric cars haven’t exactly been flying out of showrooms in the last few years. The Tesla phenomenon aside, EV sales currently make up less than 1% of the U.S. market. They remain relatively expensive compared to conventional vehicles (even after government subsidies) and hampered by the specter of “range anxiety” (the Nissan Leaf, the best-selling electric vehicle in the U.S., only goes about 100 miles on a single charge, though the vast majority of people don’t drive that much in a single day).

A new report from Bloomberg New Energy Finance gives further reason for optimism. It expects EVs to be as cheap as conventional cars in most places by 2025 and for EVs to make more than half of all new car sales by 2040 (54%). That’s a significantly more bullish forecast than it made last year, when it said that only about a third of new car sales would be electric by the same year. And it’s a good deal higher than official forecasts from the Energy Information Administration, which expects only about 1 million new EVs per year in the U.S. by 2040 (by comparison, new cars and truck sales numbered about 17.6 million last year).

BNEF is increasingly optimistic for one main reason: technology. It notes that, since 2010, prices for lithium-ion batteries have fallen 73% on a per-kilowatt basis, and that manufacturing advances and higher energy density will slash prices a further 70% or more by 2030.

“We see a momentous inflection point for the global auto industry in the second half of the 2020s,” says Colin McKerracher, BNEF’s lead advanced transport analyst. “Consumers will find that upfront selling prices for EVs are comparable or lower than those for average [internal combustion engine] vehicles in almost all big markets by 2029.”

Because cars are staying on the road for longer (the average is now more than 11 years), it’s going to take a while for EVs to actually take over. And the psychology of range anxiety could get in the way long after it’s no longer really an issue. Moreover, BNEF expects a lack charging infrastructure, particularly at home, to slow sales somewhat. But, having said that, EVs could be with us sooner than expected. In ten years, they may be the default choice for new sales, not a niche choice for relatively few.

We speculated in June that Apple’s announcement of a new augmented reality development kit (ARKit) telegraphed the addition of new AR iPhone components in the very near future. This turns out to be exactly the case. A source with knowledge of the situation tells Fast Company Apple is working hard to add a rear-facing 3D laser system to the back of one of the new iPhones to be announced this fall.

The new sensor system will enable better depth detection for augmented reality apps, and a more accurate type of autofocus for photography, the source tells me.

The source said the VSCEL laser system is probably intended for the 10th anniversary iPhone (which may be called the iPhone 8 or the iPhone Pro or, hopefully, the iPhone X). Whether the sensor will be included in that phone, or a 2018 iPhone, depends on the progress the Apple engineers make in integrating the laser system into the phone, our source says.

An Apple spokesperson declined to comment.

We reported the existence of 3D sensors in the new iPhone back in February, but it was unclear at the time where they would go on the phone and what they would do. The picture has come into better focus since then. KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo (who is usually accurate on iPhone plans) believes the iPhone 8 front-facing camera will use a laser for 3D selfie effects and to recognize the user’s face for authentication purposes.

Augmenting Augmented Reality

This may be true, but the rear of the phone is where the real action is for 3D lasers. The lasers are a huge part of Apple’s AR story. Right now, ARKit apps rely only on the single iPhone camera to picture and measure the real world into which digital content is placed. While the resulting experience is already surprisingly good, the addition of a 3D laser system on the back of the phone would dramatically improve the depth measurement part, and would make the AR even more lifelike.

Put in this context, the idea that Apple is working on a rear-facing 3D sensor for the iPhone is no huge revelation. The question is how long Apple can wait after the introduction of ARKit to get the laser into the iPhone.

(Phone-based AR is a clunky, device-in-front-of-face experience, but we’re stuck with this interim step toward AR glasses for the time being, and accurate depth sensing is needed in any event.)

VCSEL laser systems calculate the distance the light travels from the laser to the target and back to the sensor, and generate a Time of Flight (TOF) measurement. The system consists of a source (the VCSEL laser), a lens, detector (sensor), and a processor. The whole thing costs about $2 per phone, our source says.

Autofocus

The laser system would have big implications for the iPhone camera, too. Laser autofocus systems offer a faster and more accurate way of measuring objects in the frame compared to the more passive means used in iPhones now. The laser sends out light beams that bounce off objects and return to the sensor to indicate the precise depth of field of each. The camera lens can then focus on the desired aspect of a shot in milliseconds. Laser autofocus systems are already used in smartphones from Google, Huawei, OnePlus, and Asus.

Current iPhones use another kind of autofocus called phase detection autofocus, which was introduced with the iPhone 6 in 2014 under the name “Focus Pixels.” In general terms, phase detection systems compare the light rays coming into opposite sides of the camera lens, then compare them to determine whether the lens is focusing too close or too far away. The differences in the colors are used to constantly improve the focus of the camera.

About The Vendors

Our source says Lumentum will be providing the bulk of the VCSEL lasers for the new iPhone, while Finisar and II-VI (pronounced “two-six”) will contend for a smaller share. Apple has already qualified all three companies as potential suppliers, the source says. In June, executives at both Lumentum and Finisar discussed parts orders in coming quarters of such scale that some analysts surmise that they could have come only from Apple.

The TOF sensor will come from STMicro, Infineon, or AMS, the source says. Apple will likely buy the whole system in module form from either LG Innotek, STMicro, AMS, or Foxconn, said the source.

The iPhone’s Next Chapter

The iPhone 8 arrives on the 10th anniversary of the iPhone, and Apple clearly wants it to represent a new chapter in the life of the device. The new phone is expected to pack several new features that are brand new to iPhones, including wireless charging, an edge-to-edge OLED display, and–possibly–sealed buttons on the side of the phone that respond with haptic feedback and are completely waterproof. And, as we reported yesterday, some of these new technologies are difficult to implement.

Nor are they cheap. The iPhone 8 is widely expected to cost hundreds more than earlier iPhones.

The “iPhone 8” will be one of three new iPhones announced by Apple in the fall. The other two will be the successors to the current iPhone 7 and 7 Plus, and will likely be called the iPhone 7S and 7S Plus.

WHAT: An exclusive stream of the song “Stroll On” from MUTEMATH‘s upcoming album Play Dead.

WHO: Paul Meany, Darren King, Todd Gummerman, and Jonathan Allen–collectively known as New Orleans progressive rockers MUTEMATH.

WHY WE CARE: The boys of MUTEMATH are back with their second release from their self-owned music label, Wojtek Records. “Stroll On” is a quintessential example of the subgenre of progressive rock MUTEMATH thrives in, with trippy instrumentation–a bouncing Ping-Pong ball, comical space noises, and the kick of an electric drum machine (that’s actually a real drum!)–all blending together for a elegantly smooth sound.

“Stroll On” has the same tones and sounds you might hear in a Phish, The Grateful Dead, or Mars Volta composition, which obviously puts MUTEMATH in good company. The band took to Fast Company to premiere their new song, and because we’ve been navigating the music world a bit more frequently. We hope you all enjoy this song as much we do.

A few years ago, Ido Leffler, a Bay Area-based entrepreneur and founder, woke up in the middle of the night, suddenly bothered by a system he’d been participating in his whole life: the inflated cost of consumer packaged goods. “It just hit me: Why were we spending $15 or $20 on things that cost maybe $2 or $3 to make?” Leffler tells Fast Company.

Take granola, for instance. The farmers’ market and health store staple can be plucked off shelves for as much as $7 for eight ounces, despite the fact that all it is is an interesting arrangement of readily available grains and nuts. The steep price–which is a function of some of the ingredients, like nuts, falling on the expensive side, but also a response to consumer demand–has rendered the product aspirational (we tend to think expensive things are better for us), but also out of reach for many Americans.

“We’re in a whole new phase of modern consumption,” Sharkey tells Fast Company. “There’s a generation of consumers now who don’t want their parents’ establishments, they don’t want their parents’ governments, they don’t want their parents’ industries, and they don’t want their parents’ brands.” It’s a sentiment that’s fueled the creation of direct-to-consumer brands like Everlane, whose mission it is to democratize access to good-quality clothing by eliminating markups (often in the region of 50% to 75% of manufacturing costs) associated with traditional brick-and-mortar retail, which necessitates that companies bring in extra revenue to pay for both staffing and property.

“It’s very hard to fix a broken system,” Sharkey says. When she and Leffler surveyed the consumer packaged goods landscape, they saw a network of retail competition, layered with markups and inefficiencies and obscured by opaque business practices and pricing rationales. “So we decided: Let’s just start with a clean slate and build a new one,” she says.

And the direct-to-consumer model rids customers of what Sharkey and Leffler have termed BrandTax–the additional costs baked into purchases from other retailers. Through their market research, Sharkey and Leffler estimated that the average person pays at least 40% more for products of comparable quality; that can reach as much as 370% more for beauty items like moisturizer. Of course, the savings are not evenly distributed across all Brandless products–a $3 pack of 100-count organic cotton swabs is pretty comparable to what you might find in a drugstore, but a $3 bottle of organic maple syrup, when it’s not uncommon to see such items going for $12, is staggering. Anyone who makes an account with Brandless and begins purchasing through the site will receive a quarterly savings report, calculated against what they would have spent had they purchased the same items at major retailers.

“We wanted to create a platform where people could find items that reflect their values–whether it’s organic, non GMO, or gluten-free–across a wide swath of products at a price that’s accessible to almost everyone,” Sharkey says. “Obviously, we have costs for all of this, but we bear those costs.”

Sharkey and Leffler are aware that a $3 price point is still not accessible for everyone: A McDonalds hamburger costs less, and when the average Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program recipient is allocated around $4.23 per day for food, those dollars start to look a lot weightier. Brandless will do a lot to boost access to healthy, good-quality products for a wider range of the U.S. population, but the efforts of one company are not enough to dismantle or reach across decades of entrenched poverty. Sharkey and Leffler recognize this, though, and each purchase made on Brandless will automatically donate a meal through the nonprofit Feeding America.

Ultimately, Sharkey and Leffler are aiming, by doing away with excess costs and supporting an ethos of transparency, to eliminate the background noise of financial stress and choice overload. “It’s not just about creating a community of people that are looking for everyday things that are affordable and match their values,” Sharkey says. “It’s about taking action, putting people first, and ushering in an entirely new way of modern consumption.”

If and when the robots finally take over, Spotify will be ready. The streaming music leader just hired Francios Pachet, a French professor and artificial intelligence researcher focused, among other things, on teaching computers to create their own music. But why?

Officially, Pachet will head up Spotify’s new Creator Technology Research Lab in Paris. The lab “will focus on making tools to help artists in their creative process,” according to a blog post from Spotify. The blurb doesn’t go into any more detail than that, but a rundown of Pachet’s previous work invites a few educated guesses.

Until recently, Pachet led Sony’s Computer Science Laboratory in Paris, which he helped found 20 years ago. In that capacity, he worked on a range of music intelligence technologies, including a project called Flow Machines that aims to teach computers how to understand musical style and composition.

The end result is a system that can auto-generate music in a given style and serve as a sort of creative companion for artists. Earlier this year, the Flow Machines team released “Daddy’s Car,” a Beatles-inspired song that it claimed was the “first structured A.I. pop song.” (French composer Benoît Carré arranged and produced the songs, and wrote the lyrics.)

Over the last two years, the field of AI-assisted music has witnessed a dramatic growth in ability and output. Projects like Google’s Magenta and IBM’s Watson have taken their own crack at feeding musical rules and knowledge into machines in order to teach them how to mimic human creativity. The results don’t quite stand alone as anything you’d want to listen to on your commute, but like Pachet’s work, both companies say their efforts are less about replacing artists and more about supplementing the creative process with automation.

Spotify is no stranger to advanced AI. Its 2013 acquisition of the Echo Nest brought some of the brightest minds in acoustic analysis and machine learning to the company, which wasted no time flexing this expertise to build music curation features like Release Radar, Discover Weekly, and Daily Mix, among a slew of other features. But while Spotify has invested heavily in AI for purposes of music discovery and distribution, this is the first time the company has turned to machines for help with the creation side of the music equation.

Related: How Google’s Music-Making AI Learns From Human Minds At Festivals

So what is Spotify up to? A spokesman for the company, not surprisingly, declined to go into detail. But the company’s blog post refers to Pachet’s previous work “assisting artists in music composition” and strongly suggests a foray into new territory for Spotify’s growing creator services department: the development of creative tools for songwriters and artists. Until now, that team has focused on things like arming artists with listener analytics data, helping musicians target fans with concert tickets, and simply teaching artists and managers how to make the most of Spotify as a platform for connecting with fans. The idea of Spotify developing its own semi-robotic GarageBand software is a fairly radical—and to some, perhaps terrifying—departure from what it’s been working on thus far.

Tim Ingham at Music Business Worldwide, who blogged about the phenomenon last week, suggested Spotify’s AI move made the “fake artists” term even more appropriate, as debate over the term continued in comment sections. “We’d suggest that debate just kicked up a notch, wouldn’t you?” he wrote.

It’s a little hard to imagine Spotify so blatantly building a pipeline of computer-generated music solely for its own financial benefit. At the same time, the idea of one day regularly hearing AI-created songs on Spotify playlists isn’t all that outlandish. It wouldn’t be difficult for a computer to come up with perfectly listenable, relaxing ambient electronic music, for example. Even Brian Eno, widely considered the godfather of ambient music, has experimented with the concept of “generative music” that effectively never ends.

By that point, though, one would hope that the core business model of music streaming will have been fine-tuned by a combination of continued scale, smart negotiations, and perhaps new revenue streams—and that such technology-fueled trickery wouldn’t be necessary. Not to mention the uproar it would easily generate among artists, record labels, fans, and competing streaming services. (This week, Spotify finally inked a new licensing deal with Sony Music, making Warner the last of the big three record labels with which Spotify has yet to come to an agreement.)

Related: Spotify’s Plan To Win Over Anxious Artists–And Win The Streaming War

More realistically, Spotify may hope to gain future leverage in negotiations with labels and rights holders by doing something it’s already started to do: becoming as indispensable as possible to artists and the music industry. In time, the company may even morph into a sort of pseudo-label in its own right by signing deals with artists directly. That’s just a theory, of course, albeit a somewhat popular one.

In the meantime, the robot composers will have quite a bit of learning to do.

It’s Thursday afternoon. You’ve been called into a meeting that doesn’t really concern you, but you can’t get out of it. As soon as you find a chair toward the back, you look around and can tell right away that your coworkers feel the same way. Everyone’s itching to wrap up their work for the day and go home, but the meeting leader is launching into a soliloquy that would put Hamlet to shame.

You glance at your watch. Only four minutes have passed since you last checked the time. Face it: You’re trapped here, and it’s going to be agonizing—unless you give yourself something productive to do.

Why Everything Drags When You’re Bored Out Of Your Mind

When you’re working on a project and firing on all cylinders, the time flies by. When you’re sitting in a tedious meeting you have no need to attend, it doesn’t. Making the most of things starts with understanding why, and the psychology there is actually pretty simple.

Your perception of the passage of time has a lot to do with what you’re paying attention to. When you feel really engaged with something you’re working on, you’re focused exclusively on that. Your brain is completely immersed in solving problems, interacting with the other members of your team, or what have you. As a result, you notice the various aspects of the project but not the amount of time you’re devoting to it.

In a boring meeting, though, there isn’t much to pay attention to. Nothing that’s being discussed strikes you as very important, so you’re not able to engage with it—your attention has nothing to focus on. Plus, you might be cooped up in a bland room or seated in an uncomfortable chair. The only thing you can pay attention to is the passage of time, so it seems to drag.

This much is pretty intuitive. But one interesting thing about the perception of time is that works differently in hindsight. When you look back on an event, your sense of how much time it took depends on the amount of information you have in your memory about it—not how long it felt while it was happening. That boring meeting doesn’t have a lot of landmarks in memory, so even though it drags on, it won’t feel that way when you look back on it (if you ever do). A great collaborative project, though, will have lots of highlights in memory, and so it’ll feel longer in retrospect than it did while it was happening.

This is all worth bearing in mind when you come up with ways to pass the time productively in a boring meeting. Here are a few good options:

Make A List (But Not A To-Do List)

Instead of just doodling on the notepad or Starbucks napkin in front of you, put it to good use. Now’s a good time to start a running list of important ideas you generally don’t have the time to think about. Maybe you’ve been trying to figure out how to approach a colleague about a disagreement. Or maybe there’s an organizational problem that’s been bugging you, but never rises to the top of your to-do list.

In fact, don’t make an ordinary to-do list with items you need to accomplish more or less right away—that will only make you more impatient to leave. The key is to nudge your focus out of the present moment and toward something a little more distant in the future. Boring meetings are a great time to make some headway on those longer-term issues. Give yourself permission to let your mind wander in the direction of those unsolved problems.

And don’t worry about blocking out time to actually tackle them just yet–the sheer exercise of mentally planning can have some hidden upsides. It turns out that one of the best ways to solve difficult problems is to walk away from them for a while.

Doodle

Actually, you can doodle—without feeling bad about it. Part of what makes boring meetings feel so horrible is that your body and mind are both cooped up. If you can’t free your mind, at least you can free (some of) your body. Grab that notebook and draw. Even abstract shapes will help to keep your mind occupied.

The physical act of drawing can boost your creativity and help you commit ideas to memory. What’s more, one illustrator who’s created three coloring books for adults told Fast Company recently that doing the more tedious parts of his illustrations became an unplanned mindfulness exercise, somewhere “halfway between intense focus and zoning out.”

Related: Here’s Why, How, And What You Should Doodle To Boost Your Memory And Creativity

Mentally Plan A Better Meeting

Finally, you can use your experiences in really boring meetings to become a better meeting planner yourself. Pay attention to what makes meetings particularly dull. You might even jot down some notes as though you’re scoring the meeting leader’s performance.

For starters, this gives you something to focus on that you’d otherwise tune out—which in turn will make time go by a little more quickly. And second, it can help you think more critically about what it takes to run a more engaging meeting yourself. This way, when it’s your turn, you can create a really good agenda, keep your own remarks to a minimum, and use the time in a way that makes for an experience less agonizing than the one you’re trapped in right now.

Hang in there, it’ll be over soon—and once it is, you won’t remember how much it dragged.

Charnella Grossman is a vice president and senior portfolio manager in Fifth Third Bank’s investment advisory group. She’s also a mother of a 1-year old and is currently 38 weeks pregnant with her second child. Grossman is planning to take full advantage of Fifth Third Bank’s paid leave policy (four weeks for both moms and dads who have a new baby, adopt, or foster a child in addition to six weeks of medical leave for women after they give birth) when her baby is born. But she’s also using another benefit right now that’s relatively new to her employer.

For the last several months, Grossman’s been using Fifth Third Bank’s Maternity Concierge for “everything that isn’t work related.” She ticks off tasks like picking up dry cleaning and helping her replace broken heels to organizing the new nursery. “They helped me order my breast pump that I’ll use [when I return to work],” she adds, all so she can focus on her job while she’s in the office.

That’s exactly why Maternity Concierge was started in late January and then rolled out as a virtual concierge for employees of the bank’s locations across 10 states. Fifth Third’s chief administrative officer, Teresa Tanner, says that she took note of how many women she spoke to reached a career pivot point when they began planning to start a family. Tanner says that while benefits like flex time, part time, and job sharing can help, “There’s a big cost to that, you still delay your career or slow it down.”

A recent Kauffman report reveals a broader trend. Since 2000, women’s labor force participation has actually stagnated despite Census data showing women now hold more bachelor’s degrees than men. This is due in part to the astronomical cost of childcare, especially for parents of multiple children, making it more cost effective for one parent to stay home–and thanks to the gender wage gap, that person is often the mom. 

So the question became how to keep women from opting out if they don’t want to. Tanner suggested a different approach to juggling the demands of work and life to help those who want to stay on a full-time career path.

As companies continue boosting their paid leave offerings to entice talent, as well as provide benefits like egg freezing or shipping breast milk, Fifth Third Bank hit on a partnership with women-owned concierge service Best Upon Request. The bank has offered similar concierge services for all employees in their Cincinnati office for several years, so it didn’t take long to build out this additional free offering for mothers to use before, during, and after their pregnancy in the months after they return to work.

Although Tanner asserts, “They won’t transport children or pets,” there’s hardly anything else the concierges won’t do. Requests have ranged from planning gluten-free gender reveal parties to scouring Pinterest and pinning images that could inspire a child’s birthday party theme, she says.

All of this “unpaid work” adds up as a cost to women’s careers and to the U.S. economy. A recent survey by the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI) found that women do double the amount of unpaid care work that men do. Taking care of children, loved ones, or the elderly makes up only 20% of unpaid care work. The rest: shopping, cooking, cleaning, and the like fill up the rest. The report notes that this work is counted as GDP, “but it could be valued, using conservative assumptions based on available data on minimum wages, at an estimated $1.5 trillion a year.”

Tanner has organized a monthly scrum team to evaluate what’s going well or not and plans to add services like the shipping of breastmilk when women are traveling. Overall, she observes, “It is a relatively small percentage of our [benefits] budget,” but says it has a significant impact.

Even though broad retention metrics aren’t yet available, Fifth Third expects to have reliable data at the one-year mark when several women will have used it throughout their pregnancy and during their child’s first year.

As for Grossman, she says she’s more productive now that she can concentrate on work she’s being paid to do, without worrying about managing everything else. “It serves as a show of commitment to women in the workplace,” she adds “and signals that management is committed to investing in employees.”

You know a new technology is on the minds of a lot of people when it appears in a commercial during a major sporting event like the NBA Finals. So Samsung’s TV ad featuring an ostrich using a Gear VR headset to take flight was a major step forward for consumer virtual reality.

But just because big tech companies like Samsung–and Facebook, its partner on the Gear VR–want something to become mainstream doesn’t mean it will. For all the gee-whiz excitement that VR can generate by immersing people in experiences they can’t get anywhere else–like soaring above the clouds and being able to leisurely look all around you, as that ostrich does in the ad–the technology’s adoption has been fairly tepid. A lot is going to have to happen, on a lot of different fronts, before VR can truly become a part of most people’s lives.

Between their launches last year and the end of March, according to SuperData Research, consumers had purchased a combined total of about 7.7 million of the five most high-profile VR headsets—the Gear VR, Sony’s PlayStation VR, Google’s Daydream View, HTC’s Vive, and the Oculus Rift. Even though SuperData predicts that those numbers will rise to 15.9 million total headset sales by the end of 2017, those are not the numbers of a mainstream technology, especially when you consider that other data suggests little regular usage of those VR systems.

Think about it: How many people do you know own VR equipment, especially high-end systems like the Rift or Vive? Odds are the answer is zero. That’s even true in tech-centric places like Silicon Valley.

Yet, analysts are bullish on VR, with some predicting a $38 billion industry by 2026, and another saying the numbers could be $28.3 billion as early as 2020, up from $3.7 billion this year.

Facebook, which bought Oculus in 2012 for what ended up being around $3 billion, has been trying to change the game. This month alone, it has slashed the price of the Rift to an all-time low of $398 and launched the ability to broadcast Facebook Live video from inside Spaces, its social VR platform. Those moves are likely to bring a few more people into VR, but probably won’t change the overall dynamic all that much.

Nor does even Facebook expect it to. After all, earlier this year, CEO Mark Zuckerberg cautioned investors to be patient about the growth and profitability of VR, suggesting during a quarterly earnings call that the technology could take up to 10 years to hit massive adoption.

So how does the industry get there? Fast Company polled a group of industry experts and observers, and here’s what they think.

Lower prices

Notwithstanding the Rift price cut, many people think VR gear, especially high-quality systems, costs too much. The Vive, for example, costs $798, while the PSVR and Rift run $398. All three systems require being tethered with pricey computing hardware, either gaming-quality PCs in the case of the Rift and Vive, or the PlayStation 4 for the PSVR. Even inexpensive mobile VR headsets like the Gear VR and Daydream View require being connected to costly phones like Samsung’s Galaxy S8 or Google’s Pixel.

Alexis Macklin, an analyst with Greenlight Insights, pegs lower prices as the single-most important factor in building a mainstream user base for VR, pointing to a Greenlight survey in which 38% of those asked said the hardware cost was the biggest impediment to their buying a headset.

Neither HTC nor Sony have shown any indications they plan on dropping the price of their gear anytime soon. But one can expect that over the next year or two, consumers will be able to buy high-end VR gear, including a computer, for substantially less than $1,000. That will no doubt make a big difference.

Better, More Comfortable Gear

Besides the high prices, the most obvious shortcoming of today’s VR systems is the gear itself. While mobile systems like the Gear VR or Daydream View are fairly easy to use, they still require frequent updates, and they’re still somewhat bulky. The higher-end systems, which offer by far the best experience, are also hamstrung by being the most cumbersome: They are tethered to PCs by multiple wires, they require frequent updating, and there’s very little sense that they can be plugged in and used right out of the box, the way many consumer tech products can.

We’re still in the first generation of consumer VR, though, so some of those problems are certain to go away with subsequent generations–though no one knows when those will hit the market. Oculus chief scientist Michael Abrash has talked of futuristic VR systems that are hard to distinguish from a normal pair of glasses, but he also acknowledges that we won’t be seeing that kind of gear for years to come.

In the shorter term, though, there are steps forward that will help a lot with making wearing a VR headset a better experience. Beyond getting rid of the wires, as Oculus, Vive, and others are promising to do with forthcoming new high-quality “standalone” headsets, perhaps the biggest advances would be in the optics and displays, said Gartner analyst Brian Blau.

“Today, some people have some amount of negative physical response when [using VR] headsets,” Blau said, “and improvements in the hardware can help with that to some degree.”

The main goal there would be to match VR displays’ capabilities to those of human vision, including offering eye-tracking tools that make it possible for users to look around them without moving their heads. Numerous companies are working on better displays, including Finland’s Varjo, which recently unveiled a prototype that promised to improve VR display resolution by as much as 60 times over that offered by systems like the Rift and Vive, and which is expected to include onboard eye-tracking.

Blau also sees a lot of promise in headsets that eschew the big, bulky form factors of just about all of today’s systems. He thinks that the industry made a mistake by focusing on wide headsets that wrap around users’ faces, and thinks that smaller, more glasses-like gear could do a better job of being ergonomically comfortable. “You’ll probably see a whole bunch of different ones, like ski goggles, sports goggles, and safety goggles,” he said. “It’s likely we’ll see displays being integrated with lots of different form factors.”

VR at the Mall

To Stephanie Llamas, a VR analyst at SuperData Research, content is the key to more users.

She, like others, believes that one way many people will be exposed to VR is through what’s called location-based virtual reality. Businesses like The Void and Nomadic are building experience centers in places like malls and movie theaters that invite customers to work their way through complex VR narratives, for a price–the future’s budding take on the immersive multiplex.

This is still a niche sector, and it’s unclear if these companies will end up making much headway in the competitive world of date-night and family entertainment. If they do, though, they could become a massive gateway, offering many people their first taste of what VR can really do.

“It’s going to get people in headsets and get people understanding what VR is,” Llamas said. “Truthfully, most people don’t know what VR is. [They think it’s] gimmicky sci-fi. You can’t know unless you try it. [Location-based VR will] be a great way to get people understanding it, and trying it, and wanting it in their homes.”

“Universally appealing” content

Much of VR’s early focus has been on games, and attracting hard-core gamers. Those are the kinds of early adopters that can get new systems off the ground, but there’s not likely enough of them to support an entire ecosystem. That’s why Llamas thinks another big step to bringing wide audiences to VR is to convince people that there’s more to the medium than just games.

One area that has a lot of potential, she says, is animated, immersive VR storytelling, especially when it’s extremely easy for users to watch, “where you just put on the headset and you’re inside it.”

As an example, she lauded Baobab Studios, a Silicon Valley-based VR filmmaker run by Hollywood and game industry veterans that has produced some of the most popular VR content thus far.

Naturally, Maureen Fan, Baobab’s cofounder and CEO, agrees that more, and higher-quality, VR content is the top factor that will lead to more users. “That’s the number-one thing that needs to happen,” Fan said. “Content is what drives adoption.”

This, of course, is a common refrain. For example, in lowering the price of the Rift, Oculus cited the idea that its content library had reached a size–500 total titles–where there’s enough choice to keep anyone coming back for more.

At Baobab, the meat is traditional three-act storytelling that leads viewers to care about the characters, and want to see them over and over again–even if the stories are fairly short. The trick, she added, is choosing stories with “universally appealing” themes that will attract everyone, from your mother to your grandmother to your brother.

She pointed to the company’s third project, the forthcoming “Rainbow Crow,” which tackles the concept of self-sacrifice in times of darkness. Similarly, its first film, Invasion!, showcased a heroic bunny who saves Earth from hapless aliens who arrive hell-bent on destruction.

Baobab’s deep ties to Hollywood and the games industry have helped it win funding from headset makers like Samsung and HTC, which has given it the runway to look well down the line and have confidence it can plan for future projects. That’s not a luxury many VR content makers have, Fan said.

In order for there to be more and better content, there needs to be funding, she said–a dynamic that’s a problem since many venture capitalists prefer to invest in technology over content.

Nonprofits put a lot of money in VR documentary projects, Fan argued, but there’s not enough of either to account for mainstream interests. Nor are there enough gamers to help VR become mainstream. Solving this funding dilemma will be a major hurdle the industry must overcome if it’s to reach its potential, she said.

“The holy grail is when content funds itself,” she argued, “when creators make enough money off the content that” they don’t need outside help.

That’s the strategy behind projects like Fox’s “The Martian VR Experience,” a 20-minute accompaniment to the hit Ridley Scott movie that the studio hoped viewers would pay for. There’s no official data on the project’s sales, but SteamSpy, a site that provides estimates of VR content sales, suggests only a few thousand people got to play the role of Mark Watney on Mars in high-quality VR. And while there have been a few VR titles that have earned more than $1 million, it’s still a small number, and nowhere near what’s required to prop up an entire content ecosystem.

That’s where funding programs from the likes of Oculus–which has committed to invest $500 million in VR content–will help. But to hear Fan tell it, there needs to be more, and broader, funding sources for there ever to be enough content to satisfy the masses.

The Killer App

When a new technology comes along, everyone instantly wants to know what will take it to mass adoption. That’s a question about VR that people have been wondering for years, decades even.

It’s probably too early to know, and in a way, that’s probably good given that there aren’t enough users. Until hardware prices come down significantly, there likely won’t be enough users to support even the greatest content.

But Macklin of Greenlight Insights said that things are looking up. A year ago, 20% of those the firm surveyed said they’d tried VR. This year, that number rose to 38%. “VR will have a slow, steady climb until it hits [the] mainstream,” Macklin said. But until there’s better hardware and lower prices, she said, it won’t matter how good the content is.

At Facebook, though, there’s no questioning what it’s going to take to get mass adoption for VR: users understanding how the technology can be used to bring them closer to the people they know and love.

That’s the impetus behind Facebook Spaces, the company’s social VR initiative, and it’s why it just launched the ability to broadcast live video from Spaces.

Facebook sees VR as the “ultimately communication device,” said Mike Booth, head of product for Spaces. “I think the biggest thing is just letting people see what this weird VR thing is,” he said. “It’s not just for blowing up robots and shooting zombies. It’s, hey, there’s my friends having fun in VR, and I want to join in. I want to participate, and see how this all works. Maybe I’ll want to go out and get my own VR headset.”

And while Booth acknowledges that there aren’t enough folks looking at VR yet as a way to have meaningful connection with their friends and family, he’s hopeful that what the company’s doing with Spaces, and what others are doing with social VR, can change that dynamic sooner rather than later. In short, Booth argues, “people are really the killer app in VR.”

No matter what side of the aisle you’re on, today’s ear-ringing political landscape can be a little bit overwhelming. While many have likely turned to meditation as a way to cope with the stress, an app has taken things a step further, touting a series of mindfulness programs geared specifically toward dealing with today’s political news.

The app—called Meditation for Fidgety Skeptics—was cofounded by Dan Harris, who knows a thing or two about the stress of the news. Harris was a reporter for ABC News when he had a panic attack on air during Good Morning America in 2004. That very public meltdown led him to discover meditation, write a book about it called 10% Happier, and ultimately become the cofounder of the meditation app.

Founded in January 2016, the app offers free meditations to help with stress, focus, and sleep, along with a subscription tier of guided sessions. Harris says that he and his team noticed that the Trump administration and the surrounding political climate was causing a great deal of stress in the lives of people, regardless of how they felt about the new administration. The company reached out to a few of its most popular meditation guides, including Pamela Weiss, the founder of Appropriate Response, and Sebene Selassie, a meditation teacher and transformational coach in New York City, and a political-themed series called “Mindfulness in the Age of Polarization” was born.

The series initially involves just four meditations, each aimed at dealing with a particular topic. Sessions are designed to be done with just your phone, although a web version is available, and only take a few minutes, so they can be handled during a short break during your workday or at home before you start or end your day. You can do them once a day, once a week, or even once every few hours if you’re having a particularly troublesome day.

Special care was given to make sure each experience is bipartisan, so the meditations can be useful for a wider audience of peace-seekers, regardless of their specific political beliefs.

One Listening session focuses on understanding others without having knee-jerk reactions; another session tackles dealing with difficult people who may be very passionate about opinions that differ from your own; another is aimed at getting you out of your head and divorcing yourself from the constant stream of news on the web and social media, so you can refocus on what’s important.

Related link: To Fight Tyranny, Think Like An Investigative Reporter 

The hope, of course, is that listening better, in spite of all the noise, might help make the world a little more bearable. Or at least the meditations might make it so we’re able to have a face-to-face conversation with that difficult uncle—or simply use other apps on our phone, like Facebook and Twitter—without having a panic attack of our own.

WHAT: WesterosDesign.com, a website that purports to be from the leading agency in Westeros (with an office in Essos, across the Narrow Sea, of course).

WHO: The Game of Thrones tribute project is a lark from Alex Zamiar and Jonathan Richman of the Martin Agency, with strategy and design help from Gigi Jordan and Matt Wojtysiak.

WHY WE CARE: With six seasons and approximately 10,000,000 thinkpieces behind us, it’s hard to imagine that there’s anything new to do with Game of Thrones–but Westeros Design is downright novel even for the most obsessed-over fantasy world this side of Middle Earth. Written as a series of in-world case studies from the firm that ostensibly designed the banners for Houses Stark, Lannister, Targaryen, Bolton, and Arryn–as well as the Titan of Braavos and the sigil of Lord Baelish–the site is surprisingly deep in its content, and a perfect example of the sort of agency-speak that is downright hilarious to imagine in a fantasy world.

“When you can ride, tame and give birth to dragons, it’s fairly obvious how you should direct your brand look and feel. So most of our work was done. But, when House Targaryen came to us there was one major problem hurting their public perception: no dragons. They had been extinct for several hundred years. In our opinion, all the flaxen hair and banners in the world couldn’t come close to doing what a terrifying giant fire-breathing killing machine could do for both brand recall and conversion.”

Every page of the site is fully in-character (visit “location” to see that they’re on the northwest side of King’s Landing, and don’t skip the “our team” page to meet the Dothraki head of new client acquisitions), which just proves that Zamiar and Richman seem to take their Game of Thrones fandom every bit as seriously as you do.

Advice—there’s no shortage of it. From a colleague who was once in your shoes to the self-help guru with a weekly podcast, you can get input on just about any situation you’re facing. But is the advice good?

While most people are genuinely trying to be helpful, a lot of the advice you get needs caution tape around it, says relationship expert April Masini, author of the Ask April advice column.

“Bad advice is rife,” she says. “It can come from someone who means well, but doesn’t know all the facts, and so gives you bad advice. Typically, you know these sources. They’re lovable people who just don’t get it or they just don’t get you.”

Here are six signs that the “wisdom” you’re getting is best ignored.

1. The Person Isn’t Qualified

Everyone has an opinion, but that doesn’t mean their thoughts are valuable, says Bruce W. Cameron, a Dallas-based licensed counselor and LA Talk Radio host. If the advice giver’s accomplishments or background do not suggest someone who could even speak on the matter, feel free to ignore what he or she says.

“If the person is a random person and not even in the business, it’s time to reevaluate the credibility of the advice and giver,” he says

Be especially cautious if the advice comes from someone who may not have your best interests in mind, adds Masini. “People who have a history of looking out for you, and who care about you and your successes, are the best sources for advice,” she says. “When someone has a motivation for you to not come in first, consider that along with their advice. What’s on the surface isn’t always what’s really going on.”

2. The Advice Isn’t Tailored To You

Advice that has little to no context about you or your business is often bad advice. “Very often, people give advice based on their experience, which may not align with the situation the recipient is dealing with,” says Jeremy Greenberg, a business strategist who has worked with companies like Capital One and Avon.

If you receive advice that is more about someone else’s experience, make sure the situation mirrors yours exactly. “It often does not,” he says, adding that this is especially true for situations such as making a career move or relocating. “All are dependent on personal preferences.”

3. The Person Talks But Doesn’t Listen

If the advice you’re getting is filled with “shoulds” be cautious. Good advice requires context that can only be learned when the other person takes the time to ask you questions.

“Most good advice givers ask clarification questions prior to rendering their words of wisdom,” says Cameron.

4. The Advice Is Focused On The End Result And Not The Process

Be cautious of advice that’s laser-focused on the decision and not the steps leading up to it, says Greenberg. The evaluation process is just as important as the final answer.

“Analyzing the pros and cons of your options is helpful not only to making the best decision for you but also being content with your decision to minimize regret,” he says.

5. The Advice Is Emotionally Charged

When you look for advice it’s because you want objectivity, a thoughtful second opinion. But if the person’s input is filled with feeling, it might be a good idea to pass, says Greenberg.

“An overly emotional undercurrent is likely a sign of the advisor’s bias,” he says. “He or she may have an agenda that doesn’t match yours.”

6. The Advice Ruffles Your Instincts

If your inner voice disagrees with someone’s advice, go with your gut. “Chances are strong that you’re right,” says Masini.

The irony about asking for advice is that we often know what to do. “We just second guess ourselves and talk ourselves out of doing the best thing,” she says. “Don’t. Listen to you. You know yourself better than anyone.”

How To Respond To Bad Advice

When you recognize advice as being bad, you don’t need to shut someone down as soon as a red flag pops up. “There’s nothing wrong with listening to advice that isn’t necessarily helpful,” says Greenberg. While it may sound counterintuitive, you may learn something about that person that may be helpful later or you may develop counter arguments in your head. “The important point is to avoid being swayed when you know the advice is questionable.”

If they’re persistent and it’s causing you distress, thank them and say that they’ve given you a lot to think about and you need time to process things, says Greenberg. “Many will want your commitment about a decision,” he says. “Refuse to provide this by explaining briefly that they’ve been very helpful and now you need to think about it on your own.”

But skip the temptation to debate, says Masini. “When you argue the advice you’ve decided is bad advice, you’re engaging in a negative relationship dynamic,” she says. “There’s not a lot of payoff for you in that conversation. Instead, acknowledge and disengage.”

WHAT: The first episode of the new web series What Had Happened Was from music site Pigeons & Planes.

WHO: Mike WiLL Made-It, with animated cameos by Rae Sremmurd, Jay Z, LeBron James, and, of course, Beyoncé.

WHY WE CARE: “Formation” was the first song we heard from Beyoncé’s seminal Lemonade, and it may end up being the most enduring track. With its stuttering guitar, charismatic synth lines, and extremely quotable lines (“I got hot sauce in my bag / swag”), the biggest song of 2016 remains extremely relevant in 2017 and beyond. But if you’re wondering where the song came from exactly, and if you prefer to receive information like that through the medium of animation, you’re in for a treat: Atlanta producer Mike WiLL Made-It, who developed the track with Bey, tells the whole story.

It starts with him at Coachella, hanging out with Rae Sremmurd, to hearing the group’s Swae Lee freestyle “now let’s get in formation” in the backseat of his car, to recording a track on the voice notes app on his phone. Fully aware that Beyoncé was looking for ideas for a new album, fleshed out his ideas in the studio with Rae Sremmurd, sent the rough draft to Beyoncé, and the rest is chart-topping, “gumbo”-making history–just watch the video and you’ll understand.

Unlike most 11-year-olds, Gitanjali Rao likes to spend some of her free time reading MIT’s material science department website. That’s where Rao learned about a recently-developed type of nanotechnology–and realized that it could be used for a new purpose.

Rao’s invention, called Tethys, envisions using carbon nanotube sensors similar to those developed by MIT and others–tiny carbon tubes a few billionths of a meter in diameter–to detect lead in water. A small Arduino processor (a simple computer kit) connects to the nanotubes, and a Bluetooth attachment sends the results to a smartphone. Nearly instantly, you can know if your water is safe to drink. The idea made Rao a finalist in the Discovery Education 3M Young Scientist Challenge.

“Before I had the idea for my solution, I noticed articles about how there was no solution to detect lead in water that is fast, easy, and inexpensive,” Rao, who recently graduated from sixth grade, tells Fast Company. “I was appalled by the fact that there was no easy or effective solution. I did a little more research and I found out that Flint, Michigan wasn’t the only place with lead contamination. There were tons of places worldwide with water quality issues. I knew I wanted to solve this.”

In the U.S., a 2016 report found that more than 5,000 community water systems–serving 18 million people–violated the federal Lead and Copper Rule, which tracks failures to test for lead, report results to citizens, or reduce unsafe levels of lead, along with violations related to copper. Another investigation found that nearly 2,000 communities had unsafe levels of lead in tests over the last four years; some of the highest levels were found at schools. An elementary school in Maine had levels 42 times higher than the limit that the EPA considers safe.

The biggest challenges lie in replacing outdated infrastructure. But Rao realized that people also need better options for testing water, as well. In some cases, local water utilities will come to your home and test water for you–under federal law, utilities are supposed to do this for a sample of homes in communities that are at high risk for lead. Some state or local regulations also mandate testing, such as a short-term initiative in California that allows schools to receive free testing on request. But many utilities have been criticized for cheating on lead tests. If you’d like to test water quality yourself, a typical option is a kit that has to be mailed to a lab while you wait for results for a week or longer; though a kit might cost $10, lab analysis can cost another $40 or more. A box of simple test strips can be cheaper and faster, but not necessarily accurate.

When Rao learned about MIT’s carbon nanotubes, which were designed to detect hazardous gases, she realized that something similar could also be used to detect lead. “When you dip [my invention] into water contaminated with lead, the lead molecules should have a great impact on the current, and it should cause more resistance in the flow of current,” she says. The device would send the results to a smartphone, displaying whether the water is safe or poor quality, requiring someone to flush tap water and avoid using it in cooking. At lead levels higher than 15 parts per billion, the device would warn someone that the water was unsafe and tell them to contact their utility.

While the part of the device that dips into water would have to be replaced each time it is used, the rest is reusable. Rao estimates that the kit could potentially cost as little as $20, or less at scale. At the moment, it’s just a concept, but Rao, who is working with a mentor at 3M, hopes to develop it for production.

“I really am interested in making it into a product that people can buy,” she says. “I believe that it would make the process so much easier, and I believe that everyone has a right to know if their drinking water is safe or not.”

You’ve sat at the back of the room and struggled to make out what the person up front is saying. Aware of how aggravating that is, you try and do things differently the next time it’s your turn to speak—to “project” and “speak up.” You think the extra volume helps your voice carry and makes you sound authoritative.

But just ask anybody seated in the front row—or even the tenth—and once their eardrums are done ringing, they’ll probably tell you they felt shouted at, that it was no less annoying than listening to someone who’s hard to make out. Maybe they even missed your message completely as a result.

The truth is that projecting power as a speaker doesn’t mean getting louder. Here are a few tips for speaking more powerfully without having to raise your voice.

Related:Four Ways To Tell What Your Voice Is Saying About You

1. Shift From “Projecting” To “Releasing”

Whenever you’re coached to “project,” there’s one thing you’ll almost certainly do: push harder. You force yourself to get louder. You think of your sound like a bullet or a cannonball. You use all the energy of your breath to propel your sound up and forward, which makes it louder but also more piercing. Your audience will naturally pull away.

Now for contrast, think of releasing your sound instead of projecting it. Think of the sound of your voice more like a rainbow stretching across a wide expanse of water—and the smooth surface of the water placidly reflects it, rather than trembling in short, choppy waves. To see what this feels like, count to five loudly. Then just say the word “one” slowly, extending that single syllable for the same amount of time it took you to reach “five” a moment ago. Chances are your volume will have dropped a bit, but not your vocal power.

By thinking in terms of releasing your voice, you’re simply allowing your breath to support your natural sound—one that’s colorful and inspiring rather than harsh.

2. Make Your Gestures Flow

Take it from one of Bruce Lee’s best-known adages: “Become like water, my friend.” Power demands fluidity; it means letting your energy flow through your body. Think about how you gesture: Do you hold your arms tight against your body and move from your elbows or, even worse, your wrists? That’s great—if you’re a seal playing piano with your flippers.

But if you want to command a room, you need to gesture more fluidly. Your movement should begin in your center (in the pit of your stomach), then flow up through your chest and out through your arms and fingertips. These are a few more tips on gesturing in a way that feels easy and natural, not stiff and forced.

3. Move Purposefully

Speaking more powerfully also requires moving with purpose—and consciously so. Just like when you stand still, you need to appear balanced and grounded as you move. When you don’t give your movement much thought, it will appear light. You may stop and perch on one foot, or even pace back and forth. That’s just annoying to watch; it doesn’t project power.

One of the most brilliant demonstrations of purposeful, powerful movement is the opening scene of the James Bond movie Spectre. The setting is a Day of the Dead celebration in Mexico. Daniel Craig is wearing a black costume painted on both sides with a body-size skeleton. In a long, unbroken tracking shot, the camera follows him from behind as he strides purposefully through a crowd, enters a building, walks up a flight of stairs, and steps into an elevator.

Keep your eye on that bold, white-on-black skeleton, which makes it easy to notice the steady, rhythmic way Craig moves. His body swings forward in a measured, fluid cadence but he doesn’t appear light or bouncy. Each step seems to ground him, giving an impression of power contained by poise.

4. Think Of The Whole, Not Its Parts

One of the biggest challenges for even the most masterful speakers is to integrate all the elements that make for a good performance. It’s easy to try out a speaking tip thinking it’ll improve your presentation, only to wind up seeming disjointed. There’s no surefire way around this except through practice. But one place to start is simply by avoiding shortcuts—like raising your voice.

True power comes from balancing your movement, gestures, and words as you deliver your message. In any piece of music, the instruments and vocals need to blend together; if they don’t, they won’t sound any better when you ratchet up the volume. Ultimately, projecting power is just about being in the moment with ease and purpose—all at once.