When former Vice President Al Gore and the production teams at Participant Media and Paramount Pictures wrapped up the filming of An Inconvenient Sequel: Truth to Power–the follow-up to Gore’s first film from 2006, An Inconvenient Truth–Donald Trump was not yet president. The Environmental Protection Agency was not yet helmed by a fossil fuel apologist. And nor had the United States withdrawn from the Paris Agreement and its commitment to presenting a united global front against climate change. In fact, the film draws to a close with Gore leaving the negotiations in Paris in November 2015, cautiously optimistic that the world and his country was on the right path.

Without knowing the full extent of the circumstances into which the film would be released, Participant Media, one of the producers on An Inconvenient Sequel, was nevertheless prepared to position it as a vehicle to advance a wide variety a of climate causes, and to motivate audiences to not only to consume the film, but to act on its message. To that end, beginning July 24, Participant Media launched a “10 Days of Action” campaign give audiences three actionable steps to guide their response to the film; though the campaign is targeted to the leadup the film’s wide release, the actions can be undertaken at any time.

Each day, the film’s website offers visitors a different action to take, roughly categorized under the umbrellas of “use your choice,” “use your voice,” and “use your vote”; all of the actions are developed in partnership with different nonprofits, including The Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and Indivisible. Day One, for instance, includes a downloadable action kit, developed in collaboration with the Climate Reality Project, that includes an abridged version of Gore’s signature climate slideshow; Participant is encouraging audiences to use the kit to educate themselves on the key facts from the film and spread the information in their communities. The next day, the site guides people to a form through which they can petition their governor to commit to the Paris Agreement and fighting climate change, regardless of Trump’s actions in Washington. (There is a hashtag, of course, linking all of these activities, and it’s #BeInconvenient.)

Participant heard that feedback from the organizations it reached out to last fall, during what the company calls a “listening tour.” Participant was founded in 2004 by Jeff Skoll, the first president of eBay, as both a film production and a social impact company; each of their films has a strong advocacy stance, and Participant coordinates their release with the involvement of nonprofits in the issue space. By the time the meetings with over 30 environmental organizations were wrapped, Skoll says, Trump was elected, and Participant knew that An Inconvenient Sequel had secured a premiere at Sundance Film Festival in February. But with Paramount, they decided to hold off on releasing the film until the summer, “both so that we would have a long enough runway to prepare for the release of the movie, and also, quite honestly, to give people more time to experience the effects of climate change,” Linde says.

Phase two of the impact campaign–the public mobilization encapsulated in the 10 Days of Action strategy–is now underway, and for phase three, which Linde says is still in development, Participant partnered with the National Wildlife Federation (NWF) to create an environmental curriculum to be used in schools. Schools will also be able to compete for grants through the NWF to bring renewable energy projects, like solar panels for stadium lights to their campuses.

“It’s important to remember that the movie is a movie,” Linde says. “It’s an opportunity for people to experience something together, as a community.” The campaign around it, he adds, exists as a way to extend the films sense of community into efforts that feed through the over 30 organizations Participant has partnered with. The film, Linde says, “is accelerating the need for action at a moment in time when people are more open then ever to doing something for their community and for the world.”

Yesterday, DigiTimes reported that Facebook is working on an ambient voice device to compete with the likes of the Amazon Echo. This could be a great and/or terrible idea.

We’ve seen smart speakers from an online mega-retailer (Amazon), a search and ad giant (Google), and a couple of consumer devices companies (Apple and Xiaomi). Microsoft, a productivity software company, and Samsung, another consumer devices company, will likely join in with their own ambient voice products.

But the possibility of a smart speaker from the world’s largest social networking company is especially intriguing. In the cases of Amazon, Google, Apple, and Microsoft, it was fairly clear how a smart speaker might complement their core businesses. It was also clear that the smart speaker is a major beachhead in the war of the tech platforms. But why would Facebook want to sell a smart speaker?

Facebook In The Kitchen?

Facebook’s device would be different than most of the other ambient voice devices, DigiTimes reports, in that it has a large 15-inch display (sourced from LG). The device’s large screen may make sense because social network posts are largely visual, with text, photos, and video.

Global Data analyst Avi Greengart stresses that the kitchen counter is an important piece of real estate for tech companies, and that the new Facebook device—if real—might be intended for that space.

“Think Facebook in the kitchen: tasty recipe videos, photos of your niece, upcoming events,” Greengart wrote in an email to Fast Company on Tuesday. “It’s not crazy to think some consumers would welcome it, especially if positioned as a digital picture frame/smart speaker.”

An important caveat here is that the device is just a rumor at this point, and DigiTimes has a mixed track record when it comes to reporting supply-chain rumors. Some never actually come to fruition. A Facebook spokesperson declined to comment: “We don’t have anything to share at this time.”

Greengart, meanwhile, has his doubts that mainstream consumers are so hooked on Facebook that they need a “constant social media ticker in the room.” And Facebook has badly misconstrued consumer desires in the past. Remember when it thought people wanted a “Facebook phone”? Well, it turns out they didn’t.

Connected Home Device?

So far, one of the main jobs of ambient voice devices like smart speakers is to act as a hub from which to control all kinds of lights, switches, locks, and other accessories in the home. People like saying, “Hey [assistant name], turn off the living room lights,” as if telling another person in the room.

And Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has shown a special interest in the connected home. He built an AI-powered home automation system called Jarvis for his own home earlier this year. The system responds to natural language commands from the user to control lights, music, and room temperature. Zuck’s interest in the tech makes the possibility of a Facebook ambient home device sound more plausible.

And the home is, by nature, a very social place. Interactions among family members happen constantly. So do buying decisions. It seems reasonable that Facebook might want to extend its reach there.

Personal Data Vacuum

But, as Jacob Kastrenakes at the Verge points out, that’s exactly why a Facebook kitchen-counter device might be a bad idea. It could be a real threat to privacy, or at least a reason to feel uneasy. Facebook’s whole business depends on the collection of personal information for the targeting of ads. The new device may give Facebook a new and powerful means of seeing and hearing new forms of personal information and label it as “social.” Some of the ads might appear on the device itself. Others might appear on Facebook or other platforms.

The DigiTimes report says the Facebook product will be manufactured by Pegatron in China, and will be released in the first quarter of 2018. It also says the ambient device, which was designed by Facebook’s Building 8 department, will be housed in a magnesium-aluminum alloy chassis.

For now, we’ll just have to wait and see, but no doubt there’s a big opportunity here for Facebook: The research firm Strategy Analytics says smart speaker sales will reach $5.5 billion in 2022.

Donald Trump took credit on Wednesday for a new manufacturing plant that iPhone assembler Foxconn says it plans to build in Wisconsin.

Trump emerged to applause during a White House ceremony after Foxconn chairman Terry Gou—joined by House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI), Wisconsin governor Scott Walker, and Vice President Mike Pence—announced his company’s planned $10 billion investment in a new manufacturing plant somewhere in the Badger State.

Wisconsin will give the Taiwan-based company $3 billion in financial incentives to get the plant built, Walker said. The plant is expected to create about 3,000 jobs (paying in excess of $53,000 a year plus benefits), and could create as many as 13,000 jobs in the longer term if all goes well. It will be located “somewhere in southeastern Wisconsin,” but plans for the facility are still “under negotiation,” Trump said.

“This represents the return of LCD [liquid crystal display] manufacturing to the United States,” Trump said. “It has the potential to create many more manufacturing jobs in this country than we have seen in decades.”

Trump pointed out none of this would ever have happened without him.

“I would see Terry and I would say, ‘Terry you have to give us one of those massive places that you do such great work with,'” Trump said of Foxconn’s existing factories. “If I didn’t get elected, he definitely wouldn’t have been spending $10 billion dollars.”

“Terry Gou told me he really believes in America,” Trump added. “He has seen our efforts to remove unnecessary regulations on business; he’s been watching.”

Actually, Foxconn has been dangling the idea of building a large display manufacturing plant in the U.S. since at least 2014. However, the White House said Trump met personally with Gou during negotiations about the Wisconsin plant.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Trump also said that Apple CEO Tim Cook promised him that the company would be building three “big, beautiful” new plants in the US—a puzzling claim in part given that Apple only owns one factory, in Ireland, opting instead to contract with companies like Foxconn. Apple declined to comment on Trump’s statement.

Not So Fast

The victory lap may be premature.

Not only is the Wisconsin plant “still under negotiation,” but Foxconn has a spotty record of following through on new plants it’s pledged to build around the world.

Foxconn said it would build a $30 million factory in Pennsylvania back in 2013, but no plant was ever built. In 2014, the company said it would invest $5 billion in India, but has so far not done so. Similar commitments in Indonesia, Vietnam, and Brazil have fallen far short of promises.

The truth is, Gou has a habit of using splashy announcements like the one today as a way of putting pressure on the host state to offer up ever sweeter deal terms to make sure the factory is actually built, the jobs created. If the state fails to offer generous enough terms, Foxconn simply walks away.

Donald Trump knows the media value of appearing at the White House to declare a victory on jobs. Whether or not the jobs actually materialize is an abstract question for another day.

When Gisele Bundchen appeared earlier this month on the cover of Paris Vogue’s faux fur issue, animal activists hailed it as a major victory. After all, more than a decade ago, PETA stage invaders crashed a New York catwalk with signs declaring “Gisele: Fur Scum.” It was 2002 and the anti-fur movement that exploded in the 1990s was still hot. Bundchen, now the highest-paid model in the world, was just 22. Tom Brady’s wife has since become an ally of the group that once protested her and declared on Instagram that wearing real fur “is never an option.”

But for millennial fashionistas who didn’t witness the days when activists egged women wearing mink coats and tossed a dead raccoon at “fur hag” Anna Wintour, fur is no longer as taboo. In fact, it’s been making a quiet comeback.

Over the last few seasons, more than 70% of the fashion week shows in Paris, New York, Milan, and London have featured fur in some form. Most notably, Fendi, which first began as a fur house, has returned to its roots by doing “haute fourrure” fashion shows that feature nothing but fur. And these days, Fendi also makes fur keychains and bag charms in bright colors that, at $600, are more affordable than the brand’s fur coats that can cost as much a $1 million.

Cheng decided to make one for herself. She drove nine hours from New York to Maine where she found a fur seller. She then worked with a designer to 3D print a phone case and used fur cutting tools to create her first case on her coffee table at home. She discovered that there are now modern technologies and cutting equipment that allow you to create smaller fur products than those that existed in the past.

She proudly carried the phone case around town and quickly found that friends and strangers would stop her to ask where she got it. She knew then that she was onto something and decided to launch a company, Wild and Woolly, to make small, colorful fur accessories, from $405 phone cases to $350 hoop earrings and $98 round studs. The brilliant thing about these accessories is that they can be worn year-round, rather than just in the winter.

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While Cheng’s brand is on the higher end of the market, it appears to be part of a broader trend of creating small accessories made from real fur. A quick search on Etsy generates hundreds of fur earrings that cost as little as $12. Bergdorf Goodman sells $45 rabbit fur neck warmers. And the wildly popular outerwear brand Canada Goose uses coyote fur trim on its parkas.

Many brands say their fur is sourced ethically, but fur continues to be a contentious topic. PETA makes the case that the only truly ethical fur is no fur. “These animals continue to be raised in small cages and killed in absolutely gruesome ways that are unacceptable to the average consumer,” Ashley Byrne, PETA’s associate director of campaigns tells Fast Company.

It is still early days for Cheng’s brand, which generates less than $1 million in sales, but things are looking up. Wild and Woolly has grown quickly, with premium retailers around the world like Opening Ceremony in New York, Harvey Nichols London, and Leclaireur in Paris picking up the products. The brand has also been a hit in Japan, where it fits into quirky Japanese street style; and the Middle East, where women love to wear fur, but can’t wear coats because of the heat.

Cheng says she’s fascinated by fur’s storied history in America. The demand for fur was a driving force for frontiersmen who pushed ever westward in the 1800s. They traveled great distances, in dangerous circumstances, across the Midwest to purchase beaver, sea otter, and buffalo pelts from Native Americans, to bring back to customers on the East Coast.

To honor these daring pioneers, Cheng named each of the phone case designs after a different fur trading post, like canary yellow Kullyspell and emerald green Nisqually. “I was inspired by this early history of America,” Cheng explains. “There was such a spirit of adventure from this period of history. And it was an early example of trade between different communities.”

Through the process of building out the supply chain for her business, Cheng has learned a great deal about how fur is sourced. “PETA was very successful at calling out the problems with the fur business throughout the ’80s and ’90s,” she says. “I’ve found the fur industry is extremely well regulated now.”

Cheng says that she only sources Saga’s Certified Collection, which require third party auditing for 32 criteria that extend beyond E.U. requirements, including how the animals are treated and how hygienic the farms are.

PETA, for its part, questions how ethical all of Saga’s furs are. “Saga both claims programs for animal welfare and disavow any responsibility for the animal welfare of suppliers under their umbrella,” Byrne says. “So, it really means nothing.”

That said, much of the world’s fur comes from China, where the industry is poorly regulated. Conditions are far worse, with many animals forced to live their short lives out in tiny, filthy cages, where they are exposed to many diseases.

Cheng also sources fur directly from a Yup’ik Eskimo village in Western Alaska, where the natives use traditional methods to source fur. Rather than farming, they hunt wild animals and then ensure each part of the carcass is used. Besides salmon fishing, selling fur is their only source of income.

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“These Eskimos live really far away from civilization,” Cheng says. “In some cases, the only way to get to their village is to travel by helicopter or snowmobile.”

Cheng wants to continue finding ways to support these Eskimos by buying their fur, partly because the quality is top-notch, but also because their lives encapsulate everything that she loves about fur.

“We’re used to think about fur in these dark, ugly terms because the fur trade around the world really was terrible for a long time,” she explains. “But I want people to remember a different era of fur trading, when people lived out on the frontiers and went on great adventures in pursuit of fur. That’s what I want my brand to represent.”

When a short trial of an autonomous bus first ran in Helsinki, Finland, in 2016, most riders saw it as a novelty. But by this fall, if you work in downtown Helsinki, you might start riding the city’s robo-bus as part of your daily commute. The city is one of a handful to launch a longer-term trial of the technology, running along a regular bus route.

“If we want to get real data, we need to have it in an area where the same people will be every day,” says Harri Santamala, who directs a smart mobility program at Helsinki Metropolia University of Applied Sciences and is coordinating Sohjoa, a joint project that is testing the autonomous shuttles. “So we are now aiming toward the local people, feeding them to the tram or metro lines… We need strong, long-term experiences of how people will really use an autonomous bus, and what happens when the novelty value of the bus wears off.”

There are challenges, particularly from other drivers. “The machine always follows traffic rules, and people often don’t,” says Santamala. Drivers don’t yet know how to interact with the vehicles.

Cities also have to figure out how their infrastructure should adapt. An autonomous bus could potentially drop off passengers directly where they need to go, like Uber, but like Uber, that might also require new space for stops. Roads might work better with a new lane for the buses. Technology like traffic lights could be connected directly with the buses’ operating system.

“Knowing this technology is progressing, we definitely want to be involved with its development and deployment so that we can learn from it, what may impact our roadway planning, our infrastructure–essentially, we’ll provide the ecosystem for these vehicles to operate,” says Wadsworth. “For these vehicles to be a true benefit I think it needs to be connected to our traffic signal system; it needs to be connected to our infrastructure.”

The technology is still developing, and the trials will help manufacturers refine how the vehicles deal with challenges like weather (lidar, a laser system that acts as a sensor, struggles in snow, for example). But Navya, a French company that manufactures the electric shuttle that is being tested in Las Vegas, at the University of Michigan, and elsewhere, believes that the technology is essentially ready, and cities are also ready to begin testing it en masse.

“I think in 2018 we’ll have 50 shuttles running in the U.S.–that’s our ‘pessimistic’ objective,” says Pierre Elliot Petit, head of operations for Navya North America. “The optimistic objective is to have 100-plus shuttles running in 2018… What we can see with the RFPs is that people want to have long-term pilots. At first, the idea was to have a pilot for a week or two weeks. Now people are thinking because the technology is getting better and better, to have a pilot running for a year.” Navya plans to open a new factory in Michigan later this year to serve the growing North American market.

If it’s raining and cold outside and the robo-bus knows that you’re headed for an outdoor train station–but you’re going to miss the train–it could automatically take you to the next station so you could stay on the warm bus, for example. And these small adjustments to make public transportation less painless could get more people out of cars.

“I think it will help people leave their cars outside cities,” says Petit, adding, “It’s a little like when Uber and Lyft deployed their technology, people were like, ‘How can I use that?’ Then it was like your private driver from point A to point B. Then you started to share the [Uber]. And now you will share a shuttle.”

You already have an idea of what the future of work looks like because you are likely already working with bots, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. They are increasingly being incorporated into everything from work stations to websites to cloud platforms.

But while the U.S. is leading the world in robotics investment, “There is clear evidence that points toward robotic automation in many cases being a complement for human labor, rather than a direct substitute,” says David Whitaker, managing economist at the Centre for Economic and Business Research.

As robots do more things in the office, which some experts say will free people to do more valuable, creative work, what will it be like to have them as our assistants and “office-mates?”

Related:  Robots Are Changing the Future of Telecommuting

Form And Function

Many will be integrated into work stations and peripherals, as well as various cloud-based platforms says Marco Perry, a robotics expert, futurist, and founder of Brooklyn-based design and invention firm PENSA.

SAP research director Kai Goerlich says most of these “assistants” will likely be integrated into devices you already use with seamless interfaces. “We will have more algorithms, helping us do tedious office work. So, basically, tax analysis, image analysis, comparisons, statistics, etc.” He says that machines will likely evolve to rely more on voice recognition and less on keyboards. So, for example, give your device a voice command, such as scheduling a meeting or sending a document with a specific person or group, and the algorithm will exchange the necessary information with the target’s algorithm to get the task done.

That functionality is going to save time and improve the way we work, says futurist Nikolas Badminton. By the time you sit at your workstation, your tech assistant will likely have organized scheduling and tasks in anticipation of the day ahead. ‘You’re probably going to walk into an office and your system’s been churning over the last couple of hours considering what’s been going on in business, your role, your job, what you need to do that day, and probably offer up several ideas about the right direction of what to do,” he says.

In cases where a personal touch is still needed, robots can still be helpful. Just ask Jodi Goldstein, managing director of Harvard Innovation Lab (i-lab), a collaborative education and entrepreneurship initiative at Harvard University. Goldstein got a crash course in working with robots when Rony Abovitz, founder of augmented reality startup Magic Leap, was suddenly unable to deliver a keynote speech for her event, he offered to send his Beam. A beam is a robotic device with a monitor, speakers and camera. The device stands about 4 feet, 5 inches tall with a four-wheel base. It can be operated remotely, so it can move around the room and turn to face participants.

At first, Goldstein says she was concerned that it was going to be strange or awkward. However, as Abovitz operated the Beam remotely, his face on the screen, turning to address audience members and answer questions, she says that any apprehension she had went away.

“There was no diminished experience for the crowd,” she says. “It enabled us to have this phenomenal founder who, at the last minute, couldn’t be there. So when you think about the way telecommuting and telepresence, it can really change the interaction people have on a day-to-day basis in an office environment, I think it really unlocks a lot of potential value for office workers and management as well. You can have the right person, wherever they physically are, but you can have that person in the room when you need them to be.” This type of technology may give us a glimpse into how meetings will evolve and options for collaboration, she says.

New Skills Needed

While the concern about the jobs robots will take is well-documented, Paul R. Daugherty, Accenture’s chief technology and innovation officer, says that the proliferation of these technologies will create new roles, for which workers will need new skills. “We summarize those as trainers, explainers, and sustainers,” he says.

Trainers will include new jobs to train machines in artificial intelligence. (Think IBM’s Watson and its ability to answer questions and find answers through data analysis.) He says that a good example is people who are working on chatbots and virtual agents to help consumers interact with companies.

“There’s a need for personalities to train the artificial intelligence in the chatbots themselves, to embody the values of the company, the right personality,” he says. Explainers and sustainers are new jobs that involve explaining AI and how it’s working and maintaining or improving AI systems over time. This will create greater demand for people with technology skills, but will also create greater demand for soft skills, such as empathy trainers to help machines deal more effectively with people and who can analyze the needs of customers to ensure machines are effective in dealing with them.

“I would predict that five years out we’ll probably have a bigger shortage for those types of skills around, the softer skills around how can we shape the experience for people using machines and that will be a bigger skill deficit than the hard-core technology skills,” he says. Most of all, employees must stay open to learning new ways of working with technology.

As such technologies help more people, Daugherty says we’ll also need to learn to be comfortable interacting with them. He points to platforms like Autodesk’s Project Dreamcatcher, a generative design system that works with a designer’s or engineer’s project objectives and parameters to generate multiple design options. In addition, as more companies adopt virtual agents those whose jobs include interacting with those agents—finance departments working with banks’ increasing use of virtual agents, for example—will need to adapt to be comfortable interacting with these technologies, he says.

New Challenges For Managers And HR

Goldstein believes that robots and AI in the workplace will change human resources dramatically and create new challenges related to human and robot management. And while there will be a temptation to automate everything, the more sensitive or complex a situation, the more likely people will want to deal with an actual person, so it’s critical to consider the context in which you use robots, AI, and machine learning and determine if it’s really the best solution for the situation, Perry adds.

“If you completely automate that, people feel helpless,” he says. Frustration can also be a problem. For example, if you have a sensitive problem with your health insurance and can’t get anyone on the phone to help you navigate the challenge empathetically, you’re likely to feel a loss of control as well as feeling as if you’re not valued by the company, Perry says. Such a dynamic can alienate valued employees.

In addition, companies are going to need to take steps to protect workers’ privacy, Goldstein says. Just as smart home assistants like Google Home or Amazon Echo are “listening” all the time—monitoring ambient noise so they can be activated by “wake words,” office robots and machines will act similarly. This holds the potential for companies to inadvertently capture sensitive information about employees, she says. How that information will be used and protected are among the emerging issues companies must face.

As for job loss, Badminton isn’t convinced it’s going to be dire. History tells us that when innovation occurs, new jobs are created, he says.

And while these machines are designed to take away rote tasks to free workers to do more valuable, creative work, Perry worries there are consequences to being too reliant on machines to do our jobs.

“It makes us a little bit dumber,” he says, citing people who don’t know important phone numbers because they’re just stored in a device or who can’t find their way without GPS. “Not only does it take the control out of my hands, it takes the intelligence out of me because I don’t need to know that any longer. If the systems go down, you’re totally hosed. You can’t do anything about it,” he says.

MapLight is a nonprofit organization that reveals the influence of money in politics.

Legislation being debated this week by the U.S. Senate could save top members of the Trump administration an average of six figures on their annual tax bills if it includes a full repeal of former President Barack Obama’s signature health care reform law, according to a MapLight analysis.

The analysis of financial disclosure forms found the repeal of a 3.8% tax on investment income–used to fund subsidies that provide health coverage to roughly 10 million low- and middle-income Americans–would have saved Trump and his top two dozen officials between $3.1 million and $7.8 million, leading to an average tax reduction ranging from $124,200 to $313,700.

The MapLight analysis highlights another potential conflict of interest for the Trump White House, which has lobbied furiously for a repeal of the 2010 Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as Obamacare. Trump already has been criticized for violating the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution, which forbids the nation’s presidents from profiting from their tenure in the White House. The president also has refused to release his tax returns–a move that could alleviate fears that he’s using his office for financial gain.

Unlike a House measure that passed in May, the Senate is considering keeping the tax. If the Senate is able to pass legislation–with or without the tax– differences between the two chambers would be sorted out in a conference committee before a bill could be sent to the president for his signature. A health care bill may not be the end of the matter; both White House and House GOP plans to change the nation’s tax code also contemplate getting rid of the 3.8% tax.

Two of three potential health-care measures touted by the Trump administration would have clearly benefitted his Cabinet by eliminating the net investment income tax. The House measure, which won approval by a 217-213 vote, would have meant as many as 23 million Americans would lose health insurance over the next decade. It wasn’t considered by the Senate.

“We are all pushing hard—must get it right!” Trump tweeted in early June.

The president would have saved between $81,623 and $560,950 without the 3.8% tax.

A second plan to repeal and replace Obamacare was dropped by the Senate earlier this month after GOP Senate leaders failed to muster enough support for their own version, which would have kept the tax while placing health insurance out of reach for an additional 22 million Americans.

After support for the Senate bill waned, Trump pushed a simple Obamacare repeal–which would have done away with the tax–that senators initially refused to even consider. Repealing the law without a replacement would have increased the number of uninsured Americans by 32 million over the coming decade, the Congressional Budget Office reported. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pushed for a vote on a partial repeal on Wednesday; it was rejected by a 55-45 vote.

McConnell’s wife, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, would save between $5,388 and $15,250 if Obamacare is completely repealed.

Small Cuts And Big Cuts

Eliminating the investment income tax would disproportionately benefit the wealthy. The Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan, Washington-based research organization, estimated that the top 0.1% of American earners–households that report more than $3.9 million in annual income–would save an average of $207,000 after the change was implemented. Low-income households would save about $150 annually, the center said.

Although Trump’s Cabinet is the wealthiest in U.S. history, not all of its two dozen members would benefit equally from the tax cut, according to the MapLight analysis. Three members—Vice President Mike Pence, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, and Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta—wouldn’t have made more than $7 from a repeal of the investment income tax. Central Intelligence Agency Director Michael Pompeo, a former Kansas congressman, would have seen his potential tax cut top out at $31.

Even so, more than a quarter of Trump Cabinet members stood to gain more than the average American household earns in a single year. Two members–Education Secretary Betsy DeVos and Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross–could have saved more than $1 million, based on financial disclosure reports. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, a former Goldman Sachs executive, could have saved as much as $890,400 from the tax repeal.

DeVos, who married into a family that created the multi-level marketing scheme known as the Amway Corp., stood to gain the most, with a potential tax cut that would have ranged from $1.95 million to $4.15 million, according to the analysis.

Billion-Dollar Cabinet

Trump, a real estate developer who has parlayed his fame into a reputed multibillion-dollar licensing and reality television show fortune, has stacked his Cabinet with wealthy individuals. More than half have a net worth that exceeds $1 million; Wilbur Ross and Linda McMahon are both billionaires. By contrast, half of all Americans have a net worth of less than $45,000.

The exact net worth and investment income isn’t known for each Cabinet-level member because the Office of Government Ethics only requires a range of income to be reported. Pence, for example, reported investment income that ranged between $0 and $200, which would have led to a potential gain of as much as $6 if the 3.8% tax had been repealed. DeVos reported investment income ranging between $54 million and $115 million.

Ten Cabinet-level officials reported potential investment incomes of less than $100,000; they included former government and military officials with limited experience in the private sector. Only four Cabinet-level appointees with substantial experience in the public sector cited the potential for six-figure gains from investment income: Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke, a Navy veteran and Montana congressman; Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, a former Cabinet secretary under George W. Bush and McConnell’s wife; Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue, a former Georgia governor; and Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, a former Georgia congressman.

Price, a physician, traded hundreds of thousands of dollars’ in health-care stocks while voting on health-care issues during his 12-year congressional tenure. Price claimed the trades were legal and transparent; former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara was investigating the trades as a potential conflict of interest that violated a 2012 congressional insider-trading law when he was fired by Trump, according to ProPublica, an online investigative news site.

Estimated Savings from Repeal of Net Investment Income Tax for Cabinet Officials

Methodology: MapLight analysis of financial disclosure reports for President Trump and the members of the Cabinet based on filings from the U.S. Office of Government Ethics. For the purposes of this analysis, income reported under “Other Assets and Income” is assumed to be subject to the 3.8% net investment income tax. This data includes income earned by the filer, the filer’s spouse, and any dependent children. Income is reported for the preceding calendar year to the filing date, varying for each filer, and was prorated to a period of one year. All members of the Cabinet were assumed to qualify for the tax.

If you’ve ever been on the receiving end of the cold, hard truth, instead of reacting with “ouch,” you might want to say “thank you.” New research published in Psychological Science found that tough love given the right way is often a great motivator.

While previous studies found that some people like to bring others down for their own personal gain, Belén López-Pérez, Liverpool Hope University psychological scientist, and colleagues Laura Howells and Michaela Gummerum from the University of Plymouth, wondered whether there might be altruistic reasons people purposefully worsen others’ moods.

The researchers set up an experiment that would test whether someone might choose a negative experience for another person if they thought it would help them reach a specific goal. Participants played one of two computer games with an anonymous (and nonexistent) Player A: Soldier of Fortune, a shooter game that has confrontation goals, and Escape Dead Island, a zombie game that involves avoidance goals. The participants were told that their opponent had recently gone through a painful breakup. Half were asked to empathize, while the other half were told to remain detached. Then they were asked to choose music and provide a description of the game for Player A.

Compared to the participants who were asked to remain detached, those who empathized with Player A in the shooter game chose to induce anger, while those who had empathized with Player A and played the zombie game focused specifically on inducing fear.

“What was surprising was that affect worsening was not random but emotion-specific,” writes López-Pérez. “In line with previous research, our results have shown that people hold very specific expectations about the effects that certain emotions may have and about which emotions may be better for achieving different goals.”

Empathy, the study concludes, can lead people to provoke negative emotional experiences if they believe it would ultimately help the other person. This explains why we sometimes make friends or loved ones feel bad if we think the emotion could be useful in to achieving a goal, says López-Pérez.

Choosing The Right Emotions

For example, if a friend or coworker is procrastinating on getting work done—ultimately putting their job at risk—confronting the person by trying to evoke fear could kick them into gear, says López-Pérez.

Certain emotions can be helpful for certain goals, says López-Pérez. “For instance, feeling anger could be helpful to confront someone who has cheated, and fear can be helpful to escape from a very dangerous situation,” she says. “By inducing those emotions in others we may maximize their chances of achieving these goals.”

Managers can use this tactic at work to motivate their teams, but it’s important to know which emotions would be beneficial for the goal to achieve, says López-Pérez. “For instance, if the aim is maximizing collaboration then affect worsening is not going to work as we know that happiness is actually the right emotion to achieve this goal,” she says.

Proceed With Caution

More studies need to be done to understand how best to induce negative emotions, says López-Pérez. “It’s possible that the personality of the person receiving the negative emotion may modulate the obtained effect,” she says. “Also, it is important to actually know whether the person needs extra help to achieve the goal or not. For instance, if an employee is already trying to confront a competitor maybe the manager does not need to induce more anger in his employee.”

For now, use the Golden Rule as your guide. Knowing what emotion is right for the person to achieve the goal involves a high level of emotional skills and many adults may still struggle with this, says López-Pérez. “A good way to overcome this is by putting themselves in the others’ shoes and learning more about emotions,” she says.

The hard work of policing is done on our behalf, to serve and protect us, it’s often said. But we the people play a very small role in the way that that policing is conducted. That yields to the cops a power—to use force and surveil us—that is awesome and exceptional in modern democracy. This inconvenient truth is as alarming as it is nearly obvious, and it’s the basis of the book Unwarranted, an engaging tour of modern policing by constitutional scholar Barry Friedman. As he put it recently, “policing outran the structures and rules that we and the Founders created for it.”

The courts, which exist in a kind of symbiotic relationship with the cops, have proven to be poor checks on that power. Witness, for example, how in a single week last month, juries failed to convict three police officers in the shooting deaths of black men; because of a legal standard that defers to the judgement of a “reasonable officer,” or that requires that an officer “acted with malice,” very few prosecutions against police for deadly shootings end in convictions.

Deadly encounters and the videos that have documented some of them have led to public outrage, new calls for reform, and a re-dedication by many police departments to improve their training and their community relations. But suspicions on both sides of the blue line have festered. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who has tied the increase in violent crime to a lack of respect for police officers, has nudged the Justice Department away from consent decrees, the formal reform agreements between the federal government and police departments that are overseen by a federal court, and left some feeling jittery about the future of reform. 

But Friedman is an optimist. As director of the Policing Project at New York University, a group dedicated to public-police collaboration, his quest for “democratic policing” has included some promising steps forward: in cities like Camden, NJ, Tampa, Tucson, and Cleveland, the organization is building community advisory groups and working with youth and police to find common ground. In New York and Los Angeles, the project has also used citizen input to help departments design policies around the use of body cameras.

It was the stark lessons about government power unleashed by Edward Snowden—and, a year later, by Michael Brown, in Ferguson—that prompted Friedman to write about all of this. Those abuses and a steady stream of others—amplified by the viral spread of online video—have sowed distrust and fear among many communities. Black people are less than half as likely to trust the police as whites, according to a 2016 Pew Research Center survey. Asked if police treat racial and ethnic groups equally, 75% of white people said cops do a good or excellent job at this; only 35% of black people said so. When asked if police do a good or excellent job using the right amount of force during violent confrontations, the responses were similar.

If there is any accountability in policing now, it’s happening on “the backend,” says Friedman: body cameras, civilian review boards, inspectors general, judicial review. That kind of accountability is aimed at addressing problems after the fact. Friedman wants better rules on “the front end,” with police chiefs and the public collaborating on designing policies together, in order to prevent things from going wrong in the first place.

Real reform will need to come from within, but the onus is on the public to demand it, he argues. And We the People—and the courts and the legislatures—have not done enough. “People can’t just demand the police ‘reduce crime’ and then duck the question of how,” he writes. 

Developing policies for tools like body cameras is a cornerstone of democratic policing, but as Friedman points out, there are more fundamental questions too, including: Do we even want this technology to begin with, and why? The same goes for a growing arsenal of gadgets, like license-plate readers, “Stingray” cellphone interceptors, facial recognition software, internet surveillance, and DNA evidence. Here, “the people, not the police, must decide as an initial matter if these things are in or out.”

So far, even when the public speaks, it’s not as audible as hoped. In New York, Friedman and the Policing Project solicited the opinions of tens of thousands of New Yorkers in creating recommendations for the city’s body camera program. But in its final policy, the NYPD decided not to accept some significant recommendations, such as limiting the ability of officers to view footage before filing a report on a use of force, one of many controversial questions surrounding cameras. “It’s hard to know how to feel about that,” says Friedman. 

The police propensity for secrecy only makes it harder to know what is being done on our behalf, and what benefit that work is bringing. Even the concept of cost-benefit analysis—common to business and government work—remains rare in criminal justice and law enforcement. Honoring the hard-fought rights enshrined in the Constitution is one thing; but it can be hard to know if policing is even effective at its mission. 

“No one expects perfection by the police,” says Friedman. “But are we even coming close?” 

Same Constitution. Different Effects.

Fast Company: What’s a good example of how we get the relationship between the police and the public wrong?

BF: One of my favorite stories is the time that the Compton police got a surveillance plane. The company that was doing the surveillance, they get caught doing it. And then the police Public Information Officer explains, “people are worried about this kind of thing, so we decided to keep it hush hush.” Imagine another government official saying, “well, we knew this would bother you so we kept it secret.” I mean it’s such a great line, it’s hilarious. But it was honestly sad. Any other government official who said that would be looking for a job the next day.

It’s just a culture that we’ve created in this country of not inviting the public voice in law enforcement. It’s just never been the norm. When I finally realized it, it was just like a huge lightbulb that went off of in my head one day. I’ve wanted to write about policing for a long time. I taught criminal procedure for 30 years and it’s something I’m incredibly passionate about, as you can tell. But I’ve written about all kinds of other stuff: the Supreme Court, and public opinion courts, federalism. And then by happenstance I get assigned to teach in one semester constitutional law and criminal procedure.

Constitutional law is the rules about how we run the government; criminal procedure is the rules about how we run policing. And I’m literally preparing for one class after the other, and all of a sudden I think, “Well, this is weird. Why don’t the rules that apply in my constitutional law class apply in my criminal procedures class?”

Same Constitution, same justices deciding the cases. But they talked about stuff differently. Everything they know about race in one context they toss out the window in the other context. And that’s what led to all of this.

FC: Is that when the Policing Project began?

BF: I had this thought to start the Policing Project right after Snowden. That was the impetus. I thought, “Oh my gosh, I’m an academic that has an idea that might apply in the world.” Because my head was like, “where’s the public participation?” I thought, “really? Really? You decided to collect the metadata on the whole country? And didn’t get permission? That’s nuts!”

And I actually don’t think all of that [surveillance] was good faith, but I like to believe that a lot of it was, about keeping us safe.

And then I went to the dean and we decided to start the Policing Project. And I was working on it, and then Ferguson happened. And then of course it was all off and running. And along the way—I’m an old litigator, so, you know, like a carpenter when everything everything’s a nail, what do you do if you have an issue? Litigate it.

But then I was talking to my dear friend and colleague Ann Milgram, who at the time was the vice president of criminal justice programs at the Arnold Foundation. And she listened to the idea and said, “you really need to work with law enforcement.” And I thought, “I don’t know if they want to talk to me.”

But she helped facilitate a founding conference for the Policing Project [in November 2015] that was a closed-door session with law enforcement. And we did PowerPoints and had group discussions. They asked us to write a set of democratic policing principles for them and then they all signed on to it. And since then major city chiefs have signed on to it, and PERF [The Police Executive Research Forum] has signed on to it, and NACOLE [The National Association Of Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement] has signed on.

FC: How did that first meeting go? How did the police respond to your ideas?

BF: I remember sitting there—the first session was about, how do we get the community engaged? The second session was about cost-benefit analysis, and then we all had a good night together. And then the next morning we got there, and it was like, “it’s time to talk about this democratic thing!”

And we did a PowerPoint, and there was silence in the room. And then you know someone—I’m not going to identify who, because it was no attribution—says, “that seems right to me.” And from there, the conversation just ran, and ran really fast, and it ran so fast that we ended up working with a bunch of police departments.

When you sit down with the police, many if not most of them are right-minded people and some of them are just flat-out inspiring. It’s like the military: If you go talk to a lot of people who are in or have been in the military, they get the democracy thing. They’re inculcated with it. They get it and they’re interested. And it’s a change for them. I have this text message somewhere from Jim Beerman, the president of the Police Foundation [an independent nonprofit dedicated to policing]. He wrote me, “Every person over 18 in every place in America every mayor or whatever, police official, should read this book.”

False Choices

FC: After spending time with police chiefs, police officers, and the public, what’s the role of trust in improving policing?

BF: The role of trust is immense. And helping justifiable trust to exist is a lot of what the Policing Project is about. 

There’s an anecdote in my book about the police use of red light cameras and drones and public involvement in Menlo Park, California. In that case, there’s legislation that’s going to limit the use of data, and the police chief takes umbrage and says, “You know, you don’t trust us.” And the city council responds, “Actually, we do trust you. That’s why we gave you all that stuff. But it’d be remiss of us not to be involved in deciding what happens with it.” And so, you know, trust is a shared thing.

If the framers of the Constitution were here, or the authors of the Federalist Papers, they would say, “You should never trust government completely. You always have to keep a watchful eye.” And I think that’s true.

But there’s been shattered trust in many communities in which we’re dealing. I mean it’s stunning, it’s really stunning, to be sitting in these rooms of community members and realize how shattered the trust is at times. I mean, it’s actually kind of heartbreaking.

FC: Is it hard to get to that shared trust when policing or security is cast as a choice between two things, like, say, safer streets and civil rights?

BF: This is the thing I think everybody misses—we live in a society where everybody wants to fight it out. Like, “I’m for privacy.” “No—I’m for security.” It’s like, ordinary human beings aren’t walking around being for privacy but against security, or for security and against privacy. We all want to lead private lives safely.

And so something is sort of fundamentally broken in our discourse. And that’s what we’re trying to do: to get people to understand that, if they’ll sit down and talk to each other, they share a similar set of values, and that what they’re really facing are collective societal problems that are hard. And if we work together we can try to crack them.

FC: I think of Snowden’s revelations about government surveillance as the last time society grappled with privacy in a sizable way. Does it take an event like that to spark public conversation about civil rights and government overreach? Or can we find other ways to provoke that conversation?

BF: When the public is engaged, policy changes, but the public’s busy. And it’s hard to keep something salient for the public mind. And so the challenge is, how to force front-end accountability when it’s not salient in the public mind. In part because, if you stop and think about it, we have a really good record on making bad decisions in emergencies, when things are too salient. You know, decisions that get made in a panic aren’t always the right decision. What you want is kind of an ongoing, thoughtful process.

On privacy, polling is all over the map on this stuff, and it’s because how questions get asked of people about their privacy varies. But it is absolutely true that the public doesn’t understand the stakes, and they also feel like they don’t have control.

There’s a kind of sweeping past—the “what can I really do about this?” attitude. I sit at dinner parties all the time and somebody says to me, “yeah, yeah I don’t have anything to hide,” and I say, I want the last two days of your email. And everybody, once they actually stop and think about their emails over the last few days, talking about the fact that “I’m constipated,” or whatever it is. And so everybody wants privacy.

I think it’s wrong to say people feel like they’ve given up their privacy and they just don’t care. They’re actually mad about it, a lot of people. They don’t think they have a choice. And we’ve done an inadequate job as a society in part because this gets fought out in such tendentious terms, rather than letting people understand that there may be choice.

I just think we’ve had a very starved discourse about this. But people aren’t going to care on a regular basis. What we need to do is get them to understand that there are choices, and to be demanding of their representatives that there be more serious conversation about this issue.

It’s because we have framed this from time immemorial as a fight between privacy and security. There’s something about the structure of American discourse that’s binary. But good solutions are never binary. That’s what makes them good. And we have to actually just become convinced that instead of fighting about this stuff, the charge to the people that represent us is to sit down and figure out a way to try to do both of these things.

The Future Of “Law And Order”

FC: From your perspective, what is the general policing climate like now given the “law and order” signals sent by the new administration and by Attorney General Sessions? [He recently reasserted policies of civil asset forfeiture, permitting state and local police to take cash and property from crime suspects, even without a criminal charge.] How is that affecting the way police are seeing their jobs and their relationship with the public?

BF: The International Association For Chiefs of Police issued a statement on immigration enforcement, and their position is that we should care about immigration, but we also have to care about sanctioning cities that aren’t seen to be cooperating. Lots of police departments have spoken up all over the country saying, “we were working really hard to develop trust in our communities and then [immigration] agents wearing raid jackets that say ‘POLICE’ on them are pulling people out of houses, and that’s just destroying that trust.”

Balance is really important and we often aren’t. Instead, what we do is pendulum swing. The administration’s the beneficiary of a swing of the pendulum. But what I would urge is to try to find that resting place, because, again, there’s been a lot of talk out of the Justice Department about safety and crime. But we all want to be safe; the people of Chicago suffering violence in their neighborhoods really want to be safe. They would welcome support. But they also want to have a voice in how they’re policed to achieve that safety.

Related: How The Lucrative Fight To Put Cameras On Cops Is Changing The Way Police Work

FC: Speaking of Chicago, that city’s police department uses what’s called the Strategic Subject List, which crunches data to predict who’s likely to be shot. Other technologies like social-media tracking and facial recognition are proliferating. What do these tools mean for police work? And what do you make of the concerns that have been raised about the ways in which these technologies can serve to re-inscribe racial bias?

BF: A lot of these technologies, just because of how and where they are deployed—if you’re using license plate readers and you’re using them on patrol cars that are in more heavily policed neighborhoods, then you’re picking up cars in those neighborhoods more. And so that’s something we need to be very aware of and thoughtful about. As my dear colleague Brian Stevenson often says, if you’re worried about marijuana enforcement, go police some university dormitories.

Imagine the world where the cops are going down the street and everything is happening in real time and they’ve got Google Glass on, or there are body cameras that instantly recognize the people—it’s not just recognizing them but we’re getting their security scores coming up at the same time. People are getting colored by how dangerous the algorithms think they are. That’s one darn scary world.

We worry about false positives—getting the wrong people. But whoa: do we all want to be in [a database] like that? The one thing I can’t say, sadly, enough—well, you know what I’m about to say: if we’re going there, we better all go there together. Like, now.

I get that there are minority rights questions and things to worry about there that are super serious. But you don’t even get to those questions until the point that you first say, “whoa did we all discuss this and agree to this?” And my instinct is, most of the time, we don’t get there.

FC: Do you think it’s a foregone conclusion that this kind of technology will take root in policing?

BF: It is a foregone conclusion unless we start to force public engagement around all of it. It’s what we saw around San Bernardino and encryption, which is that when the companies realize that there is a demand for the public-facing security part of it, the privacy part of it, the companies will be driven to accommodate that. It’s not like everything is going to be fine. There are hard questions. But you know, it’s rare that we want to answer a hard question by just saying yes or no.

As you might guess from the work, I’m fundamentally an optimistic person, and I like to believe things are possible. I wrote this article called “Democratic Policing” with Maria Ponoromenko that was kind of a wonky version of the first part of the book. I remember sitting in my office with her and saying, “If you told me when we were writing the article that a year later that we would be conducting the the public-facing version of notice and comment for the largest police force in the country, I’d have laughed you out of here. But we’re doing that right now!”

What is gratifying too is the number of people on every side of this issue who, once you talk with them about it and offer them a way forward— including, and I just want to stress, law enforcement, because they need it, they know that there’s an issue even if they don’t want to concede it, but they know there’s an issue—and if you offer them a way to acknowledge it that’s positive, as opposed to being shouted at, they’re happy to give it a try.

FC:  I wonder how the public’s perception of policing will evolve along with the spread of officer-worn video. It makes me think of the show Cops, just on a bigger, uglier scale. There’s just going to be a lot more of that footage out there and it’s already changing the public’s understanding of the police, one way or the other.

BF: I think that goes back to the fundamental point of our conversation, which is, we ask the police to keep us safe, and do not get very involved in how that happens. And as one police chief said to me, and as many police will tell you, policing is often a violent business. And that is sometimes the nature of the job. And yet the public doesn’t watch it very often, and it would be interesting to see how the public reacts. One shouldn’t presume to know what that reaction will be.

On the one hand, cops do lots of stuff every day that none of us would want to. If I’ve learned anything from riding in police cars, it’s that I can never be a cop. I’m not up to it, and I respect the people who do it. On the other hand, there’s things involved with policing that trouble people when they see it. So the good news is, we may all get forced to do the job we should have been doing all along, which is weighing in on, “how can this happen?”

People who wind up becoming their own bosses because they have to–after a layoff, say, or to escape a toxic work culture–may be outnumbered by those who start freelancing by choice.

According to the latest study by the Freelancers Union and Upwork, 63% of the freelance workforce (which numbers as many as 55 million strong) reported doing so voluntarily rather than out of necessity, and 79% agreed that it’s better than working a normal job. In fact, Adobe’s analysts discovered that having the second (or third) job improved the mental outlook among 78% of those moonlighting–largely because they used their gigs to advance their careers through honing skills or by expanding their network.

But it’s not necessarily high satisfaction ratings across the board. Recent research by Intuit and LinkedIn ProFinder, the platform’s freelance marketplace, suggests that personality plays a big role in how happy independent workers actually are with solo-gigging. Here’s what it takes to figure out whether freelancing is right for you–based on your values, passions, and top motivations.

Related:How I Overcame My Biggest Freelance Fears

1. They’re Purpose-Driven

Thogori Karago, LinkedIn ProFinder’s senior product manager, points out that freelancers’ motivations are usually pretty personal–which means they vary as widely as the people who choose to freelance. So while earning more money was the main reason an overwhelming majority (88%) chose to hold down a side gig, money alone isn’t enough to keep most freelancers happy. A whopping 97% of those who made the leap to full-time freelance work said they wanted to take on more purpose-driven projects.

“Our research finds that professionals who are mission-driven and feel that they’re making a meaningful difference with their work are the most satisfied with freelancing,” says Karago. She points out that this is true for both “career freelancers,” who pursue freelance work to gain industry experience and new skills, and for the category LinkedIn identified as “business builders,” who use freelance gigs to expand their portfolios and get their own businesses off the ground.

So if a sense of impact and meaning are important to you, you may be more likely to enjoy freelancing long-term.

Related:Would You Pay $1,500 For A More Purposeful Career?

2. They Like To Have Their Hands On The Controls

What keeps most full-time workers from taking the plunge–or even dipping a toe–into the freelance pool? The Freelancers Union/Upwork survey found “worries about income predictability” topping the list. So while you might expect business builders to be motivated by revenue, says Karago, only 5% of this group names money as their key motivation.

Finances are a bigger driver for career freelancers, who ironically depend on contract work to fill their coffers. “If you like being in control and are comfortable with risk and uncertainty, it’s also likely you’ll adapt well to freelance life,” Karago contends.

Managing cash-flow when clients don’t pay promptly is a reality for many full-time freelancers, and dealing with that variability can be tough. Even so, majorities of both career freelancers and builders said that they preferred to control when, where, and how they work. In fact, half of workers in both groups found freelancing less risky than traditional employment–if only, perhaps, because they like being in the driver’s seat.

3. They Know To Keep Side-Passions To The Side

Ironically, says Karago, workers who are primarily motivated by doing what they love–especially in creative fields like music, writing, and graphic design–are less likely to be satisfied with gig work.

“A mere 38% of this group say they’re satisfied, which makes them nearly the least satisfied category of freelancers overall,” she points out. That’s true even when even when they’re raking in the dough; surprisingly enough, these passion-driven solo workers actually earn the most money per hour of any industry category ProFinder researchers looked at.

So just because you’re devoted to a creative passion doesn’t mean you’ll be happy quitting your full-time job to make a living from it on your own.

Related:Freelancers, Here’s The Secret To Getting Long-Term Clients

4. They’re In It For The Long Haul

Less surprisingly, workers who take on multiple gigs after losing their jobs are the least satisfied with freelance work. These so-called “substituters” also report the least desire to have more control over their work, Karago points out; just over half (53%) say they’ve always wanted to be their own boss.

Many people can put up with headaches they know to be temporary as long as they’re working toward something longer-term, but it can be a hard slog in the meantime. Picking up freelance work here and there might give you a flexible schedule and more control over where you work, but the inevitable difficulties of supporting yourself can burn you out eventually.

The most satisfied freelancers seem to have personalities that value long-term stability, even if they’re comfortable taking risks. Those that aren’t might want to think twice about leaving traditional jobs, Karago suggests, since risk-aversion was the common trait among the two least satisfied groups of freelancers.

“If you’re considering making the move into freelancing,” Karago adds, “it’s important to weigh the pros and cons and to do a bit of self-reflecting.” That’s wise counsel for anybody–in the freelance economy or outside it.

My startup just welcomed its first-ever hire since our launch, and he is not impressed with us.

He shouldn’t be–we have so much to do to turn our early milestones into sustainable, long-term success. It is a little weird to interview somebody who doesn’t care a whole lot about what you’ve accomplished so far, and doesn’t mind saying so. But even so, I’m glad that our first new team member arrived as one of our biggest skeptics. Here’s why.

You Want Your Earliest Job Applicants To Grill You

Tommy and I were old colleagues and had spoken a few times about UserMuse, so when we sat down to really discuss him coming on board, I felt unusually prepared. He was prepared, too, though, with questions like these:

• “How are you engaging the buyers?”
• “What percent do you think will never come back?”
• “What are the biggest challenges you’re hiding behind the user growth?”

That’s how the conversation went–every business metric or insight I offered was countered by a frank question about why it mattered. The subtext was usually, “Tell me why this isn’t going to fail.” A few times, it was, “Tell me why you aren’t going to give up when things go sideways.”

It felt more like an investor pitch than interviewing a potential hire. Then again, there ideally shouldn’t be much difference between the two when you get right down to it.

Related:This Is Why Your Startup Will Fail

Convincing somebody from scratch of the value of a new business shouldn’t be easy. They force you to articulate that in new ways. Sometimes they ask questions for which you have no answers. For founders, this can trigger defensive instincts (“Do you even understand what it took to get to this point?”), but it’s extremely, critically important to fight the urge to push back.

After all, once you’ve clawed your way to wherever you are, it’s natural to feel pride in the accomplishment. A good first employee won’t care about what got you here, only about what’s next–and if you fall back on your defenses, you’re missing a chance to let them help you progress. They have no sacred cows and no attachment to how you did things yesterday. They stand on the shoulders of whatever came before.

Assuming they fit the culture, you need people with this attitude; you just have to be willing to listen and let them push you.

Don’t Shield New Hires From Your Toughest Challenges

If you’re confident you’ve found the right person to add to your core team, treat them like a grown-up from day one. Make sure they’re aware of the biggest problems you’re facing today–especially the hairy ones for which you don’t have answers yet.

Every company in the world is facing big challenges right now. You’re adding people to your team to help solve those problems, whether the issues stem from growth or a lack of it. You give your startup’s newest employees (and your business) the best chance to succeed if they all know where to train their sights.

Related:Here’s What To Do When Your Startup’s Customers Get Mad At You

Something unfortunate happens to a lot of companies as they grow, and it happens quickly in my experience: The on-boarding process, intended to help people get up to speed on how the business works and what everyone does, morphs into a marketing pitch. The company’s problems are minimized or avoided, and the team feels obligated to paint the rosiest picture of the business they can.

That’s dangerous to everyone involved. The worst thing you can do to a capable person is convince them that everything is a certain way for a reason. They should be questioning everything that doesn’t make sense, not trying to rationalize why the status quo is actually just fine after all. You and the founding team may have learned to live with certain things while you fought more pressing battles, but that doesn’t mean the new folks should.

Don’t spin gaps or deficiencies as things you did deliberately. There are times when it might actually make sense to bullshit people, but this is absolutely not one of them. Don’t make your new employees cut through marketing-speak to figure out for themselves where the bodies are buried. You’ll waste time and undermine your own credibility as a leader when they figure it out for themselves.

To me, the ideal first employee is eager to join the team and dying to fix things you’re not doing well. If you find someone like that, give them what they need and let them get to work.

The Balbina hydroelectric dam in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest is, according to more than one expert, the worst hydro plant in the world. With too little water to run its five giant turbines, it operates at a fifth of its 250-megawatt (MW) capacity. The environmental and human costs required to build it were enormous and horrendous: In the 1980s, engineers flooded 900 square miles of rainforest, obliterating land occupied by indigenous tribes. And because of decomposing plant matter in the lake, Balbina may emit enough methane–an especially dangerous greenhouse gas–that its climate profile is no better than a coal plant, some scientists say.

“Balbina is among the projects that are known in Brazil as pharaonic works,” writes ecologist Philip Fearnside. “Like the pyramids of ancient Egypt, these massive public works demand the effort of an entire society to complete but bring virtually no economic returns.”

The French company behind the project in Brazil, Ciel & Terre, also recently completed a similar installation in Portugal, at the Alto Rabagão dam, and it’s working on deals in North America and South Asia. It argues that putting panels into the waters above a dam enhances a site’s output, and makes use of spare storage and transmission capacity built in hydro projects, pharaonic or otherwise. Moreover, the panels offer power at peak times of day, and help to reduce evaporation and settle the water.

“When dams aren’t running at full capacity, you have a huge opportunity to use that existing infrastructure,” says Eva Pauly-Bowles, international sales director at C&T. “This is scalable as much as we want it, as much as the electrical infrastructure can take it.”

The arrays are moored with bottom and bank anchors using high-tension cable lines. C&T monitors for water and wind conditions, ensuring they stay more or less in the same horizontal position. However, the arrays can move up to 100 feet on the vertical, as the water level behind the wall rises and falls.

Pauly-Bowles says non-recreation sites are best for the projects, as having human beings around tends to complicate permitting and operations. She, therefore, doesn’t expect C&T’s arrays atop the Hoover Dam anytime soon. But Lake Michigan is another possibility. Its pumped storage stations–which store hydro-energy (potential electricity) for use during peak times–are other possibilities.

“Working on top of a hydro-dam, there’s the synergy of having the electrical infrastructure already there. Most of hydro dams have been over engineered so they have space for solar,” Pauly-Bowles says.

Work hard and your dreams will come true, right? That’s a mantra that many people have used to pursue their dreams and bring great things to life.

However, it’s not always a perfect recipe for success. In fact, sometimes working hard can work against you. Here are three reasons your hard work could actually hinder your success:

Problem: You Don’t Take Enough Credit For Your Work

Something awful happens when you get good at what you do: You start to think it’s easier than it is. This variant of impostor syndrome strikes when you take your skills for granted, finish assignments quickly and accurately, and accomplish a ton of work without ever feeling like you’ve done enough. Or worse–while feeling like you don’t deserve credit for getting it done.

Remote:3 Steps For Breaking The Imposter Syndrome Cycle 

Fix it: Stop taking your work for granted. Start a gratitude journal and make time to reflect on all you accomplished each day, even if it seems really basic. This is especially important for positions that don’t produce tangible pieces of work but rather coordinate and communicate at high levels, like account and project management. Without stopping to appreciate how intricate your work really is, you’ll continue to downplay your achievements, and your hard work will feel fruitless.

Problem: You Overwork Yourself

Burnout is real. It stresses you out, costs you money, and damages your health. But ironically, it also dilutes the effectiveness of the hard work you’re doing–which was the cause of the burnout in the first place.

Being truly effective (and not just working hard) is the result of strategic thinking, focus, and carefully applied mental or physical muscle. If you work hard to the point of burnout, you train yourself to value work for work’s sake. You lose the benefits of strategy and focus and weaken your mental or physical muscles in a loop of aimless “hard work.”

Related:The Fastest Way To Turn Around Career Burnout 

Fix it: If you work too hard without taking the time to decompress or relax, you won’t be the most effective version of yourself, and your hard work won’t get you anywhere. Make time in your schedule to relax daily, weekly, and monthly, incrementally increasing that relaxation time accordingly. Don’t think of it as time off–think of it as refueling and regenerating your ability to do hard work.

Problem: You Get Too Much Done, But It’s Not Important Stuff

Speaking of getting closer to your goals: Deep work is more important than shallow work, yet most of us feel better about inbox zero than we do about spending 30 minutes thinking about a long-term project. That’s a real shame, because it turns hard work into a slang word for working long hours on tasks that may or may not help you achieve the big picture tasks that are truly important to you or your career. In real life, however, nothing good comes from winning the “Responded to the Most Emails Within a 72-Hour Period” certificate.

Fix it: It’s tempting to work on small tasks because they’re right there in front of you. But if you spend all your time on small tasks, you won’t make progress on achieving long-term goals. Make intention setting an integral part of your work life, and add specific strategy time to your day for every project you’re working on to make sure that your hard work is focused on things that are important. You may get less done, but it will be more important and of higher quality–and that’s the kind of work that matters.

It sounds funny, but don’t let your hard work stand in the way of your success. Use these tips to make sure that the work you do strategically makes your work life stronger and better–not just busier.

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

Angelina Jolie’s upcoming Netflix film First They Killed My Father stands to be her most personal to date. Based on Loung Ung’s memoir of the same name, the film chronicles the Khmer Rouge’s rise to power in Cambodia in 1975 and the mass genocide that followed.

As detailed in her cover story for Vanity Fair, Jolie’s ties to Cambodia started when she picked up Ung’s memoir on a roadside stand while filming Lara Croft: Tomb Raider in the country. Being in Cambodia and reading the atrocities Ung described stirred Jolie to adopt the first of her brood, Maddox, a Cambodian orphan, and compelled her to become one of Hollywood’s most visible and dedicated humanitarians. Suffice it say, Jolie wanted to get First They Killed My Father right, starting with bringing on Cambodian documentarian Rithy Panh as a co-producer and getting the access to actually film in the country. Jolie even tapped Maddox as an executive producer. As for casting the lead role of a five-year-old Ung, Jolie scouted children in slums, orphanages, and circuses and to determine who could deliver the goods on emoting the pain and desperation of such a story–and then the casting directors decided to play a little game:

In order to find their lead, to play young Loung Ung, the casting directors set up a game, rather disturbing in its realism: they put money on the table and asked the child to think of something she needed the money for, and then to snatch it away. The director would pretend to catch the child, and the child would have to come up with a lie. “Srey Moch [the girl ultimately chosen for the part] was the only child that stared at the money for a very, very long time,” Jolie says. “When she was forced to give it back, she became overwhelmed with emotion. All these different things came flooding back.” Jolie then tears up. “When she was asked later what the money was for, she said her grandfather had died, and they didn’t have enough money for a nice funeral.”

Damn.

The lengths the casting directors went to for emotional accuracy are commendable on one hand–on the other, however, it seems a touch scarring. Surely, Jolie would never co-sign something that would hurt a child, especially one tied to a country and a project that’s so close to her. But to reiterate: Damn.

See if the unorthodox casting method paid off in the behind-the-scenes clip below.

We’re back! And this week we’re ramping up for our coverage of Goldenvoice’s second-annual Panorama Music Festival in New York City. We’ll be diving into all the festival has to offer over the weekend, so follow along on our Instagram Stories for the behind-the-scenes action, exclusive interviews, and portraits from your favorite acts. In the meantime, you can read up on our coverage from last year’s inaugural festival here.

Related: Just Like Being There: See New York’s Panorama Music Festival Through Our Eyes

Last time we had a proper music recommendation post, HAIM had just dropped that new recordSomething to Tell You. So in order to make up for lost time, here are eleven tracks from my time away that I still vouch for and recommend diving into ears-first.

New Finds from the weeks of 7/14 & 7/21

1.  Rationale – Loving Life
2.  Lana Del Rey, A$AP Rocky, and Playboi Carti – Summer Bummer
3.  Mutemath – Stroll On
4.  Selena Gomez, and Gucci Mane – Fetish
5.  Louis Tomlinson, Bebe Rexha, and Digital Farm Animals – Back To You
6.  Billie Eilish – idontwannabeyouanymore
7.  Holy Fuck – Bird Brains
8.  Magic & Bird, Andy Mineo, and Wordsplayed – JUDO
9.  A-Trak, Quavo, and Lil Yachty – Believe
10.  Moh Flow, and Pusha T – Options
11.  Skrillex, and Poo Bear – Would You Ever

And since we’re in the Panorama spirit, this week’s Recommendation Playlist features some of the best tracks from the artists performing this year.

1. Frank Ocean – “Solo”

2. Nine Inch Nails – “Somewhat Damaged”

3. Solange – “F.U.B.U”

4. Tame Impala – “The Less I Know The Better”

5. Vince Staples – “Prima Donna”

6. Vance Joy – “Lay It On Me”

7. A Tribe Called Quest – “I Left My Wallet In El Segundo”

8. Bishop Briggs – “Wild Horses”

9. Alt-J – “Tessellate”

10. Tyler, The Creator – “Garden Shed”

11. Mura Masa, and Moses Boyd – “Untitled”

12. Cloud Nothings – “No Sentiment”

13. MGMT – “Time To Pretend”

14. S U R V I V E – “Stranger Things” Theme Song

15. 6Lack – “Ex Calling”

16. Justice – “New Lands”

17. SnakeHips – “All My Friends”

18. Nicolas Jaar – “Fight”

As Trump-elstiltskin continues to spew out yet more hateful things to cause despair and misery amongst the good people, let us turn up the volume and tune that out. Remember that this is the playlist to follow to stay productive. Like Frank Ocean once said in the song “Sunday”: “I’m coming back I gotta handle business.”

See you all next Friday!

WHAT:“Learn to Let Go,” the latest video from Kesha.

WHO: Director Isaac Ravishankara.

WHY WE CARE: The Kesha comeback continues apace. After a raw deal found her barred by former collaborator Dr. Luke from making new music, the much-missed songstress has been releasing tracks at a rapid clip. Her latest is a breezy track about putting the past in its place, a subject near and dear to her heart following recent traumatic events.

In order to articulate the point, the new video is filled with footage from Kesha’s childhood home movies. (Her mom even gets a co-directing credit!) These scenes are not only interwoven throughout the video, they are recreated by Kesha in the present. It’s a symbolic way of demonstrating that you have to acknowledge your own past before successfully putting it behind you.

Around two years ago, Jessica McClard noticed three Little Free Libraries–tiny, community-organized book-giveaway hutches–pop up in her middle-class neighborhood in Fayetteville, Arkansas. At the time, she was reading The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, and on her long runs through her neighborhood and past the communal book hutches, she began to mull over the Little Free Libraries as a concept, and what caused it to “tip” into a global phenomenon–as of November 2016, 50,000 tiny libraries have been registered in 70 countries around the world.

It wasn’t the fact that the Little Free Libraries dealt in books, McClard tells Fast Company. People in her neighborhood had plenty to read. “So if it wasn’t about books, that meant it could probably be used in a different way,” she says.

But the two Little Free enterprises differ in key ways. To build a recognized Little Free Library, people have to register through the LFL website and pay a $45 fee that covers the licensing of the name and adding the new library to the organization’s interactive map. LFL also recommends that library founders visit their website to purchase a book exchange-box kit, which provides, not unlike an Ikea shipment, pre-drilled pieces and step-by-step instructions; those kits range from a couple hundred dollars to $2,500. McClard, however, chose not to license the “Little Free Pantry” name; establishing one is free, as is following the recommended design guidelines she includes on the LFP website.

A free can of beans in a donation box, however, represents a real need. And that’s where Little Free Pantries succeed, but also highlight the necessity to do much more to address hunger on a national scale than just giving occasional cans.

The difficulty in setting up a community-based model to mitigate hunger and food insecurity became clear to McClard from the moment she set up the first Little Free Pantry over a year ago. “Early on, I thought it would be ideal to locate near the lower-income apartment complex close to where I live,” McClard says. “I thought the population density meant more people could benefit from it.” But after floating the idea by some of the building residents, they pointed out to her that while they might use what they find in the box, there was no one close by who would be likely to keep it stocked. She switched paths to her plan B–locating it at her church in the midst of a mixed-income, mixed-use neighborhood. That proved to be the strategy she now recommends all new LFPs adopt. Setting up a pantry near a grocery store, in a place that also gets a lot of foot traffic, ensures the pantries will stay stocked. The busiest ones empty out within 45 minutes, McClard says.

Now, McClard says, “supply can never keep up with demand.” Little Free Pantries are designed to help those people who may not qualify for food assistance benefits, yet still can’t afford many of the basic necessities found in the pantries. That they should empty out so quickly by targeting this audience is unsurprising: The USDA reported that as of 2014, 14% of American households, representing 48 million people, are food-insecure. With food assistance tightening now that the country is out of the recession that drove up hunger levels in the first place, the percentage of households struggling to put together consistent meals will likely rise. The Trump administration is looking to cut $190 billion from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) over the next 10 years.

And Little Free Pantries’ growth illustrates this perfectly. As the organization has grown over the past year, it caught the attention of Tyson Foods, a Springdale, Arkansas-based multinational corporation helmed by John Tyson, an energetic born-again Christian. Through the company’s Meals That Matter Heroes program–part of a larger effort to invest $50 million by 2020 to fight hunger by recognizing people who are taking innovative, community-based approaches–Tyson awarded McClard $40,000 to implement a web-based interactive map (not unlike the Little Free Libraries map) to better direct people to new and the roughly 1,000 existing pantries.

The map, McClard says, will allow the stewards of each pantry to post updates on items in need, and eventually enable them to collect donation shipments. But what does it say that in 2016, Tyson, the company supporting people like McClard, also donated a non-insubstantial amount of money (around $100,000) to the same Republican party now threatening to further constrict the food assistance extended to America’s poorest people?

Despite the fact that its net actions increase hunger rather than help it, its money is certainly better spent on McClard and her work through the Little Free Pantries–they’re a powerful communal gesture, even if they’re fundamentally incapable of mitigating hunger. That cause, of course, should be the responsibility of the government, but instead, we’ve left it to nonprofits and individuals to identify the extent of the need and then struggle to meet it.

What’s the first thing that comes to mind when I say Gucci. High fashion? Low art? Droptopwop? Whatever it is, chances are it’s most certainly not Star Trek. And yet, here we are. The brand’s “Fall/Winter 2017” video pays homage to the seminal science fiction show with a retro-futurist lookbook that explores strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations. Onward!

Netflix “Stranger Things Season 2 Trailer”

What: The newest trailer for Stranger Things season two.

Who: Netflix

Why We Care: First of all, it’s about time we start thinking about the Upside Down again. It’s also about time we get creeped out while having our tender ’80s nostalgia underbelly tickled with things like Ghostbusters Halloween costumes and Dragon’s Lair. But man oh man, setting the whole thing to “Thriller”? YAAAAAAAS.

Apple “The Rock x Siri Dominate The Day”

What: An elaborate new iPhone 7 ad starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

Who: Apple

Why We Care: If there’s one thing The Rock is good at, besides becoming one of the most highly paid actors on the planet, it’s multitasking. The guys stars in movies, TV shows, launches brands, and delivers mini-pep talks to this fans daily via Instagram. Then there’s the whole 2020 thing. Oh, and apparently a four-minute iPhone ad that imagines him in a buddy flick with Siri. Corny? Sure, but it’s also fun and consistent with Apple’s track record of self-depreciating celebrities.

Gucci “Fall/Winter 2017”

What: The fashion brand’s “Fall/Winter 2017” film pays tribute to Star Trek.

Who: Gucci, Glen Luchford

Why We Care: As Kenzo has been demonstrating on a regular basis, the bar for fashion brand content is getting bumped incredibly high. Here Gucci takes a left turn into Gene Roddenberry territory, with awesomely weird results.

Pizza Hut “Oven Hot Pizza, Fast, Every Time”

What: Kristen Wiig plays Every American for Pizza Hut.

Who: Pizza Hut, Droga5

Why We Care: Honestly, any excuse to see Wiig strut her stuff is worth a mention, especially in this The Nutty Professor of pizza chain ads.

ATT “Can You B. Lieve It?”

What: New ad campaign from Directv starring Michael B. Jordan.

Who: ATT, BBDO

Why We Care: In a pretty standard but charming campaign, Jordan (Creed) goes all in on the goofy spots, and this meta trip through all the TV Everywhere possibilities stands out.

Molly Hammel is a sensory technician at Mars, Inc. That means that while most of us are slogging through emails or putting the finishing touches on a team project, Hammel is eating ice cream–taste testing flavors, to be exact, or training others to hone their own taste buds in order to help Mars decide which new frozen delights to ship to your grocery store.

Although the 24-year-old is a relatively new hire at Mars (she started in January), Hammel spent several months as a lab assistant and dairy judge at her alma mater, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, while studying food science and technology. After graduating in 2015, Hammel spent the next two years interning at major brands like Diageo, a global producer of spirits and beer, and Bush Brothers & Company (of baked bean fame).

While licking ice cream at work all the time may sound great, there are a few challenges to balance out the perks, just like in any job. There are trade secrets, too; anybody hoping Hammel can reveal the special sauce inside Dove Raspberry Sorbet Bars will be disappointed. Still, Hammel did spill on what goes into her work as an ice cream taster and trainer, in case you’re dreaming of spending your days working with delicious desserts.

Fast Company: How did you land that job, really?

Molly Hammel: It was a competitive process with dozens of applicants, but I’m not sure exactly how many people applied for this job.

One thing that really helped me stand out during the interview process was that I was on the dairy judging team in college. To participate in the team, I went through extensive training on how to judge dairy products (ice cream included). I came in second overall in the Collegiate Dairy Products Evaluation Contest in 2014 so that definitely helped as well. During my interviews, I also mentioned that I made up silly songs and walked around the office singing to get panelists to attend panels at my last internship. A couple of associates mentioned my songs to me after I was hired, so I think that helped me stand out.

FC: So you’re a tasting guru. What qualities are you looking for in another taste tester?

MH: We call our ice cream taste testing panel a “sensory panel,” where we make sure all of the flavors and textures associated with our ice cream products are exactly right. The only prerequisites to participate in the ice cream sensory panel are working at Mars Ice Cream’s Burr Ridge [, Illinois] site and having a great sense of taste and smell!

Once associates sign up to participate, they go through a two-day training program. Associates participate in about 12 practice panels to determine if they can join the panel of ice cream taste-testing professionals. This program ensures their observations are in line with all of our other panelists, so we can consistently test our products for the quality we expect.

As the sensory technician that leads our tasting panels, my job is to make sure that panelists can taste the difference between a great product and one that needs improving. I train panelists in everything from how to decipher if the ice cream is too icy, to making sure peanuts are crunchy and our caramel has the perfect texture.

So far I’ve trained 21 associates for sensory panel and 15 associates that do sensory checks in the production areas. For the remainder of the year, I would imagine I might train 5-10 more people for sensory panel and probably the same for associates doing checks on the line. So total, I will train about 50 people to taste our flavors this year.

FC: During the two-day training program, what specifically are you not looking for?

MH: Mainly, I’m looking for people who can taste small differences in products. If someone smokes often, their taste buds could be dull and they won’t be able to taste these nuances. When I recruit for the sensory panel, most people are honest about their tasting abilities. I asked a few people to join the panel who said they were terrible at tasting and would not make a good panelist, so we didn’t include them. I also want people to join who are able to make the time commitment.

During a panel, they will share their thoughts on each product after tasting and evaluating it. If a trainee is consistently missing key attributes in samples, then I would decide if they needed additional training or need to be removed from panel. Everyone has different sensitivities to different tastes and aromas, so the more people that attend, the better.

I haven’t had to reject anyone due to his or her tasting ability yet, but I have removed panelists because they weren’t meeting the attendance requirements.

FC: What is the hardest part of your job? Freeze-head, weight gain?

MH: When I first started this job, evaluating our peanuts was new to me and difficult at first. I couldn’t pick out some of the attributes that other panelists were getting, but I’ve gotten a lot better after practice.

I sit on about two tasting panels per day, though, so I usually won’t crave ice cream when I get home from work and need to find different dessert options. That’s probably the most frustrating part because ice cream has always been my favorite dessert.

FC: And what is the toughest part of being a panelist?

MH: Most of our panelists sign up because they truly love ice cream and care deeply about the quality of our products. I think that the hardest thing for our tasting panelists is finding the time during a very busy work week to taste-test our ice cream products. Our panelists often have to juggle a full work schedule and make time for trying our ice cream twice a week.

Our panelists are not eating full products at every tasting, so an excess of dairy or sugar is typically not a concern for us. The panelists that attend tastings more often, like me, will expectorate [spit], but believe me, it is not easy to spit out good ice cream.

FC: Is it possible to taste so much ice cream that you can’t tell the difference any more?

MH: We taste everything from finished ice cream products to individual ingredients, and ice cream mix before it’s frozen into ice cream. That helps us really distinguish between the quality of different components in our ice creams. To help ground our taste-testing sessions, we start with a reference sample before evaluating each product that serves as a baseline of what the product should taste like.

We typically only taste four finished products per panel, so we don’t get sensory fatigue–or a decreased ability to perceive taste and aroma due to continued exposure–from evaluating too much ice cream. It also helps that each of our Mars Ice Cream products are pretty different, and each has specific ballots of what our sensory panelists should look out for. For example, with our peanuts in each Snickers ice cream bar, we’re looking for crunch and a good roasted peanut flavor, but with Dove Raspberry Sorbet Bars we look for that smooth chocolate texture and the right amount of tart raspberry flavor.

FC: Is yours the final say in whether the product makes it to market?

MH: Ultimately, my manager has the final say, but I provide her with my recommendation. As part of my job, I also get to help out our R&D team when it comes to developing the flavor profiles for our new treats. This involves taste-testing different types of elements for up-and-coming products to nail down the sensory experience. It can be challenging to create a new sensory experience, but it’s part of what I love most about my job.

FC: What is your current favorite?

MH: There are so many amazing flavors, it’s hard to pick one! I love the Milky Way ice cream bars, the Dovebar Vanilla-Caramel Swirl Ice Cream with Dove Milk Chocolate and Cashews.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

It’s hard to get anything done with all of the push notifications pulling us into other directions. You can find something else to do or think about at any given moment. But maybe the distractions aren’t the problem. Maybe it’s your willingness to be distracted that needs to be examined.

“Distractions are by-products of a problem,” says Kyle Cease, author of I Hope I Screw This Up: How Falling In Love With Your Fears Can Change the World. “Something outside of you is pulling you away from yourself or a goal. But the distraction is actually on the inside, and what’s going on outside matches what’s going on inside.”

We invite distractions as a way to handle three internal struggles, says Cease.

Using Distractions To Cover Your Fear

Distractions can help you avoid something that makes you afraid, such as trying something new or achieving a big goal. Many of us stay in a place of fear because it’s a way to seek connection, says Cease. “We get a lot of love for feeling doubtful and scared,” he says. “If you go to lunch with friend and you complain, now you’re connecting through complaining. Eventually you may become scared to not complain because you’d lose the feeling of love from that person.”

Fear is an illusion that comes from looking at something you’ve never done. “The nervous system isn’t scared of doing specific things; it’s scared of things it’s never done before,” says Cease. “It believes anything could be death. Everything you’ve already done has proven itself to be safe.”

If you’re about to make a big presentation, for example, and your mind suddenly comes up with the idea, “What if I throw up?” you’re creating an internal distraction to avoid dealing with your fear.

“Immediately your ego shows up, saying ‘You’re not going to throw up,’ helping you with problem it created in the first place,” says Cease. “Instead, look at that fear as a thought passing through. The problem isn’t having the thought, it’s being resistant to the thought and feeling that you need to fix the thought.”

Instead of creating distractions, embrace the fear, suggests Cease. Go into a new or uncomfortable situation saying, “I hope I screw this up,” or, “What if I screw this up? And I love that.”

“Once you are okay with the problem, it goes away,” he says. “All of a sudden you’re not enslaved to it. Resistance to the problem keeps it there.”

At the time of this interview, Cease, whose speaking tour The Limitation Game has been described as a cross between Jim Carrey and Eckhart Tolle, was preparing for a meeting with a television producer from Oprah Winfrey’s network. “I’m going into the meeting with the idea that I’m okay with screwing up,” he says. “All of a sudden I’m free of boundaries. I don’t need that producer’s approval. I perform much better if I’m okay with it going badly.”

Seeking Distractions Because You’re Insecure

The feeling of not being good enough keeps you from pursuing goals, and seeking distractions could mean you have a lack of awareness of who you are. The first thing to do is to stop thinking you’re incomplete, says Cease.

“Every commercial shows this loser person who then flips the tab of a Budweiser and has bikini women surrounding him,” he says. “You’re not enough is a great starting point. We buy into it because we are horrified that we are enough. Society is built around constant improvement.”

This sense of lacking is often formed in childhood. “We grew up believing that who we are is what our parents think about us,” says Cease. “We tap-danced, performed, or whatever we had to do to get love, and we end up becoming characters, thinking that love comes from avoiding something or moving something or chasing something.”

Approval has to come from self-connection. “Believing that connection is something outside of yourself causes you to be disconnected,” says Cease.

You Use Distractions For A Sense Of Control

A big cause of stress is trying to control things that you can’t, says Cease. “You can’t control politicians, for example,” he says. “You can control what you do. People pace around, using circumstances outside of themselves as excuses not to step into their own ambitions. There is a lie that things outside of you run you.”

Distractions due to lack of control turn into excuses, blame, and credit. This outward thinking helps you avoid taking action and being vulnerable. “Right now we live in a time where people are starting to see the BS in themselves and the world,” says Cease. “People can see through manipulation and strategies and marketing. The number-one thing they’re looking for is authenticity, and that takes vulnerability.”

Letting go of what you can’t control opens you up to opportunities. “Who am I to say that things have to go this way when there could be a lesson worth way more than the vision I had for myself?” asks Cease.