Try going a day at work without saying “I”–bet you can’t do it. The same likely goes for “me” and “my,” pronouns we use so frequently that we’re almost never fully conscious of them. But these tiny words, in addition to other common “function” words–like articles, prepositions, and conjunctions–may carry more weight in our speech than many of us suspect. And according to the social psychologist James W. Pennebaker, first-person pronouns in particular don’t always communicate what we think they do.

What does this mean for you and your career? For starters, Pennebaker’s research suggests that “I” and its ilk may resonate in others’ ears differently than you intend them to. When you use the first person, there’s the danger (admittedly an unfair one) that you’ll be perceived as self-promotional even when your speech patterns aren’t necessarily unusually “me”-centric.

Because language is complicated and bias is pervasive, there’s only so much of that that you can personally control. So it therefore doesn’t hurt to hedge your verbal bets. Here are five workplace situations where balancing “I” with more inclusive phrasing–or cutting it out altogether–is probably a smart move.

Related:The Secret To Sounding Smart? Use Simple Language

1. Speaking Up In Meetings

We often use “I” in order to get heard in meetings, but there’s a need to tread lightly. If the first words out of your mouth are, “I don’t agree,” or “I would look at it differently,” or “Here’s what I think,” that “I” can sound off-putting, particularly if you’re disagreeing or presenting a new perspective.

Yes, you can still use “I” and sound like a team player, but that often means throwing in some third-person verbiage as well. Kick off your comments by referring to the previous speaker or to the subject of conversation (rather than the people conversing). For example, “To Josh’s point . . .” or, “Looks like we’ve got a number of ideas on the table, so it seems to me . . .” Once you’ve built a bridge to your audience first, you can go on to show what you believe, including by saying “I,” “me,” or “mine.”

2. Accepting Praise For A Job Well Done

Sure, it’s tempting to emphasize what you’ve done, and there are times when you actually need to underscore your own role in order to get ahead at work. Just be careful how you do it. Never use “I” to claim the glory if other people have been involved–after all, nearly every project draws on the talents of many people.

Suppose you’re the art director for an ad campaign; there’s also your boss who developed the strategy, your boss’s boss who approved it, and the client who said “yes” to it. Even when pressed by someone who asks, “Did you design the campaign?” don’t just say “yes,” flash a smile, and leave it at that. Instead reply, “I had a role in the design, but it was a real group effort and we’re proud of the outcome.”

Not hogging the spotlight doesn’t mean disappearing from it entirely, of course. Women frequently deflect compliments by saying, “It was the whole team,” or even, “Oh, it was nothing.” The best thing to do is connect yourself with the accomplishment without taking sole credit for it. Say, “I’m so proud of my team. We had a great win”: one “I,” one “my,” and one “we”–that’s a balanced way to accept praise that’s directed at you rather than the whole group.

3. Showing Your Chops In A Job Interview Or Performance Review

That hiring manager is considering you for a job, and your boss is looking at your past work to decide whether you’ve earned a promotion. But overusing “I” can still backfire.

Sussannah Kelly, executive vice president of DHR International, a global executive search firm, told me that candidates typically don’t realize that the hiring processes isn’t just about them; the roles they’re auditioning to fill are really about solving problems for the team that role belongs to. “And sometimes they come out of the actual interview and tell me they knocked it out of the park,” Kelly says. “Then they discover they didn’t get the position because they focused on themselves and not enough on the company or the position.”

Related:Three Job Interview Mistakes You Think You Avoided But Actually Didn’t

A surefire formula for prevent this from happening is simply to say what you did, followed by the impact or outcome for the group. This holds true for cover letters and networking emails as well. I once got a note from a candidate with eight short paragraphs, each beginning with “I.” Despite his strong credentials, I decided to take a pass.

4. Meeting New People At Networking Events

Too often, introductions during networking begin with a perfunctory “hello,” then move quickly into monologues freighted with “I’s.” It’s deadly stuff for the speaker and listener alike.

Instead, walk into the event, grab a place next to someone who looks interesting or approach the VIP you’ve had your eye on (here’s how to do it), then start asking questions. How did they like the speaker? Why did they come? What do they do? Be complimentary, and make them feel good (“Love your shoes!”) Keep talking until you have common ground. Then you can resort to those first-person words, explaining why you came, what you do, and what you and the other person might do together.

Related:This Three-Word Phrase Is Subtly Undermining Your Authority

5. Talking To Your Boss Or An Executive

When we’re speaking “up” the organization and want to impress those above us, it’s easy to release of flurry of “I’s” as we describe our accomplishments. Self-justification in the face of authority is totally normal. The irony is that, rather than making you sound more powerful and centered, this can actually make you sound weak, insecure, and needy.

In fact, Pennebaker’s research indicates that people with less power and lower social status use pronouns like “I,” “me,” and “mine” and so-called “auxiliary verbs” (like “be,” “is,” “are,” “have,” “do,” “might,” and “should”–the stuff that usually accompanies an action verb) more frequently than those of higher rank (Pennebaker has theorized that “lacking power . . . requires a deeper engagement with the thoughts of one’s fellow humans,” as the Times summarized it in 2011). So when you’re talking to someone more senior to  you, focus less on yourself and the interpersonal politics involved than on the organization itself–the needs, goals, and outcomes everyone is pulling toward.

The slippery nature of unavoidable pronouns like “I”–just like other common words and phrases–means there will be times you really can’t control how your speech sounds to others. But one overall rule can help you maximize your impact: People simply like to know that you’re interested in them, not focused on yourself. Using collegial and collaborative language will build bridges to your audience, and hopefully result in more respect and authority for you.

After years of speeches and protests, you probably have the gist of the arguments for net neutrality: Don’t mess with what I can read/watch/download/upload, either by blocking or slowing it down. But the current net neutrality fight is really a wide-ranging power struggle between internet service providers and internet activists, between Republicans and Democrats. The battle is only partly about the ends—a free internet—and much more about the means: potential heavy regulation of ISPs as monopolies.

Trump-appointed FCC chairman Ajit Pai wants to scrap his Democratic predecessor Tom Wheeler’s Open Internet Report and Order. The Order imposed strict net neutrality rules on landline and (for the first time) wireless internet service providers. In order to do that, Wheeler’s FCC had to invoke legal authority that allows it to regulate ISPs as monopolies. The response from companies like Comcast and Verizon has been less about the merits and mechanics of net neutrality and more a strident assertion that they are not monopolies.

Why? Classifying ISPs as “common carriers,” under Title II of the 1934 Communications Act, means they could be regulated like monopolies. That could go as far as setting rates for broadband, like public utilities commissions do for electricity, according to ISPs and other critics. Tom Wheeler’s FCC promised not to go this far, by forbearing, or refraining, from utilizing most of Title II. “In finding that broadband Internet access service is subject to Title II, we simultaneously exercise the Commission’s forbearance authority to forbear from 30 statutory provisions and render over 700 codified rules inapplicable,” the Order reads.

ISPs aren’t buying it. “Even if the FCC decides to forbear from regulating [ISPs] from certain or many provisions of Title II in the near term, the fact that at any time it could implement additional rules under Title II jurisdiction creates uncertainty in the industry,” reads Comcast’s comments to the FCC.

Related: Ex-FCC Chair Tom Wheeler Dismantles The Case For Abandoning Net Neutrality

According to Susan Crawford at Backchannel, at least one ISP, Cable One, may be making itself vulnerable to monopoly regulation by taking advantage of its dominance over about 700,000 customers in low-income pockets of Mississippi, Louisiana, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, and Nebraska. That’s based on a study by analyst Craig Moffett, who might as well be the voice of God in the telecom business. (Both sides of the net neutrality debate quote him to make their case.) Moffett found that Cable One is already jacking up rates and could continue to. “What matters is that there is very little competition in Cable One’s footprint,” he told Crawford. “If you want high-speed broadband, where else are you going to go?”

Smackdown In D.C.

Cable One’s customers aren’t the only people facing little or no choice for landline broadband. (Wireless is a different story that we’ll get to in a bit.) The FCC’s 2016 Annual Broadband Report found that only 38% of Americans had a choice of landline internet providers (and 10% had no providers at all). That’s based on the FCC’s 2015 definition of “broadband” as 25 Mbps download/3 Mbps upload speeds. Ajit Pai slammed the new benchmark, writing in a dissent that most people given the option to buy 25 Mbps service don’t, that Wheeler’s figures assume rare activities like 4K video streaming.

“But for some time now under this Administration, grounding the new benchmark for broadband in reality hasn’t been the point. No, the ultimate goal is to seize new, virtually limitless authority to regulate the broadband marketplace,” wrote Pai.

By making ISPs common carriers, the FCC is required to regulate customer privacy, using another part of the Communications Act, Section 222, which says that a telecom carrier can only use clients’ personal information for the mechanics of providing services. An ISP has to know your location, IP address, and the site you are accessing, for instance, so it needs to look at you data packets.

“Once the ISPs fall under Title II, the FCC has to do something here to spell out what the ISPs are supposed to be doing with respect to 222,” says Nick Feamster, a Princeton computer science professor who specializes in networking technology.

The Commission did that last October, with a set of rules to prevent ISPs from using customer information for things like targeted advertising. The rules didn’t last long. Congress nullified them with a resolution in March—without any votes from Democrats.

Republican Marsha Blackburn, who led the effort in the House, has proposed replacing the nixed regulations with a law on ISP privacy. ISPs, Republicans, and other Title II foes also want to codify net neutrality rules in legislation, rather than working with (or against) regulations that can change each time the President does. It sounds reasonable, but “reasonable” doesn’t describe what most Congressional debates have been lately.

Related: Congress Should Decide Net Neutrality. Too Bad It Doesn’t Have The Bandwidth

Even before Title II was being discussed, ISPs were panicked about monopoly regulation. In 2013, Verizon sued and, for the most part, won to block an earlier net neutrality policy. The FCC wasn’t using Title II then, but a weaker provision—Title I, Section 706—which does not classify ISPs as common carriers. (And it didn’t apply to wireless carriers.) Still, Verizon was afraid the FCC would try to impose monopoly regulation, the company told me in a recent conversation. Verizon’s lawsuit was essentially a redo of a 2010 Comcast suit before the same D.C. Court of Appeals that had struck down a similar net neutrality policy based on Section 706.

Ironically, both companies now advocate Section 706 regulations almost identical to what they fought against because they are so spooked by the prospect of Title II monopoly regulation—and perhaps because they know they can beat it in a lawsuit.

Wireless Doesn’t Come To The Rescue

Verizon is far from a monopoly in landline broadband. Its fiber-optic Fios service reaches 5.7 million, according to its 2016 annual report. Comcast reported 23.8 million broadband subscribers in April.

Verizon’s situation is different in wireless, where it had about 141 million connections in 2015 (the latest year for which FCC numbers are available). But it’s no monopoly. AT&T is nearly as big, at 129 million. T-Mobile and Sprint each have around 60 million, and there are some smaller networks, like U.S. Cellular with 4.9 million connections.

The networks compete viciously for customers, as evidenced by the churn rate, or the percentage of a carrier’s connections that get cancelled, usually because people jump to a competitor. In 2015, the average churn rate for wireless was 23.6%. Two-year contracts have all but disappeared, making it much easier to switch. 4G/LTE wireless is now available to 98% of Americans—a milestone the White House announced in 2015.

Even the FCC, although it placed wireless carriers under Title II, acknowledges plenty of competition. The best measure is that, as the number of subscribers has shot up, prices have fallen. From 2005 to 2015, the number of wireless connections in the U.S. nearly doubled to 378 million (yes, more than the country’s population, which is approximately 326 million). But, says the FCC’s 19th Mobile Wireless Competitive Report, revenue per user “has slightly declined, for the most part, over the last 10 years.” Wireless carriers are making more money by expanding service, not by raising prices.

But wireless is a lousy substitute for a cable modem at home. Will the family huddle around a 6-inch phone screen to stream Game of Thrones while the 50-inch smart TV screen is black? Will an Amazon Echo, a Nest thermostat, and Philips Hue bulbs all connect to the wireless hotspot function that only some smartphones even have? And does the entire smart home shut down when the phone leaves or just when the battery depletes or the 4G signal wanes? Providers like Verizon have offered wireless home routers, but with lots of caveats, like download speeds as low as 5Mbps (barely enough for streaming) and a dropdown to 3G speeds after using a mere 10GB of data. Lots of limitations come with the “unlimited” data plans for phones and phone hotspots, too.

Wireless is a competitive and ever cheaper way to get online from a mobile device. But it won’t rescue people stuck with crummy or price-gouging landline internet service when they are at home.

In arguing against the FCC’s net neutrality regulations, ISPs, Republicans in Congress, and the new chairman himself are saying that Title II is overkill. Wheeler’s goal was to set some standards for equal access to the internet. Those who oppose his decision say he went overboard by pulling out a big club used to smash 19th- and 20th-century monopolies, not to nurture and fine-tune modern tech providers. But what if those modern tech providers are, in fact, acting like monopolies from 100 years ago?

Your office in the summertime has a strange feel to it. People are working, but maybe not as intensely as at other times of the year. It’s quieter. It’s emptier. Many of your coworkers are on vacation, so it’s hard to get groups together to work on big projects. Meetings get postponed or canceled altogether, and maybe you’re spacing out more, too. You haven’t been in school for awhile, but somehow the academic calendar you grew up with is still burned into your psyche.

Don’t beat yourself up over it, though. Chances are you’ll get a big burst of energy to get back into gear–tackling big work projects and personal goals, making major habit changes, or boosting your productivity in general–as soon as the season starts to change. But before it does, there are a few things you can do to make sure you’re able to hit the ground running after Labor Day.

1. Look For Where You’ve Fallen Short Before

Your first step is to spend a little time looking for your “systematic failures”–not individual goals you’ve missed once but those you’ve missed repeatedly. Nobody achieves all of their goals. You don’t have enough time, energy, and money to accomplish everything you set out to do all the time. But part of being successful is finding a way to navigate these resource limitations and to achieve as much as you can as often as you can.

Systematic failures are a little different than these one-off misses. If there’s something you’ve tried multiple times to accomplish but have consistently fallen short, then chances are you won’t succeed at your next attempt, either–at least not without making a significant change. Summer might not be a great time to actually make the change that might improve your chances, but it’s the perfect time to nail down what that change should be.

So start by thinking about the big-picture goals that have frequently eluded you: Is there a pattern to the reasons you’ve failed? Is there one key thing that keeps standing in your way? Clear a little time on your work calendar to do a mental inventory: Are other tasks crowding out the time you need to make progress? Are you unclear about some of the steps you need to take to succeed? Are there skills you need to sharpen? What are some of these factors, and how can you tackle those first, before re-aiming for the goal itself?

Related: Why I Ditched My Smartphone For A Paper Planner

2. Plan Your First Round Of Small Changes

Once you have a sense of what you’re trying to achieve and why you haven’t been able to achieve it, it’s time to plan out a course of action. You don’t have to do this alone. Sit down with a colleague or supervisor who can help you find ways to delegate, automate, or prioritize some of the obstacles you’ve identified.

Start with the small stuff–they’ll be easier for others to get behind and for you to take action on–and make a strong case for why the goal they’re meant to serve will benefit the organization, not just you. The key is just to start these conversations while the summertime slump is still in force. You don’t need to land on a solution right now, let alone act on it. But it’s wise to start planning it out; this way you’re ready to implement some changes as soon as things pick back up in the fall.

There’s one habit you can adopt now that can help you out once you do get started: Starting in the summer, consider keeping a written diary of the reasons why you feel you’re not succeeding and the steps you’ll need to take in the future. (I created a “smart change” journal just for this purpose that you can download here.) Then once you begin making headway in the autumn, you’ll already have a system for tracking your progress and a written reminder of the steps you need to take to stay on course.

3. Rethink Your Sources Of Support

Sometimes the reason for your systematic failures has to do with the advice and support you’re relying on. Lots of people gravitate toward mentors when they first start working, only to lose their grip on those relationships year by year. Others realize at some point in their careers that the mentors they have are no longer the right people to offer the advice they need. The end of summer is a great time to take stock of your mentors and look for new ones who can help you set a promising course for the end of the year.

Take a look around and find someone who’s succeeded at accomplishing the same type of goal that’s eluded you. Use the last few weeks of summer to invite that person out for lunch or a cup of coffee. Enlist their help to give you suggestions for how to tweak your schedule, sharpen a skill, or switch up your approach. Make these connections now so you can tap them when you’re ready to.

Related:Let’s Be Real–You’re Never Getting A Mentor, So Do These Six Things Instead

This preparation takes some time, but it’s crucial if you would like to turn your systematic failures into success stories by the end of the year. The benefit of starting now is that in a few more weeks, the days are going to get shorter and a little cooler. The school-year mind-set is going to kick back in, and you’ll soon find yourself more motivated to work–you just need to have a plan in place for when that happens.

A startling image that seems to show a member of an anti-fascist group beating a U.S. police officer with a club during the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, has been making the rounds of the internet over the last few days. There’s one thing you should know about it, though—it’s fake.

Snopes, the internet’s respected fact-checker, quickly debunked the photo. Turns out the picture was snapped by a Getty Images photographer during a clash between police officers and protesters in Athens, Greece, back in 2009. Some jerkface (technical term!) used their Photoshop skills to slap an “antifa” or “antifacist” logo on the jacket of the protester and an internet myth was born. As the photo circulated among Trump supporters and other far-right groups, it helped bolster claims that “both sides” of the gathering were to blame for the violence in Charlottesville, as President Donald Trump claimed in his statement about the incident. Thankfully, Snopes was on the case.

Fact Check: Antifa Member Photographed Beating Police Officer?

Full Report: https://t.co/doP9v8DgxDpic.twitter.com/R5u9J4RJIj

— snopes.com (@snopes) August 15, 2017

[Via PBS]

A 40-mile stretch of coral reef off the coast of Puerto Morelos, Mexico–part of the roughly 700-mile long Mesoamerican Reef, the second largest in the world–is both a draw for tourists and a natural barrier that helps protect the coast’s resorts from flooding and damage in hurricanes. But like other reefs, it’s facing multiple threats, including warming water, pollution, and damage from storms that are becoming stronger because of climate change. This has convinced local businesses to pay for something that is the first of its kind: an insurance policy for nature.

In September, beachfront hotels and other businesses in the area will start contributing to the new Reef & Beach Resilience and Insurance Fund, which pays premiums to the insurance company Swiss Re AG. In the event of a major storm that could damage the coral, Swiss Re will quickly offer payouts that can be used to restore the reef so it can continue to attract tourists and protect coastal property in future storms.

“You have this natural asset that’s part of the natural landscape, but it’s providing all this risk reduction to the tens of billions of dollars’ worth of economic assets that sit behind it,” Kaplan says. “No one actually ever thought about it that way before . . . if it were not there, the potential loss scenarios would be quite high, or much higher than they are in reality today. Then you can put a price tag on that exposure, on that reef.”

The insurance company formed its Global Partnerships team six years ago to begin to address the fact that only a fraction of the damage from natural disasters–around 30%–is covered by insurance. In 2005, when 1,800 people lost their lives in Hurricane Katrina, the insurance industry paid the largest total it had paid in history; the year before, when 200,000 died in an earthquake and tsunami in Sumatra, “it was almost a nonevent for the insurance industry,” Kaplan says.

“We viewed that as a catastrophic failure of the insurance industry’s intent to do its job and add its value,” he says. “So our team stood up for the purpose of closing what we refer to as the protection gap: the gap between the portion that’s covered by insurance and the actual economic impact of different types of disasters and liabilities that governments face.”

For governments, economic costs in the wake of disasters can total hundreds of billions of dollars a year around the world–that’s both a societal problem and a business opportunity for insurance companies. “Closing this protection gap is critical to protecting our economic future, but also creates a new market for the industry,” he says. “This is particularly true if you now consider nature as an insurable asset.”

Damage to a coral reef during a hurricane would typically be borne by society. After Hurricane Wilma caused $7.5 billion dollars of damage in Mexico in 2005, hotels along the coast began paying the government extra taxes that were meant to be used to protect the beach. Now, those same funds will contribute to insurance premiums instead. The payouts will go to both beach cleanup and reef restoration.

The insurance policy is parametric, meaning that it’s triggered by a particular event–in this case, a severe storm–rather than by damages. That means that no adjuster needs to come out and assess the damage to the reef; instead, if a storm meets qualifying criteria, there’s an automatic payment. The policy is triggered strictly by storms, rather than by other threats that corals face such as rising ocean temperatures or pollution, though future policies could address other issues.

“In the attempt to create a market you have to start with the steps that people are most comfortable with and they are already familiar with,” says Kaplan. “Hurricanes are probably the most modeled natural hazard in the world, and therefore there’s the greatest amount of comfort around how they behave and what they cost. The idea is we start here in Mexico with the coral reef talking about hurricanes, but 5 or 10 years from now, I hope we’re talking about . . . a much broader array of natural hazards.”

A claim will be paid in 10 days or less. “You get immediate cash influx for the repair, and the reef needs immediate attention,” says Kathy Baughman McLeod, managing director of climate risk and investment at The Nature Conservancy. “The corals break off and you’ve got to pick them up, and rest them, and they have to be reattached. That can all happen, but they can’t be left to break off and float away, because they’ll die and you’ll lose the health of the reef.”

After a severe storm, “coral first responders” will assess the damage, and take broken coral to nearby coral nurseries for rehabilitation. If the reef loses some of its height–critical for protecting the coast–artificial structures can be used to build it back up (the coral soon grows over these structures).

If the reef is damaged in a storm that doesn’t meet the criteria of the insurance policy, the fund is also designed to be used as self-insurance, so it will still be possible to make repairs. The fund will also provide money for ongoing maintenance to care for the reef between catastrophic events. Both restoration and ongoing care will happen using methods outlined by The Nature Conservancy.

“We had to figure out how many people in how many boats you need for how many days, and how much does it cost,” says McLeod. “They’ve got to clean up the reef, pick up the corals, rest the corals, and assess the damage. Part of the plan is that we’ll have that preordained science and that it’s already agreed to, so you know exactly what to do in which order.”

After the pilot in Mexico, The Nature Conservancy hopes to create a replicable process that can be used in other communities that depend on coral reefs in similar ways. It also plans to work with partners to develop insurance policies for other ecosystems, such as mangrove forests, that also provide critical services to the people living nearby.

In many cases, nature outperforms artificial structures for protecting coasts, such as seawalls, from the increasingly severe storms that are coming with climate change. “We always talk about risk reduction, and if you invest a dollar today here, you see $4 here,” says Kaplan. “The reality is that the biggest bang for your buck is almost always in green infrastructure.”

In the future, insurance policies for nature may work in tandem with traditional insurance; just as some health insurance companies give discounts to people who regularly go to the gym, a company insuring coastal property might eventually give a discount to a building owner who is helping protect a nearby reef.

It’s long been known that coral reefs have benefits beyond their beauty. But if nonprofits and others attempting reef restoration have struggled to find funding in the past, quantifying those benefits and insuring them could be a novel way to help change that.

“These natural systems are superheroes of climate adaptation and protecting these economies,” says McLeod. “The idea that nature is so valuable we put an insurance policy on it is basic. But it can change the way we look at nature and sustain economies along the coastline forever.”

It’s now a well-known media punchline that if a newsroom experiences layoffs, the rationale will probably be because the company is “pivoting to video.” This is what happened to Vocativ, Vice, and MTV News earlier this month.

Now Mic is added to the mix; the millennial-focused media company is laying off between 20 to 30 editorial staff members as part of a larger company restructuring, reports Business Insider. And, what do you know, a lot of this structuring has to do with video.

“We made these tough decisions because we believe deeply in our mission to make Mic the leader in visual journalism and we need to focus the company to deliver on our mission,” said the company in a memo to staff, which was later published on Mic.

The layoffs are often spun as a simple business exigency: Things needed to change as the media landscape has evolved. The truth is that the media business is being squeezed, and executives only know how to follow the money in the short term. As I wrote two months ago, a pivot to video means a bow to Facebook, which along with Google controls the lion’s share of the digital ad market. If these two tech companies change their tunes about what types of content they’re going to prioritize, these pivots will be all for naught.

Which is all to say that this feels like putting a band-aid on a problem that only a stem-cell transplant can fix.

As Mike Jackson watched one CEO after another resign in recent days from Donald Trump’s manufacturing advisory council, he wasn’t surprised. If ever there was a clear-cut issue for corporate leaders to take a stand on, this was it: the president of the United States, in the wake of terror perpetrated by white supremacists in Charlottesville, Va., saying that there was blame on “many sides” and “both sides.”

“Jimmy Fallon said it best . . . It’s just disgusting, right?” Jackson, the founder of the firm 2050 Marketing and a former top executive at General Motors, told me on the latest episode of my podcast, The Bottom Line. “Ignoring it is just as bad as supporting it.”

Even though Trump had earlier run afoul of some businesspeople for his stances on immigration and climate change—leading to the resignation of several CEOs from the president’s Strategic and Policy Forum—his latest statements crossed a new line. “Before last week and the whole Charlottesville tragedy,” Jackson says, “I think the path would have been different.”

By Wednesday, both the manufacturing council and the Strategic and Policy Forum had been disbanded.

Going forward, Jackson hopes that more corporations will use this as an opportunity to talk about race in America. But he cautions that not every company is equipped to do so. “You can’t just start a conversation like that,” he says. “It’s got to be part of who you are.”

For instance, Jackson points to PepsiCo (where he once worked) as a company that should “take a backseat” on the issue—no surprise, perhaps, given the insensitivity that Pepsi displayed toward the Black Lives Matter movement earlier this year with its Kendall Jenner ad.

At the same time, Jackson praises Procter & Gamble and its recent ad campaign called “The Talk,” which depicts African American parents discussing the reality of racial bias with their kids. P&G, he says, does a great job of putting forward “a very culturally relevant, authentic discussion.”

You can listen to my entire interview with Jackson here:

The Bottom Line is a production of Capital & Main. Rick Wartzman is director of the KH Moon Center for a Functioning Society at the Drucker Institute and the author of four books, including his latest, The End of Loyalty: The Rise and Fall of Good Jobs in America.

The largest engineering school in the country is betting on a big role for voice controls in the future of computing. In a partnership with Amazon, Arizona State University’s engineering school will offer three undergrad classes this semester on building skills for Alexa and other voice assistants, and will incorporate voice applications into its undergrad research and community service programs. Arizona State is also building its own Alexa skill for looking up campus info. And to sweeten the deal for engineering students, those who live in a new high-tech dorm on campus will be able to get a free Amazon Echo Dot.

The tie-up is another example of how tech titans are fighting for developer mindshare in the escalating virtual assistant wars. Just as mobile platforms lived and died by their app support, platforms like Alexa and Google Assistant need third-party voice skills to survive. By working with Arizona State, Amazon’s trying to win over potential developers before they’re even out of school.

Organizing and searching through images stored on Box is about to get a lot easier thanks to machine learning. Today the cloud storage company announced that it’s bringing image recognition capabilities powered by Google Cloud Vision to the platform. The feature, which launches in public beta today, will enable enterprise users to perform smart searches for objects, colors, and even people, making for a much more efficient workflow.

Box currently works with 74,000 companies ranging in size from small startups to Fortune 500 companies. Customers like Gap, Airbnb, and Spotify that are all storing and working with a lot of data on a daily basis.

“What we’re seeing is that there is an increasing amount of unstructured content in the form of images and videos and audio files,” says Aaron Levie, cofounder and CEO of Box. That unstructured content, especially in a large volume, can be difficult to deal with.

Slideshow: Outside The Box

“It’s very easy to search within documents and organize them, but that’s not true for a lot of this other unstructured content. So companies are spending millions of dollars in some cases just trying to organize and collect all of this unstructured information,” Levie says.

By bringing advanced machine learning and artificial intelligence to Box, the hope is to equip customers with tools to help them better understand, organize, and make sense of all that data directly within Box, without spending a ton of cash on additional software programs.

“What this does is it lets any kind of customer that turns on the functionality be able to take any image content or photos that they have and be able to automatically detect any objects or text within those images,” says Levie. “So, if you’re a retailer and you want to quickly organize all of your product information, this can instantly extract any kind of products that are inside of a photo. If you’re a media company and you want to instantly organize all of your digital assets, it can detect a significant portion of objects within the digital assets, if it’s a frame of a movie or whatnot.”

For instance, Gap might search for “blue shirts” for a promotion, or for a celebrity spokesperson to pull out images of him or her from an event.

Right now you’re limited by what’s in Google’s database, which is already extremely rich, but later on Levie says you’ll be able to train your own data set as well. The beta is also limited. While anyone can sign up to try it out, for now access will only be granted to companies that Box thinks would benefit specifically from the technology.

“This is the first announcement we’re making in this space, but later this fall at our conference in October, Box Works, we’re going to be talking about other use cases as well as partners that we’re pretty excited about working with,” Levie says. “So this is really just the start of a very, very long journey, but we think this will be the defining technology of Box for many, many years to come.”

Wouldn’t it be great if there were a magic word you could say in order to get people to agree with you? If, for example, a simple utterance of “abracadabra” could instantly convince your employer to see things your way, salary negotiations would be a whole lot easier.

Unfortunately, we live in the real world, and those magic words that guarantee instant success don’t quite exist–but the good news is, we’ve got the next best thing. The following words and phrases are expert-level ways to demonstrate the confidence, congeniality, and knowledge necessary to secure a higher salary.

Use these in your next negotiation, and you might just see a bump in your paycheck sooner than you can say “alakazam.”

1. “I Am Excited By The Opportunity To Work Together”

Too often, people think of salary negotiation as a battle: you, trying to get as much as you possibly can, versus your employer, trying to stay within budget. However, this type of thinking can be counterproductive, explains Roy Cohen, career coach and author of The Wall Street Professional’s Survival Guide.

“Never engage in negotiation as an ultimatum–an either/or–but rather as a collaborative process and a unique opportunity to create a compensation package that makes sense for both you and for them. Establish priorities as to what is most important to you and what items you are willing to trade off,” Cohen advises.

“Unless you know for sure that you are indispensable, and few of us ever are, successful negotiation should never become adversarial. That is a bad sign that the process has broken down or will,” Cohen continues.

2. “Based On My Research . . . “

It’s only natural to see if you can get a higher salary than the one that you were offered, but it needs to be grounded in reality. Rather than just throwing out a number that you think sounds nice, you need to do your homework on what your skills are worth in order to provide a compelling case for your employer to compensate you accordingly.

“One phrase to use is something along the lines of ‘based on my research.’ That shows the other person you’ve done your homework and know what you’re talking about when negotiating,” says David Bakke, writer/contributor at Money Crashers.

One tip to come to the negotiation table prepared: Get a free, personalized salary estimate from Glassdoor’s Know Your Worth™ calculator.

3. “Market”

As part of your research, make sure you know what the market for your job is, says labor and employment attorney Alex Granovsky of Granovsky & Sundaresh PLLC. “Market refers to what the employee can earn if he or she went out on the job market and found a new, similar position,” Granovsky says. “If you are making $80,000, but could get a job around the corner making $100,000, the ‘market’ suggests that you are being underpaid.” And since companies presumably don’t want to lose you to the competition, they take that number seriously.

Related:5 Often Overlooked Benefits That You Should Negotiate With A New Job Offer 

4. “Value”

Value, on the other hand, “refers to what you bring to your employer,” Granovsky says. “From an employer’s perspective, each employee has to either (1) increase revenue, or (2) increase margin (ideally both). While probably not as compelling as the job market, if you can show to your employer how you are bringing ‘value’ to the company (in the form of increased revenue and/or increased margin), you can make a compelling case for a raise.”

So if, for example, you can prove that a new initiative you implemented earned the company $100,000, asking for a $5,000 raise sounds a lot more palatable to your employer.

5. “Similarly Situated Employees”

Forget any advice you’ve received about not snooping into your coworkers’ salaries–it can be a powerful data point in negotiations.

“‘Similarly situated employees’ are people who do what you do within the company,” Granovsky says. “If your position is ‘senior account manager’ and every other ‘senior account manager’ is making more money than you, this is something you should explore too.”

While you certainly don’t want to force any of your colleagues to disclose information they’re not comfortable sharing, you can use tools like Glassdoor to find out what they’re making, and therefore, whether or not you’re being fairly compensated.

6. “Is That Number Flexible At All?”

If an employer offers a number that’s below your desired range, pushing back is essential–but you want to make sure you handle it with tact. Saying “is that number flexible at all” is a graceful way to “[give] the employer the opportunity to offer more, or even mention other perks you might be able to gain if a higher salary isn’t in the picture,” Bakke says.

7. “I Would Be More Comfortable If . . . “

Blunt phrasing like “I need” or “I want” can be a turn-off to employers. But expressing your desired salary with this phrase “is a collaborative way to let the recruiter or hiring manager know specifically what you’re looking for so they can focus on that dimension of your job offer,” says Josh Doody, author of Fearless Salary Negotiation.

“The rest of this sentence should be a specific ask. For example, the rest of this sentence might be ‘. . . we can settle on a base salary of $60,000.’ or ‘. . . we can increase the Restricted Stock Unit allotment to 100 units.’ Contrast this with something like, ‘Do you have any wiggle room?’, which is vague and allows them to say ‘No’ and short-circuit the negotiation,” Doody continues.

8. “If You Can Do That, I’m On Board”

We’ll let you in on a little secret–often times, recruiters are just as anxious as you for salary negotiations to come to a close. So if you can specifically spell out what it would take for you to accept an offer, you’ll be doing recruiters and hiring managers a favor.

Related:Exactly What (Not) To Say When Negotiating Your Salary

“When you get to this phase of the negotiation, you want to make it clear to the recruiter or hiring manager that saying ‘Yes’ will end the negotiation so they’re more comfortable acquiescing,” Doody says. For example, you may want to say, “I understand you can’t come all the way up to $60,000. It would be great to add an additional week of paid vacation along with the $55,000 you suggested. If you can do that, I’m on board,” he suggests.

9. “I Would Prefer Not To Leave”

This is a good one for employees who are negotiating raises to keep in their back pocket. Why? It comes down to the fact that it’s part of a defensible strategy, Cohen says.

“A defensible strategy explains what you want, why you want it, and how it is a win/win for both your boss and for you. The goal is to show value and benefit,” Cohen says. If a low salary at work is truly a deal breaker for you, “get an offer that you would be willing to accept, but prefer not to,” Cohen advises. “Tell your boss that you have received an offer, that it is attractive, [but] that you prefer not to leave . . . It is far cheaper to give you a raise than to recruit and train a new candidate.”

But be warned: This phrase should not be taken lightly. “Know that this is a risky proposition: It could backfire. So please don’t use it if you don’t really want to leave or don’t have a bona fide offer on the table,” Cohen cautions.

10. “Do You Mind If I Take A Couple Of Days To Consider Your Offer?”

Even if a job offer exceeds your expectations, try to play it cool. “The first thing you should do when you receive a job offer is ask for time to consider it,” Doody says. “This little phrase accomplishes several things. Primarily, it buys you time to consider the offer, determine the appropriate counter offer, and begin building your case to support your counter offer. [But] it also enables you to move the negotiation to email if it’s not already there,” Doody says.

Related:Here’s What You Need To Negotiate At Each Stage Of Your Career 

This, he says, is a key to successfully pulling off a counteroffer.

“You want to counteroffer over email whenever possible because you can be very deliberate with exactly what you say. Your salary negotiation will be more successful if you carefully choose your counteroffer amount and clearly articulate why you’re worth it,” he explains.

11. “Thank You”

Your pleases and thank yous didn’t stop becoming important once you learned them in preschool–in the business setting, manners can mean everything.

“At the end of the salary discussion, be sure to thank the person for taking the time to sit down with you, just to maintain your professionalism,” Bakke says.

Not only is it simply the right thing to do–an employer is much more likely to accommodate the wants and needs of somebody that shows them respect.

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

Rob Stone and Jon Cohen grew up together in Long Island, New York, before working in the music industry. In 1996, Rob started the creative agency Cornerstone and asked Jon to join him. Fader magazine was then born in 1999.

The domino theory in tech seems to go like this: If one company takes a stand, the others will all follow suit. We are now seeing this happen with white supremacist online content, which, in the wake of the deadly Charlottesville rally, is being blacklisted by numerous tech organizations. Today Spotify confirmed that it would take down bands and other music acts that espoused white supremacist/nazi-leaning content. Before that, companies including PayPal, Facebook, Squarespace, Airbnb, and even Cloudflare all announced they would take action to not help disseminate hate.

As I wrote yesterday, the myth of the neutral online platform is finally crumbling.

WeWork continues to fill out its executive ranks, possibly in preparation for a future IPO. Today, the company told press that Shiva Rajaraman, who previously worked on video projects at Apple, has joined WeWork as its chief product officer.

CEO Adam Neumann said in July his company will go public, but he’s been mum about when. Still, an IPO seems like it might be just on the horizon. In the last year, the company has been busy reorganizing its executive ranks. In January, WeWork brought on former Brooklyn Bowl head James Woods to head up WeLive, the company’s furnished and time-flexible residential spaces. It also hired Richard Gomel, who once lead acquisitions and development for Starwood Hotels & Resorts, to manage its coworking business. In May, WeWork hired Spotify’s VP of Engineering, Laurent Paris, to be its first CTO.

It’s also shuffling around executives. In July, the company promoted former general counsel and chief culture officer, Jen Berrent, to COO. Previously, CFO Artie Minson was occupying a sort of dual role. Now he’s focusing all his attention on WeWork’s financial growth. Already, the company has announced it’s on track to earn billion-dollar revenue this year. And WeWork recently took a $500 million investment from Softbank and others.

All these changes come as WeWork has shifted its model from simple coworking spaces to a whole suite of residential and work services. No longer just a landlord to small businesses and startups, WeWork has revamped itself as an ally to large corporations, helping them to open new offices and manage existing ones. This puts WeWork in a position to not only expand, but to prove defensibility to investors down the road.

Before launching Pixza, which he describes as “a social empowerment platform disguised as a pizzeria,” two years ago, Alejandro Souza graduated college and founded a joint business and language training institute in Rwanda. He traveled to Uganda to develop a system by which peanut farmers could increase both yield and revenue; later on, he helped the Bhutanese Ministry of Education develop a way to measure the baseline well-being of the country’s youth. As a consultant for the Inter-American Development Bank in Brazil, he helped pilot a project in the slums of Rio de Janeiro that used sports as a vehicle to promote education, conflict resolution skills, and health.

Though he landed in New York to pursue his masters in public administration and development at Columbia University, Souza’s up-front experience with global need got him thinking about his home country of Mexico. In Mexico City, around 50% of people live in informal, low-income settlements; in 2012, it was estimated that between 15,000 and 30,000 people, including youth, were living on the streets.

But for Souza, “everything I do has a social element,” he tells Fast Company. It wasn’t enough to come up with a new way of making pizza; he wanted to find a way to translate that idea into an avenue to help the youth struggling to even access food in his home city. “I thought if I opened a restaurant, I could employ kids that fall into this category of ‘social abandonment’–kids that are between ages 18 and 25, who have a combination of these five characteristics: They’ve spent time on the streets, they were addicted to drugs, they were abandoned by their families at an early age, they have no formal education,” Souza says. Those factors make finding employment difficult, but he felt that if he could reach them and offer job training in a restaurant, he could help break the cycle of poverty.

For every five slices of blue corn pizza sold in the shop, a piece of paper denoting a sixth slice is set aside. Once a week, those slips are counted up, and the corresponding number of slices are made and brought to a nearby homeless shelter, where Pixza representatives–many of them who once lived in the shelter–distribute them to the youth and have a conversation about Pixza’s program, and how it could lead to a job offer at the pizzeria.

Called “the root of change,” the program begins with youths identifying and carrying out a volunteer opportunity in their community. That could be, Souza says, as simple as offering their slice of pizza to someone else, or something more complex, like organizing a clothing drive. The second step, essentially, is a repeat of the first, but the initiative has to be more complex. Volunteering, Souza says, is essential to the program because “it changes the kids’ mind-set in terms of being willing and able to both give and receive help.”

Next, the youth are set up with a haircut, a shower, a T-shirt, a doctor’s appointment, and a life-skills course; Souza has set up partnerships with local hairdressers, medical students, and doctors who volunteer their services to the program. When the youth make it through all of the steps–their progress is recorded via a bracelet in which each step is hole-punched as it’s completed, like an analogue Fitbit–they are offered a job at Pixza.

Once employed at Pixza, the youth are matched up with a dedicated coach, who walks them through life planning and securing necessities like housing. Drawing on the people that helped enable his own success, Souza has tapped into his network to find mentors, who include his mother and many of her friends. The youth and mentors meet at Pixza during closing hours to plan: how to use the two-month stipend doled out to the kids to help them secure an apartment, how to source furniture, how they might want to direct their career beyond the pizzeria.

None of the funding for Pixza’s “route of change” program is external; the blue corn slices finance all of the initiatives. If one of the youths employed by the pizzeria is in need of some extra money to help them in their transition from the shelter–a piece of furniture, or funding to take a class–they’ll concoct a new slice with a unique array of toppings, the proceeds from which will go toward whatever the kid needs. “People come in and buy the slice, knowing it’ll help that kid directly,” Souza says.

The give-back element is proving to be good business for Souza, too. Pixza broke even after its fourth month of operation, has since opened up a second location, and this year Souza was awarded the grand prize at the annual NextGen in Franchising Global Competition in Las Vegas. “Our best client is the one that believes in our product and in our mission, but we don’t even give people the opportunity to believe or not believe in what we’re doing,” Souza says. “If they buy a slice, they’re supporting it.”

This week something changed. Technology platforms, long known for trying to keep out of messy politics and ideology, began taking a stand against hate groups after a bloody white-nationalist rally in Charlottesville ended with a man driving his car into and killing a counter-protester.

In the past, many of these tech companies, mindful of free-speech laws and their bustling businesses, have tried to stake a neutral position. Yet now, in the face of white supremacy, racist hate, and the online outrage sparked by Charlottesville and President Donald Trump’s soft response, the facade of neutrality began to come down—at least for now.

Here’s a running list of the technology platforms that have ended service to groups affiliated with the rallies in Charlottesville:

• Airbnb, acting prior to the rally, quietly refused to let people it believed were white supremacists from using its app to book rooms to attend the event.
• GoDaddyrefused the Neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer domain registration after the site published a story denigrating Heather Heyer, who was killed in the attack.
• Google also denied The Daily Stormer access.
• Twittersuspended accounts linked to The Daily Stormer.
• LinkedInalso deleted pages associated with the white nationalist website.
• GoFundMe has shut down efforts to raise money for James Fields, the man accused of killing Heyer.
• WordPressstopped providing web and e-commerce service to Vanguard America, the group to which Fields pledged allegiance.
• PayPalannounced that it would not do business with hate groups.
• Apple Paystopped offering support for websites that sold white supremacist and hate-related merchandise.
• Uberpermanently banned known white supremacists from using the app, and pledged to ban other members of hate groups from its platform.
• Chat app Discordshut down white supremacist channels.
• Facebook launched an unusual campaign specifically against the Daily Stormer article, and announced it would crack down on blatant white supremacist content and delete individual accounts spreading “threats of physical harm.”
• Squarespace said it was taking a number of hate group websites offline, including that of white nationalist Richard Spencer.
• Cloudflarestopped providing its services to the Daily Stormer (an “arbitrary” move, its CEO said, because the people behind the website “are assholes.” On free speech grounds, he has admitted to feeling uneasy about the decision).
• MailChimp said it terminated some groups’ accounts after it changed its terms of service on Monday to exclude customers whose primary purpose was “inciting harm” or promoting “discriminatory, hateful, or harassing content.”
• Spotify has said that it would take down white supremacist artists from its app.
• SoundCloudhas reaffirmed that, per its terms of service, the company will take down any hateful content.
• OKCupid said it banned the white supremacist Chris Cantwell, and asked users to report “immediately” other people on the dating network who are “involved with hate groups.”

These bans aren’t the end of the story, of course, and they belie a larger challenge to tech companies as they seek to more vigorously police potentially dangerous speech; a number of companies, including those above, still provideservices to an untold number of extremist groups. Tech platforms will need to grapple with how to tweak and enforce their policies, and how to actually carry out the messy whack-a-mole business of human and automated moderation.

“We endeavor to be content-neutral, and so I worry about” future bans, Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince tells Fast Company. “But hopefully now we can have a conversation without name-calling and think through what the right policy is. And I think we should be working with the entire tech industry, with policymakers, with legislators, with content creators with content consumers, to think about, ‘OK, where do we want to put controls in place?’… I think it is the responsible thing for us to ask ourselves, does that mean that we change our policies?”

Read more: Cloudflare’s Matthew Prince Explains Why It Was So Hard To Dump The Daily Stormer

After Google, GoDaddy, and Cloudflare booted the neo-Nazi site from their services, the Daily Stormer fled to the dark web, where it could only be accessed by the Tor browser. Some have called on the Tor Project, which is responsible for maintaining the Tor browser (but not the sites on the dark web), to ban the Daily Stormer from being accessible from its browser. Now the Tor Project has announced it won’t do so, and gave a pretty good reasoning why in a blog post:

We’ve heard that the hate-spewing website Daily Stormer has moved to a Tor onion service.

We are disgusted, angered, and appalled by everything these racists stand for and do. We feel this way any time the Tor network and software are used for vile purposes. But we can’t build free and open source tools that protect journalists, human rights activists, and ordinary people around the world if we also control who uses those tools. Tor is designed to defend human rights and privacy by preventing anyone from censoring things, even us. 

Ironically, the Tor software has been designed and written by a diverse team including people of many religions, races, gender identities, sexual orientations, and points on the (legitimate, non-Nazi) political spectrum. We are everything they claim to despise. And we work every day to defend the human rights they oppose. 

They feel powerful by spewing hate, whining, bullying, and promoting violence against others. But together, we are more powerful. 

Tor stands against racism and bigotry wherever and whenever such hatred rears its ugly head. It is our work to provide everyone with the best possible security and privacy tools so human dignity and freedom can be promoted all over the world.

There are times when I look around and can’t imagine what it would be like to have even half the technology available to teens in 2017 when I was growing up. Sure, I had the internet (sort of), but the freedom and fun wrought by the almighty smartphone is unprecedented. But this new Toyota app stopped my GETOFFMYLAWNing the young folk immediately. As a piece of utility marketing it’s fantastic, but the fact it links up the smartphones of parents and teens so adults know where the kid is and how fast they’re driving while controlling incoming calls and texts doesn’t spark even one hint of generational techno-jealousy. Onward!

Toyota “Safe & Sound app”

What: A new app that allows parents to monitor their teen drivers by linking their driving skills with their Spotify account.

Who: Toyota, Saatchi & Saatchi London

Why we care: The app syncs smartphones between parents and young drivers. The “safe” part is how it uses Google Maps API to track how fast their kid is driving. If the car moves faster than 9 mph, it automatically blocks all incoming calls and social media notifications. For the “sound” component, the app also links up Spotify, so if the driver tries to touch the phone or speeds while listening to Spotify, the app begins to play the parent’s playlist. Clever and useful, it’s a prime example of marketing utility that still exudes brand personality.

Ikea “SKOLD Rug Night’s Watch Instructions”

Want a cape like Jon Snow for Halloween (or a Minnesota winter)? We've got you covered. All you need are scissors and a SKOLD rug pic.twitter.com/WLrlSo0JKr

— IKEA Twin Cities (@IKEATwinCities) August 16, 2017

What: After Game of Thrones head costume designer Michele Clapton revealed that the capes worn by the Night’s Watch are actually just sheepskin rugs from Ikea, the brand took its duty seriously enough to create special instructions for would-be guards on the Wall.

Who: Ikea

Why we care: Not only is the Swedish retailer known for its award-winning traditional ads, it’s the little things like this and the whole high- fashion blue bag situation that really bring home just how agile and smart a marketer it is.

Plan International “Maternity Wear For 12-Year-Olds”

What: A Finnish PSA to raise awareness around the issue of underage motherhood in developing countries.

Who: Plan International, Hasan & Partners

Why we care: It’s a classic ad tactic, using the familiar language of one type of media–in this case a fashion shoot–to jar us into paying attention to a more serious issue (like what director Taika Waititi did for racism). Here, the agency got a Finnish designer to create clothing for a real-life pregnant 12-year-old girl from Zambia. And while it’s a real shock to many Western eyes, it also drives home the statistic Plan International reports that more than 7 million children give birth every year in the developing world.

Renault “Heróis”

What: A new Brazilian ad for Renault featuring the smashing car-sales skills of the biggest, greenest Avenger.

Who: Renault

Why we care: The last time we saw Bruce Banner’s behemoth alter ego in brand mode was last year’s Super Bowl, when he was fighting over a Coke with Ant-Man. Sure, it may be the most obvious kind of brand licensing sellout one could imagine, and maybe I’m just anxiously awaiting his star turn in the upcoming buddy flick Thor: Ragnarok, but it’s good to see Hulk out and about anyway we can.

OtterBox “Unapologetically Overprotective–S’mores”

What: A new campaign for smartphone case brand OtterBox with Peyton Manning cautiously enjoying the great outdoors.

Who: OtterBox, CP+B Boulder

Why we care: As I said earlier this week, Peyton Manning may be a lock for the NFL Hall of Fame, but he’s also earned a spot in the Pro Athlete Advertising Hall of Fame* for his willingness to look like a complete and utter goof for a laugh. What started on SNL many moons ago in a United Way PSA spoof became IRL commercials for ESPN, Oreo, MasterCard, and Gatorade. These spots don’t break any new ground, but they manage to combine Manning humor with sports mascot absurdity in a way that makes commercial breaks between games worth tolerating.

*totally doesn’t exist

The VC firm sued the former Uber CEO for fraud, breach of contract, and breach of fiduciary duty last week as part of an attempt to get Kalanick removed from Uber’s board. Yesterday Kalanick filed his reply to the lawsuit, reports Axios. In it, Kalanick states that Benchmark’s fraud claims rely upon “information and belief” rather than explicitly fraudulent statements, but his reply also goes on to say the timing of Benchmark’s suit was designed to exploit him while mourning the loss of his mother, who was killed in a boating accident. Kalanick’s father was also seriously injured in the boating accident. Kalanick’s reply alleges Benchmark “executed its plan at the most shameful of times: immediately after Kalanick experienced a horrible personal tragedy.”

It’s not easy to achieve a state of  zen on a bumpy Megabus on the highway in Northern New Jersey. But it doesn’t stop me from trying. I’m hell-bent on keeping a promise I made to myself: I’m going to make mindfulness a part of my daily routine.

You’ve probably read about how mindfulness and meditation facilitates a range of science-backed advantages for our mental and physical health. Studies show that it improves focus and interpersonal relationships at work, rewires our brains to help reduce stress and inflammation, decrease depression and anxiety, and improve focus and behavior in kids.

The changes aren’t just mental either: Research shows that meditation physically builds new gray matter in the brain and can even change your DNA in ways that may help keep disease at bay.  And that’s just a taste of the science, which collectively paints mindfulness as one of the most beneficial things you can do for your sanity and overall health.

Related Reading: It’s Not Just For Your Brain: Meditation Actually Changes Your DNA

But, like many people, I’ve tried meditation a few times but never quite made it part of my routine. In a weird way, it seems that as the evidence supporting the case for mindfulness grows more overwhelming, so too does the prospect of fitting it into our overextended, evermore distracted lives.

“You’re certainly not alone in that experience,” says Martyn Newman, a psychologist and author who coaches corporate clients like telecom giant Sky UK on mindfulness and emotional intelligence. “It doesn’t take very long for people to discover that it’s not an instant fix. These techniques require practice to refine and develop, like any skill.”

Why Is Mindfulness So Hard To Ritualize?

One reason it’s hard to turn meditation and mindfulness into real habits, Newman says, is that most of us aren’t accustomed to doing what the practice requires: Sitting in silence and focusing for a prolonged period of time.

“I think we’re so addicted to external stimulation that we’re not often comfortable turning inward,” Newman says. “That’s why when you start to turn inward and try quieting the mind, it can quickly lead to a general sense of anxiety or agitation, which is a disincentive to establishing the routine necessary for it to become a habit.”

Many experts say it takes at least four weeks for most people to feel the results of mindfulness practice. In about twice that much time, Newman says, you can actually *see* the effects of meditation on the brain.

“The mind, just like a muscle, can be strengthened and you can develop the neurological pathways,” Newman says. “Within about eight weeks, these things show up in fMRI [functional magnetic resonance imaging] scans and you can begin to see the neurological connections. Your mind is sharper.”

This sounds great, but for many, the idea of putting aside 10-15 minutes per day to meditate in solitude feels next to impossible. Fortunately, there are some tricks you can use to squeeze it in and build up the habit over time.

Sneak Nuggets of Mindfulness Into Your Day

Newman walks readers through the process of practicing mindfulness in his aptly named book, The Mindfulness Book. The book contains basic things you’ve likely heard before: focusing on the breathing, letting thoughts flow by without judging them, living in the current moment, and so on. But he lowers the barrier for entry. You don’t have to find an idyllic mediation room to get started.  He writes:

This is something that you can do anytime – you can do it waiting in line at the airport or at the checkout, or while driving your car, or you can do it while sitting and listening to a presentation.

Or, perhaps riding the Megabus from Philly to New York as I did. You can practice these techniques while you’re walking the dog, going for a run, washing the dishes, or whatever it is you may find yourself doing in the next 24 hours. One popular option is the shower, where studies have shown we’re already prone to declutter our minds and come up with new ideas. The point is to squeeze at least partial acts of mindfulness, typically centered around deep breathing and mental exercises, wherever they fit into your day.

Related Reading: 5 Daily Habits To Improve Brain Growth

For working professionals, Newman recommends conducting short mindfulness exercises before and after meetings as a way to cleanse the mind of the topics and take-aways from each meeting, preventing an anxiety or mental fog from spilling over from one meeting to the next.

While the goal is to work longer, more in-depth meditations into one’s life (typically 10-15 minutes at a time), Newman says that these bite-sized, one- or two-minute mindfulness routines woven throughout the day can help build the habit—and adjust the brain’s neural circuitry—in the meantime.

“Over the course of the week, you’ve instilled a habit of being able to settle the mind for one minute at a time,” Newman says. “Gradually increasing the frequency of those sessions is gradually cutting the neurological pathways in the brain which enables the mind to settle more quickly.”

For many, there’s still the issue of making it a consistent routine. I’m not much of a morning person, so reliably doing this every morning without feeling rushed to start my day is a long shot. For me, since my schedule and routine fluctuate a bit,  I try to work it in on the bus, while walking to the coffee shop near my house, while reading a book, and at other miscellaneous moments throughout the day.

“Meditation is like taking your mind to the gym,” Newman says (no wonder it feels so daunting for some). “It’s a training technique designed to cultivate the skill of mindfulness.”

Apps Are Great, But Our Minds Are Analog

Like countless others, I’ve tried meditation apps like Headspace, Calm, and Mindbody. While there’s something useful and focus-inducing about the guided, instructional nature of audio, these little machines are the ultimate personification of the “external stimuli” to which Newman says we’re addicted. The idea of turning to a minefield of digital distractions in order to clear our minds seems more than ironic.

“I see apps a little bit like training wheels when you’re learning to ride a bike,” Newman says. “They are very helpful. Until the training wheels come off and you develop some independence in your practice, it’s very difficult to get depth and to keep moving forward.”

As I read more about mindfulness and learn to practice it, I find myself putting even more distance between myself and this virtual extension of my life. At night, I charge my smartphone in on the dresser across the room instead of next to my bed, using that precious pre-slumber time to meditate, read on paper, and eventually fall asleep, rather than checking the news or mindlessly going down some Instagram rabbit hole.

I do sometimes use the Headspace app to run through a guided meditation session—or even binge on a few of the free lessons at a time if I’m feeling ambitious over the weekend. But these “training wheels,” as Newman so appropriately calls them, seem to work better as an occasional alternative to checking Facebook, rather than a part of one’s daily routine.

Two weeks in, my own results are mixed, but promising. Squeezing in moments of mindfulness certainly makes it easier to get into the habit of sitting down for longer, in-depth meditation sessions, which I do four or five times per week. Even a few minutes of counting deep breaths, for instance, has a calming effect that’s immediate and palpable.

But, as the experts warn, some of the broader and more generalized benefits develop slowly; I’ve still had a few moments marked by anxiety about work or even depression that made me wonder if this whole mindfulness thing was paying off at all. Of course, it’s this kind of impatient, short-term thinking that the experts say derails people before the real benefits can really sink in.

So I am powering on, continuing to carve out spaces for mindfulness in my days using my own blend of mostly analog, minimally digital methods. You may find that an entirely different approach—perhaps involving a meditation class or even something more digitally-infused—works best for you. But I must say, putting the phone away does feel pretty great.

“You can apply mindfulness anywhere and at any time,” Newman reminds me. “It’s the ultimate mobile technology.”

Airbnb has set up free housing for those affected by the violence that took place in Barcelona. The company launched its disaster response program last night after the incident took place, emailing hosts and asking them to volunteer up spaces for anyone who was unable to get home or to a hotel as a result of the attack.

Gracias @Airbnb#juntos#barcelonapic.twitter.com/QtF1OP4NX6

— Víctor Vélez (@victorvelez) August 18, 2017

Yesterday, a car mowed down pedestrians walking along Las Ramblas in Barcelona, killing 14 and hurting more than 100 others, according to the Guardian. A second attack took place in the ocean front city of Cambrils where police killed five attackers. Airbnb is in touch with officials there, but has not launched its disaster response tool in that region yet.

Airbnb first launched its volunteer housing program in 2013 after Hurricane Sandy hit New York. It has since expanded its temporary housing program for refugees.