What: Ken Block takes his Gymkhana concept off-roading for a new branded content video with Pennzoil.

Who: Pennzoil, Hoonigan

Why we care: It’s been almost a decade since Block first unleashed Gymkhana into the world, and he’s been finding ways to get people to sit up and say WTF about his driving ever since. Last year I spent some time on the set of Gymkhana Nine, talking to Block and director Brian Scotto about how they approach each project, as well as their goals for branching their Hoonigan brand out to work more with brand partners.

Here with Pennzoil, they’re doing just that. Once again, it’s Block behind the wheel and Scotto behind the lens. And of course, in many ways it’s similar to every other Gymkhana video–drifts, jumps, copious amounts of tire-spinning donuts–but the dusty confines of Swing Arm City, Utah, should provide enough difference to keep fans interested. The sequence starting at 3:05 mark is worth it alone.

“Wanna see my Instagram post?” Aubrey Plaza asks.

Her voice is neutral, devoid of affect. She sounds just like the detached miserablist she made famous on Parks and Rec; a person one recent profile described as being nothing like Plaza in real life. But we’re not exactly in real life.

This is the junket for her new film, Ingrid Goes West, a glossy fever dream of social media-age obsession that might be described as The Talented Insta Ripley. (Plaza plays Ingrid, who forms an unhealthy, deceptive attachment to a socialebrity played by Elizabeth Olsen.) Within this context, Plaza offering a glimpse at what’s on her phone feels both artificial and almost empirically appropriate.

I take a look. The Instagram video, mid-loop, shows Plaza filming another phone displaying an image of her costar, Olsen, who is manically grinning. It’s a copy of a copy, a micro-simulation of what director Matt Spicer had to do in bringing Ingrid Goes West to life. He created an authentically fake version of the fakeness of social media–and the very real consequences of it.

“All of this stuff started from a more innocent place,” says Spicer, who is here at the Ingrid junket as well. “It was just a way to see what everyone’s up to and share cool sunset photos. Now, it’s obviously ballooned into this full-blown industry where you can create an industry around yourself. I’m a consumer of it, but I also recognize this dark side that it brings out in myself. And that split sort of inspired the film.”

One of the cringey pleasures of the movie is seeing an Extremely Online way of life portrayed on-screen. We see what people look like sitting alone, scrolling through their phones. We hear how the princess emoji is supposed to be enunciated in a voiceover. We experience the compulsion to mine potentially enviable moments from life to dangle before a ravenous cyberaudience.

That last urge is one that Aubrey Plaza is mostly unencumbered by.

Plaza joined Twitter in February of 2009, just before Parks and Rec began airing and rendered her life somewhat unrecognizable from before.

“For me, it was mostly a tool, a way to work out jokes and material,” she says. “I thought of it as a platform for comedy.”

Her view of social media gradually shifted, though, with her increasing fame, to the point where Plaza now mostly uses Twitter and Instagram for promoting her film and TV work.

“The more aware people are of me as an actor and a public person, the more complicated it gets,” she says. “You have more followers so you want to post something, but you think harder about it because there are so many more people that you know are gonna see it. For me, there was a responsibility there to those people. It’s a lot of overthinking and it’s less fun.”

That kind of overthinking is on full display in the film, perhaps nowhere more so than when Ingrid troubleshoots the correct number of “ha”s to leave in an Instagram comment. When Spicer started filming his movie, which he cowrote with David Branson Smith, he had to do a lot of thinking about what an overthought existence might look like.

Spicer would lay out what he had in mind, and then the costume designer and set decorator would send in reference photos. Not only did the team find a perfect Airbnb house to stand in as Taylor’s home in the film, the residence also happened to be chockablock with Instagrammable artwork and potted succulents. Spicer and company didn’t even have to add very much. Overall, though, everyone took care to add as many current-seeming details as possible.

Spicer and his cowriter also chased visual trends by following a ton of popular Instagram personalities, based on recommendations from their wives and girlfriends, and studying them religiously.

“At a certain point you consume enough of it and start to see the Matrix code a little bit,” Spicer says. “You see where there’s that overlap between everybody, like when avocado toast got big. We tried to put as much of that in the script as we could, because to us the specificity of it was everything.”

The brands that pop up in the film, like Claire V. and Rachel Comey, are very of the moment. But the more you are of the moment, the sooner you become of the past. As with any film, there’s always lag time between wrapping production and the release date. If a film is set in the present day, it’s important that the world it depicts still looks like the world outside the theater. After Ingrid Goes West wrapped, Instagram completely changed its interface. Getting the details right suddenly involved having to go back in post and redo some of the practical shots, so that they matched with reality.

“Technology changes so rapidly,” Spicer says. “Instagram Stories didn’t exist yet when we shot, so even that would have opened up a whole other can of worms. It’s hard to keep up with the ground constantly changing under your feet.”

Some things never change, though.

Early in the film, Ingrid retreats temporarily to her childhood bedroom. On the wall is a Leonardo DiCaprio poster. It’s a nod toward the timelessness of obsession, an acknowledgement that these desires have always been there, even before we could just tap on an image of DiCaprio to let him know how we felt. We used to put people on our walls, just for us to see, instead of putting ourselves on a wall and hoping the world sees us back.

We’ve all heard the phrase “reduce, reuse, and recycle” muttered under the breath of irate eco-warriors, but when it comes to space travel, that phrase could be the difference between visiting the moon and traveling to Mars. “If astronauts are going to make journeys that span several years, we’ll need to find a way to reuse and recycle everything they bring with them,” says Clemson University’s Mark A. Blenner—and that includes all of their bodily fluids.

While anyone who has seen The Martian knew that this was coming sooner or later, the work of Blenner’s team focuses on recycling astronaut’s human waste to help them make the trip to the Red Planet in the first place. Specifically, they are looking at ways to transform molecules from astronauts’ sweat and urine into plastics that can be used for tools aboard a spacecraft. NASA astronauts aboard the ISS already drink their recycled urine (“Better you than me,” President Donald Trump told astronaut Peggy Whitson recently). The new research points to a future in which, if an astronaut breaks a screw on the way to Mars, she could simply pee herself a new one.

The Clemson team is focusing on a strain of yeast called Yarrowia lipolytica, which requires both nitrogen and carbon to grow. However, astronauts come with their own supplies of both, with nitrogen coming from urine and carbon from exhaled breath. The team engineered the yeast strain to churn out polyester polymers, which could be used by a 3D printer to generate new plastic parts.

For now, the engineered yeast strains can produce only small amounts of polyesters, but the scientists are working on boosting output. Their work will be presented this week at the 254th National Meeting and Exposition of the American Chemical Society (ACS). Read more about it here, and watch this informative video on the “power of pee” below:

Read more:NASA is studying the fungus among us before humans take it to a new planet 

Medium unveiled its new system to buck the digital ad system in the media business today: Claps. Claps are Medium members’ way of showing love to an article, like how we “like” a post on Facebook. The idea is that if a member-only article is more popular–gets more claps–then that author will receive better compensation for their work.

Sounds like an overall egalitarian way of doing business until you really think about it. Ariel Robinson, a privacy and security writer, tweeted her reservations about the move, saying this route would likely lead the company astray. Medium founder Ev Williams tweeted back asking why.

So Robinson explained:

1/ Sorry, mis-thread
First, there are entire companies built around selling likes/claps/retweets/etc.

— Ariel Robinson (@ArielRobinson1) August 22, 2017

2/ It’s easy to social engineer popularity of content; it’s algorithm based. Any content strategist worth his/her salt knows this.

— Ariel Robinson (@ArielRobinson1) August 22, 2017

3/ Most disappointing of all, we are RIGHT in the middle of what happens when you let reader popularity direct content: fake news.

— Ariel Robinson (@ArielRobinson1) August 22, 2017

4/ Does @Medium really think it will be immune to that? As soon as monetary incentives are involved, truth dies.

— Ariel Robinson (@ArielRobinson1) August 22, 2017

5/ I’m a professional writer; I live this every day. I’ve been a FT reporter & freelance, a content strategist & marketer, blogger & analyst

— Ariel Robinson (@ArielRobinson1) August 22, 2017

6/ We struggle enough to find publications that won’t sell us out, where we can maintain integrity. I don’t want to see @Medium go that way.

— Ariel Robinson (@ArielRobinson1) August 22, 2017

In short, Robinson fears that by letting an algorithm, which is predicated on popularity, dictate content’s worth, it creates the conditions that helped fake news run rampant.

Medium is trying to create a new system for the media business, one that rewards content creators for their work and isn’t at the whims of the fluctuating digital ad space. But, as Robinson fears, this model could create some of the same old problems.

You can read the entire Twitter exchange here.

To meet the needs of the millions of electric vehicles that may be on the roads over the next decade or two, we’re going to need a lot more places to plug in. The current facilities are limited to desultory stops in supermarket parking lots (and such places), and offer nothing approaching the peace of mind of the gas station network. There are currently about 44,000 EV charging stations in the U.S, according to U.S. government figures, compared to 168,000 nationwide that sell fuel.

Although manufacturers like Volvo, VW, and, of course, Tesla, have recently made big EV announcements (promising us nicer, longer range, cheaper EVs), the lack of charging sites is a serious impediment to greater sales and wider cultural acceptance of EVs, say industry experts.

The good news is that the flexibility of electricity–as opposed to a fuel like gasoline that has to be stored more circumspectly–eases the job of getting charging to more places. In time, the EV charging network may be more widespread than the gas station one, assuming the economics can be made to work and we free up mental and physical space for alternatives.

An initiative in California is showing how P2P car charging could work. eMotorWerks, a large charging pole manufacturer, has teamed up with MotionWerk, a mobility startup that’s backed by a German power utility. In the trial, owners of home charging poles can offer their equipment to EV owners, who can see the sites mapped, and rated, on an app. The system combines eMotorWerks‘s bidirectional JuiceNet software platform–which manages the flow of electrons in and out of a car–with Share&Charge, MotionWerk’s blockchain-enabled app.

Blockchains are decentralizing accounting systems, where transactions are recorded across multiple computers. First invented for tracking bitcoin, they’ve since been adapted, in multiple variations, for tracking digital units other than cryptocurrency, including securities, insurance contracts, and in MotionWerk’s case, electrons. On its blockchain, energy flows are recorded automatically between poles and cars. In the future, it could also record flows between cars, and between buildings and cars, as well.

The German group was spun out a incubator started by Innogy, the utility. “We see people are reluctant to buy EVs because they are afraid that the range isn’t long enough,” says Franziska Heintel, head of US operations, in an interview. “With our platform, we aim to make life with an electric vehicle easier. On the blockchain, a lot of devices can be connected together and transactions can happen automatically.”

Surveys show that up to half of EV owners in the U.S. have home chargers, potentially putting at least 300,000 additional charging sites in play (there are about 700,000 EVs on the road today). Val Miftakhov, founder of eMotorWerks, notes that home poles are much cheaper to install than public sites. The former cost in the region of $1,000 after installation (the company’s home kits start at about $600 retail). A typical shopping mall deployment costs $10,000 all in (other estimates are higher).

Miftakhov says chargers in well-trafficked urban locations could generate up to $500 a year, according to his company’s calculations. If so, it would take only two years for EV owners to pay off their equipment costs. Moreover, in putting your vehicle on the network, you would be providing valuable backup to the grid. “All these vehicles in fact are a big battery on wheels that can provide valuable services to the grid to each other,” he tells Fast Company. “Eventually, we see things like shared batteries and shared energy coming into play.”

As with other parts of sharing economy, the question is always whether people really want to share. Heintel says it’s not for everyone. “You can compare it to Airbnb, when you don’t want to rent out your room because you don’t feel comfortable with a stranger,” she says. “You have people who can’t participate because their garage has valuable stuff in it. But other people feel more comfortable.”

Studies say Tasers can save lives when used correctly, and Axon, the company behind them, says they are the “safest force option” for police. But an extensive new investigation by Reuters found 1,005 deaths following police use of the weapon, and 153 deaths directly related to their use, mostly since the early 2000s, which is far more than the 24 deaths offered by Axon.

Using court records, police reports, news stories, and reports by other organizations between 1983 and 2017, Reuters also illustrated how post-Taser fatalities are distributed across the U.S. in an interactive map (see a larger version here):

According to Reuters,

• Nine in 10 of those who died were unarmed and one in four suffered from mental illness or neurological disorders.
• In nine of every 10 incidents reviewed, the deceased was unarmed.
• More than 100 of the fatal encounters began with a 911 call for help during a medical emergency.
• In 193 wrongful death cases, cities and their insurers paid a total of $172 million, but due to confidentiality, the actual value of awards in legal settlements is certainly more than $172 million.

The probability of dying from a Taser in a police encounter may be impossible to calculate, say researchers, given a lack of official data surrounding their use, the fact that deaths often have more than one cause, and other complexities. For instance, there isn’t much science on the effects of tasers on people suffering from mental illness, who are under the influence, or who may be pregnant.

I wrote about the Reuters findings here, and in a recent magazine piece looked at how Axon, which enjoys a near monopoly in electrical weapons, has sought to rebrand (it changed its name from Taser in April) as it seeks to also dominate the fast-growing body camera business. That industry is bringing a (complicated) new kind of transparency to encounters involving Tasers and other weapons.

The Hooke Verse wireless 3D-audio headphones make binaural audio cheaper and easier to capture.

A bill is advancing through Congress that would make it illegal for the president to unilaterally create a U.S.-Russia cyber unit without notifying Congress, reports Reuters. In July, Trump tweeted that he and Russian president Vladimir Putin had personally discussed creating “an impenetrable Cyber Security unit”–a thought that scared the heck out of practically everyone in Congress. If the bill passes, the Trump administration would be legally required to inform Congress what intelligence would be shared with Russia and also describe how counterintelligence concerns would be addressed.

Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded..

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 9, 2017

Abdullah Abu Zir is the crazy old uncle of the neighborhood at the Nuseirat refugee camp, in the Gaza Strip. The wiry 56-year-old spends his days tinkering away on his many inventive projects that he keeps hidden away in his rooftop “office” filled with old wood, metal, and plastic scraps.

Abu Zir lives in the middle of the Gaza Strip, the tiny strip of coast between Israel and Egypt that has among the highest unemployment and density in the world. For the last decade, Israel and Egypt have blockaded Gaza on security grounds after Hamas–designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S., the EU, and the U.K.–violently seized control from the more moderate Palestinian Authority (PA), based out of the Israeli-occupied West Bank.

In the last nine years, Israel and Hamas have fought three bloody wars that have devastated much of Gaza’s infrastructure, health network, and economy. Hamas has imposed an extreme version of Islam and restricts everyday freedoms. Israel blocks the import of materials like cement, making construction and development nearly impossible.

But Abu Zir is still tinkering away to increase the voltage his invention can supply. He uses it sparingly in his own home, so as to not arouse the neighbors’ suspicion or a punitive government tax. One of his niece’s friends, a driver, teases the uncle every time they meet: When is Abu Zir going to install the motor in my car already, he asks?

Around Gaza there are many entrepreneurial Palestinians with smart and sustainable solutions to their resource and electricity shortages. Many have access to the internet and university degrees in sciences and engineering, and have responded to the universal impulse that necessity is the mother of invention with their own creative alternatives. There’s the 29-year-old engineer who devised a local sand-based alternative to cement, the 16-year-old female student who created her own candle-run generator to recharge smartphones, and the university students who made a model for stoves powered by organic waste.

“Because of the political problems we are facing, we need alternatives,” says Abu Zir. The father of 11 never formally studied engineering; instead, he used to work at a restaurant in Tel Aviv, Israel, back when he was younger and the border was open. “But there is no one [with power] who supports these kinds of inventions. They don’t want alternatives.”

Gazans have long blamed Israel, as well as the PA and international aid agencies, for the siege and suffering. Today, many are also increasingly critical of Hamas, which was once considered less corrupt than the PA, for imposing taxes on seemingly everything, all while its people profit amid the acute shortages.

“If there was a real government in Gaza and they cared about the situation, especially the poor people, I could have given them the idea and electricity would be so cheap,” says Abu Zir. “They should have used the money to help people. But this is our government, unfortunately.”

A recent United Nations report concluded that after a decade after Hamas rule and siege conditions in Gaza were becoming “more and more wretched” as the Strip faced an alarming rate of “de-development.”

“People are afraid to try new things,” she says. “[They say], why do it new in Gaza when it’s done better outside?”

She persisted though, and using a small grinder that her similarly inventive brother made, successfully created a workable mix. “The problem is that we can’t afford to put it in practice on the ground,” she says.

Others, like Abdullah Abu Hajer, 26, are still finding ways to make it work and, tentatively, turn a profit. On a recent hot night in July, much of Gaza City was quiet and dark amid the usual blackout. But the large house of one local sheikh was glowing because of Abu Hajer’s homemade generator.

The bearded and self-taught engineer is working to perfect locally produced generators tailored to the particular needs of people in Gaza. Because of the power shortages, people who can afford to commonly buy imported generators to power lights and fans during the off-hours. So, using the internet, Abu Hajer taught himself how to wire cables in order to make his own version of battery-operated generators–with added perks. They prevent the power from cutting off when the electricity goes out and before the generator kicks in, solving annoying generator issue. The next version he’s working on will be stronger and warn when the generator is running low and how much power each item plugged in is using.

For a fee, he’s installed several different versions at the houses of friends around Gaza to test them out. The one at the house of the sheikh, whose teachings he follows, includes a motion sensor for the light at the door to preserve energy.

Abu Hajer has big ideas, but he has no way to grow outside Gaza. He’s not afraid, though, of competition, he says: The ideas are all out there, it’s just in the implementation.

The iconic New York alternative weekly is the latest print publication to shutter its physical media doors. Village Voice owner Peter Barbey released a statement yesterday announcing the Voice’s print closure but assured readers the publication would continue to operate online, reports Poynter. Barbey said the decision was necessary to secure the Voice’s future:

“My family has been in the newspaper business for more than 200 years. I first read The Village Voice in print as a student in the 1970s–that was how I first encountered it and how it became as important to me as it did. But the most powerful thing about the Voice wasn’t that it was printed on newsprint or that it came out every week. It was that The Village Voice was alive, and that it changed in step with and reflected the times and the ever-evolving world around it. I want The Village Voice brand to represent that for a new generation of people—and for generations to come.”

Breaking: The Village Voice is ending its weekly print edition. pic.twitter.com/ATbXrP5qYh

— Ben Mullin (@BenMullin) August 22, 2017

The brick-and-mortar retail giant and the search giant are launching the ability for users of Google’s voice-controlled Assistant platform to order hundreds of thousands of Walmart items simply by speaking, reports Reuters. The move is designed to take on Amazon, the internet e-commerce giant that also dominates the U.S. voice-controlled device industry with a 72% market share thanks to its Echo range of smart speakers. The Google-Walmart joint venture will begin rolling out in September.

The bus is being designed to shuttle its employees from one campus building to the next, reports the New York Times. The new shuttle bus program is called PAIL, which stands for “Palo Alto to Infinite Loop,” which is the route the autonomous shuttle bus will run. Apple isn’t expected to be making the vehicle itself. Instead, it will use a shuttle bus made by an existing car manufacturer and will outfit it with its own in-house self-driving car tech. The Times says the PAIL program is what is left of Apple’s once-grand autonomous car ambitions.

YouTube’s automatic system designed to identify extremist content flagged thousands of videos that documented the ongoing war in Syria, reports the BBC. After the system flagged the videos, human reviewers had “mistakenly” removed them. In one such incident, the Qasioun News Agency’s channel, which documents the war in Syria, was temporarily shut down. Groups that monitor the war in Syria said YouTube’s takedown of their videos could have hurt future war crimes prosecutions as many of the videos could be used for evidence.

The days of spreading a smear of lipstick on your skin in department stores to see if it matches your tone or desired look may soon be over, thanks to Apple’s ARKit framework that allows developers to access iOS 11’s powerful augmented reality tools in the upcoming OS. A developer called ModiFace, which creates augmented reality apps for the beauty industry, showed off its virtual lipstick application program running on an iPhone, reports 9to5Mac. The result is nothing short of jaw-dropping, showing people what certain shades of lipstick would look like on them. Apple’s tracking tech is so good, the augmented reality lipstick stays in place even when the user turns their head. You can check it out in the video below.

It’s like a sexy version of a traditional NASA spacesuit.

First picture of SpaceX spacesuit. More in days to follow. Worth noting that this actually works (not a mockup). Already tested to double vacuum pressure. Was incredibly hard to balance esthetics and function. Easy to do either separately.

A post shared by Elon Musk (@elonmusk) on Aug 23, 2017 at 12:59am PDT

The popular weather app and data monetization firm Reveal have issued a joint statement after security researcher Will Strafach found evidence that AccuWeather was still sharing Wi-Fi MAC address information with Reveal even after users opted out of sharing location data via the app. As CNet reported, it found that AccuWeather and Reveal could locate a user within meters of their location using their Wi-Fi and MAC address information. Reveal’s business model shares anonymized user location information with online advertisers. The findings Strafach revealed suggested that such location information was potentially still being shared after users’ opted out of doing so. Here’s AccuWeather and Reveal’s response:

Despite stories to the contrary from sources not connected to the actual information, if a user opts out of location tracking on AccuWeather, no GPS coordinates are collected or passed without further opt-in permission from the user.

Other data, such as Wi-Fi network information that is not user information, was for a short period available on the Reveal SDK, but was unused by AccuWeather. In fact, AccuWeather was unaware the data was available to it. Accordingly, at no point was the data used by AccuWeather for any purpose.

AccuWeather and Reveal Mobile are committed to following the standards and best practices of the industry. We also recognize this is a quickly evolving field and what is best practice one day may change the next. Accordingly, we work to update our practices regularly.

To avoid any further misinterpretation, Reveal is updating its SDK and pushing out new versions of the SDK in the next 24 hours, with the iOS update going live tonight. The end result should be that zero data is transmitted back to Reveal Mobile when someone opts out of location sharing. In the meanwhile, AccuWeather had already disabled the SDK, pending that update.

Reveal has stated that the SDK could be misconstrued, and they assure that no reverse engineering of locations was ever conducted by any information they gathered, nor was that the intent.

AccuWeather will work with Reveal to restore the SDK when it has been amended and will continue to update its ULAs to be transparent and current with evolving standards. AccuWeather and Reveal continue to enhance methods for handling data and strive to provide superior, seamless, and secure user experiences.

We are grateful to have a supportive community that highlights areas where we can optimize and be more transparent.

“I want to be a strawberry picker when I grow up!” my 6-year-old self exclaimed after a fun day at the U-pick berry farm. “Sure, honey, you can be whatever you want, as long as it makes you happy,” my parents graciously replied. But by age 8, I’d filled my room with stuffed toy dogs and issues of Dog Fancy magazine from the local library, proclaiming instead that I’d one day become a veterinarian. By 16, I knew I was meant to be a baker, and my library checkout record was short on Dog Fancy and long on recipe books.

Kids often grow out of the habit of cycling through passions and dream jobs–that’s the expectation, anyway. But my career interests continued to shift throughout my 20s–not just once but multiple times–jumping from hospitality to real estate to technology. Though some of these paths didn’t last for more than a few seasons, each position gave me a broader perspective on the world and helped move me toward what I really wanted to do. And in my late 20s, I finally ditched urban corporate America altogether to start building my own company overseas.

I’ve “started over” more times than I can count, sometimes with negative dollars in the bank, and I don’t regret it. Here’s what I’ve learned, and what I’d recommend for anybody early in their career who’s already thinking about making a dramatic transition.

Related:I’m Living Proof That It’s Time To Redefine The “American Dream”

Pursue Happiness (Right Now), Not Status

While I was switching career paths in New York, many people told me, “Don’t quit your job so soon! No one else will ever hire you.” I often felt like a failure who couldn’t keep her act together. Looking back, though, I feel empowered and happy that I didn’t spend the limited hours I have on this planet doing something that wasn’t right for me.

“Prior to my culinary journey, I was a management consultant in the fashion and luxury goods space, and a Columbia MBA,” says professional chef and entrepreneur Jenny Dorsey. “Despite the fact that my life looked great from the outside, I knew I was deeply unfulfilled on the inside. I yearned to create more, especially tangible things that would have real impact on people’s lives,” so Dorsey ditched her status-driven career and went to culinary school instead.

Related:Four Career Mistakes You Should Make In Your 20s

“There is no good time, so do it now,” she adds. “This has held true for me across any difficult transition I’ve made. The coy ability of time to make future decisions seem less formidable is something to be reckoned with, but the truth is it only gets harder, not easier. Take the plunge now, and don’t look back.”

You Know More Than You Think–So Market The Hell Out Of It

While it’s important to show commitment, sometimes your goals and perspectives change, especially when you’re just getting your feet wet in the workforce. For each new job change I made, I recast any experience from my previous role into relevant, transferrable skills in a new industry. This takes effort, but it may not be as hard as you think. Write a resume for the person you want to be, using your existing skills and successes.

And if hiring managers aren’t buying it, sell those skills directly in the job market. “I was working in PR and event planning and got tired of the hectic lifestyle and working for someone else,” says Camille Holden, founder of Nuts & Bolts Speed Training. “My boyfriend and I decided to break free and start our own business. It was a super-simple idea, really: to sell our existing knowledge and expertise. So we started an online training business that teaches business professionals how to be more efficient with PowerPoint.”

In Holden’s experience, the conventional wisdom to “skill up” by taking courses, signing up for bootcamps, and adding new credentials isn’t the only way to succeed. Even for people in their 20s, she says, “If you’re looking to start a business, don’t worry about inventing something new, but instead go with something you’re already great at. You may have to dig a bit, but there’s no use starting from complete ground zero.”

Related:How My Entry-Level Job Helped Me Become A Mid-20s Entrepreneur

Lean On Your Support System

Though I’ve had my share of naysayers about my career decisions, I’ve been fortunate to have a support system that more often says, “You should do it!” than “You’re crazy!” I’ve found that when you’re looking to make a career jump, it’s important to keep negative Nancys at a distance. Surround yourself with people who share your passion and believe in your goals–whatever they might consist of right now.

That’s especially true early on, when you might not have the most certainty about your abilities and feel that you still have to prove yourself. But over time, the network of cheerleaders who support your efforts will give you the confidence to take bigger leaps.

“I just turned 44 this year,” says Veronica Sopher, a newly minted developer who was previously a marketing communications expert at Microsoft. Going full-time into a tech role, she says, “took a lot of hand wringing, discussions with my family, and advice from close friends. Even though I knew I needed to make the change, it still felt ‘irresponsible’ to abandon a perfectly good career path and reduce our household income for my own pursuit.” But because Sopher had made significant shifts earlier on in her career, she’s learned which voices to listen to and which ones to tune out.

Related:How To Turn Your Close Friends Into Career Mentors

“The lesson is, not everybody deserves to hear about my dreams and ambitions.” Sopher has a point. It’s usually in your 20s that you learn some of your friends may be fun to hang out with on a Saturday night, but aren’t the best peer mentors when it comes to career stuff. So join a group and learn alongside others. Maybe it’s a career-change bootcamp you pay for, and maybe it’s just a Facebook group for like-minded people looking for advice and support.

Whatever type of network you tap to help you make your move, keep in mind that you’re not the only one to do this.

Don’t Cut Ties After Graduating

When I decided to start my own business, I jumped headfirst into the startup scene, making connections that helped me build my business to where it is today. Networking often feels like a chore, and when you’re new to the job market and have a bland, low-level job title, it can feel especially depressing. But pulling off significant job changes in your 20s requires some type of network, even if it isn’t the sort you build by hitting up dozens of traditional networking events.

Indeed, one of the easiest ways to turn what might feel like a crappy network into a powerful one is to keep in touch with people you went to school with. When Chris Georgiev, founder of the image-recognition platform Imagga, left the corporate world to dive into entrepreneurship, he contacted former classmates. Reconnect with some of your best university friends to see who might be a great fit for collaboration. He eventually found a cofounder with a similar dream. “I’m glad I didn’t jump into this new adventure alone.”

There’s always more money to be made–and made back if an investment doesn’t pan out–but it’s impossible to get more time. If you’re not happy today, you don’t have to be permanently stuck. Nor do you have to wait until a certain age when it suddenly “makes sense” for you to switch careers. Each day is an opportunity to try something new, explore your creativity, and build a career that you’re proud of. Don’t put it off for tomorrow.

In a parking lot outside a former pharmaceutical factory in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant, 10 entrepreneurs have spent the last nine and a half months learning how to take on the industrial food system through urban farming. Square Roots–a vertical farming accelerator co-founded by Kimbal Musk, with a campus of climate-controlled farms in shipping containers–is getting ready to graduate its first class.

With a new round of $5 million in seed funding, led by the Collaborative Fund, the accelerator is making plans to build new, larger campuses in other cities.

Musk, who runs several health-focused restaurants and nonprofit school gardens (and is Elon’s brother), saw the need for a large network of well-trained young entrepreneurs who could quickly grow urban farming. “We wanted to come up with a model that scaled small urban farming, so literally every consumer of food can have a direct relationship with a farmer,” says Square Roots co-founder and CEO Tobias Peggs.

In a learn-by-doing model, everyone immediately starts farming. “When this first cohort joined on November 7, on that day, literally the farms were dropped from a truck onto the parking lot,” Peggs says. “Eight weeks later, we had our first farmers market in Bed-Stuy, where those people had learned to grow really tasty food. The whole system is kind of geared up to have a very fast learning curve.”

One pair of entrepreneurs worked together to launch a farm-to-desk delivery program that brings fresh greens to dozens of New York City offices. Another student is focused on growing greens for low-income neighborhoods. Someone else launched a business delivering produce to New Jersey while running her Square Roots farm. A former engineer is developing an improved lighting system for indoor farming and plans to launch an equipment business. Another entrepreneur used data analysis to perfect a growing recipe for heirloom basil, which he sells to restaurants and markets. (The accelerator’s layout, with modular growing containers, also allows it to study data about yield and quality and improve the technology for future students).

Lakhani partnered with a SoHo restaurant, Chalk Point Kitchen, to become its “official farmer,” growing food on demand for the chef. The restaurant buys her entire yield from the shipping container, and Lakhani provides a year-round supply of produce. She also visits the restaurant once a week to wander around tables talking with customers.

The first cohort will graduate in October, and the accelerator is taking applications for its next class; in 2016, it had 500 applicants for 10 spots. In its new location in a yet-to-be announced city, it plans to have larger campuses with room for more students. The founders also hope to quickly launch in more locations. “It’s all stemming from the mission of real food for everyone,” says Peggs. “Ultimately, we want to put a Square Roots campus in every city in the U.S.”

It’s true: Jeff Bezos wants to literally dominate every industry. Yesterday it was supermarkets. Today it’s education. Tomorrow? Who knows!

Amazon just announced a new part of its Amazon Education program aimed at providing students and teachers with learning resources. The company has been dabbling in the space with a math teaching resource known as TenMarks. Today TenMarks is expanding to writing with a platform that helps teachers dole out writing assignments, as well as analyze the work submitted using natural language processing.

TenMarks Writing helps educators build assignments around numerous topics. It also gives the students tools and activities to help them learn how to write cohesive essays. Lastly, it offers automated feedback about the students’ writing. This feedback is analyzed with Amazon’s proprietary language software and then given to teachers to approve (they can then send it to students as if it were written by them).

For the last year Amazon has been beta testing it with educators around the country. After receiving feedback and tinkering with the platform, the company decided to open it up to everyone. Now TenMarks is available for students grades 4–6, at a prices of $4-per-student-per-year. Soon it will go all the way up to 8th grade.

With primary education currently checked off, I hope Amazon will soon expand to fun electives like ceramics.

If you’ve ever brought a new cat home and introduced it to your old cat, you were probably met with wrath and feline fury. Chances are, your old cat was defensive and eager to protect its turf. Maybe it stopped hissing and hiding eventually, but the first few weeks were probably pretty tense.

When you join a new company, this same sort of standoffishness can unfold just beneath the surface-level pleasantries. At first, the people you work with might not be sure what to think about you and may see you as a threat–even if they don’t consciously recognize it. But there is a way you can assert yourself when you’re new to your job, and do it in a positive way, without causing the claws to come out. It all comes down to how you speak to your brand-new coworkers. Here’s are four speaking strategies you can’t afford to forget.

1. Only Bring Up Your Past Experience To Help Solve Current Problems

One common pitfall is talking too much about past experiences. Yes, what you’ve done before is relevant–it’s partly what got you hired– but you don’t want to start too many sentences with, “At my last company…” If you do, people might start to feel like there’s part of you that wishes you were still working there–not an impression you’d want to make in a new role.

To be more strategic about leveraging the insights and experience you picked up in your old job, you first need to build connections with your coworkers based on the challenges you’re all working together on right now. Show that you have a clear understanding of the current situation, and then weave in your experience. For example, let’s say your new company is discussing the lack of flexibility in the software it’s currently using. Don’t come right out and say, “At my last company, we used software X, and it was much more flexible.” Instead, say something like this: “Flexibility is certainly important when it comes to software like this. I know from my experience that there are other options out there that could give us more flexibility.”

2. Ask Lots Of “Dumb” Questions

What’s worse than asking a dumb question? Not asking and missing out on important information. Yes, you want your new colleagues to think highly of you. But asking questions–even those you think might have obvious answers–shows that you’re engaged and ready to learn. New hires are usually told to ask away whenever they’re not sure of something unfamiliar, but few actually take that invitation wholeheartedly. Don’t miss your chance–not just to figure out how things work around the office but to break the ice with your new coworkers. “Dumb” questions can also be jumping-off points for establishing relationships.

3. Don’t Hesitate To Probe (Politely) For Information

When you start at a new company, you’re always going to encounter a degree of skepticism about your abilities, even if it’s never directly expressed. People may be unwilling to open up about their projects or other details that you might want to know, but building trust with your team and getting them to open up to you is critical.

Related:New Job? Here’s How To Feel Like You Belong 

While you don’t want to be confrontational, you do need to probe to get the answers you need. Not sure how to answer questions in a diplomatic, non-confrontational way? There are three steps that can help you do it perfectly: Align with your listeners, bridge to their concerns, and then ask for their thoughts (here are a few tips breaking it all down). Let’s say you’re in charge of a group that’s been tasked with cutting production costs. You learn that your new team was successful in some areas but unsuccessful in others. They seem to only want to discuss their successes, but you obviously need to understand the failures, too. So you could frame your question this way:
1. Align:“I understand that you’ve done a great job cutting costs in those areas, and you certainly deserve recognition for that.”
2. Bridge:“But as you know, I’ve been tasked with helping you cut production costs at a much higher level.”
3. Question:“So, what do you think we could do to improve the areas that weren’t as successful?”

Related:Fitting In Or Standing Out: Which One Gets You Ahead Faster?

This approach legitimizes your coworkers’ feelings and allows you to probe for more information without being too confrontational about it.

4. Sync Up With Your Company’s Work Rhythms

Every company has a cultural “rhythm.” Some work cultures move fast, while others are more thoughtful and deliberate. In your first few weeks, it’s crucial to tune into that and adapt. But in order to figure out your company’s (and especially your team’s) typical rhythms, you need to establish a neutral baseline. It’s actually pretty simple–it just depends on how and what you communicate. For instance, rather than just saying to a coworker, “Great, I’ll email you back in a few hours about that,” ask, “When do you need me to get back to you?” Let others set the tone so you can get a feel for how they work, rather than just falling into your own usual work style right from the get-go. Matching the rhythms of your colleagues will help you connect with them on a deeper level–and more quickly.

When you join a new company, the first few weeks are critical for establishing yourself. Of course, you want to make an impact, but you’ve got to do it with tact. By using these strategies, you will build a solid foundation that will set you up for success.