Things are tightening up at Turner Media and, as Deadline reports, the latest victim is Super Deluxe Studios.

Super Deluxe launched as a digital comedy hub for Turner Broadcasting System back in 2006, and served as a platform for talented-but-green creators looking to make a name for themselves. With a pronounced bend toward alternative comedy, Super Deluxe put out early videos from the likes of Zach Galifianakis, Maria Bamford, Chelsea Peretti, and Tim and Eric.

After Super Deluxe petered out, Turner rebranded it in 2015 as “a tech incubator,” still producing comedy videos but chasing the same mobile ubiquity as its Funny or Die peers. The refurbished studio teamed up with a new wave of creators, including Joanna the Scammer, Jamie Loftus, and warped political comedy wizard Vic Berger. In addition, it released regular series like Cheap Thrills and Mansplaining.

Super Deluxe had been branching out at the time of its shuttering, with a series order at Netflix for a Stephan Gaghan-produced supernatural drama, Chambers. (No word yet on whether this series will live on.)

The axing is another sign of consolidation at Time Warner, following the shutdown earlier this week of its Korean drama streamer DramaFever. It looks like the ongoing trend of throwing money toward becoming the next monolithic content provider has the unfortunate side effect of squeezing out the (weird) beloved little guy.

Last year’s flu season was especially awful for vulnerable populations, including children. According to the CDC, some 183 flu-related pediatric deaths were reported for 2017-2018, almost double the number of deaths during the same period two years earlier. The agency said activity began to increase in November, peaked in January and February, and remained high even in March.

Sadly, this season is already off to a tragic start, as the CDC reported today that the flu has already claimed its first pediatric death. The death was reported as part of the agency’s weekly surveillance report, which resumed its tracking of flu activity last week after its usual summer break.

To help people keep track of outbreaks in their area, the CDC publishes new information—and a number of interactive maps—on its weekly surveillance reports.

Tragically, the first pediatric death in the U.S. this #fluseason has been reported in the latest #FluView. Even 1 death is too many. We encourage everyone 6 months and older to get a #flu vaccine today as the first and most important step to #fightflu. https://t.co/d7ZpbN4Iawpic.twitter.com/4UafPiItGz

— CDC Flu (@CDCFlu) October 19, 2018

The good news, at the moment, is that flu activity remains low throughout the country—with local activity reported in North Dakota and Massachusetts, and only sporadic activity elsewhere. But the CDC warns that the flu season is upon us. Vaccinations remain the best way to prevent the flu, and the CDC is recommending that you do that before the end of this month.

You can find more info on that here.

There is a misconception that extroverts make better leaders and networkers. After all, they’re Type A go-getters, they have bravado, and they’re charismatic. Excellent leadership qualities, right?

Yes, in specific situations. However, research published in Harvard Business Review revealed that contrary to popular belief, there are circumstances where introverts make better leaders than extroverts. For example, introverted leaders thrive in environments with proactive and vocal employees, because they’re willing to listen and consider their ideas. Extroverted leaders, on the other hand, are more likely to feel threatened when their employees question them.

You can say the same thing about networking. Professional events may seem like an extrovert’s domain, but introverts have superpowers that make them phenomenal networkers. If you’re an introvert, here are some examples of how you can tap into those strengths.

1. Redefine what networking looks like to you

When you think of an influential networker, what image comes to mind? Is it a loud, highly visible extrovert who is surrounded by people eager to breathe their air? Do you picture a person who constantly collects business cards, with an eye toward who can be most useful to them?

As an introvert, it can be exhausting to feel like you need to live up to this image. Introverts, who tend to deflect attention away from themselves, are more empathetic and focused on the needs of others. I believe this should be the primary purpose of networking. This “habitual generosity” is a key trait of what my partner, Scott Gerber, and I, call a “superconnector.” They are people more focused on true, long-term relationship building than on superficial, transactional connections. In fact, I’d argue that both introverts and extroverts should stop using the term “networking,” and start using the term “relationship building.” For introverts specifically, this term leans toward your strengths.

2. Don’t aim to work the whole room

“It’s useful before an event to learn a little bit about the people who will be there,” says Susan Cain, author of Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking and founder of Quiet Revolution, a website and consulting firm for introverts. “For everyone you meet, you’ll get beyond basic small talk faster.” Because crowds of people tend to drain energy from introverts, they’ll spend less time at an event and need to make the most of every conversation. And unlike extroverts, they don’t feel the need to work the whole room. ” I always advise people when they go into a classic networking situation to look for what I call the kindred spirits,” says Cain. “The people they can truly connect with whether or not they have some professional reason to do it.”

For me, the most interesting people are not the people at the center of the room, so I look for people who are standing on the fringes, not the ones pushing themselves into a circle of conversation. Sure, I spend more time talking to fewer people, but in return, I feel that I come away from events with deeper and longer-lasting connections.

3. Focus on asking great questions

Extroverts get so energized about sharing ideas that they sometimes forget to ask about the other person. Introverts like to ask questions, but not all questions are created equal. For starters, “What do you do?” and Where are you from?” probably won’t prompt great conversations.

I like to ask people what excites them about whatever they happen to be working on. I’ve found that this question elicits information that can help me figure out how to be of use. You can have your own go-to question, but the trick is to ask something that encourages people to reveal themselves beyond surface-level chit-chat.

However, Cain cautions that introverts can overdo their natural talent for asking probing questions. “People will feel uncomfortable if you’re asking but not volunteering anything,” she says. So make sure that you make an effort to reveal information about yourself to strike a healthy balance.

4. Learn how to listen to what they’re not saying

Asking great questions is just one essential component to building a strong relationship. You also need to listen carefully to the answers, and that often involves reading between the lines.

Sometimes, the person you are talking to doesn’t know you can help them–and it’s on you to figure that out. When you encourage them to talk about their passion and interests, however, you can quickly glean how their needs might intersect with your capabilities and connection. That’s where the magic happens.

Ryan Paugh is the COO of The Community Company, an organization that builds community-driven programs for media companies and global brands. He is also the coauthor of Superconnector: Stop Networking and Start Building Business Relationships That Matter.

Google+ is dead.

Google delivered the news earlier this month in a blog post. The company gave multiple reasons for its decision: It found a security flaw in Google+, consumer engagement is low, and running a social site is hard. So it’ “sunsetting” Google+ for consumers in August, 2019. (The service will continue for business customers.)

Over its 20-year history, Google has succeeded wildly with products in a great many businesses: Search, Gmail, YouTube, Android and others. But it tends to fail with products that involve public social interaction. In fact, it’s earned a reputation as something of a social site serial killer. High-profile failures include Orkut, Buzz, and Wave. But even more obscure social properties also got “sunsetted” by Google: Spaces, Profiles, Wildfire, Jaiku, Schemer, Lively, Hello, Dodgeball, Aardvark, Friend Connect, Latitude, Talk, Helpouts and others.

Google added social features to its Google Reader RSS product five years ago. Then the company killed it. Its blogging platform, Blogger, still exists. But it sure doesn’t feel like a strategic priority.

In truth, it’s likely that Google+ has been a dead social network walking since 2014. Since then, Google has stripped it for parts and terminated some of its best features.

In recent years, senior executives even stopped using it. Google CEO Sundar Pichai’s last post on Google+ was in March of 2016. When Pichai wants to post something, he turns to Twitter. So why wait this long to kill what is clearly a burden and embarrassment to Google? The answer is that Google+ still had some very devoted fans. But why?

The halcyon days

The year 2011 was a year of radical change and uncertainty in Silicon Valley. Apple founder and CEO Steve Jobs died that year. Facebook was preparing its IPO. And Eric Schmidt, who had served as Google CEO for a decade, was replaced by co-founder Larry Page.

Google faced a crisis. Facebook seemed to be eating the world—Google’s world. Facebook’s rapid rise was a harbinger of a future where Facebook might challenge Google’s dominance in online advertising and the future of mobile advertising.

Google+ represented a complete reversal of Google’s social strategy. Under Schmidt, the stated strategy was to build social into existing Google properties, by adding sharing features and a plus-one button to everything. Page turned the old strategy inside-out. Instead of adding social to Google services, the company would add Google services to a new social network.

Leading the project was former Microsoft executive Vic Gundotra. Together, Page and Gundotra essentially forced many other Google teams–and many Google users–kicking and screaming into Google+ integrations of every description.

The centrality of Google+ was best expressed by senior VP Bradley Horowitz. In 2012 he toldWired’s Steven Levy that “Google+ is Google itself. We’re extending it across all that we do—search, ads, Chrome, Android, Maps, YouTube—so that each of those services contributes to our understanding of who you are.”

In Page’s first week as CEO, he issued an edict commanding that 25% of every Google employee’s bonus would be directly tied to the company’s success in social. Page’s idea was with such an incentive, employees would not only want to create innovative social features, but they’d also convince their family and friends to try new Google social services, including and especially the forthcoming Google+ social network.

Google+ opened up for invitation-only access in June 2011. In its early days, it attracted an optimistic collection of disaffected Facebook users, miscellaneous Twitter refugees, photographers, and Google superfans. Above all it proved alluring to aspiring influencers seeking to grab an early lead on a new social network which many thought would be the Next Big Thing.

And the site was better than Facebook in almost every way. The character maximum for Facebook posts back then was 500–less than twice what Twitter allows today. Google+ posts let you type up to 100,000 characters. You could write a novel in a post.

Pictures posted on Facebook then were compressed to the point of actually ruining them. Google+ photos looked like the originals. Photographers flocked to Google+.

At the time, Facebook allowed you only to “friend” people, which is to say you couldn’t follow them unless they followed you back. Google+ let you “follow” people, like Twitter.

The first version of Google+ allowed your stream to refresh automatically. Many users kept it open on their desktops to watch the posts go by as they worked all day.

The integrations were amazing. You could receive posts or comments in Gmail, and post from Gmail to Google+. And people could email you from within Google+ without ever knowing your email address.

Hangouts and Hangouts on Air played live in posts, and people could comment on Hangouts in progress. The recordings of these Hangouts continued to live on as video posts.

You could recommend a restaurant on Google+, and have that recommendation show up in Google Maps.

Because of the integrations—and because of that high-quality Google search—Google+ became the best tool available for lifelogging. Even now, it’s trivial to find anything you’ve ever posted by searching.

The most innovative feature was Circles. Well before Facebook enabled groupings of people into “family,” “friends” and so on, Google+ let you create “Circles” of people and then share those circles. You could recommend groups of people, and others could follow your whole Circle. Managing Circles involved a beautiful, animated drag-and-drop interface created by Andy Hertzfeld, one of Apple’s original Mac software wizards.

These and other advantages were minimized when Facebook copied most of the best features of Google+. Facebook added following, people categories, and longer character maximums, and improved the quality of photos. But of course, Facebook continued to dominate social networking on the strength of one “feature” Google+ never had: Lots and lots of people.

Always controversial

In its golden age, Google+ was the most rewarding of social networks for heavily engaged, all-in users. If you spent hours each day crafting posts, writing comments, clicking plus-ones, and managing and sharing Circles, you could grow your follower count by hundreds or thousands of people each month.

For casual users, though, it was the least rewarding network. Thousands or millions of users gave Google+ a try, only to conclude in a day or two that it was a “ghost town.”

For Google+ devotees, the noise level and engagement was overwhelming, with posts routinely achieving the maximum 500 comments and getting shared thousands of times. Because those comments had effectively no limit in size, getting through an active conversation required a lot of time and effort.

For fans, Google+ seemed to answer all the complaints everybody had about other social networks. Facebook spammed users with misleading and annoying advertising. Google+ didn’t even have advertising.

On Twitter, trolls and haters shamed people into silence and off the network. Disruptors were easily terminated on Google+—especially in recent years, when a single click let you delete, report, and block a commenter.

Search on Twitter and Facebook were (and are) terrible, whereas on Google+ it’s always been great.

Back in the day, to use Google+ was to gain exclusive access to what’s now called Google Photos (except the editing tools were much better then). And Hangouts! It’s a banality now, but in the early years of Google+, the Hangouts feature was the only way to carry on group video conferences live without paying a subscription fee.

Years before Meerkat, Periscope, or Facebook Live, Google launched Hangouts on Air, a live-streaming feature (like Hangouts, but also broadcast to the public live). The feature was used by President Obama and Pope Francis. But Google took years to make live streaming mobile — it could be done only on a desktop browser. So the mobile live streaming revolution passed Google by.

Die-hard Google+ fans were among the most passionate users of any service. They spent hours every day chattering away on Hangouts—mostly about Google+ itself. They had their own vocabulary and culture.

Users organized meetups known as HIRLs—”Hangouts in real life.” And there were variants on this theme. The Black Eyed Peas did what they called a “HIRC”—Hangout In Real Concert—live on stage in front of 60,000 people.

Above all, Google+ was a place to have great conversations. The strong moderation tools meant trolls and haters were easily defeated. And so conversation flourished. Google+’s devoted fans simply couldn’t understand why others didn’t “get it.”

While Facebook has long been the place to connect with people you already know, Google+ was the place to connected with strangers who share your interests. Most people, it turns out, don’t want to connect with strangers.

Journalists probably love Twitter more than any other group of people. And they probably hated Google+ more than any other group. Google+ is the opposite of Twitter. For instance it was bad for driving traffic. Users never wanted to leave the site. Google+ was also a bad place to be snarky. Every comment was controversial, and would be attacked by long-winded arguments, links, and evidence. The last thing journalists want is to confront massive pushback on every post.

The idea that Google+ was a ghost town—the clear consensus on Twitter—confused active and passionate users who struggled to keep up with the firehose of activity on their streams.

Life was good for the Google+ faithful. And then everything changed.

Gundotra left Google in April of 2014, and the company seemed to sour on the aggressive policy of forcibly integrating other Google properties into the network. This probably had something to do with YouTube. In November of 2013, Google forced YouTube commenters to have a Google+ account. YouTubers rebelled, turning their channels into anti-Google screed soapboxes.

A year after Gundotra’s departure, YouTube was de-coupled from Google+. Photos was spun out. So was Hangouts. The great unbundling began.

In the end, Google executives decided that Google+ wasn’t about following people, but passions. A subsequent redesign elevated “Communities” (subject specific areas where lots of people could join and post on a narrow topic) and “Collections” (subject specific categorization for an individual user’s posts, which enabled you to follow someone but opt out of their food pics). And they neutered Circles, and killed the sharing of Circles.

As Google+ was being turned into a shell of its former self, the world’s spammers began noticing Google+ and flocking to it. Despite all its AI Kung Fu, Google was never quite able to deal with the spam problem. Most of the Communities on Google+ have been taken over by spammers. The problem is even worse in post comments. Half the spam isn’t flagged. And half the flagged comments aren’t spam.

And so we say goodbye

Most Google+ fans I know don’t mourn its closure as much as they mourn the loss of Google+ circa 2014.

Imagine a social network where geeks have higher follower counts than celebrities. Where there’s no advertising. Where trolls get crushed and ordinary people have a voice. Where smart people gather for long, detailed and interesting conversations. Where most streams aren’t algorithmically filtered. Where photographs appear at full quality. Where social networking engagement leads to actual, real-life friendships.

Imagine a social network that strikes fear into Facebook, and forces them to improve the site for their users.

It’s all hard to imagine. But for about three years, this was Google+.

Google+ is dead. But the best version of the site died in 2014. We should all mourn its loss.

A new device that sits inside a shipping container can use clean energy to almost instantly bring clean drinking water anywhere–the rooftop of an apartment building in Nairobi, a disaster zone after a hurricane in Manila, a rural village in Zimbabwe–by pulling water from the air.

The design, from the Skysource/Skywater Alliance, just won $1.5 million in the Water Abundance XPrize. The competition, which launched in 2016, asked designers to build a device that could extract at least 2,000 liters of water a day from the atmosphere (enough for the daily needs of around 100 people), use clean energy, and cost no more than 2¢ a liter.

“We do a lot of first principles thinking at XPrize when we start designing these challenges,” says Zenia Tata, who helped launch the prize and serves as chief impact officer of XPrize. Nearly 800 million people face water scarcity; other solutions, like desalination, are expensive. Freshwater is limited and exists in a closed system. But the atmosphere, the team realized, could be tapped as a resource. “At any given time, it holds 12 quadrillion gallons–the number 12 with 19 zeros after it–a very, very, big number,” she says. The household needs for all 7 billion people on earth add up to only around 350 or 400 billion gallons. A handful of air-to-water devices already existed, but were fairly expensive to use.

The new system, called WEDEW (“wood-to-energy deployed water”) was created by combining two existing systems. One is a device called Skywater, a large box that mimics the way clouds are formed: It takes in warm air, which hits cold air and forms droplets of condensation that can be used as pure drinking water. The water is stored in a tank inside the shipping container, which can then be connected to a bottle refill station or a tap.

Because the process uses a large amount of electricity, designers paired it with a biomass gassifier, a low-cost source of energy. When the gassifier is filled with wood chips, coconut shells, or whatever biomass is locally available, a process calls pyrolysis vaporizes that material. That makes the system hot and humid, the ideal environment to run the air-to-water machine. As it generates power, it also produces biochar, a charcoal that can be added to soil to store carbon and help plants grow.

“It’s a carbon-negative technology,” says David Hertz, a California-based architect who helped lead the project. “I think the future of technologies is going to be moving to this restorative, regenerative model that actually helps to repair the damage we’ve done.”

In a place like California, the gassifier could be fed with pine trees that have been killed by years of drought and pests. Left in forests, the dead trees are at risk of burning in fires and releasing CO2. In the machine, the carbon in the wood could be captured and added to soil as the system creates fresh water.

In parts of the world where wood is less available, the system could also run on solar and battery power rather than biomass. In either case, it can quickly be deployed off the grid in areas where water is polluted or where supplies have dwindled because of drought. “Our process is one that is really antithetical to the slow-moving infrastructure that exists that is not able to be responsive to a changing climate as it is in the case of say, Cape Town, for instance,” Hertz says.

Though the Skywater machine is already in use in some areas, the new combination with biomass power only exists because of the competition. The team will use the prize money to rapidly develop and deploy the units worldwide in partnership with nonprofits.

“One could imagine these shipping containers being positioned in a state of readiness throughout the world to be able to respond to disasters for both energy and water,” he says.

Whenever I deliver my LinkedIn workshop, I get a lot of pushback on the following point: How to write your headline on the social network.

A LinkedIn headline is the line directly under your name–on your profile page, in the sidebar of people similar to you, and what people see in search results when they type your name. It’s the thing that people view the most after your name and headshot.

But most people don’t exploit this opportunity. Instead, they fall back on LinkedIn’s default settings–which copy and paste your job title and employer into this critical field.

A job title tells you nothing

My “official” title is president of the Jonathan Rick Group. But if I’d put that on my LinkedIn headline, most people will probably look at it and have no idea what that means.

Sure, the word “president” may be impressive, but it doesn’t give you any clue about what the job involves or what I can do for you. As much as I’d love to flatter myself, it’s unlikely that a prospective client would see the headline, “JRG president,” and instantly think, “This guy can solve all my digital marketing needs!”

I’d go so far as to say that the same thing would apply to my previous jobs, such as “senior strategist at Rock Creek Strategic Marketing,” and “senior consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton.” You may have heard of Booz Allen, but unless you’re a senior consultant at Booz Allen, you probably have no idea what my responsibilities looked like.

There’s a simple solution to this–customize your headline. Instead of meekly recording your title and company, try following the tried-and-true strategy of describing what you do and who you help. This is your elevator pitch in 120 characters.

Here are a few examples:

• I help trade associations raise mountains of money.
• I help Fortune 500 CEOs and tech entrepreneurs navigate and influence Washington, D.C.
• Whatever the subject, I’ll make your message UBER: Understood, Believed, Enjoyed, and Remembered.

Earlier, I said that some folks rebel at the idea of a personalized headline. Let’s review their four strongest objections.

1. “Most people don’t customize their headline”

This is true–but it’s because most people don’t know any better, just like they might not know the difference between a hashtag and a handle.

2. “A custom headline typically means the headliner is unemployed”

Yes, plenty of people position themselves as consultants when in fact, they aspire to be consultants. An image I recently saw on Twitter captures the point poetically.

So true pic.twitter.com/uobZW6glNj

— hussein kanji (@hkanji) September 7, 2018

Don’t let that put you off, though. Let’s not let these self-proclaimed influencers/evangelists/whisperers ruin a good thing. After all, puffery tends to dissolve upon impact: Spend a few seconds scrolling through someone’s profile, and it’ll be clear whether they’re living up to their title, or whether they’re lying about it.

3. “They’re too flowery”

I’ve also heard plenty of people claiming that while a custom headline may be a good idea, in theory, people use it in off-putting ways. In short, they think that these made-up banners are too flowery or pretentious–and often both.

Again, I sympathize with this viewpoint. But just because someone else’s headline is fluffy doesn’t mean your headline needs to be. I’ve long railed against what I call the “laundry listers” (who can’t decide who they are, so they throw in everything) and the “keyword stuffers” (who use jargon instead of English to seduce the algorithms).

Here are some examples of a straightforward and not flowery headline:

• Public policy advocate for the greater protection of our civil liberties
• Licensed mental health social worker, treating trichotillomania and OCD
• CPA, with 20 years of experience, specializing in real estate

To me, these lines sound far more intriguing and substantive than an unclear job title at a company people might or might not have heard of.

4. “I worked hard to get here”

This objection seems to be one that people are extremely passionate about. If the first thing someone learns about me is that that I work at, say, the White House, he’s more likely to browse through my profile than if he sees I work at the White Group.

People argue that if they spend their days at a prestigious place, they shouldn’t obscure this accomplishment. After all, it takes talent to land at Goldman Sachs or Google, and isn’t LinkedIn all about showcasing that?

There are two issues here–one technical and one philosophical. Both revolve around prioritization.

The thing is, a custom headline doesn’t replace your title and company. The latter still very much forms part of your profile, at the top of your “experience” section. They’re just not the first thing people see.

When you value the institution over the individual, you also convey your insecurity. This mind-set suggests that you tie your professional identity to the company you work for, and that where you work is more important than what you do.

Instead of yoking yourself to your employer, cultivate your own identity. Recognize that your worth doesn’t require external validation. Your business card doesn’t bind you. It’s great to say, “I went to Harvard,” and that’s definitely something you should be proud of. But don’t let it define you. You’re much more valuable than that.

Jonathan Rick is the president of the Jonathan Rick Group, a consultancy that helps people overhaul and optimize their LinkedIn profile. Follow him on Twitter at @jrick, where he tweets about the latest tricks in professional branding.

If you buy an ink cartridge from HP, some of the plastic might have come from bottles collected on streets and canals in Port-au-Prince, Haiti–intercepted before they could end up in the ocean. Since 2017, the company has worked with local collectors to gather more than half a million pounds of plastic in the area, keeping around 12 million plastic bottles out of the Caribbean.

It’s one of a growing number of companies incorporating ocean-bound plastic into its supply chain. Today, HP announced that it is joining a coalition of those companies called NextWave Plastics, founded by Dell and the nonprofit Lonely Whale last year. Ikea also joined today, and plans to make its first prototypes out of ocean-bound plastic by the end of 2019.

“Everybody needs to step up [to solve the problem of ocean plastic], including business, and I see no reason why business shouldn’t be leading,” says Ellen Jackowski, global head of sustainability strategy and innovation for HP.

HP began working in Haiti in partnership with Thread, a company that works to turn plastic bottles into a material that brands like Timberland have used for making clothing and shoes. The process brings fairly paid jobs to the area and helps compensate for the lack of municipal recycling.

Other companies in the coalition have used plastic headed for the ocean, or plastic already in the ocean, in products from skateboards to carpet tiles. Humanscale recycled old fishing nets from the ocean into an office chair.

“The key is for us as a society to see plastic as value, not as waste. Today everybody sees it as waste. How do we drive enough demand that people see plastic as value and not something that you want to throw away?” says Jackowski. “Plastic’s a pretty amazing material. We’ve gotten a little carried away with it. So how do we put in the right processes in place in our society so that there’s enough value that we continue to reuse it rather than create more?”

The Ostrich Effect is a phenomenon psychologists refer to when describing the natural human aversion to bad news. We might put off a medical test because we fear the results. We turn off the news when the headlines upset us, even if the information could affect us.

For many of us who live in San Francisco, the ostrich effect entails turning a collective head not just at the latest dire predictions about earthquakes. We also tend to avoid bad news brought by the tech boom. On our way to our cubicles at Airbnb or Twitter, or to our fancy tennis club south of Market Street, many of us look straight through the city’s many homeless encampments with willed blindness.

So it was with some reluctance that I began to read Cary McClelland’s Silicon City: San Francisco in the Long Shadow of the Valley. Had I not been asked to review it, chances are slim that I’d have had the wherewithal to look up from my iPhone long enough to take in the title, much less the revealing stories therein.

McClelland, a filmmaker, writer, and lawyer, spent several years interviewing people in the San Francisco Bay Area. The 45 interviews that appear in the book–with venture capitalists, entrepreneurs, advocates for the homeless, even a pawnbroker and a tattoo artist–examine a number of questions, chief among them: Can a city lose its soul?

Indeed, the infusion of tech money throughout the Bay Area has transformed the city in dramatic and unsettling ways. San Francisco was once the embodiment of tolerance and free love, but its vibe now tilts toward churned-to-order ice cream and high-end bubble tea. The latest tech boom has displaced people and small businesses everywhere. In my own neighborhood, Noe Valley, where one-bedroom condos sell for $1 million, shopkeepers unable to keep up with rising rents are shutting down at an alarming rate. Service employees are moving to Nevada, Idaho, or anywhere even faintly more affordable.

The book is modeled after Studs Terkel’s 1974 Working, a landmark oral history in which people talked about their work and what made it meaningful, mundane, stressful, enervating, energizing. So indelible an impression did that book make when I first read it nearly 45 years ago that to this day I can recall the words of some of its most memorable interviewees.

My smug assessment before I had read McClelland’s first page: This doesn’t stand a chance of measuring up to the revelatory genius of letting people simply talk about their jobs and nothing else.

And in fact, one of the first interviews of the book, with Regis McKenna, the godfather of Silicon Valley public relations, seemed to bear out my skepticism. McClelland’s decision to give McKenna such prominent placement seemed a head scratcher, to put it mildly.

Perhaps the ultimate ostrich, McKenna counted the famously un-philanthropic Steve Jobs among his clients. (The last time I spoke with Jobs, whom I covered for Newsweek in the 1990s, he told me traffic was getting so bad he was thinking of buying a helicopter to commute from Apple headquarters in Cupertino to Point Richmond, where his Pixar Animation Studios then had its headquarters, thus eliminating the possibility of chance encounters with the Bay Area’s have-nots.)

Following McKenna’s pointless trip down memory lane, more tone deafness follows: a Google employee singing the praise of meritocracies; a cable salesman revealing that work in sales can be cutthroat; a dispute-resolution specialist informing us that rapid wealth can be “profoundly disorienting” for young people. Oy.

Even many of the voices from the other side of the cultural and economic divide seem incapable of any useful articulation of what is happening in San Francisco. A “cultural sexologist” says of the hipsters pushing expensive baby strollers in Hayes Valley (one of the trendiest corners of the city at the moment): “They are kind of libertarian dicks.” As her mother perhaps should have pointed out to her, such assessments are not helpful.

But as I rolled my eyes at what these people were saying, I had a thought: Perhaps McClelland intends to let them spear themselves with their own words. Maybe he’s actually building up to something.

Sure enough, by page 84 the book hits full Terkel stride. I can only liken my feeling when reaching this part of the book (which kicks off the section titled “The Balkanization of the Bay”) to living in a huge, rambling boardinghouse and having something terrible happen in a remote room. Wherever you happen to be, you feel its impact.

The voices are still mixed, but those struggling to navigate the fog of excess that now defines San Francisco finally begin to make themselves heard. It is on page 84 that we are introduced to Richard Walker, an economic geographer, who reports that a third of the workers in the Bay Area are not paid a living wage. “It is hard to regenerate your workforce… if young people cannot afford to put down roots,” he says. “We are destroying the basis of our prosperity. We are eating our children.”

“Many of us look straight through the city’s many homeless encampments with willed blindness.”

Whether you want to or not, once you hit the Walker interview you will sense the reverberations of a city in true existential crisis. And the boneheaded comments from earlier in the book make the latter part all the more powerful.

Silicon City should be San Francisco’s next big city-wide read. Short of that, it should be required reading for every employee of Twitter and Salesforce.com. Google and Facebook employees should climb aboard their comfy buses bound for Silicon Valley one fine sunny morning and find a copy on their seats. At the very least, McClelland should send a copy to each of the 11 members of the San Francisco Board of Supervisors.

This reader, for one, will not soon forget the words of Leon Fikiri, an Uber driver from the Democratic Republic of Congo: “Before we know it, we’re gonna be Congo here. Where no one has influence, no one seeks justice. I left that mentality and mindset only to find it here.”

Unwittingly, no doubt, Regis McKenna makes one of the book’s most profound observations. He is discussing technological tipping points, but could just as easily be talking about the social woes now tipping so much of the Bay Area into despair: “The only problem with the tipping point is you can only see it in the rearview mirror.”

Let this book be our mirror.

Katie Hafner is a journalist who writes about healthcare. She is the author of six works of nonfiction, most recently a memoir, Mother Daughter Me (Random House), and is at work on a novel. She can be reached on Twitter at @KatieHafner.  

This story originally appeared at Undark.

Criticism of Ryanair is growing after the airline failed to remove a passenger who launched into a racist tirade, an incident that was captured in a now-viral video.

According to a video captured by fellow passenger David Lawrence and shared on his Facebook page, a white man was heard saying he refused to sit next to an elderly black woman who was seated in an aisle seat, calling her names including “ugly black bastard” and “stupid ugly cow,” and threatening to push her to another seat before the flight took off.

That last bit is key. The ugly tirade took place while the plane was still on the ground, meaning the crew could’ve removed the man and let the poor woman fly in peace. However, they did not. In the video, the cabin crew can be heard saying, “Don’t be so rude, you have to calm down,” while other passengers tried to intervene and called for the man to be thrown off the flight. Instead, the woman was given another seat, and the man stayed aboard.

Some Members of Parliament are calling for a boycott of Ryanair “if they think it’s OK for a racist man to abuse an elderly black woman and remain on the plane,” and comparing the situation to Rosa Parks. Transport Secretary Chris Grayling demanded that the police act, and even Prime Minister Theresa May has waded into the issue.

However, Labour politician Karl Turner noted in a Twitter stream that, because the incident happened on Spanish soil–and Ryanair is an Irish company–British police may be powerless to act. While Turner said he plans to pursue the matter, the man may simply get away with it.

In the meantime, social media users tend to have their own ideas about these matters, and a large number of them calling on internet sleuths to “name and shame” the man in the video. Typically, that happens quickly–as it did in May after, a viral video surfaced of a New York lawyer berating food workers for speaking Spanish. In that case, the man’s identity was revealed in a matter of hours. So perhaps it’s only a matter of time.

.@Ryanair have failed spectacularly here. Suspect the pressure to turn this aircraft around quickly and get it airborne meant that they have allowed this alleged offender to remain on the aircraft. He may now get away with it. https://t.co/zEnCtCcz17

— Karl Turner MP (@KarlTurnerMP) October 21, 2018

I shall be writing to @Ryanair and the Aviation Minister Liz Sugg to ask what they’ve done about this. Clearly committed criminal offences. Racially Aggravated s.39 and or racially Aggravated s.5 Public Order. Needs to be charged and fast. https://t.co/yjJs8JdiCZ

— Karl Turner MP (@KarlTurnerMP) October 21, 2018

For its part, Ryanair is punting and saying it reported the matter to the police.

Statement: We are aware of this video and have reported this matter to Essex Police

— Ryanair (@Ryanair) October 21, 2018

Blame it on Snapchat. Back in 2013, the upstart social network debuted Stories–vertical, ephemeral slideshows made of a mix of pics and videos shot by users over the course of a day. Snapchat’s teen users loved the format, though the rest of the social media universe took little notice . . . at least, not at first.

But then Stories were copied by Facebook and introduced to a much wider audience on Instagram in 2016. Facebook itself, as well as its messaging platforms WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, rolled out Stories in 2017.

Now, a multitude of indicators point to a surprising conclusion: Stories are quietly eating the social world, fundamentally changing how we share and consume content on social media. For companies that rely on social media to reach their customers, this presents brand new opportunities—and some real challenges.

Stories represent yet another platform requiring attention–perhaps not welcome news for businesses already straining to manage content across multiple social channels. And while the old-fashioned newsfeed, a holdover from the desktop era, is well suited to short bursts of text or single images, Stories demand a mix of more time-intensive video, pics, and graphics.

But it’s difficult to ignore the power–and potential ROI–of the Stories format. According to the latest research, Stories are growing 15 times faster than newsfeeds. More than 1 billion users are already hooked on the format. In fact, Facebook’s own chief product officer, Chris Cox, has pretty much hitched the company wagon to Stories, noting, “The Stories format is on a path to surpass feeds as the primary way people share things with their friends sometime next year.”

In other words, embracing the Story format may no longer be an option for businesses, but a requirement. Indeed, it’s estimated that four of five major brands have already gotten onboard. Getting it right, however, isn’t easy.

Millennials and gen-Zers have grown up saturated with digital marketing and “content.” (Some 293,000 status updates are now posted on Facebook every minute.) They’ve learned to tune out banner ads and can smell a sales pitch a mile away. Companies hoping to reach them with Stories need to provide true value: to entertain, inform, or educate, not just sell. Far from a direct marketing or sales play, Stories are a branding opportunity, with little place for a heavy-handed call to action.

Here’s a quick survey of some effective early Stories adopters, revealing key principles that can help companies looking to ride the next social wave.

Invest in creativity

Stories work best when they integrate video, text, images, and more. Though they might look “off the cuff,” they often have higher production value and require greater technical expertise than a typical Tweet or Facebook post. As noted by TechCrunch‘s Josh Constine, “Advertisers must rethink their message not as a headline, body text, and link, but as a background, overlays, and a feeling that lingers even if viewers don’t click through.” Narrative and storytelling–those buzzwords of content marketing–are table stakes.

Juice brand Tropicana immediately recognized the potential of higher production-value Instagram Stories to boost awareness and sales among young adults. In an especially successful campaign, they combined mouthwatering pour shots of juice being mixed into festive drinks like Sangria. Hand-draw text and arrows offered mixing instructions, and users were invited to “Swipe Up” for the full recipe. The result: an 18-point lift in ad recall and measurable boost in purchase intent.

Use the multimedia format to show products in action

The traditional packshot–a sterile image of a product sealed tightly in its packaging–has little place in the realm of Stories. Successful brands are instead using the multimedia format to show how products fit into the context of customers’ lives. Tapping into influencers–users with loyal followings of their own–to create and share product Stories enables companies to extend their reach and access an already bought-in audience.

Case in point: Skincare company Dr. Brandt has used Instagram Stories to boost its following from 30,000 at the end of 2016 to more than 80,000 today. Its Stories integrate professional images and videos of its cosmetics products, like the popular “mattifying hydrator,” with before-and-after demonstrations and tutorials on how to apply the product. Shoppers can even swipe up when viewing a Story to initiate checkout. By enabling shopping functionality on their Instagram Stories, Dr. Brandt was able to achieve a 500% increase in direct sales.

Balance production value with authenticity

Users expect a certain degree of polish from brands, but too much editing can rob a Story of its authenticity (not to mention require an outlay of time and money hard to justify for content that often disappears). Finding this balance isn’t necessarily easy, and even some of the world’s leading media brands have had to experiment.

After tracking its Instagram performance, the Guardian made an interesting discovery: Highly scripted Stories were not providing the expected return on investment. In contrast, their more spontaneous, less polished Stories–like their “explainer” videos–performed much better. These low-fi Stories also feature young presenters and use more casual language (like emojis) that has resonated much better with their digital audience. On the strength of their Stories efforts, the Guardian grew their Instagram followers from 860,000 to 1 million in just four months.

Let users take center stage

Effective Stories capitalize on a fundamental attribute of many millennial and gen-Z users: The desire to share their own pics and videos and literally see themselves on screen, rather than just watch others. Brands finding success with Stories have found ways to elicit high-quality, user-generated content from fans, then incorporate that into their own efforts, streamlining production while at the same time cashing in on users’ “social capital” to enhance their own credibility.

Coworking company WeWork has built its brand on the idea of community, and their “behind-the-scenes” Instagram Story content exemplifies that. Whether it’s celebrating a book launch in London or Pride Month in Mexico City, their Stories feel raw and real because they feature the actual experiences of customers using their work spaces. WeWork also allows members to host Story takeovers to show a day-in-the-life at their offices. The ephemeral nature of Story content allows them to play around with quick, insider peeks into the company, while the “Highlight” feature allows them to permanently display high-performing Stories.

Though the format continues to evolve, Stories aren’t going away. The ability for users to “highlight” their Stories–and preserve them as long as they like–already hints at the evolution of the format into something more central and durable. Meanwhile, each passing month brings innovations that add versatility, from ever more sophisticated stickers and face filters to the integration of advanced AR functionality that lets users create their own interactive doodles. What’s increasingly clear is that for a new wave of digital natives, Stories are largely synonymous with social media itself, while the newsfeed–once Facebook’s defining innovation–may be receding in prominence.

Interior designer Ken Fulk is obsessed with animals. In his San Francisco home, an enormous taxidermied giraffe sits above the fireplace, its neck almost touching the 27-foot-tall ceiling above. The interiors that he’s designed for Silicon Valley’s tech giants often feature playful animalia. A house designed for Bebo’s founders has a winding staircase with a zebra-print carpet. At San Francisco’s The Cavalier restaurant, Fulk fills a bright blue wall with stag heads. “I remember visiting the Natural History Museum when I was a kid and wanting to move in,” he says. “My obsession with animals goes back decades. I always try to honor animals in my work.”

In a new collaboration with luxury home slipper startup Birdies, Fulk has done exactly that. The four pairs that he’s designed capture his whimsical and ebullient aesthetic in shoe form. One pair of slipper is made of emerald green satin and has a leopard on it. Another pair in a slide silhouette features a camo exterior with a golden retriever on it, a leather trim with gold studs, and an interior footbed made of bright fuchsia satin. A pair of mules features an equestrian design on a cream satin background, with a layer of fluffy faux fur. The shoes have the same kind of eclectic mix of patterns and exotic animal embroidery that Alessandro Michele has popularized with his recent collections for Gucci.

The founders of Birdies, Marisa Sharkey and Bianca Gates, launched their San Francisco-based company in 2015 with $2 million seed funding led by Kirsten Green’s Forerunner Ventures. Gates previously led retail partnerships at Facebook and Instagram, while Sharkey worked as a management consultant at Bain & Co before getting an MBA from Wharton.

Sharkey and Gates’s idea for Birdies was to create luxurious, comfortable slippers for wearing at home–but not just inside. The $140 shoes come with a rubber sole, so they can be worn outside, and interiors made of satin or faux fur, to keep your feet warm in the colder months. The Ken Fulk version comes at the slightly higher price point of $165. This might seem a little indulgent, when the average pair of household slippers costs $40 (though popular LL Bean moccasins can cost as much as $95). But the brand has been popular among young professionals, many of whom spend several days of the week working from home and want fashionable shoes to spice up long days in the home office.

This is the brand’s first collaboration, and it’s salient that they chose to partner with an interior designer rather than a fashion designer. While many fashion designers are interested in how shoes fit into a broader outfit, Fulk was interested both in the wearer, as well as the backdrop she would be wearing the slippers in. “I like to create very thorough narratives–or movies, as I like to call them–when I design anything,” he says. “With these shoes, I was thinking about the glorious home the woman would be wearing them in.”

This is also Fulk’s first fashion collaboration, but he doesn’t see it as a big leap from the rest of his design work. He leads a firm of about 50 creatives who design spaces–both commercial and residential–as well as events. He helped design Napster founder Sean Parker’s wedding in the woods of Big Sur and recently designed the interior for a coffee bar in Midtown, New York, called Felix Roasting Co. “I don’t really see myself narrowly limited by medium,” Fulk says. “When this collaboration came my way, the question wasn’t “why?” but “why not?””

Fulk says he’s enjoyed dipping his toe–so to speak–in the art of shoe design, and it’s whetted his appetite for more. “And I have always loved fashion, even as a child,” he says. “I was excited about the start of the school year because it meant getting a new wardrobe, and these days, I wear colorful shoes with my tuxedos all the time. I think fashion is a natural next step.”

The Trump administration is considering new policies that would legally define people’s genders to be either male or female as noted on their birth certificates, unless their DNA says otherwise, the New York Times reports. The proposed changes are part of a pattern of anti-transgender policies embraced by the administration, and are perhaps the harshest yet.

Here are some things to know about the Trump administration’s approach to transgender issues so far.

• The new policy is part of an effort by the Department of Health and Human Services to define “sex” as it’s used in anti-discrimination law. It would generally hold sex to be immutable and based on physical observations, and a birth certificate gender listing would be seen as proof of someone’s gender unless genetic testing showed a disparity.
• Trump has previously banned transgender people with a diagnosed history of gender dysphoria from serving in the military. The ban is formally stayed by the courts amid ongoing litigation, but would-be transgender recruits have said they’ve still had a hard time enlisting.
• The administration has also rolled back protections for transgender people elsewhere. Soon after Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos took office, they reversed an Obama-era policy protecting transgender students’ rights to use the bathrooms of their choice. The administration has also curbed other protections for transgender people in federal prisons.
• The changes are a sharp contrast from the Obama administration’s policies. “But no matter how isolated or scared you may feel today, the Department of Justice and the entire Obama Administration want you to know that we see you; we stand with you; and we will do everything we can to protect you going forward,” then Attorney General Loretta Lynch famously told transgender people in 2016, after the Justice Department sued to overturn North Carolina’s controversial bathroom restrictions. “Please know that history is on your side.”
• The changes also come as many local governments and federal courts have continued to expand protections for LGBT people. For instance, various jurisdictions have made it easier for people to retroactively change the gender listed on their birth certificates, with New York City recently adding a third option for people who don’t identify as male or female.
• After news of the proposed Trump policy emerged, protesters quickly took to the streets and social media (using the hashtag #WontBeErased) to condemn the plan. They say the changes would effectively erase the estimated 1.4 million transgender adults in the U.S. from federal law.

When the British street artist Banksy shredded his Girl with Balloon after it was purchased for $1.4 million at Sotheby’s, did he know how the art world would react?

Did he anticipate that the critics would claim that the work, in its partially shredded state, would climb in value to at least $2 million? That the purchaser would not object and would instead rejoice?

We have no way of really knowing, though the famously anonymous artist did suggest that the shredder malfunctioned: The painting was supposed to be fully shredded, not partially destroyed.

As an art historian, I view his act in a larger context–as the latest example of artists deploying guerrilla tactics to expose their disdain for the critics, dealers, gallery owners, and museum curators whom they depend on for their livelihood.

In shredding Girl with Balloon, Banksy seems to be pointing to a central absurdity of his graffiti art being treated as fine art. When it appears on city streets, anyone can vandalize it; now that the same images are in galleries and auction houses, they must be handled with white gloves.

But, as he may well know, the art market is far too wealthy and adaptable to be undone by a shredder.

In fact, we’ve seen the same pattern play out, time and again: An artist will launch a withering critique and instead of taking offense, the market simply tightens its embrace.

The many versions of subversion

Some of the most well-known of Banksy’s subversive artistic predecessors were part of the early-20th century Dada movement. One of their principal strategies involved denying the market of objects that could be commodified.

French-American artist Marcel Duchamp is perhaps the most well-known Dadaist. In 1917, his Fountain, a urinal laid on its back and remounted on a pedestal, was his first volley against the art market’s intellectual pretenses about art.

Duchamp wanted to force the art world to acknowledge that its judgments about quality were based on media hype and money rather than artistic innovation.

However, years later Duchamp admitted to the futility of his gesture.

“I threw . . . the urinal into their faces as a challenge,” he lamented, “and now they admire [it] for [its] aesthetic beauty.”

In 1920, Francis Picabia, a Cuban-French Dadaist would follow Duchamp’s lead and participate in a performance purposefully designed to provoke the French art world.

Before a Parisian audience gathered at the Palais des Fêtes, Picabia unveiled a chalk drawing entitled Riz au Nez (Rice on the Nose). The artist’s friend, André Breton, one of the hosts of the event, then erased the drawing. The artwork lasted for just a of couple hours and is now lost to history. The work’s title, it’s been noted, sounds too similar to “rire au nez” (“to laugh in one’s face”) to be coincidental.

In 1953, Robert Rauschenberg, who was then an up-and-coming American artist, plucked up the courage to ask Willem de Kooning, an established abstract expressionist, for one of his drawings. Rauschenberg didn’t tell de Kooning much–just that he intended to use it for an unusual project. Although de Kooning was disapproving, he acquiesced.

After securing his gift, Rauschenberg proceeded, over the period of a month, to carefully erase all traces of the expressive pencil, charcoal, and crayon drawing that de Kooning had put to paper.

Rauschenberg then retitled the work, now preserved in the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Art, Erased de Kooning Drawing.

Jean Tinguely’s auto-destructing work, Homage to New York (1960), is probably the closest parallel to Banksy’s stunt. Made of scrap found in New Jersey junkyards, the massive work–27 feet high and 23 feet in length–was supposed to be a mechanical display, sort of like a Rube Goldberg device.

The piece was set up the sculpture garden of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, and those attending the show included collectors Walter Arensberg and John D. Rockefeller III, and artists John Cage, Mark Rothko, and Robert Rauschenberg.

Tinguely briefly set the piece in motion–and then it burst into flames.

The Museum of Modern Art described the scene:

” . . . a meteorological trial balloon inflated and burst, colored smoke was discharged, paintings were made and destroyed, and bottles crashed to the ground. A player piano, metal drums, a radio broadcast, a recording of the artist explaining his work, and a competing shrill voice correcting him provided the cacophonic sound track to the machine’s self-destruction–until it was stopped short by the fire department.”

Apart from a fragment from Tinguely’s Homage preserved in the MoMA collection, all that remains of the work is some choppy film footage.

It’s difficult to imagine anyone surpassing Tinguely’s sound-and-light spectacle.

But in 2001, Michael Landy of the Young British Artists group orchestrated the most comprehensive “art as destruction” work to date.

Titled Break Down, Landy placed objects on a conveyor belt running into a machine that pulverized them. In the process, he destroyed all of his belongings–7,227 pieces in all–including his own paintings and the art of his Young British Artist peers.

Guerrillas in the midst

These acts of destruction are motivated by the same impulse.

In the late 19th century, art production largely became untethered from patronage offered by the church or the state, and artists turned to powerful art dealers for their livelihood.

But many found that the radical, critical aspect of the artistic act was severely compromised–or erased altogether–when the most well-known feature of a work became the dollar sign attached to it.

To many, the market symbolized nothing more than a void.

With the urban street as his studio and insurgency as part of his artistic mission, Banksy’s graffiti often critiques institutions, such as the art museum, and authority figures like the police and the Queen of England.

Though the market value of his work has soared in recent years, Banksy continues to paint images in public spaces that make preservation near impossible–and even invite theft or defacement.

Still, as guerrilla theater, Banksy’s recent act will be tough to beat. It’s certainly his most subversive and penetrating public foray into the elite art marketplace.

But even with all his critique, the question continues to nag: Is Banksy complicit with the art market? The very society he undermines, one that feeds on spectacle, has made him famous and his art immensely profitable.

In the wake of World War I, Dadaist artists made a practice of shocking their public audiences by wantonly destroying their own artistic creations. The public soon learned to cheer them on, and to detach themselves from the attack artists were actively waging on their sensibilities.

A century later, at Sotheby’s, the initial shock of a shredded Girl with Balloon dissipated quickly. The hype only grew. The market adapted.

Sotheby’s has since released a statement declaring that the piece–renamed Love Is in the Bin–is “the first artwork in history to have been created live during an auction.”

Preminda Jacob is an associate professor of art history and museum studies at University of Maryland, Baltimore County. This post originally appeared on The Conversation. 

Rachel Shechtman and Beth Comstock are unlikely confidantes. Shechtman reimagined retail with Story, a Manhattan boutique she founded that presents themed installations, or “stories,” many of which are sponsored by companies. Comstock ascended to the top of General Electric, becoming its first female vice chair and one of the most powerful leaders in business. Recently, the two experienced something of a role reversal. Comstock left GE during a management shake-up, while Shechtman went corporate: Earlier this year, she sold Story to Macy’s and became its brand experience officer. Here, the pair discuss the benefits (and risks) of corporate-entrepreneurial collaborations, and what they’ve learned from each other.

Shechtman and Comstock had known each other for years, but their friendship began in earnest in 2011 when GE agreed to sponsor a curated “experience” at Story.

Beth Comstock: Rachel is the most extroverted person you’ll ever meet. This is a person whose passion is to [make] cold calls.

Rachel Shechtman: I don’t use the word mentor, but I have lots of smart friends who give me advice. Beth and I went out to brunch and had a Bloody Mary, and the only time I’ve ever asked someone [for guidance was when] we were walking out of brunch and I was like, “Is it okay if sometimes I reach out to you to go for a walk? Because you have such a different perspective and experience than I do, and I really value your input.” I didn’t know that I’d be gaining a friend.

RS: That story, specifically, was one of the biggest “a-ha” moments in my career. Eighty percent of our space was interactive. There was a 3D printer and injection-molding machines. You had a 9-year-old seeing a 3D printer for the first time and hipsters etching MetroCard holders on the laser cutter. It was like, If there are all these online business models, why the hell are retailers still talking about sales per square foot? Why aren’t we looking at “experience per square foot”?

After 27 years at GE, Comstock retired at the end of 2017, along with several other high-profile executives. After leaving GE, she spent her time finishing Imagine It Forward, a book about managing change amid uncertainty.

BC: I didn’t realize how much work the book would be; I basically had to start a mini-company to help me get it together. It’s very lonely to be on your own. Recently, we were on a walk, and Rachel was like, “Now you know what I feel like! This is what an entrepreneur’s path is.”

RS: It might not feel natural or comfortable, but you have to talk about it because it’s just going to eat away at you, and that loneliness turns into resentment. Or I should say: It does for me.

RS: I can take things personally and get very emotional. Beth sometimes will be like, “It’s not personal,” or, “Don’t let yourself go there.” The other thing I’ve always appreciated is that when she was at GE, in whatever role she’s ever been in, she’d always take the meeting. That says a lot about who she is.

Comstock was one of Shechtman’s sounding boards when Macy’s, with 2017 net sales of nearly $25 billion, offered to buy Story (terms were not disclosed).

RS: I wasn’t going to scale Story without a partner, because operations ain’t our expertise. There’s no one who knows scale like Macy’s. Many [big] companies ask themselves, Buy versus build? The idea of the “acquihire” is something that’s been familiar to Silicon Valley for 20 years, and something I think you’ll see more and more of [in retail]. The job titles and infrastructure of the past 50 years will not be the job titles and the infrastructure of the next 50 years. But it’s hard. For most entrepreneurs, the last thing they want to do is go work for a big company, because the lifeblood will be sucked out of them.

Who’s your icon?

BC: [After the Macy’s deal,] Rachel Blumenthal [founder of the children’s clothing company Rockets of Awesome] hosted a party for Rachel, and [Macy’s CEO] Jeff Genrette was there, and I was like, “I hope you leave her alone.” Big companies either reject the Rachels of the world, because they’re fearful or threatened, or they love them to death. Hopefully they’ll just get out of the way and let Rachel figure it out. Give Rachel a scale person and let them go. I think if companies can do that, they’ll win.

When you’re preparing for a job interview, many things go through your mind. Most of them involve what you need to say and the questions you’ll need to answer. But don’t forget–there are also a handful of physical items you’ll want to bring along. Wondering what to bring to an interview? Use this as your checklist:

1. Directions and contact info

Odds are, you wouldn’t leave the house without it anyway, but make sure to bring your phone with you so you can enter the directions to your interview location, especially if you’ve never been there before. If you don’t have a smartphone capable of GPS navigation, print out directions. The worst thing you can do is get lost, which will make you late, which will likely prevent you from moving forward in the interview process. On your phone’s notepad app, or on the directions you’ve printed out, write out the name and contact information of your interviewer(s). This way, if something does go wrong on your way to the interview, you can let them know. This will also help ensure that you don’t forget your interviewer’s name–a major faux pas.

2. Identification

It’s not quite as common nowadays, but you never know if you’ll be asked for identification, so it’s worth bringing anyway. When in doubt, ask the person who set up your interview in advance–better safe than sorry!

3. Business card

As a job seeker, business cards are great for networking and interviewing. Your business card should include your name, job title, email, phone number and any other contact information you think is important. Give your card to your interviewer, or anyone else you talk to about the job.

4. Notepad and pen

You may be used to taking notes on your laptop or phone, but in interviews, it definitely looks better if you have paper and a pen handy to jot down notes like people to contact, addresses or anything else mentioned in the interview that you want to remember later. Being prepared with your own supplies to capture important information that your interviewer provides you with is a surefire way to make you look proactive and thoughtful.

5. Resume

Print out a few copies of the most updated version of your resume. You should also have extra copies in case you need to reference it during the interview–or if extra interviewers show up.

6. References

Bring an updated list of your references. Your interviewer may or may not ask for these, but again, it’s best to be over-prepared. The list should have at least three professional references, along with how they know you and how to contact them.

7. A Portfolio

Depending on the kind of job you’re after, it might be valuable to bring a portfolio of your past work. This can be a folder, binder or even a website shown on your tablet. Your portfolio should be organized in a way that makes it easy to reference during your interview. The contents of your portfolio will depend on your profession, but there should be quality examples of your work and accomplishments.

8. Questions

At the end of every interview, you will be asked if you have any questions. Have a list of questions ready to go so you’re prepared. These questions can be about the rest of the hiring process, company culture or anything else you’re interested in, but remember: You want to your questions to be specific and reflect the fact that you’ve done research, so your interviewer can see your true interest in the position.

When thinking about what to bring an interview, a lot of things come to mind, but the eight above are the most essential. While they might seem simple, it’s important not to forget them–they really might make a difference on the day of your interview.

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

Linus Torvalds is apparently back at the helm of the Linux operating system he created in the early 1990s, after taking roughly a month off after complaints about his brusque, often vulgar communications style.

“The fact that I then misread people and don’t realize (for years) how badly I’ve judged a situation and contributed to an unprofessional environment is not good,” he wrote in a public September 16 email to a Linux kernel developer list, just days before a New Yorkerarticle highlighted how his style turned away women from contributing to the popular operating system.

In announcing version 4.19 of the software on Monday, Linux temporary leader Greg Kroah-Hartman wrote“Linus, I’m handing the kernel tree back to you” and called for the Linux community to be both more welcoming and more united. He codenamed the version “People’s Front” in a reference to ineffectively divided activist groups in the satirical Monty Python movie Life of Brian.

“Don’t fall into the cycle of arguing about those ‘others’ in the ‘Judean People’s Front’ when we are the ‘We’re the People’s Front of Judea!'” he wrote. “That is the trap that countless communities have fallen into over the centuries.”

Also on Monday, Richard Stallman, head of the GNU Project that contributes free software widely used with Linux and other operating systems, announced a new set of Kind Communications Guidelines for the project.

Stallman emphasized that the policy isn’t a strict “code of conduct” and that he doesn’t see demographic diversity as a specific goal for the project. Rather, he wants to make sure that no demographic group feels unwelcome, meaning the project would lose out on contributors, he wrote.

A code of conduct states rules, with punishments for anyone that violates them. It is the heavy-handed way of teaching people to behave differently, and since it only comes into action when people do something against the rules, it doesn’t try to teach people to do better than what the rules require
[…]
The idea of the GNU Kind Communication Guidelines is to start guiding
people towards kinder communication at a point well before one would
even think of saying, “You are breaking the rules.” The way we do
this, rather than ordering people to be kind or else, is try to help
people learn to make their communication more kind.

The guidelines do seem to include some normative policies one might expect to find in a traditional code of conduct, like avoiding personal attacks, honoring people’s names and gender identities, avoiding statements about “presumed typical desires, capabilities or actions of some demographic group” and being kind to people who make technical mistakes.

Torvalds’s apparent speedy return and Stallman’s not-explicitly-pro-diversity not-quite-a-code-of-conduct seem to show the open source and free software movements are intent on taking their own approaches to diversity and gender relations. There’s no doubt this side of computing, which has historically been male and white and somewhat insular, is feeling the impact of external critiques. But so far, the projects have made relatively bland moves toward change that may not be enough to satisfy their critics or make would-be contributors who’ve felt excluded see themselves as welcome.

As foretold, scientists have discovered a “headless chicken monster” swimming in the icy waters of the Antarctic Ocean. The headless chicken-looking critter has a webbed veil for flapping, tentacles for crawling, and a transparent body that lets friends and foes alike take a gander at its internal organs. (Surely, it has a lovely personality, though.) Unsure what else to do in the face of such greatness, the Australian government wrote a press release.

The “monster” is technically a sea cucumber with the catchy scientific name of Enypniastes eximia, and while it has been spotted in the Gulf of Mexico in the past, this is the first time that the headless chicken monster has been spotted freaking out the penguin population in Antarctica.

The interspecies voyeurism comes courtesy of a new underwater camera system. It was developed for commercial long-line fishing in the hopes of maintaining sustainable fishing practices and is shared with the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). “Some of the footage we are getting back from the cameras is breathtaking,” said Dirk Welsford, Australian Antarctic Division Program Leader.

Due to his choice of adjective to describe the headless chicken monster, we can only assume it’s a reference to this equally breathtaking Seinfeld clip:

App makers have figured out how to determine who’s uninstalled their software and potentially target them with ads urging them to reinstall, Bloomberg reports.

A number of tracking-tech vendors offer uninstall tracking, which normally works using so-called silent push notifications. Those are designed to let apps refresh information without actually popping up a message, but by monitoring which previously installed app instances aren’t acknowledging those messages, companies can discern who’s taken the apps off their phones. Then, using the unique advertising IDs associated with each phone, they can target those users for messages urging them to reinstall.

The trackers might violate Apple and Google policies for iOS and Android, though Bloomberg reports neither company commented on the matter.

Either way, it seems to violate user expectations that apps will cease their tracking once they’re off the phone, even if the loophole does just deliver software companies one last piece of information.

Amazon Web Services CEO Andy Jassy has joined Apple CEO Tim Cook in calling on Bloomberg Businessweek to retract a disputed story claiming Chinese spies placed hidden chips built for espionage on server motherboards.

@tim_cook is right. Bloomberg story is wrong about Amazon, too. They offered no proof, story kept changing, and showed no interest in our answers unless we could validate their theories. Reporters got played or took liberties. Bloomberg should retract. https://t.co/RZzuUt9fBM

— Andy Jassy (@ajassy) October 22, 2018

Bloomberg Businessweek has stood by its original report, which alleged that hardware maker Supermicro hid chips on server motherboards designed to enable malware to be installed on the computers. According to the story, the spy chips were spotted by Apple and Amazon, yet both companies have strenuously insisted no such thing ever happened.

“At no time, past or present, have we ever found any issues relating to modified hardware or malicious chips in SuperMicro motherboards in any Elemental or Amazon systems,” AWS CISO Steve Schmidt said in a statement earlier this month. “Nor have we engaged in an investigation with the government.”

SoulCycle CEO Melanie Whelan, in conversation with master instructor Trammell Logan, said that the company will bring its cult fitness classes to London in 2019 as it eyes international expansion. SoulCycle will also increase its digital offerings for customers through its new media division.

Whelan made the comments at an event today as part of our Fast Company Innovation Festival in New York.

SoulCycle has classes in 15 markets, with 88 studios across the United States and Canada. Last year the brand expanded to offer classes beyond cycling at workout space SoulAnnex.