The six examples form the backbone of a report from the European Consumer Organization (BEUC) that alleges Google has broken the EU’s strict GDPR regulations by using “deceptive practices” to trick users into enabling its location tracking services. As BEUC wrote in a blog post:

Location data can reveal a lot about people, including religious beliefs (going to places of worship), political leanings (going to demonstrations), health conditions (regular hospital visits) and sexual orientation (visiting certain bars).

The report shows that Google uses various tricks and practices to ensure users enable these tracking features and does not give them straightforward information about what this effectively entails.

BEUC says these are the six main ways Google tricks its users:

1. Hidden default settings: When setting up a Google account, the actual account settings are hidden behind extra clicks. Users first have to click “More options” to see what the settings are, and whether they are enabled or disabled. Web & App Activity is enabled by default, meaning that users who did not click “More options” will not be aware that this data collection is happening.
2. Misleading and unbalanced information: Whenever the Location History and Web & App Activity settings are presented to the user, the clearly visible information is limited to a few positive examples of what the setting entails. The information that is visible often also trivializes the extent of tracking that is going on, and how it is used.
3. Deceptive click-flow: Although Location History has to be “actively” enabled, the set-up process and click-flow is presented and designed in a way that the user is compelled to enable the setting.
4. Repeated nudging: Users are repeatedly asked to turn on Location History, in many different contexts. On Android devices, users that do not wish to enable Location History have to decline the setting at least four times when using different services that are preinstalled on Android phones: in Google Assistant, Google Maps, Google app, and Google Photos.
5. Bundling of services and lack of granular choices: Throughout the Google ecosystem of services, separate services or functionalities are integrated and codependent, or simply bundled together. Enabling Location History is required in order to enable other services that users may want to use, such as Google Assistant and Google Photos Places.
6. Permissions and always-on settings: When enabled, Location History is always on in the background on Android devices, regardless of whether the user is actively using a service that requires location services.

BEUC’s complaints have been registered with national data protection authorities. If Google is found to have broken GDPR rules, it could be fined up to 4% of its global revenues, which would be over $4 billion according to its 2017 revenues.

This past January a woman was walking along a road in Tumwater, Washington, when a man pulled her into the woods and raped her. This rape might not have happened had police quickly processed evidence from the sexual assault exam–or “rape kit”–from another Tumwater rape the previous summer. But because it took nearly six months for experts to analyze and match the DNA, the suspect had the opportunity to attack again.

It’s not uncommon. In order to have the best possible chance at finding and prosecuting an attacker, victims must submit to an invasive exam as soon as possible, because the evidence quickly degrades. Many survivors say they hope the evidence will help prevent another sexual assault. But in reality, there is a significant backlog, and samples can sit untested for weeks, months, or even years. In the United States alone, an estimated 225,000 rape kits await analysis. And the backlog isn’t only unjust, it’s expensive: A 2018 study from researchers at Stanford University estimates the cost of each assault to both the victim and society at $435,419.

Advocates have long pressed to end this backlog. “It sounds ridiculous that we can send someone to the moon, but how long does it take to test a rape kit? Come on,” says Ilse Knecht, director of policy and advocacy at the Joyful Heart Foundation, a national nonprofit, founded by actress Mariska Hargitay, that focuses on sexual assault, domestic violence, and child abuse.

Such complaints are not new, but advances in forensic DNA technology and robotics suggest that the rape kit backlog may finally be improving. A technique optimized by criminalists at the Oakland Police Department in California, for example, makes it faster and easier to differentiate between the attacker’s and victim’s cells. And thanks, in part, to new robotic equipment, Ohio officials recently processed nearly 14,000 backlogged rape kits in seven years and identified more than 300 serial rapists.

The improved technology has arrived at a crucial time, as advocacy initiatives like Joyful Heart’s End the Backlog–which works to eliminate the U.S.’s backlog through research, awareness, and policy reform–are spurring legislative changes and pushing law enforcement to test old evidence. At the same time, the new tools are creating mountains of genetic information, and without people to enter all of that data into relevant databases, write reports, and search for perpetrators, more efficient processing may simply move the backlog downstream. Activists also argue that new processing techniques will do little to correct biases in which rape kits get speedy processing, and which don’t.

Still, the improvements have activists hopeful that the new technology will go a long way toward reversing longstanding injustices.

“It’s undeniable now that the right thing to do is to test rape kits,” Knecht says. “We are taking really dangerous people off the streets by doing so.”

In the 1970s, Chicago police sergeant Louis Vitullo and activist Marty Goddard developed the first rape kits. The kits have remained more or less the same since then: a box, vials, swabs, and bags. A medical professional swabs the skin, mouth, anus, and genitalia; scrapes under fingernails; collects clothing; and combs though hair, searching for anything that could point to the attacker. Then, the examiner packs up the evidence in a box to store at the hospital or send to a police station or a lab. There, a technician examines the evidence, which today includes extracting DNA to find genetic clues that may help law enforcement identify potential suspects.

Thanks to greater public awareness, legislation, and funding, there has been an uptick in research on rape kit technology. In the last eight years, scientific papers on rape kits have increased by roughly 60%, and the focus has shifted from protocols, policy, and consent, to methods for finding, purifying, and identifying DNA–especially DNA in sperm.

For rape kits, one of the most critical and time-intensive steps is separating DNA from the attacker and the victim. Because of this, scientists such as Helena Wong and Jennifer Mihalovich, both criminalists at the Oakland Police Department in California, often focus on developing methods that help automate this process without diminishing the accuracy of the results.

“You have epithelial cells — those are the cells that line the mouth, the vagina, and the rectum–and then you have sperm,” Mihalovich says. “And we know when we’re looking at that evidence that they’re going to be mixed together.”

To isolate the attacker’s contribution, analysts typically add enzymes to the mixture that break apart all but the sperm heads, which are protected by a robust cell wall. In the conventional process, the analyst separates these components with a centrifuge, which spins so fast that the liquid components press against the container wall and separate by size and density like a supercharged top-loading washing machine. The process takes several rounds, but even then, some non-sperm DNA gets left behind, muddying the results.

Instead of that time-consuming process, Wong and Mihalovich use an enzyme that can “chew up all of the epithelial cell DNA and not touch the sperm because they have that hardy cell wall,” Mihalovich says. Finally, when all the epithelial DNA is gone, the analysts add another chemical that breaks apart the sperm cell, so they can get at that prize sperm DNA.

This “selective degradation” process is well-suited for automation. “For our sexual assault cases, we can do up to 96 samples in eight hours,” Mihalovich says. Without the improvements, “We would need to have six scientists doing that manually.” Plus, while the robot is working, Wong says she is free to do other things.

So far, the method is working–t’s allowed the team to process 243 rape kits in less than a year, eliminating the lab’s rape kit backlog. The Oakland team says they have also been assisting other Bay Area labs in the technique, including those in Contra Costa and Alameda counties.

University of Connecticut genome scientist Bo Reese finds the work interesting and well done. “What’s nice is they centered it around the automated liquid handling robots,” she says, “all of which are small enough and cheap enough that most labs will have them.”

And analysts are finding other ways to streamline DNA analysis for rape kits. In a paper published in July in Forensic Science International Genetics, scientists at George Washington University describe an approach for confirming sperm in a sample with antibodies that seek out and attach to sperm cells. It requires only a tiny sample of evidence and no washes, purifications, or separations between steps, which means that, as with the Oakland team’s approach, it may be possible to combine it with robotics to analyze large batches at once.

It’s not just sperm that can out a sexual criminal. Criminalists can identify attackers with DNA left in the survivor’s saliva if tested early enough, and even imprints of skin. Automation technology is improving, too. Soon, Reese says some labs will be able to process as many as hundreds of thousands of samples at once.

These advances are crucial. In 2017, an independent research firm hired by the U.S. Department of Justice found that inefficient lab techniques were a key driver of the backlog. The report also confirms that prioritizing speedy rape kit processing is important to closing cases. Reese also sees them as an important step forward. “The technology advances, in my opinion, are wonderful.”

Still, activists argue that science alone can’t solve all the problems with rape kits. Rather, they argue, the backlog is a result of a complex interplay among technology, policy, history, and bias. In January, a study of rape kit processing in Detroit published by researchers at Michigan State University and Harder and Company Community Research found that while lack of resources contributed to the significant backlog, gender, race, and socioeconomic stereotypes were also strongly in play. Police were less likely to test kits of women with low social status because of the false assumption that they were less trustworthy as witnesses, the researchers found. Police also often assumed rape victims were involved in sex work, the researchers found, and tried to “‘nudge them’ out of the system and discourage them from continued pursuit of their report.”

In some cases, processing advances might just be creating a new backlog as the analysts who interpret the data get inundated with reports. “Imagine you’re at your desk,” Reese says, “and instead of getting one every couple of days, you now get 96 all at once.”

Employing people to analyze the reports also takes money, as does robotic lab equipment, tracking systems, and training for nurse examiners and forensic analysts. This fall, Louisiana State University won a $1.3 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to train 140 sexual assault nurses, putting the per-nurse cost at around $9,300. The automated machine that Wong and Mihalovich used for their sperm samples runs at least $65,000 for a new model. And although states can request federal grant money, some jurisdictions aren’t willing to take the time or make the investment.

According to End the Backlog, states like Nebraska, Wyoming, and South Carolina currently have no inventory of untested rape kits, no mandate or earmarked statewide funding to test them, and no way for victims to learn where their kit is in the process. In local reports, law enforcement officials in South Carolina and Nebraska cite uncooperative victims, known suspects, and guilty pleas as potential reasons not to process a rape kit, despite evidence that mandated testing has helped to solve cold cases. Without policy directives or funds to address the backlog, or even numbers on how many and how long unprocessed kits wait, analysts have limited ability to adopt more efficient technologies.

Despite these barriers, science and technology are helping motivated states including Oregon, Texas, and Hawaii make real progress. In the end, anything that helps analysts turn the kit into usable information is a win–particularly in cases like the assault in Tumwater, where a faster analysis could have prevented another attack.

“Each single one of these kits represents a survivor who has gone through a terrible experience,” Knecht says, “and then has done everything that society asked them to do.”

Jenny Morber works a freelance science journalist on an island near Seattle. Her work has appeared in Popular Science, Discover, Glamour, and National Geographic, among other publications.

This article was originally published on Undark. Read the original article.

Dawn Fichot, HSBC’s former global head of advertising, was always taken aback when fellow spinners at her local SoulCycle ignored the instructor’s advice to make time for a good post-cycle stretch. As the music softened, the athleisure-clad group would begin unclipping their shoes and grabbing their water bottles. Few abided in the communal calf movements.

Until one time, one instructor lost it.

“She started yelling at everybody in the class for not stretching, and I was like, she’s right! Why don’t they do this?” recalls Fichot. “By the time the 45-minute session was over, I walked out with a basic business model fully formed in my mind.”

Last year, Fichot partnered with chiropractor Keren Day to launch Racked, a mobile stretching concept that aims to finesse the often-ignored post-workout ritual. The New York-based group offers one-on-one deep stretching, in which a trainer manually pushes your limbs. These sessions can be customized for a wide range of specific needs, be it running, cycling, tennis, or just relaxation. Prices start at $40 for a 20-minute stretch.

“We do a lot of things to our body that are slightly unnatural, like sitting for 10 or 12 hours a day looking at screens, or carrying our phone around,” says Fichot. “This isn’t the way that our bodies are meant to be moving.”

Over 80% of Americans don’t get enough exercise, and likely don’t do enough stretching either, despite its ability to improve blood circulation, mobility, and flexibility. Those who do work out regularly need it: Repetitive motions can cause damage to the body. Even just 20 minutes of stretching a week can counteract damage and prevent potential injuries. Not to mention, “people say they sleep better, and it just feels great, too,” notes Fichot.

The rise of recovery

Racked is one of many new stretching studios sprouting across the country as recovery’s popularity widens. ClassPass named it the fastest-growing trend last year, reporting a 16% rise in restorative and recovery classes booked. The category is no longer restricted to professional athletes or physical therapy offices. Recovery has been reimagined as chic floatation tank studios,biohacking centers, and cryotherapy chambers. It’s received the boutique fitness makeover.

Lauren Shroyer, director of product development for the American Council on Exercise, sees the trend growing in a hyper-connected society. “Our minds are always on the go, increasing the amount of adrenaline in the body,” she tells Fast Company via email. “That cycle is exhausting. All recovery is a respite for the mind and the body, perhaps what people are looking for is a mental recovery as much as they are looking for muscle recovery.”

Related:This $1,495 connected mirror turns your bedroom into a boutique fitness studio

Amanda Freeman, founder of the popular boutique fitness chain SLT, saw the same thing Fichot did. Her clients consistently skipped the last few minutes of class devoted to gentle stretching, with some of her own instructors excusing clients before they even left.

“I was like, what? Everyone needs to stretch–it’s part of the class!” recalls Freeman.

“The big difference between the two is that being stretched out by someone else is an experience that people relish, whereas stretching yourself out is something people tend to avoid,” notes Freeman.

In May, the serial wellness entrepreneur opened New York’s Stretch*d studio in hopes of bridging the gap between exercise and self-care. Like Racked, it’s a one-on-one model in which instructors hold a client down, using a strap to lengthen limbs for more effective stretches. These are moves one cannot perform on their own.

Educating the public

Deep stretching by a professional, which differs from self-stretching or even yoga in its effectiveness, is not something most Americans have experienced. That makes it a somewhat difficult sell: It’s not a massage, but it’s also not fitness. It’s exercise-like, in that it’s good for you, but someone else is doing the work.

“When you experience it, you get it,” says Freeman.

In that sense, studios such as Stretch*d and Racked must first get people through the door. They, along with other newcomers, need to educate the public on the many uses and lasting effects of a deep stretch. In some ways, it’s reeducating people, as they’ve often been taught the practice is of little importance.

“It’s not like you open the door and people show up,” Fichot says. “There’s definitely education that has to happen and we have found that when people try it once, they come back. If people try it twice, they come back regularly. So, the proof is in the trial and the doing.”

That struggle for awareness is precisely what propelled Xponential Fitness–the fitness brand portfolio that includes Row House, CycleBar, and PureBarre–to invest in the three-year-old StretchLab. (The Irvine, California-based group is responsible for turning Club Pilates into the fastest-growing Pilates franchise, with plans to add 500 clubs this year to its already 300 existing locations.)

Categories like boxing are far more popular, though that’s exactly why Anthony Geisler, CEO of Xponential Fitness, avoids them. There’s more promise in less saturated markets.

Related:Getting back into yoga transformed how I think about habit changes

“I look for things that are not working,” says Geisler,“because that’s where the opportunity is.”

When Xponential Fitness first acquired what’s since been renamed StretchLab, it quickly refashioned the business model. To start, it added memberships in lieu of packages, and introduced group classes in addition to the one-on-one labor model. The staff workers were quickly renamed “flexologists.”

“We don’t want a spa-like serene, quiet feel . . . We also didn’t want a clinical feel,” explains DeFrancisco. “We also don’t want to be associated with physical therapy. This is stretching and that’s all we do is stretching.”

Stretch*d’s approach focuses on a stylish storefront and interesting menu items beyond stretching. (One treatment dubbed the “anti-aging stretch” encompasses LED-light facial toning to combat wrinkles and fine lines along with lower body exercises.)

“It’s a great way for us to build our business both in terms of client base and just bringing in revenue,” says Fichot.

StretchLab also invested in the pop-up model, bringing its services to boutique gyms, YMCAs, or companies where people sit too much. Xponential is taking an aggressive approach to expansion, with 150 nationwide locations slated to open by the end of 2019, in addition to on-site services.

“The thing I love about stretch is that it is literally complementary to everything,” says Geisler, noting its importance in nearly every fitness category. “It’s the only modality where nobody tells you it’s bad for you or you could do too much of it. It’s almost like vegetables–people don’t say, oh you’re consuming too much fresh food . . . With stretching, people feel like they did something good for themselves.”

British and Dutch authorities levied the fines on Uber for the way it handled a 2016 cyberattack that allowed hackers to access the full names, email addresses, and phone numbers of 2.7 million U.K. users and 174,000 users in the Netherlands, reports CNBC. That 2016 data breach saw 57 million users and drivers worldwide have their data stolen. Oh, and Uber paid the hackers $100,000 to delete the data and conceal the hack.

While British and Dutch authorities said that while Uber failed “to protect customers’ personal information during a cyberattack,” their main complaint leading to the fines was that Uber hid the attack from the public for more than a year, not admitting to it until November 2017.

This past September Uber agreed to pay a $148 million fine in the U.S. for the same breach. As for the British and Dutch fines Uber must now pay–well, the company dodged a bullet. Because the cyberattack occurred in 2016, Europe’s GDPR rules were not in place yet. Had they been, Uber would have been liable for fines totaling 4% of its global revenue.

The company has announced that this Cyber Monday was its biggest shopping day ever–but as is usual with Amazon, it didn’t break out total sales figures for the day. However, the company did reveal some numbers for the Black Friday and Cyber Monday shopping holidays, including:

• Amazon customers ordered more than 18 million toys and more than 13 million fashion items worldwide on the two days.
• Customers ordered more than 4 million toys and electronics on the mobile app on Black Friday.
• Sales by small- and medium-sized businesses worldwide grew more than 20% on Black Friday year-over-year.
• Christmas lights were a best seller on Prime Now.
• The best-selling products at Amazon’s retail stores, including Amazon 4-star and Amazon Books, included the all-new Echo Dot, Becoming by Michelle Obama, the Amazon Smart Plug, and the L.O.L. Surprise Series toys.
• The best-selling products across Amazon.com on Cyber Monday included the all-new Echo Dot, AncestryDNA: Genetic Testing Ethnicity, Bose QuietComfort 25 Acoustic Noise Canceling Headphones for Apple devices, Becoming by Michelle Obama, Jenga, and Instant Pot DUO60 6 Quart.

And when you take into account what Amazon called the “Turkey 5”–the five shopping days that begin on Thanksgiving and end on Cyber Monday, Amazon said it sold more than 180 million items worldwide.

Editor’s Note: This story is part of our feature, “Secrets of 13 of the most productive people.” See the complete 2018 list here.

I have a list of priorities that I make for myself. Every day when I get to the office, I write down the top three or four things that I have to really focus on. This way, I know what I want to achieve that day.

I work a lot through email and text. I make it my goal to review what has come in and separate those that I can answer. I also always say to my team: “Please don’t write me a novel, I won’t read it.” I just don’t have the time. Instead, write in the subject line what it is that this is about. And tell me up front–is a decision needed, or do you need me to look at something, or is it a “When you have time, take a look at this”?–so I can prioritize effectively and be responsive when I need to be.

But the best tool for productivity is to have the best talent. You’re never really doing it yourself.

Time she gets up

5 a.m.

First thing she does in the morning

“Coffee and water, and I’ll take a quick look at my emails. Then Jill, my spouse, and I feed the dog, the cat, the guinea pigs. We’ve got the animal kingdom.”

Place she can be most productive

“Airplanes. Nobody’s talking to you, and you’re not expected at a meeting.”

Skill she’s still working on

“Being a better listener. I come from a family of seven other children–I was the middle child. If you wanted to not eat a gizzard or neck for dinner, you best be heard right away. Now, I have to be mindful about telling myself to listen more. Because–and especially when you step into bigger roles–if you say something too quickly and don’t listen, it shuts down conversation.”

Last thing she does at night

“I try to [turn off] all the technology and grab a magazine, or something, to read.”

Time she goes to bed

Between 10 and 10:30 p.m.

Editor’s Note: This story is part of our feature, “Secrets of 13 of the most productive people.” See the complete 2018 list here.

I oversee all the legal work and manage our team of attorneys, legal assistants, and administrative staff in Fort Worth, Texas. That involves figuring out how many cases we can take, [devising] legal strategies, and managing attorneys and project managers in our [five] other offices. I have my own caseload as well, about 30 cases that I’m actively working on, and about 60 that are pending.

I go to the detention center about every other week. It’s sensory overload. Heavy, locked doors are constantly being opened and shut, making loud, banging sounds, so it’s hard to hear my client speak. The guards walk up and down the hall with their walkie-talkies, and we can constantly hear their communication with the other guards. It is very distracting. The meeting rooms are barren and drab, with fluorescent lighting. It’s not conducive to people opening up and telling me about the worst moments of their lives. It is a dehumanizing and draining experience.

I’ve learned to just allow myself to feel sad and then move forward. After I experience sadness over having lost a case or some awful new policy, like separating children from their parents, I try to find an outlet–either exercise or talking with coworkers. Humor helps.

I also make sure to have regularly scheduled self-care days in our office where we do something fun and take a break from the serious nature of our work. I think it helps prevent burnout.

Time she gets up

6:30 a.m.

First thing she does in the morning

“I listen to the news while I get ready for work.”

Productivity philosophy

“Know your limits. In every line of work, there’s pressure to take on more. That’s especially true in nonprofit because there’s always somebody who needs help, and we want to help. But I know that if I take on too many cases or too many commitments, it’s going to stress me out. I would be doing a disservice to the cases I already have. And I let my staff know that: If they can’t do something, they don’t have to feel bad about that.”

What she does with 15 minutes of free time

“What I’ve really enjoyed this past year is an online space where a group of other attorneys commiserate or share funny stories. I like to scan through that forum and see what other people are experiencing right now.”

Best habit

“Going to the gym. When I’m tired, I know I still need to do it because it’ll keep me healthy and burn off some stress.”

Nightly routine

“The end of the day is when I like to look at social media. I think there’s some study that says you’re not supposed to, but I sleep just fine.”

Time she goes to bed

“A little past 11.”

Under Executive Director Rashad Robinson, Color of Change has become a leading civil rights organization by leveraging the internet to pursue racial and social justice. His organization campaigned to get The O’Reilly Factor canceled in 2017 by rallying employees of Fox and the show’s advertisers to take a stand against on social media. Last summer, it used online petitions to push companies like MasterCard, PayPal, and American Express to stop processing payments connected to hate groups. More recently, it mobilized black voters to turn out for Democratic district attorneys in the midterm elections.

Here, Robinson reveals his tips and tools for getting the most out of every day.

What’s your On Switch?

On my best days, I start with exercise, which gets me going and helps me think through the day ahead, including how I am going to approach each part of it. I often start by thinking about what I’m going to wear. It’s another way of plotting my course through the day, mentally dressing myself for each part: What I need to do, who I need to be, how I can achieve what I need to achieve.

My days require constant engagement with a wide range of people, in-person and across several digital channels, and this moment alone helps me establish a quick, controllable win for myself. It offers a clear beginning, middle, and end that sets my pattern and energy for the day, when I will face so many variables I cannot control.

It really is like training, starting with the simplest actions, the fundamentals, to prepare oneself for the unexpected conditions that will require more complex and intuitive improvisation. Sometimes training for complex performances comes down to grounding oneself in the most basic, simple, contained practices of mind, body, and spirit.

What’s your Off Switch?

On big work days, I’ll look at poll information and other research; process the news cycle from the day and figure out what that means for potential opportunities the next day; and review metrics from our campaigns (like action and engagement rates) and so on. I love to process lots of different information, fitting different pieces into the larger puzzle of strategy I’m working on across different projects.

But on other days, I like to just catch up with the culture, especially TV, which is another way to understand a big part of the world that people are living inside in: [I’ll watch] Queen Sugar and Love Is..., both on OWN and led by Black women creative powerhouses; and Billions, High Maintenance, and Atlanta, to name a few.

What books are on your nightstand?

No Ashes in the Fire: Coming of Age Black & Free in America, by Darnell Moore. [Moore] came of age as a gay, Black man in Camden, New Jersey, when that was supposed to mean that he wasn’t going to build a life of freedom or self-realization or value. But [he found] a way to create a new character in the story of Camden and beyond, and a new role in society that made him more and more relevant and influential.

When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir, by Patrisse Cullors. The title alone says so much about what you’ll find in the book: someone daring enough to name the terms of struggle for her freedom, namely, the very unresolved question in this country about who is the real threat and who is the real future. Patrisse is a friend and collaborator whose work opens up so many opportunities for all of us.

The Barefoot Contessa, by Ina Garten. She’s someone I’m a little bit obsessed with, get lots of ideas from, and would love to be able to cook with some day. I grew up on eastern Long Island, very aware of the fresh seafood and produce that came through our area. That, and my mom’s garden, influenced my whole sense of what I could make and eat, and also always reminded me to keep food simple, even as it became a passion for me.

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration, by Isabel Wilkerson. A breakout and definitive history of the multi-decade migration of Black people from the American South to the American North, this is one of my very favorite books. I can see my family’s own story so clearly in it: The migration of each of my parent’s families in the 1920s and 30s from the farms of southern Virginia to the farms of eastern Long Island.

A.L.T.: A Memoir, by Andre Leon Talley. I loved looking at this book again, following the documentary dedicated to him that came out this year. The interplay between fashion, character, and race is a constant stimulus for me.

Dear America, Notes of an Undocumented Citizen, by Jose Antonio Vargas. He is a friend and collaborator whom I admire for helping to usher an entire segment of Americans–a whole American identity–into the light. He is also bravely tying very difficult aspects of his own personal story to that larger story, for the very first time, which is inspiring to see in print and is a story that is un-ignorable.

Is there a service or tool you can’t live without?

Video conferencing. In a world in which I’m so often not in the room with the people I am working with most closely, seeing people’s faces and their reactions–and having people see mine–makes such a big difference.

What do you do with the time when you have a free…

Five minutes: Check the news for cultural (rather than political) developments.
Hour: Find out what then people I love are doing: friends, family, movement collaborators.
Day: Sleep some, then cook.

Too many hats from Goorin Bros and Tito’s on the rocks with lemon.

Which app do you look at…

Once a day: Yelp and my music app.
Once an hour: My news app.
Far too often: Twitter.

Sporting a pair of black Jordan 11 Cap and Gowns that look like they were just unboxed and a dark baseball cap that casts a slight shadow over his baby-cheeked face, Delane Parnell fields questions from the audience at this September’s TechCrunch Disrupt, the annual San Francisco assembly that has become a startup kingmaker of sorts. He shares the stage with Jason Citron, founder and CEO of Discord, a messaging app for video gamers with more than 150 million users, and—after a $50 million fundraising round in April—a valuation of $1.65 billion. Parnell’s PlayVS (pronounced play versus), an e-sports platform for high schools, has yet to even launch. But the 26-year-old Detroit native exudes confidence. “Investors are starting to realize that gaming is the next social paradigm,” says Parnell, answering a question about e-sports’ mainstream popularity. “And they want a piece of it.”

You don’t have to look far for evidence of gaming’s influence. It’s all over YouTube and Twitch in how-to videos and live-streamed sessions of FIFA 19 and Assassin’s Creed. A robust ecosystem of e-sports competitions is rising as well, with game publishers, entertainment companies, and even colleges and universities creating leagues and events for pro gamers and amateurs alike. The largest tournaments, for titles such as Dota 2 and Call of Duty, can fill stadiums and dangle purses of millions of dollars. According to research firm NewZoo, revenue from e-sports-related media, sponsorships, merchandise, tickets, and publisher fees is expected to nearly double from 2014 to reach $1 billion this year. Goldman Sachs projects e-sports viewership to reach 300 million by 2022, putting it on par with the NFL.

For all the organizations rushing into e-sports, a hole remains: high school competitions that engage the estimated 75% of American teens who already play video games. Parnell is filling that void with PlayVS, which lets schools create leagues and host virtual and live competitions. Though he’s diving into an industry full of well-funded sharks, including Amazon (Twitch’s parent company) and Discord, Parnell has an edge. In January, PlayVS signed an exclusive, five-year e-sports partnership with the National Federation of State High School Associations (NFHS), the organization that oversees varsity sports and activities at nearly 19,500 public and private high schools across the country. The first test season of a PlayVS-powered competition, for the popular multiplayer game League of Legends, commenced this October at high schools across five states, and the company is gearing up for its official inaugural season in February.

Parnell is now on a roll. Last week, just five months after PlayVS closed its $15.5 million Series A, the company announced a $30.5 million round from investors that include Adidas, Samsung, Sean “Diddy” Combs, and the VC arm of the Los Angeles Dodgers. “I don’t care if you’re gaming on your phone, on a console, or through a cloud service,” Parnell says. “Gaming in high school, even if it’s tic-tac-toe, will run through us.”

If he succeeds, he could effectively control a pipeline that would feed into the burgeoning pro leagues. It took the NBA two decades after its first draft to start recruiting players from high schools, but e-sports leagues are already tapping young talent. A 13-year-old recently signed with a European pro Fortnite team. Given the venture capital and startups flooding into e-sports today, Parnell could create another, equally valuable conduit: one that enables high schoolers—particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds—to parlay their interest in gaming into lucrative tech jobs. All he has to do is convince schools that e-sports deserves to be taken as seriously as football and basketball.

In a consumer tech world dominated by Amazonian giants, e-sports (for now) is a relative land of opportunity: a place where someone with hustle and perhaps an atypical skill set can still plant a flag. Growing up, Parnell embraced video games as a welcome distraction. He was raised by a family friend in Detroit’s troubled Jeffries Projects until his mother was able to move with him to a better part of town. Not long afterward, Parnell came home to an FBI raid that ended with his stepfather going to jail for several years. “For not snitching,” Parnell says. “I think [my childhood] really fueled my hustle,” he adds. “Entrepreneurs love to joke about eating ramen. I don’t eat fuckin’ ramen today—and don’t plan to ever again.”

As an associate at a cell-phone store during high school, he ginned up business by offering free cases and ringtones to classmates. By the time he turned 16, he was part owner of the store and several others. Parnell’s next act was starting a car-rental chain with a friend who owned a collision shop. (Parnell made it a hit by renting rides to teens during prom season.) He tried college, hated it, and turned to tech. He launched a startup event series, with speakers such as Alexis Ohanian and Mitch Kapor, and later took a job at an internet provider called Rocket Fiber.

Parnell’s interest in e-sports was piqued when tournament organizers began reaching out to Rocket Fiber for help in getting faster connections. In 2015, he created his own professional Call of Duty team. He sold the team a year later and began looking for his next venture. That’s when, at a party during his first South by Southwest, in 2017, Parnell was introduced to investor Peter Pham, who was jigging by himself on the dance floor. “Within a few minutes, it was very clear that [Parnell] understood what was happening in [e-sports],” says Pham, whose Santa Monica, California–based incubator, Science, has nurtured Dollar Shave Club and DogVacay. Pham urged Parnell to focus on the high school market and invited him to move to Santa Monica and work with Science. Pham also provided the brand-name legitimacy that locked in the NFHS deal.

The world of opportunity for e-sports players

Today, PlayVS is powering up for its first full season, which will run from February through May in high schools across 12 states (and counting). It’s the only time in the NFHS’s 100-year existence that it has completely handed over the operation of a sport to another organization. In addition to receiving fees of about $64 per student, per season, from participating schools, PlayVS has the right to operate all online and real-world e-sports competitions and partner with game publishers to bring their titles into high schools. To reassure educators, Parnell is choosing his first titles carefully: League of Legends, a multiplayer game that encourages teamwork and strategy; Rocket League, which combines soccer and driving, and SMITE, which incorporates classic Greek mythology.

Some critics recoil at the idea of school-sanctioned e-sports. “We wouldn’t bring gambling into high schools, because we know it wouldn’t be good for kids,” says Hilarie Cash, cofounder and chief clinical officer of the Restart Life clinic, outside of Seattle, which treats addiction to video games and other digital technologies. But Mark Koski, CEO of NFHS Network, the organization’s video platform, sees e-sports as a way to engage disenfranchised teens: “We want students who are currently not in athletic activities to be involved in the school community.”

Parnell has an even bigger vision. “This is the most accessible, affordable, and inclusive sport at the high school level,” he says. “If we grow, the e-sports [industry] grows.” He aims to build the same kind of recruiting and scholarship infrastructure around gaming that exists for other sports. Tobias Sherman, a former global head of e-sports talent at WME/IMG (now Endeavor) who founded the gaming studio Foundry IV earlier this year, shares this perspective: “As an agent, [I was] always looking for anything that supports the ecosystem and allows players to reach their full potential.” He sees PlayVS as an opportunity not only to develop new athletes, but also to help parents and teachers “understand there’s a pathway to a career.”

It’s not just fame and prize money at stake. With some of the biggest brands in the world acting as funders, sponsors, and headhunters, e-sports can get young people interested in (and scouted for) careers in gaming and tech. Pro gamer Lester Chen, for example, is now a global head of emerging gaming partnerships at YouTube. The e-sports job board Hitmarker posted nearly 2,500 openings in the space for the first half of 2018. Gaming can help “students think more critically from an engineering and design perspective,” says Len Annetta, a professor at East Carolina University who researches gaming. “A lot of kids who aren’t succeeding in school play video games. They have an interest in learning what’s under the hood.”

Parnell knows as well as anyone how a future career can present itself in untraditional ways. “It’s like having somebody open the door for you, and you gotta find your seat,” he says. “I didn’t just find a seat, though. I took it.” For now, it seems that the schools most in need of those opened doors will have to wait. The PlayVS platform requires equipment specs (strong Wi-Fi, CPU power, and PCs with high-quality graphics cards) that can be prohibitively expensive. Parnell acknowledges that some schools have been benched because they can’t afford the technology—a missed opportunity given the dearth of black and brown players in e-sports.

The plan, Parnell says, is to get video-game publishers and other brand partners to help refurbish computer labs and cover participation costs. “We’re focusing on narrowing that wealth gap,” he says. There may be another young CEO-in-the-making who’s depending on it.

How mainstream organizations are pushing into gaming

1. MLS: In January, Major League Soccer announced a partnership with EA Sports, which makes the FIFA 19 video game, to create an eMLS league. It will pit the best players from the U.S. and Canada against each other to determine who will represent the league in the FIFA eWorld Cup. The tournament’s sponsors include AT&T and Wells Fargo.

2. NBA: The NBA 2K League, a partnership between the NBA and game publisher Take-Two Interactive, tipped off its inaugural season this past May with 17 teams (each owned by real-world NBA franchises) competing for the $1 million prize. Games were live-streamed on Twitch, and sponsors included Dell and Intel.

3. NFL and NHL owners: Pro sports team owners, including Robert Kraft (New England Patriots), Stan and Josh Kroenke (Los Angeles Rams), and Jeff Wilpon (New York Mets) each paid $20 million to buy a franchise of the year-old Overwatch League, overseen by gaming giant Activision Blizzard.

4. U.S. colleges and universities: Since forming in 2016, the National Association of Collegiate Esports (NACE) counts more than 80 educational institutions as members, and awards more than $9 million in annual scholarships. Today, some 1,500 student athletes compete on varsity e-sports teams.

5. TBS: Two years after TBS launched its ELeague tournament and broadcasting operation, the network now airs a one-hour show on Friday nights with teams playing CS:GO, Overwatch, and Rocket League. Advertisers include Arby’s and Credit Karma.

6. United Talent Agency: After acquiring e-sports talent firm Press X Agency and gaming management agency Everyday Influencers in June, UTA is now the only company to represent both e-sports athletes and gaming publishers.

Artificial intelligence is the most ubiquitous innovation you never see. It quietly powers automatic translation and closed captioning, automated media manipulation, search results, social media filtering, medical diagnosis, shipping logistics, and targeted advertising. There is likely no aspect of human industry and society that AI will not eventually touch–for better or for worse. Consumers, however, have few ways to understand when and how AI is being used, and to judge for themselves if they see it as a benefit or not. It’s simply not a recognizable element of a brand.

If AI is to become a meaningful facet of society, identifiable and understandable by consumers, its value must be articulated. And for that to happen, designers of AI-driven experiences must make the invisible visible; they have to give AI a good, old-fashioned brand identity.

The case for branding AI

A skeptic might wonder why AI needs branding in the first place. If it’s meant to silently toil away in the background of our lives, why does it need to announce itself? Why give consumers yet another thing to think about?

But brand-building has always been key to making impersonal industrial processes, technologies, and corporate organizations relevant and relatable to people–especially in cases where there’s little functional difference between one corporation’s products and services and its competition’s. Brands are the human face of an industry and the primary mechanism businesses use to make unique, differentiated promises to their customers.

Every successful brand articulates itself to people both through familiar visual branding assets–a logo, typeface, color palette, and so on–but also by crafting distinct experiences that make products and services tangible. The cushioning of shoes, the sound of a car engine, and the closing of its door, the color of a pill’s coating, the login mechanisms of a phone, the hidden chipset in a computer, the coating and insulation of a jacket, and the alert sounds of a digital device can all be meaningful (and trademark-able) elements of a brand experience.

Invisible by design

The key obstacle that AI faces, from a branding perspective, is that it has been engineered to be invisible. AI is often deployed as a way to eliminate friction and to reduce people’s awareness of technology. Unlike other familiar brand elements–color, typography, logos, texture, sound, tone of voice, photography style–AI is often seen as being most successful when it’s completely invisible.

Consider the role that AI plays in creating shopping or content recommendations within products and services today as opposed to, for instance, a sommelier at a Michelin-starred restaurant: a sommelier’s job is to converse, inspire, and educate; diners’ experience with their sommelier’s unique human intelligence is everything artificial intelligence isn’t: It’s highly visible, opinionated, and slows down a process rather than speeds it up. In contrast, Netflix’s celebrated, AI-based recommendation engine–which Netflix has estimated being worth $1 billion to its business–succeeds entirely by virtue of its invisibility and the way it reduces rather than amplifies interaction: if the very first thing you see on the Netflix home screen is exactly what you want to watch, Netflix’s AI has done its job.

In this case, AI has succeeded in Netflix’s goal of directing people toward relevant content, which is the only real reason why people pay for their service in the first place. Despite its UI being an indispensable part of the product, nobody in all likelihood buys a Netflix subscription because they enjoy hanging out in the UI, flipping through box art without ever watching anything. Netflix’s AI is valuable because it’s invisible; if it somehow interrupted you–remember Microsoft Word’s Clippy?–you would get annoyed and perhaps consider joining another streaming service.

When invisibility is a liability

However, it’s a mistake to think that all applications of AI should aim for Netflix’s model of invisibility. The way AI shapes people’s experience of Netflix is surprisingly atypical: Invisibility works for Netflix primarily because the vast majority of time enjoyed with the service is spent watching long-form content during which the AI-supported interface is completely irrelevant. While AI is an indispensable part of Netflix’s service, it is not fundamental to the most important part of the experience: watching TV and movies.

Contrast that to YouTube, which has an AI-based algorithm that may guide people to two-dozen or more pieces of content. In a fundamental way, YouTube’s AI is its experience. And because the content can be anything–unlike a TV network such as HBO with stringent editorial controls, for which the quality and tenor of their programming is a fundamental part of their brand–YouTube’s AI is its brand.

YouTube has come under significant criticism for the way the invisible hand of its recommendation algorithm can amplify hate and ignorance–watch a single white supremacist, anti-vaccine, or chemtrail conspiracy video and you get sent down a rabbit-hole of racist or baseless anti-science propaganda, all on auto-play. YouTube’s AI-based algorithm amplifies the message of whatever you watch. The dangers for young people, for whom YouTube is an indispensable educational tool, are especially acute. Is this the experience that YouTube, which in its brand mission claims that its goal is to “give everyone a voice and show them the world,” wants people to associate with its brand? Does “everyone” really mean Nazis, too?

In this context, you can see how the invisible aspect of YouTube’s AI is more of a liability than an asset. The same could be true for many other companies. Unless they make AI’s positive potential part of their brand strategy, they risk being associated with the alienating risks of AI.

Looking ahead

So how should companies brand AI? For some companies, it could mean embodying AI-generated experiences in unique personalities (think: more C-3PO or R2-D2 than HAL). For others, it might mean actively marking AI-enhanced experiences as such so that a consumer understands their behavior and benefit–and can take manual control when she doesn’t like what she sees. For still other companies, perhaps branding is a matter of empowering people to be active participants in the machine learning used to train AI systems. Imagine a service that lets consumers retrain an AI-based system when they get undesirable results.

Branding AI is a formidable design challenge, and there is no one-size-fits-all solution; as YouTube and Nextflix demonstrate, companies use AI in myriad different ways. But given the newness of AI, and the extent to which it is poised to reshape society, design-led companies should consider its branding among their top priorities.

Jason Brush is global executive vice president of experiences and innovation at Possible.

After seven years of development, seven months in space, and “seven minutes of terror” plunging through the Martian atmosphere at up to 13,000 mph and 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, InSight touched the surface at a gentle 5 mph at 2:52:59 p.m. ET.

Within minutes, her first image appeared: a dirt-spattered fish-eye view of Mars.

“To be in the room when the data stops, to know how quiet it gets, and then once it comes back—the elation!” gushed NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine in the post-landing briefing. International Space Station astronaut Alexander Gerst weighed in: “I got goosebumps watching the coverage!”

“Nice and dirty!” laughed InSight principal investigator Bruce Banerdt about the photo after garnering effusive applause. Since the mid-’80s—including some half dozen failed proposals—Banerdt has been trying to get the first seismometer on Mars since the 1976 Viking lander. “This is a longtime dream come true for me.”

Watch a recap of the landing:

Watch (and click around) a 360-degree video of the landing:

The eighth successful Mars landing, InSight will remain on the flat Elysium Planitia expanse gathering data during the next two years that will reveal Mars’s internal structure and clues to the beginnings of all rocky planets, including Earth. The earliest data should arrive in spring.

“Those answers are in the details of the structure formed very early in the planet’s history,” Banerdt told reporters at a pre-landing session last week. “On Mars, that structure has been preserved for the last 4.5 billion years; on Earth, it’s been scrambled up by plate tectonics and mantle convection, wiping away evidence of those earliest processes. So we’re going to Mars to study those early processes to help us understand how Earth got to where we are today.”

The first mission to study the deep interior of Mars, InSight—or, Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport—will monitor the planet’s seismic activity, rotational wobble, and underground temperatures to determine the size, thickness, and density of its mantle, core, and crust, as well as current geothermal activity and number of meteorites. The lander will also have the first continuous weather monitoring on Mars, offering daily readings of temperature (now a balmy 93ºF), wind, and barometric pressure.

InSight has two cameras: one, a fish-eye lens offering 120- to 130-degree views that took the first shot; the other, a normal lens mounted on the seven-foot robotic arm. The latter will take 56 images that, when composited, will give scientists a 3D image of where the lander, seismometer, and heat flow sensor are, in space, from each other. The 3D imagery will assist in creating a digital elevation map and help with instrument placement—a task, that JPL science system engineer Elizabeth Barrett likens to “playing a claw game at a carnival, with blindfolds, on another planet.”

NASA will make raw images and seismic data available to the public and NASA’s Seismology in Schools program. “This science is for everyone,” said Banerdt.

“It’s the start now of answering a whole set of questions,” NASA’s chief scientist Jim Green tells Fast Company. “The more we understand about Mars, the more we’ll understand about how terrestrial planets evolve. It might help us interpret exoplanets and whether they’re habitable. If humans are going to live and work on Mars, they’re not going to want to build habitats that marsquakes are going to knock down. We don’t do Star Trek; we don’t go where no human has gone before. We need to know as much as we can before we send humans.”

See my feature on InSight for a more in-depth explanation of this science.

The world has a tiny window of time to change course to avoid the worst-case scenario of climate change in the future–from global food shortages and catastrophic fires and floods to mass deaths from extreme temperatures. The good news: We have the technology we need to tackle the problem. The next step is to roll out the right policy to implement that technology. A new book, Designing Climate Solutions: A Policy Guide for Low-Carbon Energy, explains how to do it.

“It’s all solvable if you do the right thing, and do it promptly,” says author Hal Harvey, CEO of the energy and environmental policy firm Energy Innovation. He created the book for policymakers after seeing a need for a good guide about how to create targeted, well-designed climate policy. “It’s such a huge part of many of our issues, and yet, we sort of stumble around with this idea and that idea without systematically collecting data on what works and compiling that into a clear strategy.” Here are a few key points from the book.

Target The Biggest Emitters

A small group of countries–led by China, the U.S., India, and Indonesia–emit 75% of global emissions. Because of their outsize impact, these countries are the key places to focus new climate policy. The 20 largest emitters all made pledges under the Paris climate agreement, though all of the top emitters need stronger policy (and the U.S., of course, plans to pull out of the agreement, making state and local policy even more important).

Target The Important Areas First

Within each country, policy needs to target six key areas. “We’re all about triage: Do the important things first and do them hard,” says Harvey. Building codes and other policy can make buildings more efficient. Renewable electricity has already fallen in price so much that it is growing quickly, but policies like renewable portfolio standards, which set targets for utilities to procure a certain amount of clean energy, can push faster adoption.

Policy can also drive down emissions in industry–in industrial agriculture, for example, governments can incentivize farmers to use anaerobic digesters to turn cow manure into electricity instead of emitting methane, a potent greenhouse gas. In transportation, policy can support charging stations for electric cars, force automakers to design more efficient cars, and make neighborhoods more walkable and bikeable. In countries where changing land use is a major source of emissions (such as Brazil, where deforestation in the Amazon is on the rise), policy can protect forests. A price on carbon can help cut emissions across sectors. Support for R&D can also help technology continue to improve and drop in price.

Make Smart Policy

Some economists suggest that a carbon tax that forces polluters to pay for their emissions, or a cap-and-trade policy, is a panacea. But carbon pricing alone isn’t enough. In parts of the market that aren’t sensitive to price, a carbon tax won’t help–for example, when tenants pay the electric bill in a building, landlords don’t have an incentive to buy the most efficient appliances for those apartments. The book carefully lays out a mix of the best policies that are designed to reinforce each other. To improve something like air conditioners, we need standards for appliances that call for a certain level of efficiency.

Policy also needs to be designed well. Good policy, the book explains, uses several principles. One example is the idea of built-in continuous improvement. Without it, a policy can eventually flop. The fuel economy standards introduced in the U.S. in 1970s had a target of 27.5 miles per gallon by 1985. After 1985, the standard didn’t rise again until 2011. “The consequence of that is we sent over a trillion dollars to countries that hate us,” says Harvey. “If Gerald Ford had used continuous improvement–one of our core principles–saying we’re going to increase fuel efficiency by 4% a year instead of setting an end date, we would have saved all that money, and prevented all that carbon dioxide, and that national security problem.”

The price of a clean energy future is about the same as a carbon-intensive future, Harvey says, even without counting environmental benefits. The book also details the cost-effectiveness of the key policies it recommends. Many ultimately save money–fuel economy standards for cars, for example, save consumers money at gas pumps. Cities that are designed for walking and biking and have good public transit save money by cutting traffic and pollution and health costs. The challenge of addressing climate change “isn’t technical, nor even economic but rather is a matter of enacting the right policies and ensuring they are properly designed and enforced,” Harvey writes.

How does one convey the importance of distancing newborns from electronic hazards in a way that captures an audience’s attention?

How about with a well-dressed cardinal dubbed Bird Ben Franklin? In a recent Instagram and Twitter post by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), the imaginary bird implores the public: “Have courage and keep cords three feet away from newborns.”

It makes no sense, but visually, it’s hilarious. Bird Benjamin Franklin looks quite serious about his call to action, top hat and all. It’s exactly this type of absurdist humor that’s made a social media star of the government agency.

In other posts, a Godzilla-like hamburger threatens to destroy a city in what is a less-than-subtle way to urge caution while preparing and grilling the national favorite. In another, a child is seen flying a giant book as a gang of pink backpacks gain traction. “Faster, Balthazar, they’re gaining on us!” says the child. That one is meant to draw attention to the 7,800 related ER visits by kids with spinal injuries and falls caused by overloaded backpacks.

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Keep baby monitor cords, window blind cords, and any other type of cord at least 3ft away from your baby. ???? ???? ???? #cpscsafety #newmom #newdad #momlife #momsofinstagram #dadsofinstagram #dadlife #toddlersofinstagram #toddlerlife #howtomom #howtodad #babysafety #BabySafetyMonth #babysofinstagram #birds #birdsofinstagram #mommyandme

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“One of the best ways to rise above the noise to really reach people and educate consumers about product hazards is to keep things a little bit fun and unexpected,” explains CPSC social media editor Joseph Galbo. “How can we make this memorable? How can we take something that you’ve maybe taken for granted over the course of your life and make it interesting so that it’s relevant to you again?”

Of course, considering the issues often surround life and death, the challenge is to keep the messaging entertaining without downplaying the seriousness involved. Topics span a wide range of categories, including tip-overs of furniture, pool safety, the Tide pod challenge, even proper avocado slicing. So, while some posts might feature a cat in a wig or a shark jumping out of a laptop screen (to demonstrate safe online shopping), others are rather straightforward.

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Keep swinging. ???? ???? ???? #cpscsafety #seniorcitizensday #newmom #newdad #mommylife #momsofinstagram #newparent #toddlermom #toddlerlife #toddlersofinstagram #toddlerdad #parenting #parenthood #parentlife #mommyandme #dadsofinstagram #howtodad #dadtobe #momtobe #grandma #grandpa #grandmother #grandfather #family

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The CPSC is a relatively small government government agency, with roughly 500 employees spread across the country and a total budget of $125 million. In the last year, the agency covered more 15,000 different kinds of products.

The CPSC’s communications team, meanwhile, is only 10-people strong. Together, they sift through all the data captured by the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System, which is used to calculate how many people are being injured by specific kinds of products across the country.

Essentially, together with the greater CPSC team, the communications specialists pinpoint trends and develop messaging around it, often in real time.

“So. when a safety message starts, it’s coming right out of what we’re seeing happen to real people coast to coast,” says Galbo.

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Make sure backpacks aren't too heavy. Make sure kids keep them in a place where they won't trip over them. ???? ???? ???? #cpscsafety #newmom #newdad #mommylife #momsofinstagram #newparent #toddlermom #toddlerlife #toddlersofinstagram #toddlerdad #parenting #parenthood #parentlife #mommyandme #dadsofinstagram #howtodad #dadtobe #momtobe #bookbag #backtoschool

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In addition, the team creates a calendar for events that routinely spike injuries during certain times of the year. For example, kitchen fires during the holidays. For that, Galbo crafted what he describes as a “grandma empowerment post.”

It’s an image of a grandma cooking over a stove, accompanied by the text: “Amateur hour is over. This is Thanksgiving…. We don’t have time for lumpy gravy and light seasoning. This is grandma’s kitchen for the next 12 hours. No amateurs. NO UNATTENDED COOKING.”

Sometimes, the group goes for more esoteric–perhaps click-bait-ish–methods. At one point, the CPSC tweeted out the word “horses” and just left it there for a few hours. Eventually, it followed up with a thread about fire safety, specifically the importance of changing your smoke alarm batteries. The following graphic read: “Horses need you. We all need you. Put a fresh battery in your smoke alarm, you beautiful people.” That one received nearly 1,500 likes.

“Each graphic has its own concept behind it,” says Galbo.

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Gifts should let people know you love them, so they should always be safe. ???? ???? ❤️ #cpscsafety #newmom #newdad #momlife #momsofinstagram #dadsofinstagram #dadlife #toddlersofinstagram #toddlerlife #howtomom #howtodad #mommyandme #fatherhood #parenthood #parenting #shoppingonline #shopping #gift #christmas #hanukkah #sharks

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The Consumer Product Safety Commission doesn’t have a massive following: Its Twitter has a bit north of 50,000. But its reach, by way of its humorous strategy, has been impressive. The agency had an internal goal of reaching 300,000 social engagements across all of our social media websites in the last year. It garnered 800,000.

“We should try to run a social media strategy that works,” stresses Galbo. “And what’s encouraging is that doing the posting in a really entertaining fashion is definitely working well.”

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THIS IS THE BIG ONE ???? ???? ???? #cpscsafety #newmom #newdad #momlife #momsofinstagram #dadsofinstagram #dadlife #toddlersofinstagram #toddlerlife #howtomom #howtodad #mommyandme #mommyhood #fatherhood #parenthood #parenting #cooking #Thanksgiving #fire #FireSafety #grandma

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In the summer of 2010,  Alex Matisse–great grandson of the French modernist painter Henri Matisse–began laying bricks for a kiln in a farmyard on the foothills of North Carolina’s Blue Ridge Mountains.

These days, you can easily purchase an electric kiln that will turn your soft clay into pottery in a matter of hours. But Alex, then in his early twenties, was more interested in making pots the rustic, pre-industrial way. With the help of Connie–his then-girlfriend and now wife–he built an enclosed brick chamber that would allow you to fire clay up to temperatures of more than 1,000°F continuously for three days. “This is, as far as we know, how the earliest people created their clay pots,” Alex says. “Every culture has a version of fired pottery. I love that it is one of the most universal art forms.”

The boy who loved pottery

Alex was in a fourth-grade art class when he first fell in love with pottery. Even as a child, he loved the idea that he could make something with his hands that was both beautiful and usable.

Growing up in central Massachusetts, he was embracing a craft with rich local roots. Throughout the United States in the 1800s, hundreds of pottery studios and small factories sprang up, with potters handcrafting pieces that were both decorative and functional. Over time, pottery communities began to form in Massachusetts, Ohio, and North Carolina, where clay was abundant. But the vast majority of these potteries were forced to close when commercial kilns became widely available in the early 1900s. As with many other American industries, free trade agreements of the ’90s drove manufacturing to countries where labor was cheaper. As a result, today, most Americans eat food on generic-looking plates, mass-produced in places like China, Mexico, or Tunisia. Very few American potteries make ceramics at scale. There’s Los Angeles-based Bauer Pottery, founded in 1885, known for its pastel hues and ring patterns; West Virginia-based Fiesta, founded in 1936, famous for its bright Art Deco aesthetic; and Bay Area-based Heath Ceramics, founded in 1948, which produces earthy, minimal dinnerware used in restaurants like Chez Panisse and Park.

At 18, Alex moved to North Carolina, which has been home to a thriving pottery community since the 1950s. There, he apprenticed with a well-known potter named Mark Hewitt. While his friends were in college, Alex spent his days cleaning kiln shelves, mixing glazes, preparing their clay, and making the same pot over and over again until it was perfect.

Alex developed his own distinct style, which featured simple silhouettes, distinct rims, and geometric patterns on the glazes. He was inspired by slave pottery, rooted in the Carolinas, and particularly the work of Dave Drake, who was owned by a family that had a pottery business. Drake would engrave his name, and occasionally poetry, on his pots, which are now featured in museums across the country. Alex was also drawn to the Japanese folk art and British Studio Pottery tradition that influenced many North Carolina potters.

It took weeks of labor for Alex and Connie to build their own kiln. But the backbreaking work of laying bricks was a form of escape for Alex. In some ways, her was running away from a lifetime of carrying a heavy weight on his shoulders: Growing up as a Matisse comes with sometimes unreasonable expectations. “If you have any sort of creative inclination at all, your art will immediately be compared to Henri’s,” he says. “But how can anyone live up to the work of Henri Matisse?”

In 2011, Alex and Connie Matisse officially founded East Fork Pottery, named for the street their farm was on. (In 2013, they brought on their friend John, who had also apprenticed with a North Carolina potter, and now serves as CFO.) Unlike many potters, who often name their companies after themselves–Heath Ceramics is named for founder Edith Heath while Bauer Pottery is named for founder Andreas Bauer–Alex didn’t want the name Matisse connected to his business.

“I wanted to build something that was my own,” says Alex, who has taken on the role of East Fork’s CEO. “I wanted people to consider the pottery on its own terms.”

From art studio to Instagram bait

Alex, Connie, and John have transformed that small pottery studio into a thriving business with a cult following on the internet. They are inspired by fast-growing, millennial-oriented startup success stories, like Away, Allbirds, and Casper. They’ve also noticed a wave of new digitally native home brands, like Year&Day, Snowe, Great Jones, and Material Kitchen. East Fork clearly considers itself part of this wave, especially when it comes to branding. These days, when East Fork announces that it is launching a new color glaze for its vases, mugs, and plates, hundreds of people put themselves on the waitlist. Then, pieces sell out within hours of going live.

East Fork hit its stride three years ago, when the founders bought their first gas kiln to supplement the handmade brick kiln. John and Alex have focused on designing the visual identity for the pottery: They’ve developed a line of modern, minimalist ceramic tableware and vases that use North Carolina clay. Each piece is unique and speckled with little dots from the iron in the clay that becomes visible in the firing process. The pieces blend together rustic, handmade charm with a kind of industrial-chic look that appeals to many different aesthetic sensibilities.

Connie, East Fork’s creative director, has poured herself into creating a digitally native brand that will appeal to younger consumers who may not otherwise be drawn to pottery. The brand’s voice is funny and irreverent. The website is full of relatable photographs. A bowl is stacked with ice cream. Connie holds a side plate with a donut on it, while simultaneously breastfeeding her baby. Another image features the Matisses’ two toddlers eating pasta.  “We want to be approachable,” she says. “We want to challenge people’s ideas about pottery as old-fashioned or granola, but we also don’t take ourselves too seriously.”

The direct-to-consumer model works particularly well for this kind of labor-intensive business. By cutting out the middleman markups that come with selling products at boutiques and department stores, East Fork is able to sell pottery at prices that are affordable. Bowls begin at $20, and mugs cost $36. It’s more expensive than a dinner set you would buy at Ikea or Target, but it’s not so outrageous you would be ashamed to put it on your wedding registry.

Today, the company has grown from the three founders to a team of 40, dozens of whom are involved with the actual crafting and manufacturing of the products. To date, East Fork has raised $2.6M in funding from angel investors, and is on track to be profitable by 2020. At the current pace, the founders expect to grow revenue by 300% over the next two years, and have a staff of nearly 100 in the next five.

To prepare for this growth, East Fork has moved into a new factory, which used to be a plumbing supply manufacturer. As you enter the newly remodeled building, you first see East Fork’s offices, which are reminiscent of the headquarters of many other hip, digitally native startups, like Everlane and Allbirds. The walls are lined with exposed brick, natural light fills the room, and there is a lot of open white space. The unadorned walls have the cold mystique of an art gallery. “I sometimes feel like we live halfway between two worlds,” Connie says. “We have one foot in the world of Warby Parker, and the other foot in the world of Asheville’s artist community.”

Made in America

In the light-filled factory, expertly trained potters stamp East Fork’s logo into soft clay that will become cups, bowls, and candle holders. It’s delicate, technical work that requires expertise. I watch Jessie Reinerth make plaster molds that give the final ceramics a consistent shape and size. She shapes the plaster with her hands, using her fingers to form a rim. “Much of the process is still done by hand, which isn’t true of most direct-to-consumer startups on the internet,” Alex says. “But we think that this handcrafting and attention to detail is what our customers are looking for, so we’re not about to take any shortcuts.”

East Fork is not entirely alone. Over the past few years, a couple of new startups committed to bringing manufacturing to the United States have cropped up. The founders of these companies each have their own reasons for making products locally.

Bayard Winthrop founded American Giant in 2011 because he wanted to make the best-quality, durable clothing, and he believed the only place to do that was here in the United States. He works with several American factories and makes many products using American-grown cotton. Yael Aflalo launched Reformation in 2009, so that she could bring the latest styles to consumers as quickly as possible, while still remaining ethical. The company has recently opened a large, eco-friendly factory in downtown L.A. And State Optical‘s founders had a somewhat patriotic mission: They saw that so much eyewear manufacturing had been taken overseas to low-quality factories, and wanted to revive the craft here in the United States, so they opened their own factory in Chicago, and train craftspeople to carve and polish acetate.

East Fork’s founders have many reasons for making the products in North Carolina. Part of it is about investing in the local community: Alex has made this region his home for more than a decade, and wants to see it thrive. Part of it has to do with wanting to make sure that the products are well-crafted, and this is easier to do when the founders can walk a few feet from their desks to see how the glazes are looking today.

Perhaps the most crucial reason to make the ceramics in the United States is to continue an American craft pottery tradition that is rooted here in North Carolina. East Fork’s collection of products is designed to be sleek and modern–to appeal to young consumers who are buying houses and starting families. But whether those customers know it or not, the pieces are tied to very specific cultural lineage.

You can see glimpses of the thick rims and glazing that Dave Drake incorporated into his pots. East Fork’s mugs and plates carry a philosophy of creating beauty in the simple, ordinary objects used every day, inspired by Shōji Hamada, who founded the Japanese folk art movement. And like the work of the well-known British potters Bernard Leach and Michael Cardew, who believed in using clay close to where the pots are made, East Fork sources its materials from the earth close to where the factory sits. East Fork is giving new life to these ideas.

A few weeks ago, East Fork took apart that brick kiln that Connie and Alex build with their own hands. They didn’t need it anymore, since they moved into their new factory. Connie observes that Alex spends less time making pots these days, although he still loves the craft. He’s evolved into the role of a business leader, and she thinks it suits him. “I think he’s been searching for his own creative identity,” she says. “And as a CEO, he’s found it. There’s a lot of creative energy that goes into running a company.”

I have three kids who are all in their twenties. I remember fondly when they were in their teens, though, and each of them at different points would say, “Why don’t you treat me like an adult?” My response to them was that no adult ever needs to be asked to be treated like an adult. They command that respect by virtue of who they are.

The same thing holds true for being taken seriously at work.

Early in your career, early in your tenure with a new organization, or early in your interactions with a new customer or client, you may feel like you have difficulty being taken seriously. Start by looking a bit at your own behavior to figure out whether you are doing anything that prevents people from engaging with your contributions the way you want.

Are you listening?

No matter how good your ideas are, nobody will pay attention to them if you cannot present them in a way that is on-point to the people you talk to. That means you need to provide a bridge between the knowledge and concerns of others and the idea you are presenting.

The only way to determine what other people know and what they care about is to listen to them. Ask a lot of questions. Listen to the language they use to discuss key issues. Listen for the pauses in what they say to get a sense of whether there are things people are uncomfortable discussing.

Then, mirror the language other people are using as you introduce your ideas. Go out of your way to help people see how the proposals you want to make connect with what they care about. And if you can’t find any bridge between what other people care about and your ideas, then you may need to wait for another time to lay out your plans.

Are you taking complexity seriously?

Another problem that can arise early on is that you may treat the problems people are grappling with too abstractly. When you first enter an organization or an engagement with a client, it is often easy to see things that are going wrong. It may seem obvious initially what the problems are and how to fix them.

Often, though, the systems that an organization has put in place reflect the need to make trade-offs among competing goals. These compromises may not allow the organization to do something optimally, but they may reflect a very good balance that resolves a number of conflicts.

Before throwing out suggestions for how to improve something, it is important to understand why things are done the way they are. If you make suggestions that don’t take the complexity of an issue into consideration, other people will assume you don’t really understand the problem (which is true). As a result, they will start to discount other things you say as well.

When you feel you have a good grasp on a situation, you can present your suggestions in a way that acknowledges the trade-offs that have to be made. Present your ideas in a way that helps people to see how they resolve conflicts in a different way that you believe to be better.

Do you follow through?

The best way to be taken seriously in any organization is to develop a reputation as someone who gets things done. That means that when you talk with people about plans for the future, you should take the lead on ensuring that the ideas move forward. Follow up with people to make sure that everyone knows their responsibilities. If you promised to do something by a particular time, then do it.

You don’t really need to broadcast your accomplishments. If you do what you say you are going to do, it will get noticed. Then, when you say something, people listen. They know that your words are followed by actions.

That also gains you allies around your organization. Much of what gets you taken seriously involves conversations that other people have outside of your presence in which you get mentioned. That reputation creates an orientation in other people where they already intend to take you seriously from the moment you engage with them.

It takes time to develop that reputation. You have to keep doing your work and doing it well. When you do that, though, you will find that it has been a while since you were concerned that people weren’t taking you seriously.

The more than 1,000 members of the Mongols biker gang broadcast their membership on vests, T-shirts, bikes, and their skin using a logo: a cartoonish image of a burly man who resembles Genghis Khan grasping a saber in one hand while steering his motorcycle with the other.

Federal prosecutors, who have shown that the gang is linked to a number of crimes, have been trying to strip the club and its members of their right to use the logo for more than a decade. According to a story published in The New York Times, that fight continues in a Los Angeles county racketeering trial, where prosecutors are trying to use a law that allows them to seize goods that were used in criminal activity. They’re arguing that the trademark to the Mongols’ logo is a “good” that should be confiscated because gang members have committed crimes under its banner and used it to intimidate people.

“The government will show that the marks served as unifying symbols of an enterprise dedicated to intimidating and terrorizing everyone who is not a member and assaulting and killing those who have sworn their loyalty to other outlaw motorcycle gangs,” reads one court filing.

It’s a fascinating attempt to fight crime by diluting the brand of the alleged criminal enterprise. If the Mongols were to stop wearing their patch, as it’s also known, their power theoretically wouldn’t be as strong because they wouldn’t be easily identifiable, making it harder to intimidate their enemies. The Times reports that prosecutors also tried this tactic in a Michigan trial against six members of the Devils Disciples gang, but then dropped the bid for the trademark when they realized that none of the defendants owned it. Other biker groups have vigorously defended their logos in court against companies that used them without authorization, like Alexander McQueen, Amazon, and Disney. But this unusual legal strategy tries to use the power of gangs’ symbols against them.

So what happens if the government is granted ownership of the trademark? Prosecutors seem to think that the police will be able to simply take Mongols’ jackets away from them. But according to Sarah Burstein, an associate professor of law at the University of Oklahoma College of Law, it may not be that simple. “In theory, a court could cancel [a trademark’s] federal registration,” she tells Fast Company via email. “But under U.S. law, trademarks arise from use in commerce. I don’t know how you can really seize a common-law right.” In other words, trademarks only really apply when people are using them to make money–which isn’t the case here. 

The government began trying to take the Mongols’ patch back in 2008. Over time, different judges have ruled differently on whether it was legal to seize the trademark or not. Each time, the Mongols fought back, arguing that it is their first amendment right to wear the logo, and that because it’s the property of the organization, the government can’t seize the trademark.

The court is still out on which way the judge will rule. But it could set a precedent for whether the law considers logos an accessory to crime.

Magnums of wine and champagne are basically the Super Big Gulps of the alcohol world, and Big Beer wants in on the fun. For those who haven’t had a magnum of wine or champagne plonk down on a dinner table, sending seismic reverberations through the wood, it’s a 1.5-liter bottle–double the size of a standard 750 ml wine bottle.

The SevenFifty Daily wine and beer trade news site notes that the magnum trend has been growing among craft brewers for a while now, due to the “showstopping package” and “better carbonation levels.” Since craft brewers are the cool kids of the beer scene, it was really only a matter of time until the corporate bigwigs shilling their mass-produced giggle water caught wind of the idea and started to do it themselves.

British supermarket chain Waitrose offered a magnum-sized beer for sale in 2017 with the bottles emblazoned with the har-dee-har phrase, “Just the one beer tonight.” Then, for the holiday season Miller High Life, which has long claimed itself to be the Champagne of Beers, glommed on to the trend. It makes some sense too since champagne comes in magnums so why not the Champagne of Beers, too?

Now comes news that Heineken is selling magnums, as well. The bottles look like champagne bottles; they’re topped with a cork that will pop out of the bottle, fizz like champagne, and then disappoint everyone by not actually being champagne. That’s 8 pounds of disappointment and as The Sun points out, costs more than buying a few smaller bottles of Heineken (those, too, would be without that undercurrent of hostility from hosts who thought you brought the good stuff to their shindig).

Sure it’s a growing trend and might be good for a laugh, but why risk disappointing party hosts when you could show up with a magnum-sized bottle of Hidden Ranch Dressing and make everyone happy?

Where you see just another Starbucks cup, Soo Min Kim sees a 3D canvas.

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<We will rock you!????????> Instalive 2018.11.03 . 이번 인스타라이브는 깔끔하게 50분만에 완성???? 퀸 좋아하시는 분들은 내일 당장 <보헤미안 랩소디> 보러가기!! 라이브 함께해주신 분들 오늘도 감사!!???? . 今回のインスタライブは余裕に50分で完成しました。いつもちょっとしたクイズ形式でやっておりますが、答えを当てて下さる方々、そしてライブに参加して下さる方々にいつも感謝です‼︎???? . #soominkim #fseo #cupart #papercup #art #illustration #starbucks #starbuckscupart #queen #bohemianrhapsody #wewillrockyou #freddiemercury #rock #movie #김수민 #컵아트 #일러스트 #스타벅스 #영화 #퀸 #보헤미안랩소디 #프레디머큐리 #キムスミン #スタバ #紙コップアート #イラスト #クィーン #ボヘミアンラプソディー #フレディーマーキュリー #映画

A post shared by Soo Min Kim / 김수민 / 金秀敏 (@fseo) on Nov 3, 2018 at 8:12am PDT

The Korean artist has turned his Instagram account (@fseo) into a gallery of characters and eye-popping cutouts, all based on the iconic Starbucks siren. Kim’s creations on the platform date back to 2012, and his latest feature Freddie Mercury and Hayao Miyazaki characters. The French newspaper Les Échos recently incorporated his work in editorial illustrations for a Starbucks feature.

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<TOTOROBUCKS> 2018.11.13 . 하야오선생님, 죄송합니다…???? . . . #soominkim #fseo #cupart #papercup #art #starbucks #starbuckscupart #totoro #animation #design #김수민 #컵아트 #종이컵 #아트 #일러스트 #스타벅스 #디자인 #토토로 #애니메이션 #キムスミン #紙コップアート #デザイン #イラスト #アート #スタバ #アニメ #ジブリ #トトロ #となりのトトロ

A post shared by Soo Min Kim / 김수민 / 金秀敏 (@fseo) on Nov 13, 2018 at 2:14am PST

Check out more of Kim’s work here.

Yesterday was Cyber Monday and already Amazon has revealed many flowery statistics about all the ways it earned tens of millions of dollars in a matter of hours. Amazon does this every year–it’s how it reaffirms to the world its dominance. But in the background something else is afoot, and it’s been slowly gaining traction: a backlash.

On Vox’s The Goods, writer Rebecca Jennings wrote yesterday about the slow and steady movement of people and organizations realizing that Amazon may actually be bad.

“Having covered Black Friday for the past few years, I’m used to the infinite roundups of Amazon’s best Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals–which, to be sure, won’t be going anywhere as long as publishers are able to monetize them,” she wrote. “But what I hadn’t seen as much before this year were media companies openly discouraging readers from shopping at Amazon.” Two examples she brings up are The Ringer and Gizmodo–both of which wrote pieces this year dissuading its readers from using the e-commerce platform.

Similarly, individuals have joined the call too. Jennings points to numerous tweets–most of whom come from the loud but incestuous media twitter circle–of popular accounts imploring their followers to break ties with the company. (A search of Google Trends for the search query “cancel Amazon Prime” shows a spike last December, followed by a steady decline.) Other smaller creators have also tried to foster positive reinforcement in name of canceling Amazon Prime; online ceramicist and writer Marian Bull (who’s also, full disclosure, a friend of mine), held a brief sale on her Instagram imploring followers to part ways with the Amazon beast.

“[H]ey I fucking hate Jeff Bezos so if you cancel your prime subscription and DM me a screenshot I’ll send you a free cup,” she wrote. And it seemed to work: in less than a day Bull updated the post to say she reached her free mug cap.

This new, loosely organized movement does all seem to coalesce around the realization that Bezos has created a streamlined system of commerce that consumers believe they need, which, all the while, reifies a strain of capitalism that routinely disenfranchises everyone but those as the very top. (To be fair, this strain may actually be all of capitalism, but alas that inquiry is for another blog).

Bezos is the richest man in the world; his company brings in more money while reducing its ever-shrinking margins. That’s the business model. (Growing numbers of Prime members, who now pay $119 for a 12-month membership, have surely been helping.) People first thought he was nuts–for the first decade-plus, the company invested all its profits toward expansion, to the chagrin of many investors–but now he’s considered a god among entrepreneurs. He created an empire when no one was looking.

Meanwhile, those who keep his digital realm afloat–the people physically laboring in warehouses to ensure that Prime purchases get sent at the right schedule–are expected to work increased hours with poor compensation under Dickensian conditions. (In October, under political pressure, the company set a minimum wage for employees at $15 an hour.)

support the strike. don’t buy from amazon & cancel your prime membership. https://t.co/gSCjWPSPMD

— talia jane (@itsa_talia) November 23, 2018

Every so often we hear of protests or a shout from the whisper network, but this knowledge has become so commonplace that people just as soon forget about the labor system underpinning their expected two-day delivery. Amazon’s has become a modern day serfdom–bringing on more people worldwide to continue the platform’s constant expansion while also keeping the margins low.

Last week, thousands of European warehouse workers went on strike on Black Friday. There was some coverage about it, but it didn’t change the narrative much. Amazon also reportedly tried to call in police to break up one of the strikes in Spain. But, again, this didn’t raise many red flags in the U.S.

Meanwhile, Amazon’s strategy has been to stay quiet or outright deny–hoping it all will blow over. Take the Spanish police incident: the company maintained that multiple allegations by workers were all “ludicrous suggestions.” In years past, when others brought up bad business dealings, the company either denied or kept quiet. And, it should be said, this strategy worked! Nearly every PR headache Amazon incurred blew over because, well, people like their free shipping.

Now things are perhaps changing a little. More and more, others are calling for increased mindfulness when submitting to the e-commerce beast. Maybe this is because they are questioning Amazon’s commerce ubiquity, or maybe it’s because the company’s current expansion plans go beyond merely shopping for things. Amazon is trying to take over entertainment. Amazon is also slowly growing its ad network. It’s also been making its own devices for years. It already runs much of the internet’s cloud infrastructure. If all goes to plan, it will become The Business Centipede, which will look like Walmart sewn to the butt of Comcast but also to Google and Apple.

Related:Delete your account

In today’s economy, where the rich are getting richer and everyone below is either stagnating or struggling even more, it’s difficult to know what to do. Amazon thrives because it can capitalize on this economic-cum-psychic resignation, which helps perpetuate the problem.

But, for some, one small act of resistance–one precious measure of control–is simply refusing to participate.

A group of Google employees are boldly facing off against their bosses, publishing an open letter with their real names signed on it. The letter asks the company to cancel Project Dragonfly, a controversial censored search product designed for the Chinese market.

“We are Google employees who are joining with Amnesty International in calling on Google to cancel Project Dragonfly and guarantee protections for whistleblowers,” the employees wrote.

Project Dragonfly, an Android-specific app, would restrict content related to human rights, democracy, and religion for users in China where Google’s search engine is blocked by the so-called Great Firewall. Searches on Dragonfly will automatically filter out results from websites that are banned by the Chinese government.

“We refuse to build technologies that aid the powerful in oppressing the vulnerable, wherever they may be,” the Google workers wrote in the letter, arguing that Dragonfly would “enable censorship and government-directed disinformation, and destabilize the ground truth on which popular deliberation and dissent rely.” They also note that due to China’s history of suppressing dissident voices, “such controls would likely be used to silence marginalized people, and favor information that promotes government interests.”

The employees made their beliefs known in private, but say that their “leadership’s response has been unsatisfactory.” Back in 2010, Google’s cofounders Larry Page and Sergey Brin effectively pulled out of China over censored search results. In 2016, CEO Sundar Pichai and a small team began working on China-related projects, including Dragonfly, to bring Google’s search engine back into the country. In October, the company made its return official.

Prior to that announcement, most Google employees only learned of Dragonfly’s existence when The Intercept reported it in August. This open letter is the latest wave in a tech worker-led resistance that may have led Google to not renew their military contract for Project Maven, a Pentagon program to use artificial intelligence on the battlefield.

Google sent along this comment:

We’ve been investing for many years to help Chinese users, from developing Android, through mobile apps such as Google Translate and Files Go, and our developer tools. But our work on search has been exploratory, and we are not close to launching a search product in China.