What’s a gal (or a guy) to wear—in space?

That question is something you may be asking sooner than you think. The space economy is exploding: NASA is planning for manned flights to Mars, private companies have thousands of space tourists lined up, and asteroid mining is just around the corner.

So that sartorial dilemma is very real, and while major brands like Reebok are working to update the traditional astronaut gear with flair, the real challenge is in making the suits lighter, safer, and more high-tech.

For space tourists and scientists who are expected to stay inside Earth-orbiting ships, that means protection from unexpected complications during launch and re-entry. The suits should help them survive sudden pressure drops, gas leaks, or even fires. At the same time, comfort is also at a premium.

Related: How To Build A Spacesuit That’s Actually (Sort Of) Comfortable

“They’re not going to be military pilots, they’re not going to be highly trained astronauts, and they’re going to be looking to wear something that’s not going to be bulky, heavy, and completely uncomfortable,” says Shane Jacobs, a design manager at David Clark Company, which has been producing spacesuits since the Gemini program of the 1960s. “Starting about 10 or 12 years ago, we started really working hard on developing the lightest-weight suit we could.”

The Worcester, Massachusetts, company is working with Boeing on spacesuits for its upcoming Starliner spacecraft, designed to transport astronauts and tourists to the International Space Station and future private stations. David Clark developed a softer helmet that weighs about two pounds—six pounds less than previous harder-shelled models.

It also combined multiple layers of previous suits into one, to cut the garment’s weight to about 18 pounds, including life-support systems. A lighter suit not only makes astronauts nimbler—it also saves fuel and money, with NASA estimating it costs $10,000 per pound to bring passengers or cargo into Earth’s orbit.

And the savings won’t just come from the suit itself—Jacobs says the company is developing lighter protective gloves compatible with the touch screens in smartphones and tablets. That will help tourists snap selfies in space and let pilots and scientists transport documents and take notes on lightweight tablets.

“It was make this suit function—make it work, and don’t really worry about aesthetics or anything like that,” he says. “We don’t really care what the guy looks like, as long as it will save his life.”

Big-name fashion brands are getting a piece of the space-fashion pie. Reebok, working with David Clark, recently unveiled its Space Boot SB-01, which it says is the first update of space boots in 50 years. The boots, which use Reebok’s Floatride Foam, were “exclusively designed to accompany the final space suit that will shuttle astronauts to and from the International Space Station in Boeing’s new vessel, the CST-100 Starliner,” the company said.

Virgin Galactic, the spaceflight company led by billionaire Richard Branson, announced last year that it’s working with Y-3, a fashion label from Adidas and Japanese designer Yohji Yamamoto, on designs for spaceflight wear.

And in Brooklyn, a startup called Final Frontier Design, founded by designer Ted Southern and engineer Nikolay Moiseev, has entered the market, winning multiple contracts from NASA to develop future suits and components.

“We make garments, and so there’s a lot of fabric welding, but there’s also sewing involved,” says Southern, the company’s president. “But that means New York City is a pretty good place to be.”

Final Frontier has worked on individual suit components like gloves, but it’s also aiming for a piece of the market for suits geared for what NASA calls extravehicular activities (EVA)—operations outside of a spacecraft, from ship maintenance to scientific experiments.

“An EVA suit is kind of like a spacecraft for one person,” Southern says, repeating a common industry adage.

That complexity also makes for a more lucrative market—Southern estimates that in-spacecraft suits represent a $20 to $25 million market, while NASA spends $250 to $300 million a year on EVA operations and maintenance. The space agency has also spent close to $200 million on development efforts for the next generation of EVA suits, according to an April audit report from the NASA Office of Inspector General.

The existing generation of suits, used on the International Space Station, “were developed more than 40 years ago and have far outlasted their original 15-year design life,” the audit says, and they’re not designed for operations beyond the Earth and its immediate environs.

That means that getting the next generation of suits ready is critical before NASA’s first scheduled manned mission outside of Earth’s near orbit. The launch is currently planned for April 2021, though many in the space world believe it’s likely to be delayed. The audit report warns the suits may not even be ready for testing on the Space Station before its planned 2024 retirement. Not having suitable EVA suits would naturally hamper the types of scientific work that can be done in space and potentially even crews’ abilities to do emergency repairs.

“I would say there’s no reason to send humans to space if you can’t go EVA, and I think that’s been proven by space operations since [the first U.S. space station] Skylab,” says Southern.

Humans will need that kind of protective gear if and when they make it to Mars. And they’ll also need to be able to move about with a fair bit of dexterity, without relying on the extremely low gravity experienced in other extraterrestrial missions.

One solution may come from a Massachusetts Institute of Technology innovation called the BioSuit, which incorporates tiny, springlike fibers to mechanically pressurize an astronaut’s body without the need of a bulky, gas-filled garment.

“Now you’re a biped again—now you’re an extreme explorer,” says Newman, who is also a former deputy administrator of NASA.

She and her colleagues are working on prototype versions of the suit, with an eye toward future testing in vacuum chambers. They hope to see working versions of the suit on manned missions of the not-so-distant future.

“I think we’ll definitely be able to use it on Mars,” says Newman,

If your employer asked your permission to install a microchip in your body, what would you say?

That’s the question facing workers at Three Square Market, a Wisconsin company whose self-checkout technology powers more than 2,000 miniature convenience stores in offices and break rooms around the world. Since the news broke last week, the company has come under fire from the public, and it’s barely managed to stay above a one-star rating on Google.

The chips, RFID-compatible devices roughly the size of a grain of rice and typically injected between the thumb and forefinger, are strictly voluntary, the company says. About 50 out of 80 employees in the River Falls, Wisconsin, headquarters have opted in, as have the company’s college interns. They’ll be able to use the chips to unlock doors around the office, log in to computers and copy machines, and, naturally, make purchases at the in-office minimart.

“Now, instead of remembering hundreds of passwords, we’ll be able to hold our hand over an RFID reader,” says CEO Todd Westby.

Three Square is working with Swedish company Biohax International to install the chips and is paying the roughly $300 parts-and-labor cost for employees who want them. Those who want the benefits of the chip without breaking their skin can opt to have it installed in a wearable ring or bracelet, says Westby. Other employees are free to stick to passwords and traditional badges to access computers and unlock doors.

“The people who don’t want to be chipped are understandable,” he says. “This is a voluntary thing.”

Software engineer Jon Krusell says the company has been supportive of his decision to skip the implant and use a removable RFID ring instead.

“I like the technology—I just don’t like it in my body,” he tells Fast Company. “I know you can take out the microchip, they can pop it out, but I’d rather just take off a ring if I want to get rid of it.”

Still, the project has naturally stirred up plenty of concern that it’s the first step on a slippery slope to a dystopian future, and that similar chips will one day be necessary to do business, receive government services, or board a plane. Comments on the company’s Facebook page reference the Bible’s Book of Revelation, and its prophecy that only those with the “mark of the beast” will be able to buy or sell goods, and some are calling for a boycott of Three Square and its related companies. Parent company TW Vending is also the parent of Turnkey Solutions, which offers similar kiosks for use as automated prison commissaries, which has further unnerved some critics of the proposal. But general manager Dewey Wahlin says the company has no plans in the works to deploy the chips in prisons or jails.

Other critics have expressed concern about the health ramifications of having such chips inside the body, and warned that Three Square or third parties will be able to use the devices to spy on the microchipped workers. (Westby emphasizes that the chips don’t contain any GPS technology, so they won’t be able to monitor their employees’ movements other than their interactions with devices in the office.)

Melissa Timmins, sales director at Three Square, says she’s still unsure whether to have the chip implanted.

“It’s something that’s being implanted into my body,” she says. “I’m just a little nervous about that.”

Timmins’s 18-year-old daughter, who asked that her name not be used, doesn’t share those concerns. She says she’s planning to get a chip of her own, adding that she hopes to be able to use the device for payment at more stores in the future, in lieu of services like Apple Pay, believing that it will be more secure from the threat of hacking. She says she trusts the simple chip more than a complex, network-connected device like a smartphone.

She also looks forward to the simplicity of paying with the palm of her hand, she says.

“Most stores at, like, the Mall of America accept Apple Pay, and I think that’s pretty cool that you can just put your hand down [to pay],” she says.

Three Square isn’t the first company to offer digital implants to its employees: A little over a decade ago, a Cincinnati-based surveillance system provider called CityWatcher.com made the news by embedding similar chips into a handful of employees. In response, a number of states—including Wisconsin, where Three Square is based—passed laws saying employers can’t require the chips.

In Europe, a number of companies have offered chips under similar voluntary conditions. New Fusion, a Belgium-based digital marketing company, recently implanted chips in about a dozen employees. Managing director Vince Nys says the project to install chips and corresponding readers, a boon to employees who forget their key cards, was along the lines of a Google-style 20% time project, voluntarily undertaken by tech-curious workers.

“If you should force someone into doing this, that should be really wrong,” he says. “It’s more a personal thing than a company thing.”

And Westby says Three Square first learned of the concept when installing its vending kiosks at Epicenter, a Stockholm coworking space, which made headlines earlier this year by offering chips to employees and members for use in unlocking rooms, activating printers, and other tasks.

“When we were setting up the markets, Biohax approached us and said, ‘Are you aware that we are a microchip company that can actually facilitate payment through your kiosks?'” says Westby. “We all looked at each other and said, ‘That’s interesting.'”

At Epicenter, too, the chips are strictly voluntary, says Epicenter CEO and Cofounder Patrick Mesterton.

“There’s no sort of group pressure to do anything,” he says.

Generally, the chips have proven more popular in workplaces outside the United States, where people are less worried about government or corporate tracking, says Amal Graafstra, author of the book RFID Toys and founder of biohacking supply company Dangerous Things. The company supplies chips to hobbyists, who install them to access doors in their homes, start their cars, or even share business card data with compatible phones. But so far, the market for more serious uses in the U.S. appears limited. In 2004, a company called VeriChip won Food and Drug Administration approval for an implantable chip that would be used to help doctors access medical record information. But the company withdrew the controversial devices from the market just a few years later, citing lack of interest. VeriChip’s successor company declined to comment.

Laws in some states prevent companies from offering incentives to get the chips implanted, which some companies interpret as meaning that they can’t pay for the devices in employees who want them. And others are worried about a potential consumer backlash, he says.

“If one person says, ‘We’re not going to buy your product because you’re chipping employees,’ they’re not going to do it,” Graafstra says.

In other countries, the public reaction can be just the opposite, he says.

“In Denmark or Sweden, the company goes, We could offer implants to employees, people are going to talk about us, they’re going to talk about how innovative we are,” says Graafstra. “There’s no financial benefit to offering chips to employees—it’s just coverage. It’s just corporate image.”

Chris Spinelli, the cofounder of Roc Brewing in Rochester, New York, was all set to open his small brewery and taproom in 2011, when he realized it had a built-in buzzkill. To expand his reach, Spinelli planned to contract with bigger brewers who could fill kegs with his recipes that he’d sell to local bars. The place could indeed fill his kegs, but not wash them. So Spinelli needed to invest in an industrial keg washing system—fast.

So Spinelli applied to Sam Adam’s Brewing The American Dream program, which partners with the small business lender Accion to offer loans up to $10,000 for emerging food and beverage companies. “It was pretty big for us in the sense that right away we could get open and produce enough beer to keep our taproom and taps around town going,” Spinelli says.

Roc Brewing has since expanded into a full-fledged microbrewery that does everything in-house, distributing to bars in five cities and producing its own line of cans. Even better, one of their beers, dubbed ThreeNinety Bock, just went national: This month, Sam Adams released its first Brewing The American Dream Collaboration Pack, a 12-bottle variety pack with offerings from five independent brewers that the program has helped support. The others include Bosque Brewing in Albuquerque, New Mexico; ChuckAlex Independent Brewers in Ramona, California; Woods Beer Co. in San Francisco; and Brewery Rickoli in Wheat Ridge, Colorado. Each gets two bottles per 12-er, leaving just enough room for a couple Samuel Adams Boston Lagers for good measure.

Sam Adams has borrowed recipes from each place to do the brewing and bottling at their own plants. That’s good considering Roc doesn’t actually have the ability to bottle anything yet, let alone handle the logistics and costs of a national release.

The program has made 1,300 loans worth $17.7 million total since it started. That includes about $1 million for 40 small independent craft brewers. According to that the Brewers Association, indie craft brewers generally make less than 6 million barrels a year with the brewery owning at least 75% of its own operations. All Brewing The American Dream recipients fit under that umbrella, with the majority having less than $500,000 in revenue. The average loan amount is $10,000, a sum that, if used wisely, often spurs job creation. Once you create a keg wash system, say, you need a person to run it. As production increases, the demand for delivery drivers and sales staff might grow. (Sam Adams estimates that each infusion ultimately leads to three to four more employees.)

Koch has publicly rallied against craft beer industry consolidation: MillerCoors, InBev, and other light beer giants tend to buyout littler craft breweries to expand their portfolios. To that end, his goal isn’t to groom future acquisition targets, but to diversify the market, encourage more experimentation and find more ways to bring light beer drinkers into the craft fold.

“We don’t have any plans to acquire those businesses we have provided guidance to, and don’t plan to in the future either—that would be contrary to the goal of this program which is to support other small business owners in their quest to wake up every day and do something that they love,” he adds. “Here at Sam Adams we believe that when we all support each other, the craft community becomes stronger. We either grow together or not at all.”

Since its last earnings call, big things have happened at Amazon. One, its stock price eclipsed $1,000 a share. Two, it announced plans to buy Whole Foods for $13.7 billion, a move that speaks to its seemingly insatiable supply-chain ambitions.

So more eyes than usual will be on Amazon this Thursday as it reports second-quarter earnings for 2017. The Jeff Bezos-led e-commerce juggernaut expects sales to grow 20% year over year, hitting around $36 billion. As the stock has been rising, many analysts expect it to surge even higher following the report. According to FactSet estimates cited by CNBC, analysts expect the stock to hit $1,136, compared to its current price of $1,037.

Last quarter saw great Amazon results. Its revenue went up 23%, hitting $35.7 billion. And earnings per share were $1.48–well above analyst expectations. With a good earnings track record behind it, investors hope this trend will persist.

Here are four things we’ll be watching.

Amazon Web Services. Amazon’s cloud storage offerings continue to grow every quarter. This is one of the products that helps Amazon prove itself as a viable world technology leader beyond retail. Last quarter, Amazon Web Services hit $3.66 billion, and we’ll be looking to see what sort of growth it has seen over the last few months.

Groceries. Amazon is buying Whole Foods for $13.7 billion. While the deal wasn’t a huge surprise, it is the largest acquisition the company has ever made (as long as the deal actually happens). We’ll be interested to hear any new details about this deal, and any other big plans Amazon has for its grocery business.

Prime. Last quarter, Amazon reported huge growth for its retail subscription services that are mostly represented by Prime. We’ll be looking out to see if this growth will continue. Amazon’s Prime Day, although it happened after the end of the second quarter, hints at its ongoing momentum. The company says it broke sales records with its annual event, which seems to have morphed into a summertime Black Friday. The event was a major boon for Echo, which Amazon said outsold every other item. Hopefully, Amazon will divulge more information about just how well Prime Day went, and any other plans it has for Prime itself.

International expansion. Some of Amazon’s biggest pushes are beyond U.S. borders. It’s been expanding Prime to new territories, as well as looking toward acquisitions that would help expand its e-commerce business around the globe. We’ll be looking out for more announcements like these that will illustrate where and how Amazon intends to spread its tentacles around the world.

There is surely a lot more Amazon could say during the call, including any developments on Echo, Alexa, and its smart-home ambitions. We’ll be keeping an ear out Thursday. Be sure to check out our live coverage then.

In April 2015, Deborah Graham, a resident of the tiny town of Salisbury, North Carolina, received a letter from the North Carolina Division of Public Health, who wanted to let her know that the water coming out of her tap–the same water she used to fill her kids’ water bottles and cook dinner–was chock-full of vanadium, a coal-ash-derived chemical that causes nausea and, later in life, neurological decline. The public health authority also sent notices to 424 other households in the state.

Duke Energy, which supplies electricity for the state, had been depositing the ash created by burning coal into 32 pits throughout the state for decades. Coal ash contains radioactive materials and heavy metals; when it’s deposited into the pits, which are often unlined ponds, contaminants seep into the groundwater, through the local water system pipes, and from there make their way into people’s taps, water glasses, and bodies.

In the film From the Ashes, a Bloomberg Philanthropies-produced documentary that premiered last month, we see Graham hauling 24-packs of bottled water into her home to drink and cook with, while waging an advocacy battle against Duke Energy, demanding that the utility shell out the tens of millions it will take to clean up the water supply.

The database was first launched in 2004, Nneka Leiba, EWG’s director of healthy living science, tells Fast Company; since then, updates were released in 2009 and now in 2017. “One of the reasons it takes us a while to update the database is also one of the reasons why it’s so important,” she says. “It’s the only available database that is this comprehensive and tells Americans what they’re drinking.”

Anyone can access the database, enter their zip code, and see a list of utilities that serve their area, as well as the contaminants found in their water. While the Environmental Protection Agency sets legal limits, measured in parts per billion (ppb) on a handful of chemicals, like chloroform and trichloroacetic acid (both known carcinogens); under those regulations, water utilities must comply with a certain level of contamination or face a fine. But legal limits, Leiba says, are not necessarily health-protective limits. “They’re a compromise between health, cost, and feasibility,” she says. What the EWG has done with this update of the Tap Water Database is to develop and establish what they’re calling “EWG standards,” which reflect truly health-protective limits. “So for nitrates, we’re not looking at 10 ppb, which is the legal limit; we’re looking at how many people are affected by levels over 5 ppb, which could be cancerous,” Leiba says.

But the database, for the most part, steers clear of sweeping generalizations about trends in the national water supply, but Leiba notes that contamination levels tend to rise as incomes lower. In the 79406 zip code of Lubbock, Texas, where the per-capita household income is $2,905, EWG found 12 contaminants above the health limit; in Manalapan, Florida (not coincidentally, not far from Mar-A-Lago), the per-capital income is $143,729, and just two contaminants were detected.

The reason EWG wants to keep the focus on the local issues is to get people engaged with what’s going on with their own water supplies, and take action against the utilities, like Graham did, to remedy the source. “The first thing to do is identify and acknowledge that there is a problem,” Leiba says. For anyone concerned about the quality of their tap water, the EWG database lists all local utilities and contaminants (to find your utility, check your water bill), as well as which industries are responsible for the pollutants. “Through community action, people can push state and federal legislators to strengthen policies,” Leiba says. “We think that Americans have the right to know about this so they can push for improvements, push for stronger standards, and push for upgrades to treatment and infrastructure—the onus is not just on the utilities.”

There’s no way around it–job interviews are nerve-racking. Hiring managers know this, and are generally forgiving of a fumble or two. But sometimes, they get answers that go beyond a mere slip of the tongue. Whether it’s repeating clichés, or being too honest and giving off the impression that they have a me, me, and me! mentality, there are some answers that candidates should never ever utter when they’re in a job interview.

Fast Company reached out to recruiters and hiring managers for the worst answers they’ve ever gotten to common interview questions. Next time you interview for a role, do yourself a favor and make sure you don’t repeat any of these answers.

How Not To Answer: “Tell Me About Yourself”

This is a classic question that most interviews kick off with, and for the most part, is a signal for the candidate to give their elevator pitch. What it’s not, however, is permission to narrate your life story.

Chandler Bolt, founder and CEO of online training company Self-Publishing School, told Fast Company that the worst offenders tend to let this question “take up the entire interview.” Michelle Mavi, director of content development, internal recruiting, and training for the hiring agency Atrium Staffing agreed. In a previous article for Fast Company, she said, “As it’s a very broad and open question, candidates are prone to ramble, talking about their professional selves in very generic and general terms, and basically rehashing their resume.”

Of course, broad questions come with broad answers. Kathleen Steffey, CEO of Naviga Recruiting & Executive Search once had a candidate tell her, “I am trying to find out what I really want to do and your position caught my attention.” Ed Mitzen, Founder of Fingerpaint Marketing, witnessed a candidate point out a red flag straight away. Their answer? “‘I’m not a very punctual person, so if you are looking for someone who will be here exactly at 8:30 a.m. every day, I’m probably not the right person.”

How Not To Answer: “Why Do You Want This Position?”

Cringe-worthy answers to this question include candidates admitting that they’ve been unable to get a job so far and they were desperate, to saying that they didn’t know much about what the job description involved. Annie Boneta, head of talent at AutoGravity, interviewed a candidate who answered, “After I graduated, I decided to backpack around Europe for a couple of months. I was into month five when my parents called me up and told me I needed to get a job, so that is why I decided to call you.”

Related: Three Pieces Of Job Interview Advice You Should Ignore 

How Not To Answer: “Why Do You Want To Work For This Company?”

Many candidates bombed this question by admitting that they didn’t know much about the company. Candidates trying to “flip the question” by saying something along the lines of “I don’t know, you tell me why I should work for this company” were also common offenders, according to Sung Hae Kim, VP of people operations at Wizeline. Several hiring managers also told Fast Company that they often see candidates mentioning money, perks, and media prestige as their main motivation, and not much else. One candidate told RETS Associates principal Kent Elliott that their main reason for wanting to work at the company was because it had a ping-pong table.

Tom Gimbel, founder and CEO of staffing firm LaSalle Network, said that a candidate once said: “I’m not sure I’m interested because I can’t bring my dog to work.” 

How Not To Answer: “Where Do You See Yourself In Five Years?”

Hiring managers differed in opinions on what constitutes a terrible answer. Tawanda Johnson, president and CEO of HR consulting firm RKL Resources told Fast Company that the worst answer she’d ever heard was, “I haven’t really thought that far.”

Katie Sanders, head of content and communications at Jopwell said that a candidate once answered they’d hope to “run this company or one like it,” an answer that Mitzen and Gimbel have also heard from interviewees. Gimbel stressed that he doesn’t think there’s really a bad answer to this question, but he does admit that when a candidate says their ultimate goal is to run their own company, it raises eyebrows. “It makes me think, are they going to leave after four years, two years?”

How Not To Answer: “What’s Your Biggest Weakness?”

Johnson and Boneta both experienced candidates telling them that they’d had anger and temper issues, a clear red flag to many employers. But the answers that truly irritated hiring managers were candidates cloaking their weaknesses as strengths, such as “I’m a perfectionist” or “I work too hard.”

A candidate Boneta interviewed once answered, “my biggest weakness is that I have too many strengths.” Bolt, whose company conducts interviews over Skype, said that a hiring manager at his company once had an applicant stare blankly at the screen for 30 seconds, only to say “you know, I don’t actually have any weaknesses.”

Related:How Being Super Prepared For Your Interview Can Still Cost You The Job 

How Not To Answer: “Do You Have Any Questions For Me?”

The answer to this question was unanimous–hiring managers and recruiters believe that one of the biggest job interview sins is not having any questions at the end of the interview.

Johnson said “every person should have at least two to three questions for the person they’re interviewing with.” The consensus among hiring managers is that lack of questions translates to a lack of interest, which can translate to lack of commitment in the role that they’re applying for.

“Just use the spray paint can.”

That was me trying to teach my 82-year-old grandpa, Harold, how to use his new computer’s Microsoft Paint Program. It was 1997, and Grandpa Hal was ready to paint. He had done it with actual paintbrushes all his life–and now he was learning how to do it on the computer, a technological advancement that at the time seemed alien to this World War II veteran. Eventually, it would become an art form that reflected his earlier artistic talent–and, fortunately, would ultimately allow my grandfather to continue his lifelong passion until he was almost 99 years old.

When Jérôme Blanquet set out to make his new virtual reality film, Alteration—which, among other things portrays an artificial intelligence diving into a man’s dreams to steal them—he felt strongly that AI should play a big part in the project.

“As a filmmaker, I would like to represent…using AI in the dreams of a human,” Blanquet says. “For me, only AI can represent what AI can [represent] in the human brain.”

Alteration, which was launched yesterday for the Oculus Rift and Samsung’s Oculus-powered Gear VR, centers on Alexandro, who volunteers to take part in a dream experiment, unaware that the researchers running it are going to inject, digitize, and take over his subconscious with an AI in the guise of a woman named Elsa.

The story progresses through scenes representing Alexandro’s memories, the AI always hovering nearby. His wife, Nadia, who plays a central role in some of those memories, objects to Elsa’s presence, leading Alexandro to pull the plug on the experiment–with disastrous results.

Nadia is a painter, and Blanquet wanted to show the crumbling of Alexandro’s subconscious by blending it with the very style of the canvases on the wall of her studio, even as Nadia is slowly absorbed in his dreams and replaced by Elsa.

Representing The Alteration

The filmmakers’ goal was always to represent that alteration visually and, originally, they thought they would do so using traditional post-production animation tools. But Blanquet knew that AI researchers at Facebook had developed an algorithm for style transfer–the very visual method for recomposing images in the style of other images–he wanted in the film, and wondered if it was possible to incorporate that algorithm into his VR film–“to make real style transfer, with real AI,” says the film’s producer, Antoine Cayrol.

“Elsa wanted to take the place of [Alexandro’s] wife, through the style of her paintings,” Blanquet said. “Style transfer is really what we thought makes sense when you look at what’s happening in the story.”

The film’s executive producer, Yelena Rachitsky, who works at Facebook-owned Oculus, which helped fund Alteration, explained that VR was a natural medium for applying style transfer, given that in virtual reality, there’s no limits imposed by reality. And by using the effect, the filmmakers were able to impart the kind of visceral feelings of what it’s like to be an AI, Rachitsky says.

“It’s an interesting approach to go through that,” she says, “and it wouldn’t have the same impact if it was a traditional film, because you’re not immersed in it. Things shift and change, but then it kind of captures you all around. It just changes your feeling of what you experience in the space.”

Like A Hackathon

In the meantime, the folks in the Paris office of Facebook’s AI Research (FAIR) lab were eager to help out, especially since they came aboard before shooting started. Applying style transfer to a VR film was likely something no one had done before, so they wanted to find out if AI-generated imagery could help establish the story in an immersive VR film.

One of the best parts of working on Alteration was the brainstorming sessions before filming began, recalls FAIR research scientist Antoine Bordes, since those conversations influenced the direction of the production. “From the beginning of the project, we were involved,” he adds, “showing them what AI was capable of doing.”

Befitting Facebook’s involvement, those brainstorming sessions were akin to a hackathon, recalls research scientist Piotr Bojanowski, since there was no guarantee that the filmmakers would be able to incorporate the still-experimental cutting-edge algorithms that came out of the research lab.

One particular challenge, recalls Bordes, is that the style-transfer effects FAIR had developed were known to work on content for mobile phones, and for 4K video, but no one knew if it could be scaled to work on fully immersive scenes like those required for a VR film. Even if it could be scaled, Bordes says, “would it look good enough for [Blanquet] to put in his movie?”

The Challenge Of The Unknown

For the folks at FAIR, it was important that the answer was unknown. After all, what’s the fun in going into a project already knowing exactly how it’ll turn out? “If we knew at first” it would work, says Bordes, “we wouldn’t have done it….Usually, when we try to pick these projects, [we ask] are we going to learn something” about AI.

In this case, the unknown was whether or not style transfer could be applied to a VR project, in which the visual effect must be scaled in 360 degrees, and at high quality.

For those who watch Alteration, the answer is a pretty clear yes. Although the technique didn’t end up working for each of the 14 paintings by French artist Julien Drevell–as well as three corrupted noise images–that Blanquet and Cayrol brought to FAIR to experiment with, the final product demonstrates that for those that did work, the effect is striking. It results in a seamless blending of pictures on the wall with the entire visual dynamic, gradually subsuming every bit of what’s in front of the camera in all 360 degrees, including the characters. When a stylized Elsa appears above Alexandro’s bed, you realize the AI has taken over, in every sense of the word.

In order to achieve the desired effect, the FAIR team had to train a series of neural networks that would be utilized for altering the film’s frames. The team had to scale the style transfer process for professional-quality VR, which meant 4K resolution, as well as 360-degree and stereo video, the FAIR team wrote in a blog post about their work on the film. They also had to train their networks on larger-scale images than originally planned because of the immersive nature of VR. It took over 120,000 hours on powerful computers to train the models, not to mention hundreds more hours on even more powerful machines to apply the models to the actual movie frames.

“It was a big bet for the team,” says Cayrol, “because the process was really original. We were sending the files to FAIR, and they processed them. Then they would send us examples of what came back. It was like opening your Christmas gift.”

The skills you need to land an in-demand job right now might not be so different from the ones that will keep you employable in the future.

As ZipRecruiter cofounder and CEO Ian Siegel points out, there’s a huge demand for traditional jobs–ranging from construction work to data science–right now, but there’s also a growing need to fill futuristic-sounding jobs like these:

• Ethical self-driving car hacker
• Robotic medicine
• 3D hologram producer
• Drone pilot instructor
• 3D-printed footwear designer
• Private spaceflight mission manager

For job seekers, it’s hard enough to know how to position yourself for the existing positions, let alone plan for emerging ones. But what seems pretty clear across the board is that employers value so-called “soft skills” today and are likely to do so tomorrow.

While nearly half of U.S. jobs could be affected by automation in the coming years, nearly a third of workers think it will actually make their jobs better, according to new Randstad research. That means it’s worth thinking strategically about what robots can’t do well–like interpersonal communication– which a full 89% of executives say is difficult to find when hiring. Heck, even astronauts need emotional intelligence.

With that in mind, Fast Company talked to job experts about which skills you need to develop right now in order to grow your career in the future–even if most job postings never actually say so.

1. Storytelling

This skill has applications in a variety of industries, according to Scott Dobroski at Glassdoor. While a job description for a creative manager, for instance, will specifically call for a person who can tell “compelling stories across [social] channels” and appeal to customers through emotion and reason, most others won’t.

However, Dobroski points out that in jobs like IT, where “you’ve got to service every department in your organization,” it’s essential to know how to figure out what everyone needs, then build all that into a solid argument that gets leaders to invest in crucial tech updates. In data science, too, says Dobroski, data visualization requires a certain amount of storytelling–for instance, in converting the analysis to a presentation for that execs and non-technical employees can grasp.

Jim Curtis, president of Remedy Health Media, says you can showcase storytelling skills right on your resume. Maybe you’d ordinarily write how you achieved “20x customer acquisition and “75% year-over-year customer retention.” While that’s impressive, why not add bit of drama? Curtis suggests mentioning you did this while a competitor was on your heels, or at a time when you were one of the company’s first hires. “Take the prospective employer on the journey with you,” he advises, “to create a multidimensional portrait ahead of meeting with the interviewer.”

2. Collaboration

Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) found that job growth last month was led by the addition of nearly 5,000 positions in IT, software services, and computer system design.

CEO Todd Thibodeaux says CompTIA’s analysis of job-posting data finds that despite demand for technical expertise, employers are looking for good verbal and written communication, problem solving, business intelligence, project management, and teamwork skills. He says that’s because tech professionals are no longer relegated to the back office or the server room.

But that can create some challenges. The more IT managers earn front-row seats in decision-making means they’ll also need to tap soft skills like teamwork, he says. They, like other workers, “are a part of a bigger project involving cross-functional teams that must interact and work together for the project to succeed,” Thibodeaux explains. So on the next resume or cover letter you write, make sure you pair those technical talents of yours with examples of ways you’ve deployed them collaboratively.

3. Project Management

Elaine Varelas, managing partner of Keystone Partners, agrees. You’ll definitely see “project management” listed in jobs for (you guessed it) project managers, but it may be absent from many other openings where it’s crucial. Varelas says this skill goes hand in hand with collaboration; in her view, they top the list of soft skills that Keystone researchers have found workers need most–across industries, both now and in the future.

“Team-based projects need team leaders who can keep the project moving, track the components, keep everyone on task,” she observes. Workers with project-management skills bring multiple initiatives in line with each other while planning for every contingency. Beyond just juggling all those elements, Varelas says, “Motivating participants to excel in order to achieve the best possible outcomes is indeed greater than the sum of its parts.”

4. Conflict Resolution

Varelas’s colleague, Jayne Mattson, senior vice president at Keystone Associates, has encountered some candidates who lack conflict-resolution skills. This typically happens in face-to-face interactions where emotional intelligence is required to pick up on what somebody else’s body language and other nonverbal cues might be saying.

But this plays out in other, sometimes preemptive ways, she says, like “the courtesy of acknowledging receipt of emails or other forms of communication.” Here, too, Mattson adds, it’s important to be able to “articulate thoughts and feelings about a situation in a respectful way versus ‘telling it like it is.'” If you can’t do that well–whether in person or digitally–you’re likely to stir up confrontations.

5. Managing People

This is a more nuanced skill than you might think, and while many job postings are flagged as managerial roles, they might not always emphasize how essential good people management really is. What’s more, this job skill isn’t just crucial when you’re moving up the ranks in a corporation–it’s also useful if you decide to strike out on your own. As ZipRecruiter’s Siegel notes, thanks to the gig economy, the rapid rise of independent workers, and the ease of starting their own businesses, “We’re experiencing a wave of entrepreneurship the likes of which society has never seen.”

So hard skills, like learning to read a balance sheet and profit and loss statements, won’t always cut it; you’ll also need to direct your own employees or work effectively with clients and customers. “I don’t know that there’s a class you can take to learn empathy, perspective, and patience,” says Siegel–it just takes practice. “If you haven’t worked for others, it is hard to be good at managing,” he points out–adding that he believes it takes at least three years’ reporting to somebody else before most employees should even be considered for management roles themselves.

Just because employers focus largely on technical skills and industry expertise in job postings doesn’t mean that’s all that’s required. “The reality is that employers are terrible at saying what is important to success on the job,” says Siegel, “Few people say you must be a good listener,” he says, or be able to help your coworkers collaborate. But those skills have never been more important–not just to your current career but to your future one, too.

The saying that people quit their bosses, not their jobs, is basically a cliché, but it rings true for lots of people who’ve left positions they found demotivating, boring, or stressful. It isn’t that employers don’t realize that, though. More often, managers just struggle to recognize their team members in ways that actually do motivate and inspire them.

But doing that first requires steering clear of the recognition tactics that don’t work. These are a few of the more common ones that tend to fall flat, plus one that actually works.

Related:8 Common Ways Companies Screw Up Employee Recognition

Stop Handing Out Token Promotions

The oldest form of recognition in the book (after a raise or a bonus) is a promotion. When somebody on your team has done a great job and deserves to be rewarded, it’s normal to want to offer a title bump–it feels significant, formal, weighty.

But sometimes promotions can have the opposite effect. Carolin Soldo is now a business and marketing coach, but she previously worked in a bank, where she got promoted twice–and both times felt like lip service. “I received a new title, but no additional responsibilities or tasks. I did not have any additional ownership of projects, or any additional staff to manage,” Soldo recalls. “Worst of all, I didn’t receive any additional pay either. The promotion was truly a formality only.”

Title changes that don’t come tied to monetary recognition aren’t necessarily ill-advised. But if you can’t offer to tie your team member’s promotion to compensation, you need to deliver some other meaningful, positive change in their work experience. “A change in job title without any actual changes is not motivating for me, and it left me frustrated and disappointed because I felt my talents and abilities were overlooked and wasted,” says Soldo.

“People thrive when they feel needed and rewarded in meaningful names. Fancy titles are not among those things.”

Related:Managers, Here’s Why You Keep Promoting The Wrong People

Stop Trying To Make Recognition “Fun”

Before leaving to start her own company, Leah Andrews remembers really liking her coworkers. “The products and team of people I worked with were amazing, but the culture was really bad,” she says. “Almost everyone was unhappy and felt underappreciated.”

Around the holidays, “the company refused to offer anything other than joke awards, because they didn’t want to single anyone out for appreciation,” says Andrews. “Some years we were given a token gift; other years there would be nothing.” Leadership might’ve thought that taking a fun, lighthearted approach to recognition was actually an asset–a sign of a healthy, supportive work culture that knew how to kick back. But in Andrews’s experience, that approach just seemed like an excuse not to take positive feedback seriously.

So she left to launch a custom snow-globe business. While her company does fill personal orders, Andrews says her passion is helping others say “thanks” and show their appreciation through one-of-a-kind gifts. She realizes, of course, that a snow globe might not exactly cut it as far as recognition, especially when you’re overdue for a raise and promotion. But she still believes a little thoughtfulness and sincerity can go a long way in many workplace situations where that’s often lacking.

“I still have a handwritten note from 17 years ago that I received from a manager. He didn’t need to personally hand it to me, to look like ‘the good guy.’ He just left it there on my desk for me to find,” she says. “It meant so much to me–which is obvious from the fact that I’ve kept it all these years!”

Stop Only Praising Outcomes

Akshay Nanavati is a former Marine who served in Iraq as a noncommissioned officer in Information Ops, in 2007–8. Nanavati’s job was to train Iraqi police officers in counterinsurgency tactics and to serve as a go-between for Iraqis and Marines to communicate with one another. It was hard work, he recalls. “We weren’t paid a lot of money and we didn’t often hear praise, yet I thrived in that environment because it was a meaningful and purposeful struggle in service of something greater than myself.”

After transitioning into the corporate world, Nanavati says he was often praised when he was able to “close” on a sales call, but it meant little to him because it didn’t recognize the effort he’d put in all day before then. As Nanavati saw it, his higher-ups only cared about the partial results these wins signified, because closing the call was just one small step in an endless grind of making cold calls each day. There was no real recognition of the bigger picture.

While managers are often told to praise small victories, Nanavati believes this can cause many to miss the wood for the trees. “Running my own business today, I still go through low moments, but by focusing on the greater impact [I’m having], I feel motivated,” he says. “I have learned to enjoy the struggle–that is what helps me rise from those low moments.”

Start Offering More Independence

If there’s a common thread to these three misfires, it’s that none offer the recognized employee any more autonomy. It’s like patting somebody on the head and then expecting them to go on doing the same thing. But if you really want your team members to excel, you need to follow your positive feedback with some kind of demonstration that you trust them to excel more independently.

Grant Wise, a real-estate marketing strategist, learned the hard way how important this is. “In one of my first real-estate ventures I was the youngest person in a company I co-owned. None of my co-owners valued my abilities, vision, or skills,” he says. “They didn’t think I knew anything about business, sales, or marketing”; in other words, they didn’t trust him. These days, Wise makes an effort to show his employees he trusts their judgment and ability.

So if you can’t offer a raise or bonus, just make sure that the promotions, praise, and (why not?) even the snow globes you do offer them come with greater freedom to handle their day-to-day work. As Wise puts it, “Trust and space are two of the most important things to give your employees if you want to grow your business. I simply treat them as adults and let them do their job.”

It’s been four months since hipster women’s retailer ModCloth was acquired by Walmart for less than $75 million.

The partnership came as a bit of a shock to ModCloth’s fans who were drawn to the brand’s values and its unique take on fashion. Walmart, the world’s largest retailer, seemed like the opposite of the quirky, indie brand they knew and loved. Social media was flooded with disappointed tweets from loyal ModCloth fans.

Trying to break up with @ModCloth since they were bought out by @Walmart is the hardest thing #fairwages#butiloveyou#butnotcool#modcloth

— Sarah Kuelbs (@Skuelbsy) March 24, 2017

Matthew Kaness, the CEO of ModCloth who previously ran strategy at Urban Outfitters, had his work cut out for him. “We had a number of long-term customers who were not too positive about the acquisition,” he says. “There are things that we don’t control, such has how the customer perceives our new parent company. We’re working every day to explain why the partnership will actually be a huge plus for the community.”

Customers responded to the Kogers’ approach and over time, ModCloth built a loyal following. In its marketing, ModCloth featured a diverse array of models who were not photoshopped. It also offered an assortment of cute, vintage styles that you might find at a thrift store without the effort of digging through piles of clothes. Importantly, many of these dresses came in large sizes, catering to plus-size women who tend to be underserved by the market.

But the brand struggled in the last few years for a range of reasons, including increased competition online. At its lowest point, in 2014, it was forced to lay off more than 100 employees. So, when Walmart came knocking looking to expand its stable of fashion brands, ModCloth said yes. (Walmart has since acquired Bonobos, another digitally native brand that taps into a different market than the typical Walmart customer.)

Kaness sat down with Fast Company to discuss his strategy for dealing with the transition. His approach is twofold: Take advantage of the new financial freedom the brand has thanks to Walmart’s deep pockets and convince customers that the acquisition will ensure they have a better shopping experience with the brand.

Step One: Listen To The Barrage

ModCloth has always been community-oriented, which, in practical terms means that the brand was always gathering feedback from customers through social media and email, then using these comments to inform the way they do business. “We’re constantly asking the customer to participate, engage, and give us feedback,” Kaness says. “All of our internal processes use that feedback every day to keep iterating.”

After the acquisition, the feedback got pretty ugly. In the comments section of ModCloth’s blog post about the change in ownership, loyal customers were bitter. “This is so disappointing, to the point that it took me days to even read the article,” one wrote. “I adore shopping at ModCloth… For once I thought I found a company that was different. I see now that ModCloth is just another company like any other. The dollar is the bottom line…..Walmart?!!! Really ModCloth????”

Kaness has been trying to understand what is driving this anger. Part of it, of course, simply has to do with the fact that many people have strong feelings about Walmart’s business practices and treatment of employees. But he also saw other strains of commentary. “A lot of it was just the fear of the unknown,” he says. “Are you going to change your quality? Are you going to change your values?”

ModCloth has been responding to some of these concerns by emphasizing its commitment to inclusivity and diverse sizing. And there are regular posts about the fun, progressive culture at ModCloth’s headquarters that fly in the face of perceptions about Walmart.

"This is a time to recognize people who have struggled through hate and fought to make change possible. It's also a time to reflect on how far we've come and how far we still have to go." – Maddy Fraioli, HR Coordinator // Watch our Instagram Story to see what Pride means to ModCloth employees. . . #TeamModCloth SF is ready to celebrate #SFPride this weekend! Double tap if you are, too. ❤️????????????????

A post shared by ModCloth (@modcloth) on Jun 24, 2017 at 11:43am PDT

Step Two: Show And Tell

Kaness believes that ultimately, the way to prove to the customer that the partnership is a good thing is to give them better products and better customer service. “Walmart has been very good about allowing us to retain our independence, so that we continue to protect our culture and our values,” he says. “But those things are not transparent to people who are concerned about that.”

While there are many challenges connected to being part of Walmart, there are other advantages. Previously, ModCloth was funded by VC firms in the tech world that expected to see financial results very quickly. “Now, our source of capital is the world’s biggest retailer,” he says. “They understand the unit economics, supply chain, and merchandizing that we’re dealing with. This means tying up your supply chain to get better costs on fabric buys that are six to nine months out.”

One of the biggest changes is that ModCloth is increasingly going to make its own products, rather than sell other brands. “You can’t scale a digital brand if you are not selling your own product,” he says. “It’s too easy for customers that you acquire to say, ‘I can get this on Amazon or somewhere else.'”

Over the last two years, ModCloth has worked to increase the number of garments available in inclusive sizing from 20% to nearly 70%. Walmart will allow it to make nearly all of its clothes from extra-small to 3X. “A lot of manufacturers won’t make a full size range because it costs more,” says Kaness. “But we’ve built that into our cost structure without bringing prices up.”

Step Three: A New Look For A New Start

ModCloth has also been quietly rebranding to give the online store a slightly more muted, sophisticated look. Kaness has also changed the assortment of products, based on data from the site. It turns out, the vintage looks did not always sell best. While ModCloth still has a quirky vibe, it has fewer statement dresses, and more clothes that can be worn in more low-key contexts like going to the office. “We still have the retro and vintage feel, but what I’ve tried to do is make sure it feels consistently feminine but to diversify from the retro, tease out the quirky, and also bring in classic looks.”

Kaness hopes that customers that haven’t been to the site in a while will be pleasantly surprised by the new look and be drawn back in. The new site is also designed to appeal to a broader audience that may never have shopped at the brand before.

The danger with this approach is that some loyal customers will feel that ModCloth has changed its essence since the acquisition. But Kaness feels like this a risk the brand is willing to take for the ability to tap into a wider market. “There are people who have been shopping with us for a long time who are asking about where the real retro vintage dresses are they’re used to seeing,” he says. “They’re seeing a new version of ModCloth that looks very different from five years ago. But they’re also showing different signs of engagement and purchase. We have customers that come in and love the new assortment.”

Currently, only about 10% of cancer patients in sub-Sahara Africa receive chemotherapy treatment. More than a half million people are diagnosed with cancer in the region annually, while nearly the same number die from it each year, too. Without intervention, that toll is expected to double by 2030, partly because as people are otherwise living longer, thanks to better malaria and HIV treatments and prevention. But chemotherapy and related drugs are both expensive and tricky to use because there are so many types and stages of the disease.

To fix it, you’d need to somehow lower and stabilize medicine prices and train doctors on various treatment protocols. (Plus, adapt everything in a way that could work in areas with minimal medical facilities.)

Other IBM Health Corps projects include efforts to map and reduce mosquito-related diseases like dengue fever and Zika in Panama and Taiwan, and work alongside Duke to plot and fix vexing community health issues in the southeastern U.S. But Health Corps is just the latest in a trio of similar programs at the company designed to loan coders, engineers, and even business development managers to social good projects that could change the world.

Anyone with at least two years at the company may apply. In general, a review committee grades applicants on previous performance reviews and their answers to a series essay questions. (IBM didn’t elaborate on exact topics, but tries to create a “holistic profile” of each candidate, and judge their English proficiency.) The formula gives extra points to those who can demonstrate that they’re already interested in community service work. Workers can specify what part of the world they’d like to work in, but the company is the ultimate matchmaker.

When that medicine arrives, governments not only have a better idea of where to distribute it, they can also re-order in a way that preserves their price agreements. For doctors, IBM has created an app to direct patients to the closest (and cheapest) pharmacies that stock those medications. At that same time, the new partners created a treatment protocol that’s gained approval from both U.S. based authorities like the National Comprehensive Cancer Network and African health officials. IBM’s crack team turned that into free software, which will be available in November and provide doctors more guidance while collecting data for epidemiological studies.

IBM has always contributed to philanthropic causes: It funded the formation of the NAACP in the 1930s and, by the mid-80s was using PC-boom related wealth to give out 50% of all corporate philanthropy spent abroad. But developing pro bono swat teams for specialized problems is a shift. The Corporate Service Crops began 10 years ago, followed by Smart Cities in 2011, and then Health Corps.

In 2015, the company still gave about $36 million in cash grants to needy causes, $110 million in gratis technology, and an estimated $60 million in pro bono work. In general, its philanthropic proprieties are improving education, health, and resilient communities.

Today, the company thinks about how to partner in more strategic ways. “Building those immersive experiences is sort of a signature piece because it’s about employee engagement. It’s about the way millennials work. It’s about driving social impact and it’s also about bringing a little bit of fun back to the workplace, which I think is pretty important.”

Since 2008, Corporate Service has sent at least 3,500 workers to projects in 40 counties. Projects include working with Coders4Africa in Senegal to provide programmers business training along with technical skills, a disabled rights group in India to open business processing centers that could create more jobs, and finding ways to boost donations and the distribution range of food banks in Latin America.

Smart Cities alone has plugged into 130 cities; that includes improving ambulance response times in Memphis, building a renewable energy grid in Pingtung County in Taiwan, and expanding affordable housing through an analysis is declining but salvageable properties in Syracuse, New York.

On average, about 500 employees are expected to deploy this year. The process for getting picked, however, remains competitive: Only 10% of those who apply are picked, after a performance analysis and interviews to determine if their skill set and personality matches the gig. Those who do, however, generally become more valuable to the company. According to an IBM survey, 80% of managers say special mission veterans come back more positive and motivated. Among those who have deployed, 80% say they’re interested in staying aboard for life.

Of course, managers still have to deal with losing a top employee while she or he is in the field. The program coordinates to avoid conflicts with obvious commercial deadlines and end-of-quarter goals. Team members are expected to prep for several months ahead of their departure, giving other employees time to divide the leftover workload. It’s true some departments might be running differently when those employees return–especially if others have stepped up to fill the void–but that’s sort of the point. The employee who comes back is hopefully more dynamic; departments should change and evolve.

He and his team were initially only tasked with figuring out the medicine supply chain but lobbied for reconvening this summer for an obvious next step, matching newly vetted developing world treatments with that automate guidance software.

“I think that’s one of the great things that can come out of these types of collaborations. You’re getting all the right people together and not only are you trying to solve the [immediate] problem, but you’re kind of brainstorming and coming up with other ideas and ways to collaborate in the future. And that’s exactly what happened.”

For Sandy Campbell, a North Carolina-based marketing manager within IBM’s Global Business Partners, the chance to join a Corporate Service team in Serbia in June 2016 validated that, after more than 30 years with the company, her skills were broad enough to tackle even the novelist challenge. In this case, it was developing a business plan for a non-profit trying to incubate more local entrepreneurs. “It was a self-confidence boost that I could be plopped down in the middle of a very unfamiliar environment and be able to use my experience to do to work,” she says.

Since returning, she’s changed jobs within the company, joining their Global Business Partners division. Her former field team stays in touch, sharing skills that can help each other in their day jobs.

That formula may not be entirely profitable up front, but over time would make the company’s pro-bono efforts more sustainable. According to PYXERA, a consultancy that tracks global pro bono work, IBM’s efforts are the largest in the country. At the same time, it’s not alone anymore: Since 2008, 25 major U.S. companies have sent a combined 8,000 employees abroad.

That’s allowed IBM to expand its impact by co-deploying with the likes of JP Morgan Chase, FedEx, Citi, Novartis, and others depending on the specialties required for each engagement. Last year, they began partnering with the Peace Corps, which has on-the-ground resources to track, monitor, and continue scaling programs in areas after employees depart.

Most people now lobbying to get involved with immersive experiences want help others and themselves, realizing that it’s a great way to grow as an adaptive, emotionally intelligent person. “If we play our cards right…. fast forward another 10 years and all of the senior leaders of our company will have had this experience, so they build that cultural sensitivity, they understand about the social impact being critical to the bottom line, and they understand about shared value.”

On Thursday morning, Twitter will usher in its second-quarter earnings results. The big question on our minds: Will the social network’s live content gambit finally pay off?

Over the past year, Twitter has aggressively built up its roster of live content, inking deals with the NFL, MLB, BuzzFeed, and a slew of other outlets and organizations. Bloomberg and Twitter are even teaming up to produce news programming that will stream live 24/7. As Fast Company‘s Harry McCracken wrote last year, investing in live video is an attempt to both boost Twitter’s dwindling user growth and alter the perception of it.

From a user perspective, video may seem like an odd investment for Twitter, which has long been a text-centric platform and not necessarily where people seek out rich media in the same way they do on Facebook or Instagram. Where Twitter does fit in, however, is at the intersection of live video and commentary–something that has been happening organically for years. (Just ask Shonda Rhimes.) That, coupled with the millennial penchant for cord-cutting, makes it perfectly clear why Twitter wants to pair live video with real-time discussion, make it mobile friendly, and use it to hook in new users.

At the very least, shareholders seem optimistic that live streaming might unlock monetization opportunities for Twitter. (In fact, the bulk of Twitter’s ad revenue comes from video ads rather than text-based ads.) Last month, Twitter’s stock jumped more than 6% after a note by the analysts at equity research firm Cleveland Research indicated that the company’s advertisers were emboldened by its live video push and user growth. Even Steve Ballmer, a shareholder who previously expressed ambivalence over his investment, vouched for Twitter, calling it a “very good asset.”

Twitter’s stock has actually been on an upward trend since its last earnings report in April, when it boasted nine million new users–the biggest upswing in user growth that Twitter had seen in years. The company has since shared more good news, appointing a new CFO and announcing cofounder Biz Stone’s return. Twitter COO Anthony Noto attributed the increase to “resurrected users” who had returned to Twitter to follow political news, as well as people who were consuming live video on Twitter. During the first quarter, Twitter streamed 800 hours of live video, drawing 45 million viewers.

But a Morgan Stanley report from last week warned that its stock pop–which has persisted into July–shouldn’t lull shareholders into a false sense of security, noting that “we have not heard of any material change in advertiser intent to spend in the near term.” So are advertisers really buying what Twitter is selling? We’ll have to wait and see what Twitter has to say about all this on Thursday morning. Stay tuned!

When Sean Spicer resigned last week, America bid farewell to one of its favorite political caricatures: Melissa McCarthy’s Saturday Night Live interpretation. (Good night, sweet prince.) However, just as Spicer was immediately replaced in the White House, SNL may have already found its next great political guest star.

Let us know who you’d like to see play Scaramucci on Twitter. Alternately, you can let us know if and why you’re done with the show.

Communication can be difficult–for some more than others.

Last week, Donald Trump gave an interview to the New York Times–a media outlet whose news, sources say, is fake–and some of his message was lost in translation. Literally. A transcription of the interview contained no less than 15 instances where the stand-in “[garbled]” had to be deployed. However, after digging beneath the surface a little, this intrepid reporter discovered that this was not the first time Donald Trump used words in a way that didn’t fully make sense.

As it turns out, the president’s Twitter account is a post-apocalyptic wasteland, littered with leftover debris from the nuked English language. Some of his words make sense and some do not and none of them seem to be in the right order. Perhaps it might be best, I decided, if Twitter used the same tactic as the New York Times‘ transcriptionist. Alas, such innovations are not in the company’s purview, so I put the question out to some of its users.

Can someone make an app that makes every @realDonaldTrump tweet just say: "[garbled]"

— Joe Berkowitz (@JoeBerkowitz) July 24, 2017

In short order, a hero heeded the call. Former Bob’s Burgers writer Justin Hook, the guy behind WhatsMyStarbucksName, created a chrome extension that performs the remarkable service requested.

Hey @JoeBerkowitz and @WendyMolyneux– here's my Chrome extension to turn @realDonaldTrump's tweets to "[garbled]". https://t.co/nZYQTmo4K4

— justin hook (@justinhook) July 25, 2017

Trumpspeak is an app that fully understands the needs of the average citizen 2017–specifically, the need to see a more honest representation of the president’s words on Twitter. It joins other great Trump-based only innovations of the past year, including the extension that replaces all images of the president with kittens, and RealPressSecBot, which presents Trump’s tweets as official press statements. Obviously, there are many other voices on the platform that could use the same treatment, but for now just this one should go a long way toward making Twitter great again.

There’s a rush of emotions you feel when you find the perfect job listing. Then there’s another whole rush when you see that you’re not exactly qualified for the role. In these cases, it’s only natural to close the window and just assume you’ll never get it.

But that’s the wrong move. While some requirements are necessary, others aren’t so much–especially if you have a few other things going for you.

“Like what?” you may ask…

1. You Have Extensive Experience In The Company’s Industry, Even If You Don’t Have It In That Role

Before I started writing for a living, I never thought I’d be able to find a company willing to give me a shot. I’d never done anything more than an occasional freelance project for a friend, and I wasn’t sure how to get my foot in the door. That was until I learned about transferable and additive skills–the skills that make up for you being slightly under-qualified.

Related:How To Prepare For An Interview When The Job Is A Stretch 

It turned out that my previous jobs actually made me a good fit for certain roles, even if it didn’t look that way at first. For example, even though I didn’t have a journalism degree, I landed this Muse gig because I did have experience as a recruiter, as well as an account manager in the recruitment space.

If you’re in this boat, you can highlight your own skills in your application by using this formula.

2. Your “Fun” Side Projects Are Relevant To The Job

Speaking of transferable skills, take another look at the listing you’re considering applying for. You might not have “professional” experience handling the responsibilities it calls for, but if something you do in your free time is relevant, you’re probably more equipped to do the job than you realize.

I’ve lost track of how many conversations I’ve had with people who have said, “I do this thing when I’m not at work that will never make me any money, but it sure is fun!”

Related:Science-Backed Ways To Build Confidence When You Feel Like You’re Out Of Your League 

Often times, it’s either a blog or a project that those people never think will see the light of day. But in a lot of those cases, those “fun” projects have actually ended up landing my friends jobs.

Plus, based on conversations I’ve had with recruiters in the past, these side projects often prove to be good indicators of someone’s potential success in a role. So they’re usually all about them when they see them on an application. (On that note, here’s how to include those on your resume.)

3. You Don’t Have All The Qualifications

No, you read that right. At the end of the day, you’re allowed to apply for roles that you’re not 100% qualified for. In fact, you should know that many hiring managers view job descriptions as wish lists.

So, before you dismiss yourself as a candidate for a gig, take a closer look at the listing. If you meet most of the qualifications and bring some additional skills to the role that they haven’t even considered, go ahead and apply.

Just make sure to tailor that resume and cover letter.

Applying for new positions is an exhausting process and it’s even tougher when you think you have no shot at landing your dream job. But many employers understand that the perfect candidate doesn’t exist–so they consider many other things to find the right person. The only way to find out where you stand for a role you’re not qualified for on paper? Take the leap and submit an application.

This article originally appeared on The Daily Muse and is reprinted with permission. 

More From The Muse:

• This Is What Makes Hiring Managers Fight For Under-qualified Candidates 
• The 2 Kinds Of Skills You Should Highlight When You’re Under-Qualified For A Job 
• 3 Reasons You’re Not Getting Hired (Even Though You’re 100% Qualified) 

Though more people are earning some form of secondary income, research suggests that men and women often have different motivations when pursuing a side hustle.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics the number of Americans with more than one job hit a two-decade peak in 1995, with more than 6.8% of workers holding a second job, before declining steadily until a low of 5% in 2013. A recent survey of 2,000 Americans by the recruiting platform Jobvite, however, has found that nearly a quarter of working Americans earn some form of secondary income.

Researchers suggest that the rapid increase in side hustling is a result of a number of recent developments that have made earning a secondary income more appealing, necessary, and attainable than ever before.

The skyrocketing debt levels of American students, averaging more than $37,000 last year, are leading many graduates to pursue a side hustle to pay down their student loans. With nearly half of millennials switching jobs every one to three years, secondary incomes have also become more necessary to help bridge the gap between full-time roles. Furthermore, the past few years have seen an explosion in digital tools that make a side income more attainable than ever, ranging from sharing economy platforms like Uber and Airbnb to freelance platforms like UpWork and 99 Designs.

While the Jobvite survey suggests that approximately one in four people across all age brackets now has a second source of income, it has also found that men are more likely to pursue a side hustle out of passion, while women are more likely to be motivated by financial necessity.

The study found that 61% of women with a side hustle indicated that they pursued a second source of income because they needed the money, compared with 48% of men. At the same time 31% of men with a side gig report being primarily motivated by passion, compared with only 19% of women.

Though neither study was able to provide a precise reason for the discrepancy, researchers have considered a number of explanations.

“Without speculating too much we know that the wage gap is very real, so it’s possible that could be a factor in why more women are spending side hustle income on living expenses in comparison to men,” said Bankrate blogger and analyst Sarah Berger. “We also know that being a single mother is very expensive, so a side hustle might be necessary for women with kids who are struggling to make ends meet.”

Though the gender wage gap still sits at around 23.7%, according to a 2016 study by PayScale, FlexJobs’ senior career specialist Brie Reynolds isn’t convinced that it’s the primary factor leading more women to pursue a secondary source of income.

“Maybe men more often take full time jobs that they’re not necessarily passionate about but that pay the bills, so they pursue freelance work as a way to follow their passion,” she says. “It might be that more women are already doing things in their full time jobs that they’re more passionate about.”

Another theory behind the gender discrepancy in side hustle motivation relates to the fact that, according to Pew Research, the number of married Americans is at its lowest point in nearly a century, with millennial men and women marrying at an average age of 29.5 and 27.5 years, respectively.

“I think there’s an independence factor that is leading this,” says Rachel Bitte, the chief people officer for Jobvite. “You may be seeing [in these statistics] that women are increasingly trying to become more financially independent and secure earlier in life.”

Financial independence was a factor for 26-year-old side hustler Kassondra Cloos. After graduating in 2013 with debt greater than her starting salary,  Cloos says the only way she could justify spending on anything aside from her student loans was with money earned outside of her day job as a newspaper reporter in Virginia.

“I was paying almost as much in rent as I was for student loans,” she says. “I really wanted to save money to travel, but it wasn’t something that I felt I could justify with my student debt.”

Cloos worked as an Uber driver between shifts at the newspaper, rented out her living room on Airbnb, and even donated plasma in order to support herself, travel, and continue paying down her student loans all at once.

While Cloos’s side hustles were entirely motivated by financial necessity, Daniel Berzen initially lost money on his. The 29-year-old loves his senior creative role at a marketing agency, but his true passion has always been in live music and events. He began his side hustle in college, booking artists to play small venues near campus, before launching an artist collective called Almost Art after graduation.

“We basically find art we love and help build it out,” he said, explaining that the role could involve anything from designing album art to booking private events. “I was entirely motivated by my love for art, and once you’ve decided that you’re willing to lose money on it you’re more than willing to put a lot of time into it.”

Though it required some upfront investments and a lot of his time, Berzen says he’s building experience that he could one day use to create his own label. Furthermore, he’s able to leverage the relationships he’s built on the side to the benefit of his full-time employer.

Bitte explains that both Cloos’s and Berzin’s stories are consistent with the feedback gathered in Jobvite’s study, adding that such discrepancies in motivation could have long-term implications for employers.

“It shows that women are feeling financial pressure, and that financial pressure is going to lead them to potentially look at their full-time gig and question whether they’re making enough, and maybe they’ll start to negotiate more,” she says.

On the flip side, Bitte believes that the fact that men are pursuing their passion in the form of a side hustle should be of equal concern to their employers as well. “They might start to ask themselves, ‘why can’t I turn my side gig into a full-time career?”

As a result Bitte believes it’s more important than ever for employers to pay their employees fairly and provide an opportunity for them to pursue passion projects at work. Otherwise they could risk losing talent to the growing number of side hustle opportunities available to them.

Retinas, the image sensors of the eye, don’t heal after damage from an injury or a genetic disease—at least not in mammals like humans. But the retinas in some fish do regenerate. Today, researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle reported that they have hacked the cells of a mouse retina to act like those of a fish—not only growing new neurons, but also wiring those neurons up to other neurons that send signals to the brain.

This is a major step, though far from the last, toward restoring sight in people who have lost it due to retina damage from genetic diseases like retinitis pigmentosa, age-related diseases like macular degeneration, or side effects of diseases like diabetes. Retina damage isn’t the biggest causes of blindness. That would be cataracts, which affect the eye’s lens. But cataracts are curable with routine surgery. Retina damage is incurable.

Related: Researchers Have A Vision: Cure Blindness By Regrowing Retinas And Optic Nerves

Instead of trying to engineer a new drug that might unlock that DNA, the UW researchers pored through catalogs of existing drugs that might do the trick. They found one called Trichostatin-A (TSA), a hormonal treatment for breast cancer, that also happens to open up the regeneration DNA sequence. In an injured retina, these Müller glia cells treated with TSA transformed into two types of neurons, bipolar and amacrine cells, that are part of the retina’s internal wiring.

But the UW researchers haven’t yet produced the most important neurons: the photoreceptors that actually convert light into a signal for the brain. Other researchers have generated new photoreceptors from types of cells other than Müller glia, but they haven’t wired up to other neurons. The UW researchers expect their method could someday make not only photoreceptors, but ones that connect to the brain. That will be a bright day, indeed.

Capital & Main is an award-winning publication that reports from California on economic, political, and social issues.

Christopher Parras is a pioneer of sorts.

A year ago, the 28-year-old media company employee invested $3,000 in a West Hollywood-based startup, thanks to recent changes in a federal law that allows people of modest means to play the role of venture capitalist. The company he chose, DSTLD —pronounced “distilled”—is an online apparel firm whose promise of premium denim at affordable prices caught his attention. He became a customer and when the company launched a crowdfunding campaign, he wanted in.

“I felt like this was a nice chance to be part of a company from the beginning,” says Parras, who adds that fashion had always been “a little passion of mine.”

DSTLD raised $2 million from that offering, made possible by the Jumpstart Our Business Startups (JOBS) Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2012. The company—which projects sales of $7.7 million for this year—plans a second campaign next month using a New York-based platform called SeedInvest.

Having seen documentaries about sweatshops, Parras, who lives in a small city in northwest Riverside County, was attracted to the fact that DSTLD markets itself as sweatshop-free and “more eco-friendly.”

Conscious About How Clothing Is Made

DSTLD is one of a slew of online fashion companies that market themselves as being “ethical,” an umbrella term that refers to a concern for the impact the firm has on working conditions, the environment, and animal welfare. Like Everlane, Zady, Kestan, Reformation, Tuckerman & Co., and Elizabeth Suzann, these online outfits are building direct relationships with a customer base increasingly conscious about how its clothes are made.

But most apparel companies–DSTLD included–do not own the factories that make their clothes. Many source their products from far-flung manufacturers and mills in a global supply chain that has historically been rife with labor and environmental problems.

Being an ethical apparel firm is therefore a complex proposition, especially when you add to the equation fickle and price-sensitive consumers with a myriad of buying choices. Very few brands—if any—can claim to have fully minimized their environmental footprint while also guaranteeing living wages to workers from the cotton field to the factory floor.

That said, advocates claim there are important benchmarks to look for and that making a firm’s supply chain more transparent is a critical part of being an ethical brand. New York-based Project Just is a nonprofit focused on helping the socially and environmentally conscious consumer make choices about where to shop and which questions to ask apparel companies.

Coming soon to dstld.com ✔

A post shared by DSTLD (@dstld) on Feb 6, 2017 at 12:33pm PST

A Project Just consumer guide recommends scrutinizing which kinds of fabrics are used, whether the brand can claim any third-party’s nod of approval (like a fair trade or organic cotton certification), and, if the company has not done these things, whether it has publicly committed to meeting goals in the future. Transparency, says Project Just’s Jacinta FitzGerald, is “one of our key criteria” for how responsible a company is.

On its website, DSTLD touts its “moral fiber.” The company “carefully screen[s]” its suppliers, laundries, and factories to ensure “products are fairly manufactured and 100 percent sweatshop-free.” In addition, “many of the fabrics” are “eco-friendly and fully sustainable” and, “where possible,” the company uses “eco-friendly dyes.”

These are “broad, sweeping statements,” observes FitzGerald. “I would want to know what those meant to them, and I would want to know how they ensure how that actually happens.”

Large photographs of denim-clad models decorate the walls of DSTLD’s stylish Beverly Boulevard offices of founders Corey Epstein and Mark Flynn. It’s mid-July and the air conditioning is off because the building is about to be renovated and the DSTLD staff are the lone holdouts as the 14-person company waits to find new digs.

The two men are casual and unguarded, occasionally interrupting and correcting each other. At times, the ethical component of DSTLD’s brand seems front and center to them. Epstein talks excitedly about a mushroom-based alternative to leather that he hopes one day to be able to use in their line. Flynn described their ethical approach as “inherent,” and Epstein, as “part of our blood.”

But when it comes to the marketing of their product, they both say it is not what they want to put in the foreground. The crowdfunding campaign meant the firm disclosed an unusual amount of financial information for a private company. Its 84-page filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission includes two sentences about its ethical commitments.

“You can lead with environmentally-friendly first as your ethos,” says Flynn, but “it stigmatizes you a little bit. We try to guide the consumers’ choice by providing them with a value proposition.” By that he means a pair of jeans that everyone wants to wear and be seen in.

You Get What You Pay For

Their company did not begin as an ethical brand. In 2012, Epstein and Flynn launched 20Jeans, a company that purchased overstock denim from L.A.’s downtown fashion district and sent it to Hong Kong and Shanghai factories to be made into $20 men’s jeans. Their initial venture taught them a few things about the fashion industry–one was that you get what you pay for. They rejected up to 40% of orders because of poor quality, Epstein would tell the Los Angeles Business Journal. The second was that the fashion industry generated an enormous amount of waste. In fact, Americans toss out 80 pounds of clothing annually. Clothing magnate Eileen Fisher has said apparel is the most polluting industry after oil.

In 2014, Flynn and Epstein rebranded the company as DSTLD and refocused its mission on producing a high-quality minimalist line for the “creative class that lives and works in denim.”

Now they source from high-end suppliers like Cone Mills in North Carolina, which Project Just’s FitzGerald acknowledges is “meant to be quite a good mill” and its T-shirts from JS Apparel, a Carson, California-based company whose clients include Nordstrom and American Apparel.

Lazy Monday vibes #dstld #lightwash

A post shared by DSTLD (@dstld) on Jul 24, 2017 at 12:22pm PDT

DSTLD contractors use “natural dyes” and “natural softening enzymes” on all items and water at their wash houses is cleaned and reused to reduce consumption, according to company spokesperson Hannah Laverty. It also uses modal for some of its clothes, a fiber made from a renewable plant. But Epstein acknowledges that not everything is eco-friendly about their supply chain, and there are things that “pain him” about the making of black denim jeans, in particular.

Still, says Epstein, what’s most polluting is not the making of a pair of jeans. Rather, “it is, do you have that pair of jeans for 10 years of six months?” He questioned the value of an organic label if it’s affixed to clothing that no one can afford. The company has not made public any goals around gaining third-party sustainability or fair trade certification. But unlike some more costly ethical brands, DSTLD is trying to “nip at the heels of the fast fashion guys,” says Flynn.

The rise of fast fashion—the trendy designs that appear in retailers soon after debuting on runways—has only increased the apparel industry’s already substantial ecological impacts, which range from rivers polluted by toxic dyes to the dirty fuel used by container ships to transport clothes worldwide. Fast fashion’s compressed production schedules and low prices also exacerbate the industry’s heavy toll on workers.

DSTLD’s business model—with its focus on quality and wardrobe essentials, and its direct relationship with consumers, says Epstein, is pushing in the other direction. Nobody is telling DSTLD to lower prices. Indeed, “we’ve had vendors give us prices where we’ve said, ‘That’s too low.'”

Epstein reports that 70% of the company’s clothing is made in the U.S. That is unusually high. In 2012, only 7% of apparel-related products were made domestically.

Still Too Many Sweatshops In California

But the “Made in the USA” label is not a guarantee of good working conditions, claim labor advocates and wage-and-hour officials who say sweatshops are still found in California. As recently as last year investigators from the California Department of Labor’s Wage and Hour Division found wage and hour violations in 85% of the 77 factories investigated in Southern California, Women’s Wear Daily reported. Many of L.A.’s garment factories are dusty, lack proper ventilation, have blocked exits, and workers report health problems as a result, according to a 2016 UCLA Labor Center report.

But, says Foxvog, “slow fashion” is no guarantee of good working conditions, either. She sees living wages, freedom of association, and compliance with the United Nation’s International Labor Organization standards as essential first steps. Like Project Just’s FitzGerald, Foxvog also emphasizes the importance of disclosing factory names and addresses, so that workers and reporters can “connect the dots” between those factories and the clothes customers are buying if working conditions are substandard.

“Ideally, if a brand truly cares about human rights and labor rights in their supply chains, then that brand should know their whole supply chain, and they should be taking steps to ensure that no labor laws are being violated,” says Foxvog. An increasing number of global brands, like H&M, Patagonia, Levis Strauss, and Gap are publishing information about their factories. DSTLD declined to share its full list of suppliers with Capital & Main, although several suppliers are listed in the company’s filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

DSTLD has a set of minimum worker and environmental standards it shares with each of its contractors and its production team visits every factory that it contracts with. But the company currently lacks the capacity to audit factories. Instead, it contracts with plants that work with well-known brands that have auditing capability, says Epstein.

Piggy-backing on the auditing infrastructure of trusted brands is “a smart strategy” for a small firm, says Vincent Stanley, co-author of The Responsible Company, who was a longtime marketing executive at Patagonia, a company that pioneered ethical retailing.

Stanley cautions against using the term “sweatshop-free,” however. Companies should be “as specific as possible about what they are doing.” Even an audit is only a snapshot of a company at a point in time, he says, adding that the rewards for transparency—by which he means talking in more specifics about what the company is doing and is not doing—are significant. Among other things, it can help build trust. DSTLD’s founders are reluctant to have a deeper conversation with their customers because, as Epstein points out, “it’s a long rabbit hole.”

Joy Ready, who works in advertising, fell in love with the comfortable fit of DSTLD’s jeans and will wear no other. She invested $500 in the last crowdfunding round and plans on participating in the next. She would like to hear more about DSTLD’s ethical commitments in a blog, but argues that a company would not stake its name on claims that did not hold up to scrutiny.

“I know what they are saying on the website is true,” Ready says.

A rapidly growing young company that is still operating in the red, DSTLD has a ways to go before it is bought or goes public. But if that happens, Ready, Parras, and more than 1,700 small investors stand to benefit financially. That promise, plus a great-fitting pair of jeans at an affordable price, may be enough for them to remain brand evangelists for DSTLD.

“What you want to do is raise the level of conversation with the customers,” Parras says.

Since President Trump’s election, Republicans officials in nearly one-third of the country’s states have lobbied for ways to reduce political dissent. As the Washington Post has reported, that includes laws against protesting by ratcheting up punishments for highways, outlawing the use of masks to conceal your identity, and in more extreme cases even absolving drivers who might hit those obstructing traffic, and making demonstrators financially liable for any resulting violence or property damage.

But those limitations may restrain more than just one kind of action. They could create a chilling effect that hurts societal progress. According to Civicus, a worldwide alliance for citizen participation, those countries with the most open “civic space”—a catchall term for people’s ability to associate, assemble, and express themselves freely—tend to develop more powerful democracies, with citizens scoring higher on international indexes for human development, having more electoral freedom, and lower income inequality.

By that argument, limiting free expression is akin to limiting societal advancement, in which case the world may be in trouble. A recent Civicus analysis has found that among all United Nations countries (plus Kosovo and Palestine) just 3% of the world’s population lives in areas where civic space is truly open, free of pressures or threats to stop assemble. Over 40% are in places where that right is repressed or taken away altogether.

The results look rosier–but not much–in a per-country breakdown. On a sliding scale of “Open,” “Narrowed,” “Obstructed,” “Repressed,” or “Closed,” (read the full definitions here) only 26 of 195 countries have created open civic space. In the U.S., which in recent months has seen Black Lives Matter and Dakota Pipeline protesters pressured and arrested, falls into “narrowed” territory, meaning those who form associations to share their own opinions may be subject to “harassment, arrest, or assault”, protests can be denied or broken up by excessive force, and journalists face obstacles in reporting the truth.

To keep activists apprised of such shifts, Civicus has created the Civicus Monitor, an interactive map that ranks relative levels of openness in every country around the world. Since its launch in April, the service has provided daily updates on violations impacting those scores. The site includes a watch list that, early on, noted state repression in Cameroon where Anglophone activists were being arrested, and tortured during an internet blackout, alongside warnings that, in the U.S., Trump’s “vilification of mainstream media houses” is hurting press freedom while “a growing number of states pass or prepare new laws to curtail protest rights.” ‘The group’s current watch list of oppressed spots includes Angola, Kenya, Tanzania, Turkey, and Venezuela.

Civicus Monitor data is generated through a collaboration with more than 20 civil society research partners (alphabetically, it ranges from the Asia Democracy Network to West African Human Rights Defenders Network), and other independent societal scoring agencies (which include Freedom House, Reporters Without Borders, and the University of North Carolina which runs the Political Terror Scale.) Civicus adds in-house research that’s been reviewed peer groups like the United National Human Rights Council, and contacts activist groups, who can also report infractions directly through the service to ensure what’s being shared accurately reflects what’s happening in the group.

Civicus’s research shows that 20 countries–mostly in Africa and Asia–have totally closed civic space. “In one almost unbroken swathe of territory, across a dozen countries stretching from Kinshasa to Tehran, it is next to impossible for activists to conduct human rights advocacy or peacefully oppose the state without the very real risk of attack, imprisonment or death,” notes a recent report.

How exactly does civic space get shuttered? The most obvious and widely used tactic appears to be detaining activists, most often those expressing political dissent or decrying or monitoring human rights violations. In less than a year of collecting such data–from June 2016 and March 2017–the group cataloged 160 overall reports. Security or police using excessive force to break up protests including tear gas and rubber bullets comes next (112 reports); such tactics are most likely to occur again to silence those speaking out against government decision, but social and economic-based demonstrations, and human rights gatherings often get hit.

Civicus counted 101 attacks against journalists trying to cover related news in the field last year, ranging from online threats and intimidation for covering war crimes and corruption in the Balkans, which are generally “narrowed” to widespread killings of journalists covering the complicated war against organized crime in Mexico, which ranks as “repressed.”

“We believe we are seeing a global emergency on civic space,” Civicus’s General Secretary Danny Sriskandarajah writes in an email to Fast Company. “Many governments seem to be fearing an independent and vocal civil society, and have been locking up activists who speak out, shutting down peaceful protests, restricting income streams of civil society organizations and demonizing them in the political realm . . . Now, more than ever, we need an active not suppressed citizenry.”