Below, you’ll find a batch of links that represent the themes of this newsletter: career development, community building, and self care.

Employers Are Making Job Candidates Jump Through Hoops to Prove They’re Real. This is a topic that turns up often in conversations I have with AI founders, how the legacy companies are way behind in terms of screening candidates. It’s a cybersecurity issue, not just a concern about people gaming the system.

You Know Who Really Hates AI? Insurance Claims Adjusters.

The myth of workplace readiness.

To navigate those unknowns, Catrino says the center needs to bridge the gaps in how employers and schools talk about career readiness and skills. That includes conversations with employers about how Dartmouth students have performed in internships and first jobs, and what skills employers are seeking, while shifting how students talk about themselves and their abilities to also focus on skills rather than a quick name drop of companies and schools.

Meet the gen Zers finding job opportunities teaching English abroad.

Can you spend your way out of loneliness?

Because social health touches so many aspects of life — the physical spaces we inhabit, the technology that both facilitates and inhibits socialization, the costs of interacting — the path toward connection is more complex than marketable products or individual purchases. It involves government investment in public spaces and low- or no-cost community events; policies that allow everyone to lead a dignified life, which includes the space for leisure activities; and a societal shift that prioritizes slow, intentional relationship building instead of instant connection.

Inside the Perimenopause Industrial Complex.

Who’s ‘Working Class’ Anymore? This debate over this term has surfaced in my feeds this week, and I find it all to be a sideshow. We should be making cities more affordable, however we can, and giving additional people the chance to triumph without overextending themselves. The worst things taking place now are Buy Now Pay Later and prediction markets. Let’s give people a fair shake.

Seattle and D.C. Are Bucking the Trend by Attracting Families With Kids.

AI’s not taking all the jobs. Just ask your local hobby shop, garage band and crafts store.

“There is a niche in today’s economy for in-person business, because that is something a computer cannot provide,” he said, “and that’s a real human need to connect with other people who care about what you care about; who love what you love; and who can show you that you are valuable as a human being to other people.”

Life lessons from Big Tech workers who got laid off.

Gen X is being squeezed out of the job market – here is the formula to get back in. I’ve written about this before, but I feel for Gen X more so than I feel for other cohorts because they had to reinvent themselves coming out of college, with the advent of the internet, and are now stuck doing it again in an age of AI, when they are expensive and on the verge of retirement years…

How these homeowners pulled off buying a house in their early 20s.

Brace Yourselves: These Back-To-School Staples Suffered The Biggest Price Hikes This Year. People cut back in their own respective ways, but the costs that come with sending kids to school with appropriate supplies has taken its toll this season on Americans hoping for a bit of relief. These are essentials.

Parents Push Teens to Start Investing Earlier Than They Did.

The Parental Case for Playing Video Games.

Pew notes that 41% of teen gamers say they’ve been called an offensive name, 12% have been physically threatened, and 8% have been sent unwanted sexually explicit messages. But that’s just another reason why it’s great to play together, so parents can see what’s going on and model how to be a good sport or a gracious loser without bullying—or have help handling difficult situations if they do arise.

Shortly after my wife and I met, while we were still learning how to merge two formed young lives into a shared narrative, I encountered a kind of social adversity that, in hindsight, taught…

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During the pandemic, I managed to keep my job thanks to some creative concessions. I accepted a 15% pay cut and took on responsibilities that extended beyond the company that employed me. Th…

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Since I can remember, I have had a tendency to receive other people’s stray comments as veiled digs at my expense. A passing remark, an offhand joke, some lightly delivered sentiment that ca…

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Late last year, a friend celebrated his son’s Bar Mitzvah in Israel. The decision reflected both the cost of holding the event locally and the family’s preferences, shaped by their experienc…

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Below, you’ll find a batch of links that represent the themes of this newsletter: career development, community building, and self care.

Third places are out, as prices rise. Hosting dinners, craft nights, and book clubs are in. Right on. My book club is one of the greatest gifts. I’m hovering around nine year of book club sessions making me better. Sometimes I even enjoy the books we’ve read.

Gen X is losing confidence.

Americans Are Rethinking Their Love Affair With Plant Milks.

“People are cutting back from plant-based milk. They’re disappointed with the price, the taste and the heavy processing, and it’s low-protein comparatively to dairy milk,” says Melissa Altobelli, a Circana senior vice president. “That is why dairy is winning.”

Love in the Time of AI: Chatbots Are Taking Over Online Dating.

Your junior engineers don’t need an office. They need you. “These examples reinforce the importance of hiring organizations’ preparedness and planning to ensure that new hires have the tools and resources in place to succeed in their roles.” Well, yeah. Many assigned to manage never wanted to manage in the first place, but it was a means to an end along the way.

VCs Are Asking Founders: Will You Quit on Me?

Why Bosses Who Hate Remote Work Might Just Be Narcissists, According to Adam Grant. I have been seeing this take floating around this year, and it’s just such a weird thing to say and believe. People who want to be CEOs enjoy being at the front of the company, which isn’t for all of us. And CEOs are entitled to run those businesses however they’d like to, even changing policies if it better reflects where their thinking is currently and ahead. It’s that simple.

AI Is Turning Retail Traders Into DIY Hedge Funds.

Ozempic is causing weird work conversations. “But GLP-1s and their coverage end up eliciting more debate than those other treatments, something that can cause further discomfort in workplaces bound by premiums and plans.” This is a great angle and approach to take. I hadn’t seen anyone cover it from the benefits managers side in such a manner.

Reviews are ruining your life.

AI Is Giving Your HR Department an Existential Crisis.

Now some HR departments are trying to reinvent themselves again, racing to take on new tasks and rebrand themselves as something more than the administrators of the corporate world’s paradigmatic bureaucracy before their time runs out.

You Can’t Be Messy On Social Media Anymore. Where to Next?

Fake AI job candidates are forcing a hiring rethink at Arena, its CEO says. “It urged employers to verify identities during interviews and onboarding — ideally in person — and to continue checks throughout remote workers' employment.” Just so absurd, and also so necessary, that this is the world we reside in now.

‘I’m invisible now’: The high-earning women who can’t find work.

It’s Easier Than Ever to Fly Private Without Your Own Jet.

PS facilities have shared lounges and private suites, as well as their own TSA agents. Customers are often greeted with Champagne and caviar and pampered with gourmet meals and massage treatments. When it’s time to board your flight, a driver whisks you directly to the plane in a BMW.

For much of my young adult life, I didn’t belong to a synagogue. I attended countless services, usually leaving early and rarely feeling that I truly belonged. I was unimpressed by what thes…

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Separately from that endeavor, I have prepared to deliver this coming Saturday afternoon a 30-minute class on the subject of Shabbat. This is not a simple sermon, a challenge of greater proportions to entertain and educate a group of a few dozen people with material handouts and a central thesis to engage them. I am excited to get to deliver it, viewing that time on Saturday as relief after the many, many hours I’ve poured into drafting and editing what I have to say originally.

I am pasting below a version of my class for you to read below. I am eager to get your impressions and insights ahead of the weekend, when I will present my findings.

Two distinctive times in the Torah, almost the same set of commandments is presented to the Jewish people. The first version takes place in Parshat Yitro, weeks after Yetziat Mitzraim. The Jewish people are newly freed, standing at Sinai to receive the Torah. They have experienced miracles but have not yet learned how to function as a nation.

The second summary appears in Parshat Vaetchanan. In the wilderness, their known environment for nearly 40 years, they have lived by the laws of the Torah. And they have been shaped by it, even built an identity within their circumstances and surroundings. Their leaders are about to change. The situation has altered significantly. Most importantly, the people themselves have evolved.

The Exodus, too, has matured in their consciousness. At Sinai, freedom was still immediate. The memories were raw, the wounds fresh, and the miracles unforgettable. Four decades later, a new generation knows Egypt differently. They have inherited its memory rather than lived beneath its oppression. That geographical and emotional distance permits Moshe to reveal a different dimension within the same commandments.

The Torah is no longer simply something they received; it has become something they carry. At first blush, the Ten Commandments appear almost identical. But the differences are selective and instructive. Let’s have a close look at Shabbat.

In Yitro, Shabbat is rooted in Creation. Shabbat grounds us and reminds us that the world is not entirely ours to govern. We are not the sources of all existence, rather participants in a narrative that came ahead of our appearance on the scene.

So the Torah adds one additional word to the conclusion: “Vayikadshehu,” and God sanctified it. Shabbat is presented as a day of rest that is imbued with holiness. This is the foundation of the kiddush ritual, recognition that this day is elevated, that time is set aside as sacred - and that by stepping away from the ordinary we can encounter something beyond ourselves.

This first presentation of Shabbat directs our eyes upward. It teaches us what Shabbat is. It establishes the foundation our Creator designed, reminding us that the world has purpose. Even if someone were alone for Shabbat, this version of the day stands, rooted in the relationship between God and the individual.

But decades later, the Jewish people encounter a different emphasis. In Vaetchanan, Shabbat is not tied to Creation. Rather, its focus is redemption. Consider that the Exodus was closer to Sinai than to this moment in the long narrative.. If the goal were simply to remind the people of what happened, Sinai would have been the natural place to emphasize the Exodus. Yet Moshe waits until a generation later. The passage of time has changed not the facts of redemption but the people’s ability to comprehend and in turn to appreciate what redemption requires of them. As the people are about to enter the land of Israel, Shabbat conjures up Yitziat Mitzraim. Because redemption is not complete when a person is freed. It happens when that person helps create a world where others experience dignity as well. Think about how we begin our Passover seders, by inviting guests to join us, the ultimate expression of freedom.

Notice how the commandment expands in Vaetchanan. Shabbat is no longer only a personal spiritual discipline. It conveys a communal responsibility. The Torah could have simply said, Do not force your servants to work. Instead, it states “Lema’an yanuach avdecha va’amatcha kamocha,” “So that your servant and maidservant may rest like you.”

Like you.

Rabbi Jonathan Sacks points out that this may be one of the most revolutionary ideas embedded in Shabbat. In the ancient world, rest was a privilege of power. Those with wealth and authority controlled their own time. Those without power couldn’t. Vaetchanan declares that on Shabbat the person who commands and the person who serves stand on equal ground. On that special day, we confer dignity.

Shabbat teaches that human worth does not come from productivity or from status. The servant does not merely get a day off. The servant witnesses a different form of living. The servant anticipates weekly a household transformed by holiness, a dedicated space where productivity gives way to presence.

So in Vaetchanan we discover something new, that Shabbat is built to emerge as Judaism’s weekly public demonstration. A Jewish home should evoke something somewhat unusual, where believers pause weekly to appreciate what they have accumulated. The stranger may not have stood at Sinai or know every word of our tradition, but the stranger can participate in what covenantal life looks like and feels like.

The second telling of Shabbat is more experiential than conceptual. It does not only outline why we observe the day; it begins to describe what the day should resemble. This message becomes even more powerful because of where the Jewish people are standing at that moment. On the verge of conquering the land of Israel, they will have to establish new norms. In the wilderness, holiness came with structure. The cloud guided their journeys. Manna arrived each morning. Divine presence was visible and visceral.

But in the Land of Israel, they will need to build something for themselves. Create homes, communities, institutions - a society. The theology was given decades earlier. Now and ahead arrives the active assignment, to foster civilization. This explains why the Torah waits until now to emphasize redemption through Shabbat. A nation wandering through the wilderness has relatively few opportunities to shape public life. Soon they will become employers, landowners, judges, neighbors, and leaders. They will possess authority they never had before. The memory of Egypt is therefore no longer merely historical. It becomes ethical. They must remember not only where they came from, but also how people should be treated when they themselves wield power.

The Netziv suggests that the mitzvot of the Torah were never intended merely to fuel righteous individuals. They were assigned to create a righteous society. A person can believe deeply in God and still fail to construct a world that reflects God’s vision or values. Similarly, a nation can observe rituals and still neglect the dignity of those housed inside.

That is why the Torah preserves both versions of Shabbat. They are not competing explanations. They are two stages of growth for the nation. Memory becomes covenant only when it transforms behavior. “Zachor” reminds us where Shabbat emanated from. “Shamor” teaches what Shabbat is meant to produce in our time, under our jurisdiction.

And if we read Vaetchanan carefully, the Torah is inviting us to undergo the very same progression. We often picture the Ten Commandments as two equal tablets, five commandments on each side. Visually, that makes sense. Spiritually, however, I have come to envision them unfolding more naturally as two, then three, then five.

The first two commandments establish our relationship with God: “I am the Lord your God,” and “You shall have no other gods.” The next three turn inward, shaping the kind of people we become. We honor God’s name, sanctify Shabbat, and honor those who gave us life. These mitzvot cultivate gratitude and identity. Only then do we arrive at the final five: Do not murder, commit adultery, kidnap, bear false witness, or covet. Every one of these commandments governs how we relate to another human being. Once our relationship with God is secure and our own character has begun to take shape, the Torah turns our attention outward, asking us to build a society worthy of the covenant we have received.

That is precisely the shift we witness between Yitro and Vaetchanan. First comes the foundation of holiness. Then comes the challenge of carrying that holiness into the world and allowing it to reshape what surrounds us.

We often think of Shabbat as the seventh day, coming at the conclusion of the week. And in the earliest sense, it is, marking when God rested. But spiritually, I’d position Shabbat at the front of the week. Because if Shabbat occurs only at the tail end of the week, it emerges more so as an escape from ordinary life. If Shabbat is slotted as the beginning of the week, though, it becomes the force that propels everything that follows. A day of reset, not toward rest. A day for the rest.

There is a hint of this idea in the Talmud, Pesachim kuf vav amud alef. It asks: If someone forgot to make Havdalah on Saturday night, until when can they still recite it? The answer, many of us know, is until Tuesday. The Gemara explains that Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday are still considered to be batar Shabbata, “after Shabbat.” The week has already begun, but spiritually we have not yet left Shabbat behind. Shabbat, in other words, casts a shadow longer than a single day. For half the week, we are still living in its light.

The holiness we associate with Shabbat is not meant to remain within that limited period. Rather, how you spend Shabbat will usher in the days ahead. The awareness of God we cultivate on Shabbat should deepen our integrity on Sunday and into the workweek as well. The patience we practice on Shabbat informs our conversations with others on Monday morning.

My wife invited several of her colleagues for Shabbat dinner some years ago, most of whom had never attended a meal like this one previously. I led a short program at the top introducing candle lighting, kiddush, and hamotzi. Prior to sitting down, I had everyone pause to take in the sanctity of the day, saying goodbye to Friday and ringing in the Shabbat environment we prepared for. They came to know Shabbat as we celebrate it. Table talk focused largely on belief and what it means to participate in community. It was a lot of work ahead, a pleasure to entertain.

At the close of Shabbat, each of the five families shared the same private admission to my wife: they had almost canceled. They were exhausted from a long week. They had to hustle to coordinate to get there on time. Some had sick family members to check in on further away. They had every reason to stay home, once they considered what it would take to arrive, as intended.

But, they told her, they were so very grateful they came. They told my wife that the evening had been exactly what they needed to nourish them, without realizing it in advance. She replied: “You experienced Shabbat.”

That is the power of Shabbat spent together with people who appreciate the impact of Shabbat once you share it with them. Sometimes a person simply feels what happens when we slow down, gather together, and make space for the other, over a meal or just with a friendly smile in passing. And that is why we need to find additional ways to meet and elevate each other on Shabbat.

Hospitality is beautiful, however it is not the only expression of Shabbat. The spirit of Shabbat begins by introducing ourselves to the people who make up the tapestry of our weekends, not only speaking to reliable friends. Because it’s really a self-selecting group who would elect to be at a shul on a given Shabbat, and the presumption should be that those who turn up in the pews have more in common with us than inside any other room we step into throughout a busy week.

Because the point of Shabbat is not only existential. It is practical. It comes with a commitment to cradle one another. And that is the challenge before us as a synagogue community in a fast-paced world, to spend Shabbat in the image of what Vaetchanan invokes.

A few weeks ago, a child celebrated his Bar Mitzvah just behind where I stand. As Rav Steven stated that morning, this was entirely his decision. The child wished to learn his portion so that he could represent the community and read from the Torah. For many of us, his family was unfamiliar. They had come to mark a milestone with us, even if they had not been regular faces within our sanctuary.

Shabbat creates moments like these. They are not singularly family celebrations, rather opportunities for the rest of us to introduce ourselves, to stand with parents at kiddush, to welcome grandparents and other visitors, and to help ensure that a local family honoring one treasured day leaves feeling that they have discovered a community, not merely attended a service. In those exchanges, we communicate that your loved ones belong here, and so do you.

If we hope to see that young man back with us again, that responsibility belongs to all of us, not to our assigned clergy or synagogue leadership. Whenever someone walks through these doors - whether for a simcha, for the first time, or after an unexplained absence - Shabbat hands us the chance to make their experience a sweet memory.

It is far more difficult to persuade someone outside these walls to come in than it is to embrace the person who has already chosen to be here. When someone spends their sacred time among us, they deserve to be welcomed, nurtured, and, over time, known. For much of my young adulthood, I mistakenly viewed people who kept Shabbat differently than I did as not my people. Really, I should have been gravitating toward them, because they were choosing Shabbat, no matter what it looks like for them.

The question we all must ask, in the wake of another cycle of Vaetchanan, is whether Shabbat is making us more compassionate, more curious, more connected, and more capable of seeing those around us. Not preserving only a blurry image of what Shabbat once was, or was supposed to be, but acknowledging with open arms what Shabbat can deliver unlike any other day of the week.

A shul is intended to be a place where people find relief from the exhaustion of life rather than another source of exhaustion. A place where Shabbat is not simply a commandment we fulfill, but a commitment we make to one another.

Shabbat reinforces that beneath our different backgrounds, labels, and levels of observance, we are all people seeking connection, dignity, and meaning. Every week, we are handed some magic beans that cannot be found anywhere else across our wider culture, seeds of possibility waiting to be planted.

An opportunity to say hello, to invite someone in, to make them feel seen, and to greet not a stranger, only someone you simply haven’t met yet. The greatest gift, I have found, that you can hand someone else is hope that things indeed will work out for them.

The first Shabbat version teaches us that God created the world - and we preserve that awareness richly. The second Shabbat summary emphasizes that we have a responsibility within a much wider world, as part of a cohesive nation, to be present and to emerge as holy individuals.

We begin by looking upward. We fulfill that vision by looking outward. Shabbat is a special day, not to stop, only to get started again.

“I appreciate you being so generous with your time and wisdom. It’s uncommon.”

A job seeker in media and marketing included that line in a follow-up email after we spoke this past spring. I d…

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In February 2025, our elderly neighbor entered our lives in earnest. We recognized him by face, and eventually by name after years of seeing him around the building, though he avoided us in …

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Below, you’ll find a batch of links that represent career development, community building, and self care.

Prepare for Airplane Purgatory. “And climate change really has made weather more volatile. But 2025 had nearly three times the average number of tarmac delays as the decade prior, and the weather is not three times worse.” Good argument against what was shoveled his way as the explanation for the skyrocketing delays.

Fired Without Warning? Why Workers Feel Blindsided And What To Do Next.

How job descriptions got longer than CVS receipts.

What’s puffing up the ever-expanding job description? What else: AI. In some, hiring managers have layered new AI proficiency and pedagogy expectations on top of standard job tasks. Other listings, recruiters tell me, have inflated because hiring managers generated them with long-winded LLMs.

Physical media is dying. So is the idea that you own what you buy.

I Wanted to Learn How to Fly Fish. So I Traveled to Its American Birthplace.

When Weinberg talks about fly fishing, he speaks of it less as a single hobby than a constellation of interests, where each angler finds their own corner to obsess over. He never got into tying flies, he explained, but after he moved to the Catskills in 2013, his new backyard quickly led him from catching fish to painting them to learning the “off-the-beaten-path history” of the anglers that came before.

The tech attention crisis has hit the workplace. One company thinks AI is the cure.

Go On, Date Your Co-Workers. I know that cultural feelings on this subject matter have changed, and in an era when people are struggling to connect with others - especially at work in a limited capacity - I can see the author’s point. Let people do what they wish, without worry about repercussions to follow.

The moral case for being less online.

Feeling stuck? Try ‘productivity snacking’.

Over the course of a working day, there were lots of opportunities to pick up my instrument for a few minutes: in between interviews, as a quick morning or afternoon break, or as a small reward for finishing an article. It’s not a replacement for extended sessions; sometimes, I really do need to immerse myself in a piece. But I find that I can make far better use of that time if I’ve kept my skills fresh with bite-size bursts of activity.

Half of Americans struggle to afford groceries and gas, exclusive poll finds.

The World Cup Is Convincing Restaurants and Cocktail Bars to Break With Their Norm. For Some, It’s a Windfall. Love this story because it’s fundamentally about gathering in public spaces. The American model is not what Europe typically boasts, which is to be home, alone. But over the course of this summer these public spaces have emerged more so as part of the appeal, not to remain in isolation.

What it's like to live in the world's most liveable cities in 2026.

My pet insurance didn’t fully cover a $6,000 emergency vet bill—why I’m keeping my plan. Good overview of how this whole process works, for the layman. I like these types of stories that bring the reporter’s personal experience front and center, as they look to and learn to negotiate areas of consumer finance that wouldn’t have been appealing to them if not for enduring the pains and the costs themselves.

I went viral for sobriety. Then I got shamed for moderation.

How the ‘Swift-Kelce Effect’ May Be Coming to a Wedding Near You.

Their July wedding could also revive interest in marriages during this month — a reversal from the pattern today. Zola’s data shows that only 7 percent of weddings in the U.S. take place in July, far less than in June and October.

Roughly a year ago, my synagogue closed. It was difficult for me to muster the strength at the time to pivot accordingly and to join another synagogue just down the block offering the same s…

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Below, you’ll find a batch of links that represent the themes of this newsletter, which are career development, community building, and self care.

Welcome to the age of AI sprawl.

AI has the potential to boost collaboration and decentralize some skills, like coding or editing images. But so far much of the evidence suggests that instead of thriving during a shortened work week, AI maxxers have burned out, lost faith in their coworkers, and marooned themselves, working alone on islands.

How Remote Work Has Helped a Generation of Working Parents.

Work From Home? For World Cup, Even JPMorgan Says Yes. This accommodation makes sense, as people would be distracted at the office regardless. Better to give people the leniency they prefer than to prosecute behavior that would more likely send them out the door than to be pleased.

The Secret Reason Bosses Want Everyone Back in the Office, Every Day of the Week.

How Eli Lilly Got Huge By Making Us Thin.

Available first as injections and then also as oral medications, GLP-1s are beginning to turn the tide on the US obesity epidemic, an unfathomable outcome a few years ago. Now their efficacy is being studied for other potentially deadly conditions, including heart disease and drug addiction, with promising results.

Revenge of the commute.

Employers to college students: Never mind that 4.0 GPA. Go out and get a summer job. It’s really crazy that people are expecting so many years of experience at the entry-level, but if they’re going to demand that people at the front of their careers not be at the very outset, then there’s never been a better time for people in college to mock up what they’ve done past and present to make it sound like real, transferrable experience.

Zombie unicorns are haunting Silicon Valley.

Americans Have Turned Against AI in Incredible Numbers. When you sit down with 20-somethings, especially those who have recently graduated from college, they will tell you how they feel with a dead stare at the suggestion that AI should accelerate their careers at the outset.

Why health systems are making bets on remote monitoring.

The Smart Way to Shop for Used Phones and Other Gadgets. The K-shaped economy coming for your most prized possession. People are downgrading on travel, from airfare to bus fare, and it makes sense that when their phones are in need of replacement at a time like this one that they are looking for alternative solutions than paying the ever increasing bounty to Apple.

In the Social Ban Era, Where Will Gen Alpha Spend Time Online?

This Year’s Family Reunion: Matching T-Shirts, BBQ—and Financial Advice.

The weekend’s schedule included signatures of Black-American family reunions—genealogy, food and festive, matching T-shirts. But at the heart of the gathering were “empowerment sessions,” where relatives with professional expertise gave presentations on financial, career and healthcare topics.

Married for 10 Years? Experts Say This Anniversary Matters Most for Retirement Planning.

Why luxury steakhouses are such big business in Boston.

Grill 23 has the elegant appeal of a bygone era: dark wood, stark white linens, tuxedo uniforms, and a wine cellar worth roughly $4 million. There are clear expectations of great service and high-quality food when you dine somewhere like this, making the investment of going out less risky. Even as consumers pull back elsewhere, reliability is paying off.

My general impression is that the norms of male friendship formed in adolescence end up shaping what people expect friendship to look like well into adulthood. By their 20s, most men seem to…

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The main reason I attend therapy regularly, even when I do not feel I need it and when other things compete for my attention, is that I do not want to become a predictable statistic. Rightly…

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Around this time last year, I wrote about modeling hospitality after the best examples I’d seen in others. When we speak about Community with a capital C, we tend to elevate what it means to…

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Below, you’ll find a batch of links that represent what this newsletter covers: career development, community building, and self care.

From unfilled gas tanks to fewer frills, retailers see US consumers rethink their spending.

The price of gas won’t help bring customers with household incomes of $45,000 or less back to U.S. fast-food restaurants, McDonald’s Chairman and CEO Chris Kempczinski said last month. People in that income group began scaling back their fast-food purchases after the period of inflation that accompanied the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and the trend picked up speed last year.

High-earning millennials and Gen Zers feel broke and conflicted: ‘I make a good salary, I shouldn’t be struggling this much’.

It's not your imagination, parenting is getting harder. Here's why.

Parenting overwhelm isn’t new, but feels more pressing than ever because algorithms have made it inescapable, parents and experts say. Social media – particularly influencer accounts and an ever-growing load of new products – have exacerbated the feeling that parenting is getting more intense, more extravagant and harder to succeed at.

The Backyard Stadium: How To DIY an Outdoor Theater for the World Cup.

We are optimising ourselves to death. “I can’t open X without being confronted by a 20-post thread about what CEOs do between 4am and 7am (it’s not sleep, alas) or how to use AI to make my life more streamlined and productive. I can’t open Instagram without being offered ideas for how to eat my body weight’s worth of protein for breakfast.” Social media, it turns out, was a terrible experiment. We should learn to get away from it.

The American Family Is at a Breaking Point. Our Politics Have Finally Noticed.

Have a Thorny Medical Question? Your Doctor May Be Using A.I. for That. This story gets to the heart of not just AI, but it’s customer-facing benefits and drawbacks. Medical advancements are probably the best area for progress to emerge at the intersection of AI, and the complexities of the how and when are going to determine whether this makes for actual changes for patient betterment.

I love my tech neck.

The fired labor economist who couldn't get unemployment. I loved this segment, such a smart and funny way in to understand how nutty this process is. What follows is a good summary of what led us here - and what can be done to motivate improvements that seem too distant to be real minus the expected bureaucracy.

Caffeine Minimalists Rewrite Routines to Battle Coffee Jitters.

Gen Z Is Redefining How Americans Earn a Living. This is positioned sometimes as by choice, that they are not loyal to one company or interesting in sticking around in corporate America, when in reality it’s done by necessity because how else are they going to make the numbers work when there are no jobs to be found instead of the one they’re fortunate enough to have for now?

Fake Tanning’s Big Glow Up.

How to be yourself in the workplace. “A harmonious workplace isn’t simply defined by everyone acting the same way. Instead, it’s shaped by how individuals contribute to a shared environment — through communication, professional boundaries and respect for one another’s lived experiences.” This is something that improved dramatically over the time I have been working, a general understanding that people tick differently than the next.

“You’d Be Perfect for This!” Inside the Devious Casting Scam Sweeping Hollywood.

Reorgs happen. A level-headed approach to why changes take place at work - and how. I benefited in my 30s from changes like these, welcoming new chances to expand my view and to extend my offerings to the team at large. At some point, though, I decided I no longer had it in me to fight another round there. So I left.

Careers have visible and visceral milestones: promotions, titles, successful internal presentations, and the like. But there are other milestones, smaller ones along the way that rarely get …

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