I wanted to share a series of articles I’ve written over the past few years that might shed a bit of light on some of the points we’re making today.

They’re included as a .pdf in both mobile and desktop formats so hopefully you can read easily, and broken into three quick sections:

• Section 1: Making it Personal — examples of including just enough personal details to be authentic, without oversharing.

• Section 2: Learning From Bigger Companies — I love stealing from the big ones.

• Section 3: Jobs, Bezos and Buffet — A few observations on three masters at personal branding, even when it didn’t seem like they were trying. (They were).

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Also, I think we’ll wind up talking about Jobs’s return to Apple and the Think Different ad campaign. Here’s an ancient video of him introducing it to the team—and what he says he thinks all great marketing is about.

Nice shorts, by the way.

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Marc Najera on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.

I would prefer not to call back later because you claim to be experiencing higher than normal call volume.

I would prefer not to answer a few more questions so you can route my call to the correct person. I would also prefer not to answer the same questions a second time, since my answers were not previously passed along.

I would prefer not to pay you with cash if I don’t have any. But I would also prefer not to not pay you with cash if I happen to have it burning a hole in my pocket.

But most of all, I would prefer not to download your app.

I suspect I’m not alone.

Chicken & coffee

The preceding rant was prompted by the following:

• The fact that Dave’s Hot Chicken bought its way to the top of the Apple app store rankings, driving 343,531 new account sign-ups in a single day, by giving away free chicken sliders.

• The fact that Subway brought back its old Sub Club loyalty program (buy three footlongs, get one free), but made it app-only.

• And the free McDonald’s-for-life and Starbucks-for-life promotions, which once more require you to download an app.

But mostly, it was prompted by the fact that on a Sunday in New York City recently, I really wanted a cup of coffee. I happened by a Luckin Coffee shop—China’s fast-growing, supposed “Starbucks killer” that opened 3,008 stores during the third quarter of this year alone—and having never seen one in the wild, so I thought I’d give it a try.

Then I learned—or maybe remembered—that you cannot simply walk in and buy coffee at Luckin Coffee. Even standing at the counter with a credit card in your hand, you have to download the Luckin app first, create an account and hand over your personal info and payment details.

I wasn’t looking for a long-term relationship, so I left.

But still

I recalled the ice cream shop I went into with my daughter recently in California that was the opposite of Luckin: a cash-only store.

Walk in there with a $5 bill and you can buy one small ice cream. So my daughter got hers, and I went without—which was maybe for the best—but still.

I write about this kind of stuff. I do the math. I understand why all companies want us to download all of their apps.

They lead to very cheap customer acquisition, and the strategy works because enough of us keep playing along. And that’s their prerogative.

But, sometimes I just want to walk into a place and buy something without negotiating the terms of our relationship first.

Meet people where they are

The kicker at the end to all of this was that my Sunday New York City trip was the tail end of a weekend with friends of mine from college.

As a last stop—we did go to a Jesuit university, after all—I opened an app that I once downloaded voluntarily, and found what time there were Catholic masses near Penn Station before I headed home.

So I went, and when it came time for the collection I felt a bit funny that I had no cash.

But, unlike Luckin Coffee and random California ice cream shops, this church was willing to accept my donation any way I wanted to give it: a website and QR codes posted in the pews, along with volunteers collecting cash using those old-fashioned baskets on the end of a stick.

I chose Venmo.

Meet people where they are, somebody once said. I’m pretty sure there’s a lesson in there.

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7 other things

• The U.S. military has seized an oil tanker off of Venezuela’s coast, President Donald Trump told reporters Wednesday as his administration continues to escalate the U.S. military presence in the region. Trump did not provide details on the matter but said that it was an “interesting day.” Oil prices began steadily rising as reports of the seizure circulated throughout the day. (NBC News)

• In a long, late-night social media post, Trump raged about stories in The New York Times and elsewhere questioning his health, calling them “seditious, perhaps even treasonous, and adding: “There has never been a President that has worked as hard as me! My hours are the longest, and my results are among the best.” (AFP)

• Travelers visiting the United States from countries like Britain, France, Germany and South Korea could soon have to undergo a review of up to five years of their social media history, according to a proposal filed by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, along with email addresses from the last decade, and the names, birth dates, places of residence and birthplaces of parents, spouses, siblings and children. (NYT)

• Secretary of State Marco Rubio ordered the U.S. State Department to use Times New Roman for all official government documents, apparently becuase the current typeface being used, Calibri, is too woke. (Gizmodo)

• Madeleine Wickham, known for writing the bestselling novel Confessions of a Shopaholic under her pen name Sophie Kinsella after feeling aghast at the size of her credit card bill 25 years ago, has died aged 55. Wickham wrote more than 30 books, which have sold more than 45 million copies. In April 2024, she announced that she had been diagnosed with glioblastoma, an aggressive type of brain cancer. (The Guardian)

• A driverless Waymo vehicle turned into a temporary birthing center when a woman gave birth to a baby inside the car before she reached a hospital, according to the autonomous vehicle company. The pregnant woman was apparently in labor and attempting to reach a University of California San Francisco hospital when the baby arrived. The mother and her new baby arrived safely in the Waymo at the hospital, according to the company. (KRON)

• A symphony of woofs: 2,397 golden retrievers gather in a park in Argentina. (ABC News)

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Rami Al-zayat on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this Inc.com. See you in the comments!

Sometimes, people wrestle for a long time with a very difficult decision—and then they have to make a choice quickly.

That’s what happened at McDonald’s 35 years ago this week, when the company announced its “abrupt decision,” in the words of contemporary news accounts, to get rid the foam plastic clamshell boxes in which it had long-sold the Big Mac and other sandwiches.

As the New York Times put it at the time:

“As recently as a week ago, McDonald’s was preparing to respond to public pressure for a cleaner environment by announcing that it would extend its limited plastics-recycling program …

“But ‘our customers just don’t feel good about it,’ said Edward H. Rensi, the president of McDonald’s U.S.A. ‘So we’re changing.’”

Looking at this now, through the eyes of American customers in 2025, the whole thing seems anachronistic.

However, the packages really were among the best-known symbols in America at the time. How much of an icon were they? The Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History includes an exhibit on them.

Featured specifically: the McDonald’s Double Clam Shell Container—a twice-the-size package designed to keep hot and cold parts of a burger separate (and thus staying closer to the intended temperature) until the customer was ready to eat them.

McDonald’s had faced mounting consumer pressure over its foam packaging. However, it resisted changes, in part because of concerns that sandwiches would get cold faster.

Its plan: to roll out a $100 million recycling program, and also maintained that its approach was environmentally sound. Yet, just days before the company was set to announce that it was keeping the packaging but adding the program, the Environmental Defense Fund objected, big time.

At this point, we can go to a day-by-day chronology that shows just how fast the company acted:

• October 25: Frederic Krupp, head of the EDF, called Rensi, the head of McDonald’s U.S., to object strenuously.

• October 26: Rensi: “When I got back in the office on Friday, I called Shelby Yastrow, who heads our environmental work, and told him to get some people together and study whether we should get rid of foam and switch to paper.”

• October 31: By Halloween, reporters had figured it out and were scooping McDonald’s ahead of its plan to make the switch—which began in December.

The EDF says it made a big difference:

“Over the next decade, McDonald’s eliminated more than 300 million pounds of packaging including the polystyrene clamshells, recycled 1 million tons of corrugated boxes and reduced restaurant waste by 30 percent.”

McDonald’s said it had spent a lot of time studying what it would be like to get rid of foam packaging. So, during that roughly 72-hour period when the company made the momentous change, it already had data it felt pretty good about to inform the decision.

Since then, most food companies and restaurants that were using foam packaging have moved on, even though the environmental aspect is a bit more complex than public pressure might have indicated at the time.

Today, McDonald’s faces even greater packaging challenges, particularly overseas. Case in point: a French law that says any fast-food restaurant with more than 20 seats has to use reusable packaging for dine-in customers.

It’s challenging, I’m sure. But isn’t that part of the fun?

Now something many of us grew up seeing everywhere is a long-forgotten anachronism.

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7 other things

• Can children and teenagers be forced off social media en masse? Australia is about to find out. More than 1 million social media accounts held by users under 16 are set to be deactivated in Australia on Wednesday in a divisive world-first ban that has inflamed a culture war and is being closely watched in the United States and elsewhere. (NBC News)

• A fertility start-up that promises to screen embryos to give would-be parents their “best baby” has come under fire for a “misuse of science” and “eugenics.” Nucleus Genomics, founded in 2021 by a college dropout and funded in part by Peter Thiel, describes its mission as “IVF for genetic optimisation,” offering advanced embryo testing that allows parents to screen diseases, autism, IQ, and eye color. The company has plastered signs reading “Have your best baby” and “Height is 80% genetic” in New York City subway stations. (The Times)

• Three Russian soldiers were sentenced to up to 12 years in prison on Monday for torturing and killing Russell Bentley, a 63-year-old US national who had volunteered to fight for Russia against Ukraine. A photograph published in some Russian media on Monday showed Bentley sitting on a bed next to an assault rifle, with a pro-Russian flag, a souvenir from Texas and a bust of Vladimir Lenin. (The Guardian)

• A new Realtor.com analysis of metro areas seeing the most departures from September 2024 through August 2025 has revealed which cities homeowners are fleeing in droves: Kansas City, San Antonio, and Indianapolis tied for having the highest turnover rate, with home 45 sales per 1,000 units, the report found. Shockingly, all six of the California metros included in the Realtor.com study saw turnover rates lower than the national average (29.7), suggesting that people are not leaving the state as much as is widely believed. (Daily Mail)

• Everything from air fryers to TVs now suck up our personal data. Here’s how to give gadgets that respect privacy this Xmas. (The Conversation)

• Young Daters Confront a Relationship Killer: the ‘Swag Gap.’ Gen Z has strong feelings about the stylistic imbalance that can doom a courtship; ‘It felt like a smack in the face.’ (WSJ)

• Have you seen this (AI-generated) man? Police swap suspect sketches for AI. (The Washington Post)

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Thanks for reading. Photo fair use. I wrote about some of this Inc.com. See you in the comments!

• Schadenfreude (German): taking pleasure in someone else’s misfortune.

• Lagom (Swedish): just the right amount—not too much, not too little.

• Tartle (Scots): that awkward moment when you’re about to introduce someone and realize you’ve forgotten their name.

The fact that these concepts are encapsulated in a single word says something about the values and experiences of the cultures that coined them.

Recently I learned another foreign word in this category—one that stops you cold:

• Karoshi (Japanese) – death from overwork.

It’s a legally recognized phenomenon in Japan, severe enough that there are laws governing excessive work hours and employer responsibility.

Which is part of why Japan erupted recently when its new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, held a three-hour staff meeting that began at 3 a.m.

The fax heard ’round the country

Takaichi had a 9 a.m. appearance before the Diet. As she explained it, she needed to rewrite briefing materials—and the fax machine at her home jammed, which forced her to go to the prime minister’s official residence to rework everything with staff.

(For the idea file: Wait, Japan still uses fax machines?)

So she walked out at 3 a.m. and convened her aides in the middle of the night. The optics were immediate and intense.

The backlash

Critics said she pushed staff into the same unhealthy patterns the country has been trying to move away from—patterns tied directly to karoshi. A former prime minister called her timing “crazy,” saying that during his tenure, they started at 6 or 7 a.m., not in the dead of night.

Supporters defended her. Some said she was simply doing what the job required. Others blamed opposition lawmakers for submitting questions too late.

Takaichi acknowledged the “inconvenience” but stood by the decision.

Whatever side you take, the moment fits into a much larger conversation.

Have you heard of Elon Musk?

Think of Tesla, where Elon Musk has held 1 a.m. company-wide meetings, including a Sunday all-hands during the Model 3 “production hell” years.

Employees have described being summoned with almost no notice—and expected to show up because the CEO was awake and wanted answers.

In 2025, Tesla did it again: Staff got a surprise late-night meeting announcement that left people scrambling.

Going past Tesla, in the AI and tech world, we’re seeing a U.S. adaptation of 996 culture—the 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six-days-a-week schedule that became so extreme in China that courts eventually barred employers from requiring it.

U.S. startups now openly advertise 70- to 80-hour weeks. Some founders brag on social media about 90-hour stretches. Hacker-house teams work, sleep, and brainstorm together so they can whiteboard at 1 a.m. without calling it overtime.

The framing is always the same: This is what it takes.

But Is It?

• Is a 3 a.m. prep session truly unavoidable?

• Is a 1 a.m. all-hands meeting the only way to solve a problem?

• Is a 72-hour week the price of admission for innovation?

Or are these simply habits get normalized—not because they’re necessary, but because intensity gets mistaken for competence, or urgency for strategy, or exhaustion for commitment?

Or maybe even for ego? “You’re probably wondering why I’ve called you all to this meeting in the middle of the night. It’s because I can.”

We don’t have a single English word that captures that entire dynamic. Not one I am willing to put in a newsletter that my mom will probably read, anyway.

Five letters, starts with H

Since we started with untranslatable words, let’s end with one from the opposite end of the spectrum:

• Hygge (Danish) – a warm, cozy feeling from simple comforts—soft light, good company, calm.

A lot less dramatic than a 3 a.m. meeting, and, frankly, a lot healthier.

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7 other things

• Ukraine’s president spoke optimistically Monday about the progress of revising the Trump administration’s peace plan, saying “it looks better” and the work will continue during talks on how to end Russia’s nearly four-year war. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke after meeting with France’s president, the latest in discussions aimed at brokering the terms for a potential ceasefire in the largest armed conflict in Europe since World War II. (AP)

• Costco joined a fast-growing list of businesses suing the Trump administration to ensure eligibility for refunds if the US Supreme Court strikes down the president’s signature global tariffs policy. During arguments before the Supreme Court last month, key justices appeared skeptical of Trump’s tariffs, which have generated tens of billions of dollars a month. (Bloomberg)

• Back to the office at Meta: Instagram chief Adam Mosseri is ordering most US staff in his organization in-office five days a week starting February 2. Earlier this year, Amazon told many corporate employees to return to the office five days a week. Other tech giants such as Alphabet, Apple, and Microsoft have taken a slightly softer approach, generally requiring staff to be in the office at least three days a week. (Insider)

• India’s Department of Telecommunications is giving phone manufacturers 90 days to comply with an order to pre-install a state-owned app on new phones and push it to existing phones through software updates. In August, Russia issued a similar order requiring phone manufacturers to preload a state-backed messenger app, Max. (Verge)

• For years it has seemed no sticker price was too high for American car buyers. Even as average new car prices approached $50,000 this year, dealers fretted more over depleted inventories than losing customers to sticker shock. Those days are coming to an end. Increasingly stretched consumers are starting to draw the line on what they will pay for a new car, according to dealers, analysts and industry data. (WSJ)

• Criminals who modify vehicles to smuggle people, drugs and weapons into the UK face five years behind bars under new laws. Under legislation expected to get Royal Assent this week, it will be a criminal offense to create concealed spaces for traffickers to use. The new laws also make it an offense to possess or supply templates for making 3D-printed firearms components, pill pressers and pill encapsulators – used to make drugs like MDMA. (The Mirror)

• A widow and widower fell in love during water aerobics. They wed in the pool. “We just don’t take life seriously,” said Marlene Parsons, 78. “I mean, life’s too short.” (The Washington Post)

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Igor Omilaev on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments!

Five years ago on the eve of Thanksgiving, I asked readers of this newsletter share what they were thankful for.

Their replies were inspiring, and they got me thinking on a deep, philosophical level about gratitude, and how to practice it.

And, I came up with the list of seven “gratitude prompts” you’ll find below. Here’s how it begins.

1. Are you grateful that you’re alive?

Start with this one: You’re alive! Right now! How cool is that?

Can you imagine all of the highly unlikely things that had to happen in order for you to even have been born?

So, be grateful that your parents met. Be grateful that their parents met. Be grateful for whatever strange, against-all-odds things had to happen.

Imagine, not only did we get to be born, but we were born in the 20th or 21st centuries!

We speak the world’s most common language, and we’re walking around with small devices in our pockets that can connect us to almost the entire history of human knowledge.

I mean, the timing is pretty great.

Even though there are more than seven billion people alive on the planet, that doesn’t make this gift of life less unique. The gift of life is worth being very thankful for.

2. Are you grateful for pain and longing?

Wait, what? What kind of list is this?

Absolutely, yes. Learn to be grateful for the pain and longing in your life. Do it for two main reasons.

First, because good relationships are what make us happiest and most fulfilled, and all good relationships depend on understanding. If you’d never experienced pain and longing, you’d never be able to understand anyone else.

Pain and longing lead to growth.

Also, how would you know the absence of pain and longing if you didn’t know what it was like to feel them to begin with?

3. Are you grateful for your needs?

First, be grateful for your needs that are being met.

Do you have a home? Food? Shelter? Protection from the elements?

Congratulations. The base level of Maslow’s hierarchy is taken care of. That’s fairly easy to be grateful for, even if we sometimes forget.

The trickier part? Being grateful for unmet needs — frankly, the kinds of things that lead to pain and longing sometimes (see above).

These are the fires that get lit under us. They’re what motivate us to exercise creativity.

They’re what get us out of bed in the morning on the days when we’d really rather sleep in.

No needs? No necessities? Then no inventions. (Necessity is their mother.)

Be grateful for progress, and in turn, be grateful for the needs that make them possible.

4. Are you grateful for forgiveness?

We all mess up. We all have to ask for forgiveness sometimes. We all have reason to be thankful when it’s given.

Here’s a twist though: How about exploring gratitude for your own ability to forgive?

Because you’re human; you’ve been hurt by other people. You’ve probably even been hurt by people you care about. Maybe deeply.

I’ve written before that I think people who look for business partners should look first to people they’ve done other projects with before. The reason is that you don’t want the first argument you have to be over something important, like the direction of your company.

But you will have arguments. Some of them might get heated.

The ability to forgive and move on keeps you from throwing out these kinds of good, valuable relationships. They wouldn’t be tenable otherwise.

That makes your ability to forgive a gift, and something else to be grateful for.

5. Are you grateful for your failures?

This is a good one, right? Failures. I’ve sure had my share of them.

Done right, however, failures are a sign of ambition. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that.

They’re also learning opportunities–not just a chance to learn from your mistakes, or the times you fall short–but a chance to learn how to fail.

You learn what to be afraid of and what not to be afraid of. You learn sometimes that there’s nothing really to be afraid of–that we all get second acts in America.

And third ones, and fourth ones, as long as we keep going.

Fall short, sure, but realize it almost never has to be the end of the story.

Be grateful for your ability to write that next chapter, but also for the experiences–even the failures–that brought you to the blank page once more.

6. Are you grateful for your people?

Our lives are largely the sum total of our relationships. So train yourself to be grateful for the people in your life.

People like your family, your friends, your co-workers.

And your classmates. Your acquaintances.

It’s hard sometimes, but I’d go so far as to say: Learn to be grateful for your rivals — even your enemies, if you have such people — the ones who hurt you or bring out the worst in you.

You get knowledge from even those relationships. You get understanding. You get things worth being grateful for.

And while we’re at it, I’d put the animals in your life in this category too: pets if you have them. Those relationships are important. And they’re worthy of gratitude too.

7. Are you grateful for hope and faith?

Was this year a difficult one? I’m sorry to hear it, and I hope experiencing that difficulty brings you hope.

How? Because, by definition, if this year was especially difficult, then other years must be better.

That’s not to minimize the very big challenges and pain that some people have faced in the last 12 months. It’s just to recognize that hope is many things, but it’s partly the sense that bad times prove the existence of better times.

Locked up with it: faith.

I’m not going to evangelize here; I’ve been wrong about the details on enough things in my life that I have a hard time telling anyone else, “This is what you should believe.”

But hope and faith go hand in hand. They’re prerequisites to optimism. And optimistic people are the ones who achieve the greatest success and happiness in life.

So learn to be grateful for both of them. And feel a bit better about next year.

Gratitude as a habit

I think you’ll come up with other, even better examples of “gratitude prompts” to add to this list. I hope you’ll share them.

Again, it was hearing what readers had to say about gratitude back in 2020 (of all years!) that got me thinking deeply about it to begin with.

Are you up for it again? I’d love to hear things you’re grateful for in the comments. And let me start it off by saying thank you very much for being here and reading Understandably. Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

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7 other things

• Don’t plan to cook on Thanksgiving? Here are the restaurants and fast food places that are scheduled to be open. (Yahoo News)

• Move aside Tokyo, the world has a new largest city: With an estimated population of nearly 42 million residents, Indonesia’s capital Jakarta soared from 33rd place to surpass Japan’s Tokyo, according to a new United Nations report. (NBC News)

• H. Rap Brown, one of the most vocal leaders of the Black Power movement, has died in a prison hospital while serving a life sentence for the killing of a Georgia sheriff’s deputy. He was 82. Brown maintained his innocence but was convicted in 2002. (AP)

• Campbell’s is insisting that its soups aren’t made with lab-grown chicken, or bioengineered meat. The food giant issued the explanation on its website after leaked audio allegedly captured Campbell’s vice president of information technology saying the company’s meat “came from a 3D printer.” (The Verge)

• They relied on marijuana to get through the day. But then days felt impossible without it. (AP)

• This Thanksgiving, your turkey might thank you for nothing: a wave of AI‑slop recipes has swooped in, offering bogus cooking advice, bizarre measurements, and photos that may look right but taste wrong. Real food bloggers are seeing their clicks vanish while algorithms churn out disastrously unappetizing dinner ideas. (Boing Boing)

• Son dresses as dead mother in ‘Mrs Doubtfire’ ruse to claim her pension: An Italian pensioner had been deceased for three years when family member was caught impersonating her while trying to renew her ID card. (The Telegraph)

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Amadeo Valar on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments!

Think The Hangover meets Derry Girls; it’s about three Americans who meet while on a semester in Ireland.

Anyway, it started with a scene that went like this:

At the packed JFK departure terminal, 21-year-old Jenny — nervous, broke, and about to start her study-abroad semester in Ireland — learns at the check-in counter that her suitcase is ten pounds overweight and the airline wants a $140 fee she can’t spare.

In a desperate burst of logic and chaos, she unzips the bag in front of everyone, frantically shifting clothes, then begins layering them on: sweaters, hoodies, even multiple bras, transforming into a human laundry pile. The crowd stares as she shoves the bag back on the scale — exactly 50.0 pounds.

Victorious but sweating, she lumbers off toward security like a padded, determined marshmallow, perfectly setting the tone for the misadventures to come.

Honestly, it was a darn good script. But it also means I’ve always got a weather eye open for amusing stories about airlines and luggage limits.

And that’s what tuned me in, on the eve of the busiest travel day of the year, to the latest news from American Airlines.

Au revoir, metal cage of judgment

American announced recently that it’s removing metal bag-sizers—you know, the rigid frames that sit at boarding gates like mechanical judges—from gate areas.

If you’ve never had the pleasure of using one of these things, let me paint the picture:

• You’re at the gate, your bag looks like it might be a little too big, and a gate agent gestures toward the metal frame.

• You hoist your luggage, trying to angle it just right. Sometimes it slides in. Sometimes it doesn’t.

• And sometimes—most awkwardly—it sort of fits, leading to an uncomfortable negotiation about whether those extra two inches really matter.

Starting now, however, instead of making passengers prove their carry-on fits by wrestling them into an unforgiving template, gate agents will simply eyeball whether a bag looks too large for the overhead bin.

“As we further simplify the boarding experience for our customers and team members, American will soon remove bag sizers from the gate area,” the airline said.

A judgment call

Agents are being told to err on the side of the traveler if they’re unsure.

The official size limits aren’t changing. Carry-ons still can’t exceed 22 x 14 x 9 inches (including handles and wheels), and personal items max out at 18 x 14 x 8 inches.

And, if you really want to verify your bag meets the requirements, the sizers will still be available at check-in counters.

Just not at the gate, where they’ve long been a source of last-minute stress and occasional confrontation.

Now, will this lead to chaos?

Maybe! After all, if you remove the objective standard, maybe more people will show up with oversized bags, confident they can talk their way past a sympathetic gate agent? Won’t the overhead bins fill up faster, leading to more gate checks overall.

But let’s be optimistic. Let’s assume that the vast majority of passengers aren’t trying to game the system.

They’re just trying to get through the airport without the kind of desperate, sweater-layering theatrics fictional Jenny had to resort to.

So—and here’s a fairly rare statement—good for American Airlines.

And, good for those of you who are traveling today. Maybe it will make your trip a little less chaotic.

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7 other things

• How Trump’s 28-point plan for Ukraine shocked the world. (Axios)

• Robert F Kennedy Jr once dumped a dead bear in New York’s Central Park, sawed the head off a whale, claimed that a worm ate part of his brain and has peddled multiple conspiracy theories. But 71-year-old US health secretary, scion of the Kennedy political dynasty, has now been swept up in a sex scandal involving his alleged lover, Olivia Nuzzi, 32, a former journalist with New York Magazine that, even by his standards of eccentricity, is eye-catching. (The Telegraph)

• The Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, a controversial team of federal cost-cutters previously led by Elon Musk, is no more. As of early November, DOGE “doesn’t exist,” according to Scott Kupor, the director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, which serves as the federal government’s human resources department. (TechCrunch)

• “Praise your kid 462 times a day?” The viral advice trend that’s making parents do the math. (Motherly)

• Soaring electricity prices are triggering a wave of power shutoffs due to nonpayment nationwide, leaving more Americans in the dark. Data from select utilities in 11 states show that disconnections have risen in at least eight of them since last year. In some areas, such as New York City, the surge has been dramatic — with residential shutoffs in August up fivefold from a year ago. (The Washington Post)

• The U.S. Department of Transportation is launching what it’s calling a “civility campaign” to promote good behavior on flights and at airports, as the busy holiday travel season gets underway. The department is naming the campaign “The Golden Age of Travel Starts with You” and announced the effort in a press release last week. (NPR)

• A federal judge is hotter than a newly brewed pot of coffee over the failure of Peter Coker Sr. and his son, Peter Coker Jr., to pay millions of dollars in restitution for their leading roles in the notorious $100 million New Jersey deli stock fraud. The Coker convicts owe a total of $5.56 million to victims of their scam, which involved illegally inflating the stock prices of two publicly traded companies to make them attractive candidates for mergers. The scheme led to one of the companies, then-known as Hometown International, having a market capitalization of more than $100 million despite owning only one small, money-losing delicatessen in the hardscrabble south Jersey town of Paulsboro. (CNBC)

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Thanks for reading. Photo by David Schultz on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments!

“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

So, let’s talk about an extremely unreasonable man: John Harrison, inventor of the “sea watch,” or the “marine chronometer.”

Harrison spent nearly 50 years of his life on his invention, which solved one of the great technological challenges of his time: how to accurately calculate longitude while at sea.

Inaccurate navigation led to calamitous shipwrecks, because calculating longitude required keeping precise track of time, and the watches and clocks of the pre-Harrison era simply couldn’t keep accurate time during long sea voyages.

This was a massive challenge, so important that in 1714, the British Parliament established a £28,000 prize for anyone who could come up with a solution (equivalent of several million dollars today).

996

Harrison wasn’t sufficiently famous during his lifetime for others to chronicle him, which now seems rather ironic, since his entire life was devoted to timekeeping.

As his biographer Dava Sobel summarizes, during one 19-year stretch, “he did nothing but work ... to the detriment of his health and family, since the project kept him from pursuing most other gainful employment.”

Some of you might remember that I wrote about Harris a long time ago on these digital pages—more than four years ago, in fact.

I bring him up today because of “996,” which is having a moment, and which is the colloquial term borrowed from China for the 72-hour work week, better known as 996; the idea of working 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., six days a week.

Now, it’s catching on in the U.S., particularly among AI startups racing to be first to market.

‘Excited!’

According to the New York Times, some companies are noting their expectation for 70-hour-plus workweeks right in their job descriptions. More anecdata:

• AI startup Rilla tells candidates right on their application page not to apply unless they’re “excited” about working “70 hrs/week in person.”

• Ramp, a “financial operations start-up,” said it observed more corporate credit card transactions happening in San Francisco on Saturdays, suggesting people really are working weekends.

• Cognition’s CEO Scott Wu posted on X that the company “routinely” works through weekends and does some of its best work “late into the night.”

• Marty Kausas, 28, CEO of AI startup Pylon, posted on LinkedIn that he worked 92 hours a week for three weeks in a row.

‘slaves with no life’

Tech has always had intense work cultures, dating back to the 1960s semiconductor days, as historian Margaret O’Mara told the Times—legendary perks at companies such as Google 20 years ago notwithstanding.

There’s also a sense that to at least some of the 996-ers—or at least the CEOs of the companies they’re working for—work doesn’t feel like work.

“Most of the stuff people count as work I don’t,” Magnus Müller, the 24-year-old CEO of AI startup Browser Use, told The Washington Post. (He lives in a “hacker house” with five teammates, so they can whiteboard at 1 a.m.)

Still, when Müller’s co-founder Gregor Zunic posted about an opening, it got 53,000 views and plenty of criticism.

“996 = slaves with no life,” one person commented.

They want “people who are really obsessed,” as Müller put it, and they want everyone else to self-select out.

To not being one

Look, I’ve worked in startups, and I’ve put in long hours. I’ve also described myself as a “workaholic” many times in this column over the years.

I’ve never invented a clock of any kind, and I doubt I’m going to be an AI pioneer. (Although there’s still time!)

Still, Shaw knew what he was writing about.

Whether “996” sounds brilliant or insane to you probably depends on how you feel about that quote.

Here’s to the unreasonable people around us. And also maybe, to not being one.

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7 other things

• Both houses of Congress on Tuesday almost unanimously passed a bill to compel the Justice Department to release all files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In a stunning reversal, President Trump has said he would sign the bill, but it’s still unclear anything will be released. Reason: Trump has recently demanded an investigation of Epstein’s ties to former President Clinton and other Democrats, and DOJ can withhold information that it says could interfere with that (or any) investigation. (Axios)

• Texas cannot use its new congressional map for the 2026 election and will instead need to stick with the lines passed in 2021, a three-judge panel ruled Tuesday. The decision is a major blow for Republicans. Attorney General Ken Paxton said he will appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, but time is short: Candidates only have until Dec. 8 to file for the upcoming election. (Texas Tribune)

• President Trump played down the murder of Saudi journalist and dissident Jamal Khashoggi as he rolled out the red carpet for Saudi Arabian leader Mohammed bin Salman at the White House, saying “things happen” and admonishing reporters for embarrassing the Saudi prince. (Sydney Morning Herald)

• Meta won its high-profile antitrust case against the Federal Trade Commission, which had accused the company of holding a monopoly in social networking. The case, initially filed by the FTC five years ago, centered on Meta’s acquisitions of Instagram and WhatsApp. “Whether or not Meta enjoyed monopoly power in the past, though, the agency must show that it continues to hold such power now,” the judge wrote. The Court’s verdict today determines that the FTC has not done so.” (CNBC)

• How baby boomers got so rich and why their kids are unlikely to catch up. (The Washington Post)

• The U.K. plans to pass one of the world’s most sweeping anti-ticket-scalping measures, banning the resale of music, comedy, theater and sports tickets for profit. Fans will still be able to sell tickets to shows they can’t attend, just not at any meaningful markup. (LA Times)

• This one is for my daughter. “Wicked: For Good review: This ‘emotionally soaring’ sequel is ‘more captivating’ than the first film.” (BBC)

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Anne Nygård on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this Inc.com. See you in the comments!

Speaking of which, a United Airlines flight heading from Washington to Rome had to turn around recently. The cause? A passenger’s laptop somehow fell down the sidewall of the Boeing 767 and into the cargo area.

“We don’t know the status of it, we can’t access it, we can’t see it,” the United Airlines captain told air traffic control, in a recording that has been saved and uploaded to YouTube. “So our decision is to return to Dulles and find this laptop before we can continue over the ocean.”

This is one of those odd stories for which there are few details, and yet I crave more. I’ve asked United Airlines for comment beyond what has been reported elsewhere, but have yet to hear back.

Because words like “lost,” “laptop,” and “airport” in the same sentence rekindle a heck of a memory for me.

Thank you, whoever you are

A few years ago, I lost my laptop on the sidewalk outside Logan Airport in Boston.

We were loading our car at the arrivals area I somehow left it behind. When I realized an hour later what had happened, I can hardly describe the feelings of anxiety and panic.

There was a happy ending: A good Samaritan found my bag and turned it in. But, the logistics meant I had to make a seven-hour round trip drive to recover it. However, I did get it back.

Heck, I even got a good story out of the whole thing. I also got something else—yet another life experience that helps me try to see the world through other people’s eyes.

Cases in point …

The captain

First, the United Airlines captain. I can’t imagine he enjoyed having to make this decision. That’s why he gets four stripes on his shoulders.

I say “he” because it’s a man’s voice on the ATC recording. Speaking of which:

This is just out of an abundance of caution and just precautionary, you know, due to the lithium battery in the cargo area where it’s not even near the suppression system that we have for fires down there. So this is just a safety precaution.

Honestly, who can complain when the captain of an airliner makes a decision and justifies it like that?

The laptop passenger

There’s not much information about this person, and so I don’t know if he or she handled the whole thing well or not.

However, I imagine someone like me and maybe you, trying to get last-minute work done on the eve of an Italian vacation—only to have your laptop slip out of your hands and somehow get swallowed by the plane itself.

If this person is anything like me, I imagine two competing sources of anxiety:

Embarrassment at the idea of being the source of an entire airliner having to turn around, thus delaying the plans of likely hundreds of people to get to Rome.

Panic, thinking about whether the laptop and its contents are now going to be lost forever—along with whatever digital memories they contained.

Without looking, when was the last time your computer was backed up?

The rest of passengers

Of course, it’s important to consider everyone else on the plane. A United Airlines Boeing 767 can hold between 167 and 231 passengers.

That means at least scores or even hundreds of other people who were inconvenienced by the fact that the flight took off, turned around, landed, and had to regroup. Then, apparently it took off again at 3:24 a.m.— three hours after its original departure.

I feel for them as well.

Everyone else’s battles

Sitting crammed together in a metal tube at 30,000 feet, simultaneously anonymously and yet oddly intimately, is something everyone can relate to.

And this whole episode reminds me of a quote that I’ve seen paraphrased and attributed to people ranging from Plato to Tim Ferriss:

“Everyone you meet is fighting a battle you know nothing about.”

In the end, whether you’re the captain making a tough call, the mortified passenger, or one of the hundreds inconveniently delayed, everyone is just trying to get where they’re going safely.

There but for the grace of God go any of us.

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7 other things

• President Trump pardoned a woman convicted of threatening to shoot FBI agents, and also issued a second pardon for a Jan. 6 defendant, Daniel Edwin Wilson of Kentucky, who had remained behind bars because of a separate conviction possessing firearms, something he was prohibited from doing because of his earlier felony convictions. Wilson, who had been scheduled to remain in prison until 2028, was released Friday evening. (Associated Press)

• A group of victims of Jeffrey Epstein in a new ad calls for Congress to pass a measure to force the Department of Justice to release investigative files about the notorious sex offender, following months of resistance to that by the Trump administration. On Sunday night, in a major reversal, President Trump urged House Republicans to vote in favor of the measure. Trump last week pressured congressional Republicans not to support a petition that forced the vote. (CNBC)

• An AI podcasting machine is churning out 3,000 episodes a week -- and people are listening. With its small eight-person team, it takes a day to go from an idea to a complete episode. With each episode only needing 20 listeners to turn a profit, it’s no wonder Inception Point prioritizes quantity. (The Wrap)

• Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon and one of the world’s wealthiest people, is throwing his money and time into an artificial intelligence start-up that he will help manage as its co-chief executive. The company, called Project Prometheus, is coming out of the gates with $6.2 billion in funding, partly from Mr. Bezos, making it one of the most well-financed early-stage start-ups in the world. (NYT)

• Bangladesh’s former prime minister has been sentenced to death after being convicted of crimes against humanity over her crackdown on student-led protests which led to her ousting.

  Sheikh Hasina was found guilty of allowing lethal force to be used against protesters, 1,400 of whom died during the unrest last year. Hasina, 78, was tried in absentia by the International Crimes Tribunal (ICT) in Bangladesh, having been exiled in India since she was forced from power in July 2024. (BBC)

• Thanksgiving 2025 is shaping up to be one of the priciest yet for American families. New survey data reports that the average person celebrating the holiday will spend close to $1,000 when all expenses are tallied, yet more than a third of Americans are slashing their budgets compared to previous years as they navigate financial pressures during what’s become an entire season of celebrations. (Study Finds)

• With lasagna and burritos, neighbors feed one another as food prices soar. (Business Insider)

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Thanks for reading. I wrote about some of this Inc.com. See you in the comments!

Here’s a fun, instructive, and ultimately very relevant rabbit hole. Spend a minute or two perusing some of the classic “supposedly expert people who were wildly skeptical about the concept of the Internet” moments from just before it took over everything.

Examples:

• The anchors of NBC’s TODAY, completely bewildered by email addresses.

• Bill Gates, trying to explain the concept of the Internet to a confounded and dismissive David Letterman.

• Or else, this story from a print version of Newsweek in 1995: Why the Web Won’t Be Nirvana.

Actually, let’s just quote from that one for a minute:

Baloney. Do our computer pundits lack all common sense? The truth is no online database will replace your daily newspaper, no CD-ROM can take the place of a competent teacher and no computer network will change the way government works.

We can laugh about those responses today. But I find myself wondering if skeptics about how artificial intelligence is changing the world today might be doing something very similar.

‘Literally every job’

Reason for bringing this up: A series of timely interviews with Walmart CEO Doug McMillon, who runs America’s largest private employer, and who just gave some of the most direct assessments we’ve heard yet from a major CEO about AI’s impact on employment.

“It’s very clear that AI is going to change literally every job,” he told executives at Walmart’s Arkansas headquarters during a workforce conference, as reported by The Wall Street Journal. “Maybe there’s a job in the world that AI won’t change, but I haven’t thought of it.”

Literally every job.

‘Getting plussed up’

In a separate interview with the Associated Press, McMilllon laid out what he thinks this means in practice:

“I think the best way to think about it is getting ‘plussed up.’ So how can I lean in the role that I have, regardless what that role is, to adopt new tools, leverage them and make things better than they would’ve otherwise been?”

By and large, McMillon said it’s his goal is to keep Walmart’s 2.1 million headcount at the same level at least over the next three years. But the mix of those jobs will change dramatically.

“We’ve got to do our homework, and so we don’t have those answers,” Donna Morris, Walmart’s chief people officer, said at the same conference.

Of course, McMillon isn’t alone:

• Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees in a memo that he expects the company to reduce its corporate workforce in the coming years as it rolls out more AI tools. With about 1.5 million employees worldwide, Amazon is the second-largest private employer in the U.S.

• Ford CEO Jim Farley predicted that AI will eliminate about half of all white-collar jobs in the U.S., telling an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival: “AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind.”

• JPMorgan Chase’s consumer banking chief told investors that operations staff would fall by at least 10 percent as the bank deploys its AI platform — a system that can create a five-page investment banking presentation in 30 seconds.

‘Default to AI’

Oh, and as my colleague Justin Bariso adroitly examined recently, at Opendoor, the real estate technology company, new CEO Kaz Nejatian sent a companywide memo establishing in which he said “Default to AI” as the first line in everyone’s job expectation.

And:

• “Starting with the next performance review, in addition to asking how much impact each employee delivered, we will also ask ourselves how frequently does each person default to AI.”

• “If you reach for Google Docs or Sheets before you reach for an AI tool, you are not defaulting to AI.”

• “If the prototype for a project is not built in Cursor or Claude Code, you are not defaulting to AI.”

• “If you have not used chat.opendoor.com and started thinking about how you can build your own agents and save your prompts, you are not defaulting to AI.”

This is anxiety-inducing stuff. So what should leaders actually do, so that years from now people aren’t trotting out your anachronistic and skeptical reaction to the dawn of AI?

Reassure the people you work with — but be honest.

In short, transparency beats terror.

McMillon put it well: “Our goal is to create the opportunity for everybody to make it to the other side.” Talk to your team “real time about what we’re learning and what we’re doing and why we’re doing it,” as he told the AP.

Recognize that if you’re not optimizing, your competitors are.

Nearly half of technology leaders say AI is “fully integrated” into their companies’ core business strategy. This train has left the station.

The question isn’t whether to adopt AI — it’s how quickly and how well.

Remember what AI cannot do.

At least for now, that includes genuine human relationships. McMillon made this point when he noted that companies have recently pitched robot workers to Walmart.

His response? “Until we’re serving humanoid robots and they have the ability to spend money, we’re serving people. We are going to put people in front of people.”

That’s the sweet spot: Using AI to handle the tasks it’s good at so humans can focus on what they’re uniquely good at.

The bottom line

Change is coming. Actually, scratch that — change is here.

The CEOs running the world’s largest companies aren’t sugarcoating it anymore. They’re telling us exactly what they see: AI is going to reshape every job, eliminate some positions, create others, and fundamentally change how we work.

The good news? We still have time to get ahead of this.

But less time than we did yesterday.

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7 other things worth knowing

• On cue after today’s main newsletter story: Walmart is forming a partnership with OpenAI to let shoppers buy its products directly within ChatGPT, the artificial-intelligence chatbot. It is a signal by the biggest U.S. retailer that online shopping is going to become a totally different experience from the retail websites we are all used to. Within the next few months, U.S.-based ChatGPT users will be able to instantly buy Walmart products directly in ChatGPT. The products will include nearly everything available on Walmart’s website, except for fresh food. And Walmart+ members will still get their benefits such as free shipping when making purchases through ChatGPT. (WSJ)

• So much has happened in the Middle East since we last published on Friday. Monday brought tears of joy and of pain in Israel and Gaza, as all of the living Israeli hostages and four of those who died in captivity were handed over by Hamas in exchange for the release of nearly 2,000 Palestinian detainees and prisoners held by Israel. But as the ceasefire brokered by President Trump held on Tuesday, there were a number of unresolved issues testing his plan to turn it into a sustainable peace. (CBS News)

• Late night talk show hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert, often critics of President Trump, praised the president over the recent Gaza peace deal this week. “There is some good news out there, because today, thanks to Trump’s newly brokered ceasefire in Gaza, all living Israeli hostages and almost 2,000 Palestinian prisoners have been released,” Colbert said Monday on CBS’s “The Late Show.” Trump on Monday visited the Middle East, where he met with Israeli hostage families and spoke at the Knesset in Jerusalem. He then traveled to Egypt for a peace deal signing ceremony. (The Hill)

• At the two-week mark, Republicans and Democrats are bracing for a long government shutdown, with both parties seeing more upside in persisting with their conflicting demands. As a result, neither side is willing to give an inch in the standoff, now the fifth-longest shutdown in the country’s history. (NBC News)

• Pete Hegseth‘s Defense Department has threatened to revoke press credentials of news organization that do not agree to restrictive new coverage rules. Now, more than three dozen news orgs have said they are refusing to sign on to. In a joint statement Tuesday, ABC News, CBS News, CNN, NBC News, and Fox News (where Hegseth worked until January) — said they were not agreeing to the new rules. Previously, the New York Times, AP, Reuters, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal and Politico, along with conservative-leaning outlets like Newsmax and the Washington Examiner, all said they would refuse the restrictions. (Variety)

• For the first time, the average price paid for a new car in the United States is over $50,000. Prices rose 2.1% between August and September, and are up 3.6% year over year, the largest gain in two years. Meanwhile, the once-common $20,000 car is essentially gone from dealership lots. Many budget-focused Americans have shifted toward used vehicles or have chosen to keep existing cars longer. Data from S&P Global shows the average age of cars on American roads exceeds 12 years. (Yahoo Finance)

• Remembering Diane Keaton, the iconic star of ‘Annie Hall’ and ‘The Godfather.’ (NPR)

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.

It was a time, in her eyes, during which people had no style, their hairstyles were terrible, they wore round glasses, and “iPhones and iPads hadn’t even been invented yet.”

I didn’t know whether to be offended or nostalgic. But you know what? Sometimes I miss it.

Some of you might recall I had the odd out-of-the-blue chance to interview Michael Eisner a few months back—the former Disney CEO. He was talking about his book about summer camp, specifically the place he spent his childhood summers called Keewaydin in Vermont, where kids do overnight canoe trips and spend most of their time outdoors.

No electronics. No iPods. No cell phones, not even as cameras. They lock them in the camp safe on arrival.

“Do they do this for adults?” I asked him.

He laughed, but I was serious.

Which brings me to Fred Ramsdell.

I have 200 text messages

Ramsdell is a 64-year-old cancer researcher. He was parked at a campground in Montana on Monday afternoon after weeks of camping and hiking across the Rocky Mountains when his wife, Laura O’Neill, suddenly started shouting.

He first thought maybe she’d seen a bear. Instead, she’d regained cellular service and seen a flood of text messages. “You just won the Nobel Prize!” she yelled.

“No, I didn’t,” Ramsdell said. His phone had been on airplane mode. But his wife insisted: “I have 200 text messages saying that you did!”

They had missed a 2 a.m. call from the Nobel committee announcing that Ramsdell and two others had been awarded the 2025 prize for medicine for their research into the immune system. His lab later said he “was living his best life and was off the grid on a preplanned hiking trip.”

Ramsdell was offline, as he usually is while on vacation. His wife, on the other hand, preferred to stay connected.

“I certainly didn’t expect to win the Nobel Prize,” he told the NYT from a hotel in Montana. “It never crossed my mind.”

Three weeks in the Rockies

The stop in Montana near Yellowstone was nearly the end of a three-week vacation that crossed the mountain ranges of Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. Ramsdell, O’Neill, and two dogs -- a Gordon setter and rescue husky mix -- had set off from Seattle in their Toyota 4Runner with a small teardrop trailer in the back.

A teardrop trailer. Two dogs. Three weeks in the Rockies. This is a man who won the Nobel Prize and vacations like a retired park ranger.

(Note to my wife who reads this newsletter; I think a trip like this will be in our future, someday.)

When he got to the hotel in Livingston, Montana, on Monday night, Ramsdell finally spoke with Thomas Perlmann, the secretary-general of the Nobel Assembly—about 20 hours after Perlmann first tried to call him.

Perlmann said in an interview that it had never been this difficult to reach a laureate since he assumed the role in 2016. (Someone call Guinness.)

How do you think we pay the mortgage?

As much as I like to say I’m not addicted to my phone and other screens, I am. My daughter says maybe I need a screen time limitation app, like we use for her.

(Counterpoint, Darling Daughter: How do you think we pay the mortgage? Yes, with things I do on screens.)

Still, I’ve tried unplugging. I last maybe three hours before I convince myself I need to “just check one thing.”

But Ramsdell did it for three weeks , and the Nobel Prize waited. He set a boundary.

The research waited. The interviews waited. The congratulatory phone calls waited.

And when he finally came back online, the world was still there.

The Nobel Prize didn’t go away. It didn’t get rescinded. The Committee didn’t say, “Well, he didn’t answer, so we’re giving it to someone else.”

Almost everything can wait.

On Tuesday, Ramsdell planned to drive the six hours left on his trip to get to his fall and winter home near Whitefish, Montana. “I was just grateful and humbled by getting the award, super happy for the recognition of the work in general and just looking forward to sharing this with my colleagues, as well,” he said.

And then, presumably, he got back in his 4Runner with his two dogs and drove six more hours.

Maybe there’s hope for the rest of us yet.

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7 other things worth knowing

• The FAA is bracing for nationwide air traffic disruptions as a result of the shutdown. On Tuesday night, staffing shortages hit several major control centers: Chicago, Nashville, Houston and Las Vegas. Also, Hollywood Burbank Airport in California went without any air traffic controllers on duty for nearly 6 hours, as their duties were handed off to San Diego. (Fox Business)

• The White House’s Budget Office says government workers aren’t guaranteed compensation during a shutdown, and President Trump opened the door to blocking back pay: “It really depends on who you’re talking about, but for the most part, we’re going to take care of our people,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “There are some people that really don’t deserve to be taken care of.” (Bloomberg)

• The Treasury Department said it is working on a $1 coin featuring Trump’s image to mark the 250th anniversary of U.S. independence next year. “No fake news here. These first drafts honoring America’s 250th Birthday and @POTUS are real,” U.S. Treasurer Brandon Beach wrote in a social media post. (CBS News)

• Food Network star and longtime Sonoma County resident Guy Fieri said the 2024 heist of $1 million of his company’s tequila “hurt bad.” The celebrity chef recounted the devastating incident in an interview with “60 Minutes.” (Press Democrat)

• Zelda Williams, daughter of Robin Williams, has asked people to stop sending her AI-generated videos of her father. “Please, just stop,” Zelda Williams posted on her Instagram stories. “Stop believing I wanna see it or that I’ll understand, I don’t and I won’t. … If you’ve got any decency, just stop doing this to him and to me.” (BBC)

• Buckle up, the smart glasses backlash is coming. (Gizmodo)

• Wait a sec, that’s Colonel Umberg! I came across this story: California legislators passed a law to mandate that the noise level of commercials is at the same level as the movie or TV series being streamed. [T]he bill, had been shepherded by Sen. Thomas Umberg (D-Santa Ana) through the legislative process. Lo and behold, Senator Umberg was my old commanding officer in the Army Reserve in the days just after 9/11, back when I was Lieutenant Murphy. Glad to hear he turned out O.K. (Hollywood Reporter)

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Thanks for reading. Photo by Redd Francisco on Unsplash. I wrote about some of this before at Inc.com. See you in the comments.

These moments reveal something important about workplace culture that Harvard researchers say we’ve been getting wrong.

The Misunderstood Buzzword

“Psychological safety” has become one of those phrases that gets thrown around in corporate settings like “synergy” or “thought leader”—everyone talks about it, but fewer people seem to understand what it actually means.

Writing in Harvard Business Review, Amy C. Edmondson of Harvard Business School and Michaela Kerrissey of the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health identify key misconceptions about psychological safety and how to actually build environments where people feel empowered to contribute their best thinking.

Here’s what they say most people get wrong, and what actually works.

What Psychological Safety Is NOT

Actually, they came up with five misconceptions:

1. It’s not about being “nice” all the time. Safety and comfort aren’t the same thing. Real psychological safety means you can have honest, sometimes uncomfortable conversations. When “being nice” becomes code for never saying what you really think, organizations end up, as the researchers put it, “producing ignorance and mediocrity.”

2. It’s not about always getting your way. Psychological safety doesn’t mean every idea gets implemented or that everyone leaves every meeting feeling validated. Disagreement and constructive conflict are normal and necessary.

3. It’s not about job security at all costs. While no one should be punished for offering a well-intentioned idea, psychological safety isn’t a shield against accountability or consequences for actual performance issues.

4. It’s not an excuse for poor performance. The entire point is to create an environment where people feel empowered to express ideas that might *improve* performance. As the researchers note, extensive research shows that when people don’t feel safe, they hide information to save face or be agreeable, and teams fall into groupthink.

5. You can’t mandate it from the top. Psychological safety has to be built by everyone, at all levels of an organization. Leadership support matters, but it requires buy-in across the board.

What Actually Works

If you want to help create psychological safety in your workplace—whether you’re in leadership or not—Edmondson and Kerrissey say there are three key approaches:

1. Focus on shared goals, not on the concept itself. Talk about what you’re all trying to achieve together. When everyone understands and cares about the mission, it becomes easier to have honest conversations about how to get there.

2. Improve the quality of conversations. This means asking good questions, listening intently, and working toward decisions rather than letting discussions drift. High-quality conversations both create and result from psychological safety. You can practice this in any meeting or discussion you’re part of.

3. Create structures for reflection and progress-tracking. Simple practices like regular check-ins, weekly reviews of learnings and insights, or creating time for team members to talk directly with each other can make a huge difference. These don’t require executive authority—often a team can implement them on their own.

The Bottom Line

Creating psychological safety is hard to quantify, but the payoff is real: teams that can speak honestly, challenge ideas constructively, and learn from mistakes consistently outperform those that can’t.

And perhaps most importantly, you don’t need to be in charge to start contributing to this kind of culture. Anyone can ask better questions, listen more carefully, and help create the conditions where good ideas can surface—no matter where they come from.

Which, ironically, is exactly the kind of thing you should feel comfortable saying out loud at work.

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7 other things worth knowing

• Officials from Israel and Hamas were in an Egyptian resort on Monday to launch talks that the U.S. hopes will bring a halt to the war in Gaza and a release of hostages, despite contentious issues such as disarmament of the Palestinian militant group. The negotiations on President Donald Trump’s plan were set to begin on the eve of the second anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel that triggered the war, when fighters killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust. (Reuters)

• The Supreme Court’s new term opens Monday and is poised to deliver President Trump and conservatives a string of victories. Here are some of the biggest cases to watch: Legal challenges over Trump’s tariffs, his attempts to fire an FTC commissioner and his firing of a Fed governor; a case brought by Vice President JD Vance when he was still in Congress in which the court will consider reversing a precedent that limits coordination between campaigns and political parties; and two cases about whether states can bar trans athletes from participating in women’s sports. (Axios)

• One case the court won’t take: an appeal from Ghislaine Maxwell, the imprisoned former girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein. On the first day of their new term, the justices declined to take up a case that would have drawn renewed attention to the sordid sexual-abuse saga after President Donald Trump’s administration sought to tamp down criticism over its refusal to publicly release more investigative files from Epstein’s case. (Associated Press)

• Bari Weiss announced on Monday that she is officially editor-in-chief of CBS News and her outlet, The Free Press, is joining Paramount. “We’re a news organization, so I’ll get right to it: This morning, The Free Press is joining Paramount,” Weiss wrote in an email to readers. The purchase price for The Free Press was $150 million in cash and Paramount stock, according to reports. (Fox News)

• A trio of scientists — two Americans and one Japanese — have won the Nobel Prize in Medicine for their discoveries concerning “peripheral immune tolerance,” a mechanism by which the body helps prevent itself from attacking its own tissues instead of foreign invaders. Mary E. Brunkow, Fred Ramsdell and Shimon Sakaguchi will share the prize for discoveries that “launched the field of peripheral tolerance, spurring the development of medical treatments for cancer and autoimmune diseases,” the Nobel Assembly said in a news release. (NBC News)

• Voters under 50 are the least open to electing a female president, and four in 10 Americans personally know someone who would not elect a woman to the White House, a new poll finds. The American University poll, shared first with POLITICO, says a majority supports electing more women to office, yet female politicians face persistent headwinds over trust on key issues like national security. They also run up against double standards, with voters saying a female president must be both “tough” and “likable.” (Politico)

• Walmart says it’s removing artificial dyes and 30 other ingredients typically found in ultraprocessed foods from its store brands by January 2027, calling the move “one of the largest private brand reformulations in retail history.” Consumers are paying closer attention to ingredient lists as they increasingly prioritize health and wellness. The Trump administration has put additional pressure on companies to reformulate, asking the food industry to eliminate artificial colors by the end of next year. (Food Dive)

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I was definitely an AOL dial-up customer back in the day. We all were, really. At its peak, AOL had more than 20 million users—which in the late 1990s basically meant everyone who was anyone online.

You remember the sound. That drowning-robot cacophony of computerized tones as the modem tried to connect through your phone line. And then, if you were lucky and nobody picked up the landline downstairs, you’d hear it: “Welcome! You’ve Got Mail!”

That chipper, vaguely mechanical voice became so iconic it inspired a Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan romantic comedy.

Imagine Netflix greenlighting a movie today called “Push Notification.”

My brother lived with me during the dial-up years, and his outgoing voicemail message used to say, “We’re either on the phone, or on the Intanet.”

The Intanet.

I used to tease him for that accent; we’re from Rhode Island but we don’t usually drop our R’s like that. But, honestly? He wasn’t wrong. We really were either on the phone or on the Intanet, because you genuinely couldn’t do both at the same time.

Here’s a fun bit of trivia: Cyber Monday exists because of AOL-style dial-up.

After Black Friday, all those people whose only access to high-speed internet was at work would return to their offices the following Monday and finally be able to shop online without waiting 45 minutes for a single page to load. Thus, a shopping holiday was born.

Now dial-up has gone the way of 8-track tapes and actual film in cameras—relics of a bygone era that younger people will never experience firsthand.

AOL itself merged with Time Warner in 2000 in what was then the largest corporate deal in history, valued at $350 billion.

By 2021, it sold for $5 billion. I’m not going to claim to be the best businessperson ever, but I don’t think that’s good.

But here’s my favorite part of the AOL story: the original cancel culture.

Long before that term meant something else entirely, in 2006, a guy named Vincent Ferrari called AOL to cancel his service.

He was subjected to a Kafkaesque nightmare of a customer service rep refusing to let him go. The rep kept asking why he wanted to cancel, what he didn’t like, what AOL could do differently—everything except actually canceling the account.

Vincent recorded the whole thing and it went viral. (If you enable images, you should be able to see the link below this line.)

According to recent Census data, about 163,000 people in the U.S. still rely on dial-up internet, mostly in rural or remote areas where broadband isn’t available or is prohibitively expensive. But only a few thousand of those were still AOL customers.

Which brings me to my final thought: Somewhere out there, I wonder if there’s someone who was unable to cancel their dialup, and who finally succeeded—because AOL dial-up simply ceased to exist.

Congratulations, whoever you are. You’re finally free.

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7 other things worth knowing

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth slammed “fat generals” and diversity initiatives during a rare gathering of top U.S. military commanders, and warned that they should resign if they do not support his agenda. Afterward, President Trump floated the idea of using deployments to U.S. cities as “training grounds for our military.” The remarks by Hegseth, a former Fox News personality, and Trump, a former reality television star, had a made-for-TV element to them after nearly all U.S. generals and admirals were summoned on short notice to the event. (Reuters)

• The White House declared an imminent government shutdown as of 12:01 a.m. this morning, after the Senate failed to pass a spending bill to keep federal agencies funded through Nov. 21. Democrats and Republicans each blamed the other. (Fox News)

• About 22 million Americans who get health insurance via the Affordable Care Act marketplace will see their premiums more than double (114%) in 2026, according to an analysis published Tuesday by KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research group, because government subsidies are set to expire. Democrats say this is the main issue holding up a deal to avert or end the government shutdown. (CNBC)

• House Republican leaders refused to swear in a Democrat from Arizona who won a special election, and who would become the 218th and final “yes” vote needed to force a vote on releasing the “Epstein files.” Rep.-elect Adelita Grijalva won in a landslide in the race to replace her father, who had held the seat but died earlier this year. (The Hill)

• American comedians are defending their decisions to play in Saudi Arabia. “So what, they have slaves?” asked Tim Dillon in a podcast segment that led to his firing from the festival. “They’re paying me enough money to look the other way.” Pete Davidson offered a similar take, acknowledging that people have asked him why, given his father’s death on 9/11, he would take a paycheck from the Saudi government. (The Guardian)

• Charlie Javice, 33, the founder of a startup company called “Frank” that promised to revolutionize the way college students apply for financial aid, was sentenced Monday to more than seven years in prison for cheating JPMorgan Chase out of $175 million by greatly exaggerating how many students it served. Javice made false records that made it seem like Frank had over 4 million customers when it had fewer than 300,000. (CNN)

• The skateboard that Tony Hawk used to make history in 1999 has sold for a record-breaking $1.15 million, according to a statement from Julien’s Auctions. The deck, called the Birdhouse “Falcon 2,” was used by Hawk to land the first-ever 900 trick — a 2-and-a-half-turn trick few skateboarders dare to try — at the 1999 San Francisco X Games. (Mississippi Daily Journal)

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• Some say it was Mark Twain.

• Others say Abraham Lincoln.

• Still others say that neither actually said it, but that it parallels a passage from the book of Proverbs in the Bible (Proverbs 17:28, to be exact).

Regardless of where it comes from, it’s good advice — and something that people with high emotional intelligence take to heart.

It’s also something that a United Airlines pilot reportedly ought to have kept in mind before posting recently on social media.

“They are all a dime a dozen!!!”

Let’s set the stage. United Airlines flight attendants have gone without an updated contract for the past several years. Their union negotiated a deal with United — a pay raise of almost 27 percent, along with retroactive pay that would have averaged $21,500 per flight attendant — only to have the union membership vote overwhelmingly not to ratify it.

It’s quite possible that this was a shortsighted move, that this was the best deal the union was going to get, and that union members might regret not having taken it down the road.

But, I don’t know that for sure, so you’ll notice that I’m couching my language here — which is something the United Airlines pilot allegedly did not do.

Instead, according to media reports, screenshots, and even a Change.org petition calling for him to be disciplined, the pilot chimed in on a social media report of the contract rejection with the following:

Love it, now they will get nothing.

They all want pilot pay!!! [United Airlines CEO Scott] Kirby should go to a local university where they are all a dime a dozen!!!

“Oh, he needs a potty break?”

I suppose the ill-advisedness of this is clear, but let’s break it down into three key themes:

Schadenfreude: It’s unclear how any airline pilot would benefit from the flight attendants not getting a contract. The sentiment here is more “joy derived from the misfortune of others.”

Defensiveness and jealousy: Some flight attendants replied to the part about “want[ing] pilot pay” by saying they understand that it takes a lot longer to be qualified as a commercial pilot than it does to become a flight attendant, and they don’t expect pay parity.

Devaluing colleagues: Those last seven words are a killer when it comes to leadership. Imagine how the flight attendants on this pilot’s next flight — or any flight, for that matter — will react.

Actually, we don’t have to imagine, assuming some of the people who commented on his social media post as flight attendants actually are who they claim to be:

• “Hopefully, he brings his food from home.”

• “Just like that, I forgot to cook his meal. Oh, he needs a potty break? Sorry, service is running late, and the entire cabin is in line to use the [forward] lavatory. Maybe later.”

• And, after the pilot apparently removed or hid the comment: “Aww, Mr. Captain deleted his comment. Guess he couldn’t handle the smoke! I hope no one ever warms his bread up ever again.”

Does this need to be said by me now?

There are 28,000 United Airlines flight attendants, and while we live in a divided time, it’s hard to imagine a significant divergence of opinion on this one.

Just under 2,800 people signed a petition asking United Airlines to investigate the comment and “address [it] in accordance with our disciplinary procedures.”

I asked both United Airlines and the flight attendants’ union for comment on this story. United declined, and I have yet to hear back from the union. Most airline industry media experts seem to think it’s unlikely the pilot would face any real disciplinary risk.

That said, as Matthew Klint pointed out on Live and Let’s Fly, if the pilot has “lost his credibility with the flight crews he must work with” to the point that it becomes “fair to wonder whether he can safely work with flight attendants in case of an emergency,” that might be something else for United to consider.

For now, I’m left thinking about what comedian Craig Ferguson called the three-question rule — which my colleague and friend Justin Bariso often cites in his work.

In short, before saying just about anything, you’re encouraged to ask yourself three questions:

• Does this need to be said?

• Does this need to be said by me?

• Does this need to be said by me now?

Let’s apply that here:

• Um, no.

• And … no.

• Also, no.

No matter where that original quote about staying silent comes from, it’s pretty clear that this is all a lesson in what not to do.

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7 other things worth knowing

• The Trump administration expects a government shutdown will start Wednesday, but was scheduled to meet with Democrats Monday to try to find a settlement. Previously, the White House had said it would refuse to negotiate and instead just place all the blame on the other side. Trump “read all the sh*t they’re asking for,” a senior White House official told Reuters over the weekend, and he said, ‘on second thought, go f*ck yourself.’” (USA Today, Politico)

• With a potential shutdown looming, thousands of workers could be furloughed and operations could be disrupted at many agencies. But not all government programs would come to a halt. Here is how some government functions would be affected. (NYT)

• Almost every senior U.S. military leader -- hundreds of generals and admirals -- will gather for an unprecedented in-person meeting in Virginia today with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Trump now says he plans to attend: “I want to tell the generals that we love them, they’re cherished leaders, to be strong, be tough and be smart and be compassionate.” (Reuters)

• Dozens of federal agents took individuals into custody in Chicago, and a top U.S. Border Patrol official told a reporter that they were choosing who to arrest in part based on “how they look.” Full quote from commander Gregory Bovino to a white, middle-aged, male reporter: “There’s many different factors that go into something like that. It would be agent experience, intelligence that indicates there’s illegal aliens in a particular place or location. Then, obviously, the particular characteristics of an individual, how they look. How do they look compared to, say, you?” (Chicago Sun-Times)

• The new tax law will allow millions more Americans to pay nothing in federal income tax. We are going to show you some plausible paths to zero, using examples of a married couple earning $100,000 with two children; a single waitress with one child; and a senior couple with several sources of income. (WSJ)

• If her supporters are to be believed, actress Tilly Norwood is on the verge of Hollywood superstardom. The London-based girl-next-door starlet, they say, is preparing to sign with a major talent agency. But Tilly is manufactured by artificial intelligence, and so is completely fake. She, or it, is poised to be the first AI actress to be signed by a real-life talent agency that normally works with humans, according to Tilly’s creator. (The Telegraph)

• How Finland continues its reign as the happiest country on Earth. (CBS News)

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McDonald’s launched the global “I’m lovin’ it” campaign in the U.S. on September 29, 2003 (it actually got a head start in Germany by a few weeks; “I’m lovin’ it” is “Ich Liebe Es” in German).

Eventually, it expanded to more than 100 countries around the world. It’s still the company’s official slogan, 22 years later.

Contrast that against the fact that the longest McDonald’s kept a single slogan in place before “I’m lovin’ it” was four years.

Here’s the story of the slogan, and how it kinda/sorta saved the company.

McDonald’s Had a Problem

I’ll bet you’ll hear the five note jingle from “I’m lovin’ it,” even just from these five “words,” such as they are: “ba da ba ba ba.”

But before that ear worm worked its way into our collective global subconscious, McDonald’s was a brand in trouble. As Larry Light, who was McDonald’s global CMO at the time, later put it:

“The brand was in serious decline. McDonald’s was ailing with dismal morale among employees.

McDonald’s was under attack from the media. … McDonald’s stock price declined from the $40’s to under $15. Customers perceived the McDonald’s brand as no longer relevant. …

And, franchisees lost confidence in the leadership.”

Light recalled that McDonald’s did three things to turn the situation around. The first two keys, “financial discipline” and “operational excellence,” were out of his control.

But the third key focus — “leadership marketing” — was right in his job description.

Don’t tell me what to do!

Light, who passed away in 2024, also recalled that many of the previous McDonald’s campaigns had involved McDonald’s trying to dictate actions or feelings to its customers — in a nice way, I suppose, but an authoritarian one nonetheless.

Campaigns like “McDonald’s is your kind of place,” and “It’s a good time for the great taste of McDonald’s,” had been successful at one time, he said, but they wouldn’t work with younger generations:

“Telling isn’t selling. Our customers did not want to hear and did not want to be told what to do or how to feel.

They did not want a corporation telling them how great they are and that customers should appreciate what McDonald’s does for them. Customers can think and speak for themselves.

Don’t tell me I “deserve a break today.” I know I do. Why should I take my break at McDonald’s?”

One result of the analysis McDonald’s did at the time, was that it decided to run a big competition among advertising agencies all around the world to find a new direction.

The one that won, and came up with “I’m lovin’ it,” was Heye & Partner, a small agency located in a 1,000-year-old town in Germany.

Of course, there was much more to it than that. The month before, The Wall Street Journal revealed how Heye & Partner landed the deal, and included a juicy clue to how McDonald’s planned to jump start the campaign:

In a move that may win the hearts of teens and ‘tweens, McDonald’s is wooing pop star Justin Timberlake, according to people from both camps.

In fact, McDonald’s paid Timberlake $6 million to record a song (co-produced by Pharrell Williams) called (what else): “I’m Lovin’ It.”

It was a hit both in the U.S. and Europe before the campaign really started, thus hooking the phrase in young people’s heads ahead of time.

I’ll include the video at the end of this newsletter; as you’ll see, it doesn’t mention or show McDonald’s at all.

For what it’s worth, Timberlake later said, “I regret the McDonald’s deal. … [M]arket share went up by 25 per cent when I walked into those offices and changed their image.”

Lessons for today

I admit that when I first saw this anniversary coming up, I thought perhaps I’d learn that 22 years with the same slogan was some kind of record.

As it turns out, not at all.

• The New York Times has used “All the News That’s Fit to Print” for 128 years.

• Heck, Rolling Stone has used “All the News that Fits” for 56 years.

• Wheaties cereal has been the “Breakfast of Champions” since 1933, and DeBeers started telling people that “A Diamond Is Forever” in 1947.

Still, if you want to learn how to become a great marketer, study the history of McDonald’s.

“I’m lovin’ it” offers a lot of important lessons in particular. Among them:

• Relevance beats irrelevance.

• Simple lines often work best — especially if they’re memorable.

• If something ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

As Light wrote back in 2020: “This unique combination of sound, graphic and words has endured for 17 years.”

Actually, make that 22 years — and counting.

Here’s the Justin Timberlake video that kick-started the campaign. Let me know if you remember it.

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7 other things worth knowing

• Former FBI Director James Comey is expected to be indicted on criminal charges in the coming days in federal court in Virginia, MSNBC reported. Comey for years has been a target of President Donald Trump, who fired him as FBI director early in his first term in the White House. Trump in a social media post Saturday, had called Comey “guilty as hell” as he raged about the lack of charges against the former FBI leader. (CNBC)

• The National Park Service removed a statue of Trump and Jeffrey Epstein holding hands from the National Mall early Wednesday morning, a day after it was placed there and several days before its permit was suppposed to expire at 8 p.m. on September 28. The White House did not respond to emails seeking comment on the statue’s removal. (Wash Post)

• A sniper died from a self-inflicted gunshot early Wednesday morning after he shot three ICE detainees at a Dallas ICE facility from a rooftop, according to law enforcement. At a news conference, officials confirmed one victim had died, and two others were taken to the hospital. There were reports that a second victim had died at the hospital, but officials would not confirm that. None of the victims are law enforcement officers, officials confirmed. (Fox 4 News)

• A new Quinnipiac University Poll released on Tuesday found 53% of citizens believe American democracy is not working right now, compared to 41% of Americans who believe the system is going fine. Other eye-grabbing results: 79% of American voters believe the U.S. is in a state of “political crisis,” and 71% of Americans believe political violence is a “very serious problem” — up from 54% who felt that way in June. (Mediaite)

• This is 36 hours old now, but: Jimmy Kimmel broke his silence in an emotional return to ABC’s airwaves, by turns defiant, joking and somber. Kimmel said he understood why his comments last week about the suspected shooter of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk seemed “ill-timed, or unclear, or maybe both.” But Mr. Kimmel also had harsh words for President Trump and FCC chairman Brendan Carr, saying that “a government threat to silence a comedian the president doesn’t like is anti-American.” (New York Times)

• Gen Z’s New Symbol of Resistance: A Cartoon Jolly Roger. Protesters around the world hoist a flag from a hit Japanese pirate show to express disdain for authority. (WSJ)

• As housing costs rise beyond what many families can afford, more people are looking for shelter outside the traditional housing market. About 486,000 people live full time in an RV, twice as many as in 2021. About a third have children, and a vast majority earn less than $75,000 a year. (NBC News)

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• Hire someone.

• Fire someone.

• Move someone’s office.

I question whether it works, although it does conform to my favorite communication rule: the Rule of 3.

(That would be the hard-wired receptiveness we have to things that are grouped in three — everything from the 3 little pigs to “veni, vidi, vici.”)

However, new research from a trio of business school professors, published in the Journal of Management, suggests that there’s a much simpler thing that new leaders can do to set the tone and significantly improve their chances of success.

The trick? Insist on starting either in January or at the beginning of the fiscal year.

‘Heightened net income’

As researchers Diego Villalpando, Robert Campbell and Liliana Pérez-Nordtvedt summarized in Harvard Business Review earlier this summer:

“When CEOs began their tenures within 10 days of the calendar or their firm’s fiscal year (which is around 25% of successions in our sample), their firms experienced, on average, a 0.4% higher ROA [return on assets] than firms whose CEOs started at any other point in the year.

This effect might seem small, but it equates to a nearly 31% difference in ROA compared to our sample’s average ROA and begins to fade after the first 10 days.

We also found that this synchronization resulted in heightened net income for these firms, on average, over the same post-succession period.”

It’s even more important, the research suggested, for CEOs who come from outside the firm, or are women, or else fairly young (under age 46), or “members of racial or ethnic minority groups.”

Why would the calendar matter?

Truly, this strikes me as the kind of study that makes sense — but that you’d really want to dig down and question your assumptions.

I mean: January versus February; does it really matter that much?

Villalpando, Campbell, and Pérez-Nordtvedt said they interviewed stakeholders surrounding many of the 690 CEO transitions they examined for this study, and came up with three non-exclusive theories:

“Alignment of Goals and Objectives.” As they put it, “the beginning of the year is when new goals are set,” and a CEO who begins “in the new year” can set those goals “according to their own vision,” as opposed to having to consider the goals of the departing or departed leader.

“Minimization of Disruption.” Bottom line, the beginning of a calendar year or fiscal year is likely to be perceived as “a natural breakpoint,” which “allows enough time for organizational members to regain focus and attention on tasks and projects before results are expected.”

“Decrease in Time Pressure.” While there’s always pressure for a new leader or CEO to perform, “this pressure is especially strong closer to the end of a calendar or fiscal year,” and so taking over at the start of the year “can alleviate time-induced pressure, enhancing decision-making and ultimately operational performance.”

Atypical CEOs

As for young leaders, women, or “members of racial or ethnic minority groups,” Villalpando, Campbell, and Pérez-Nordtvedt theorized that this population of CEOs — who are a minority overall — are also “more likely to enact major strategic change,” according to previous research.

The start of a calendar or fiscal year is simply a time when people are more open to change and less averse to having their routines or presumptions upended, the idea goes, and thus more likely to be receptive and quicker to buy into a leader’s vision.

At the least, as Jeff Bezos might have put it, they might be more willing to “disagree and commit.”

Of course, timing isn’t always negotiable.

An outgoing CEO might have to be replaced in a hurry, and an incoming leader might not want to put off his or her start date — either because they’re simply eager to get going, or because they don’t want to signal any reluctance.

But all other things being equal, if you have a choice, either just after New Year’s Day or just after the start of the fiscal year seems like a smart choice.

Now, about your office …

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7 other things worth knowing

• Tom Homan, who was later named President Trump’s border czar, was recorded in September 2024 accepting a bag with $50,000 in cash in an undercover F.B.I. investigation, according to people familiar with the case, which was later shut down by Trump administration officials. Asked for comment … the White House, the Justice Department and the FBI dismissed the investigation as politically motivated and baseless. (The New York Times, MSNBC)

• The United Kingdom, Canada and Australia officially recognized Palestine as a state over the weekend, a significant shift in foreign policy and a step away from their alignment with the United States, with several other European nations and U.S. allies set to follow suit this week. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused the foreign leaders of giving Hamas a “prize.” “It will not happen,” he said. “A Palestinian state will not be established west of the Jordan River.” (NBC News)

• Jimmy Kimmel is getting back on the air. The ABC late-night host is returning to broadcast on Tuesday following a brief-but-monumental suspension that sparked a national debate over the Trump Administration’s pressure tactics and the modern limits and consequences of free speech. (Hollywood Reporter)

• Poland's prime minister warned it will shoot down Russian fighter jets if they violate its territory. This follows a series of incidents in which Russian drones or warplanes entered airspace of Poland, Romania, and, last Friday, Estonia, when three Russian MiG-31 jets remained in the NATO member state’s airspace for nearly 12 minutes before the alliance scrambled jets in response. (The Mirror)

• A California attorney must pay a $10,000 fine for filing a state court appeal full of fake quotations generated by the artificial intelligence tool ChatGPT. The fine appears to be the largest issued over AI fabrications by a California court and came with a blistering opinion stating that 21 of 23 quotes from cases cited in the attorney’s opening brief were made up. It also noted that numerous out-of-state and federal courts have confronted attorneys for citing fake legal authority. (Cal Matters)

• Isn’t this exactly how you get an ancient Egyptian curse? A 3,000-year-old Pharaoh’s bracelet has been stolen from a museum and melted down for gold. Pharaoh Amenemope’s lapis lazuli bead jewelry was snatched from Cairo’s Egyptian Museum on September 9, before being sold for the equivalent of roughly $3,800. Four suspects have been arrested. (Metro UK)

• Thousands of baseball fans set a new Guinness World Record for the Largest Game of Catch at Yogi Berra Stadium in Monctlair, N.J. over the weekend, with 1,179 pairs of participants. The challenge – a five-minute continuous game of catch – and no stopping to look at your cell phone or take a selfie. Yogi’s Big Catch beat the previous record of 972 set in 2017 in Illinois. (Montclair Local)

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Each of these companies now has a CEO who began years ago as an intern, and then worked their way up to the top job over the decades:

• At GM, Mary Barra started as an 18-year-old intern in the early 1980s. Her LinkedIn profile lists 15 different positions culminating as chair and CEO starting in 2016.

• At Nike, CEO Elliott Hill started as an intern in 1988 and had 19 different roles at the company before retiring in 2020 as president — but then came back last October to take over as CEO.

• And now, Target has a new CEO — or at least, will have one as of next year: Michael Fiddelke, who started at the company as a finance intern while he was getting his MBA back in 2003, and has had 10 promotions before the big one he’s now getting.

Hat tip to Jessica Karl at Bloomberg, who pointed out the connection among these ladder-climbers. Additional similar inspiring stories worth mentioning:

• Ursula Burns, who had a 46-year career at Xerox, starting as a summer intern and culminating with a seven-year tenure as CEO. Burns was the first black woman to lead any Fortune 500 company; she left the company in 2016.

• And, Doug McMillon, CEO of Walmart, who wasn’t an intern as far as I can tell so he gets an asterisk, but he did work as an hourly associate at a Walmart during high school and then came back to begin a career several years later, after getting his MBA.

I’m sure there are others, but the news recently at Target is happening at a very apt time — just as we get into the first days of September, and as the summer interns of 2025 have headed back to school.

One-and-done

Do many interns expect they’ll stay with the company they spend a summer or two with -- or a few days a week during the school year -- for an entire career? Or that they’ll eventually rise to the top job?

Do they even know about the “run the copy machine” to “run the entire company” career journeys of people like Barra, Hill, Fiddelke, Burns, and McMillon*?

According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, people hold an average of 12.7 jobs from ages 18 to 56. These are baby boomer statistics — which makes sense in a way, since younger generations likely haven’t retired yet, so we don’t know their full experience.

But personally, it’s possible I’ve missed someone, but when I think about the people I went to college and later law school with, I can’t think of a single one who had a one-and-done corporate career like this.

Of course, I don’t know too many Fortune 500 CEOs either, at least nobody that I knew before they were either in or close to that position.

Also, personally, my longest stint at a pure W-2 job is just four years — although let's add that I've been writing this newsletter for (oh my God!) nearly six years.

But if I had interns, and I was working on my “thanks for all you’ve done for us this” speech, I’d find a way to work these examples into it.

Let’s talk Target

A few quick points about Fiddelke’s situation.

It’s fair to wonder whether this is a bit of a Pyrrhic promotion, given that the company is in a heck of a slump — both in terms of sales and stock. After the second quarter, Target reported that it expects an annual sales decline in the coming year.

Of course, there’s something to be said for taking the helm of a troubled ship; if Fiddelke is successful, he’ll be seen as a savior.

Fiddelke told reporters he’s “stepping in with urgency to rebuild momentum and return to profitable growth.” He added, “We’ve built a solid foundation, and we’re proud of the many ways that Target is unique in American retail. We also have real work in front of us.”

I hope it works out for him. My default position is always to root for an iconic American company like Target to do well.

Besides, if a year or now from now we’re talking about what a great job Fiddelke did turning around Target, that will bode well for the interns of the future.

And that might lead to some even more inspiring stories.

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7 other things worth knowing

• Layoffs surged nearly 40 percent last month, according to consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, and U.S. private sector hiring rose less than expected, by just 54,000 according to data from payroll processing firm ADP. That’s below the consensus forecast of 75,000 from economists polled by Dow Jones and marks a significant slowdown from the revised gain of 106,000 seen in the prior month. Separately, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Friday will deliver its first jobs report since President Trump fired its leader in response to disappointing employment data for July. (The Hill, CNBC, The Hill again)

• Senior Justice Department officials are weighing proposals to limit transgender people’s right to possess firearms. The idea of restricting gun rights has long been a red line for conservatives ... but Justice Department leadership is seriously considering whether it can use its rulemaking authority to follow on to Trump’s determination to bar military service by transgender people and declare that people who are transgender are mentally ill. (CNN)

• $40,000 Vacations Inspire Finance Pros to Become Travel Agents: A growing number of professionals have left the security of high-flying jobs in finance, law and other white-collar industries to join the rapidly swelling ranks of travel advisers. (Bloomberg)

• The U.S. Navy restored the retired military rank of Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), who was President Trump's first-term White House physician, reversing a Biden-era decision to demote him from rear admiral to captain. Jackson had been demoted in retirement in 2022 after the release of a Pentagon inspector general’s report that found he bullied his staff and made inappropriate sexual comments about a female subordinate during his time within the White House Medical Unit. (The Washington Post)

• A 42-year-old Texas man is facing a murder charge in the shooting of an 11-year-old boy after the victim and his friends banged on the suspect's door late Saturday night in what police described as a "ding-dong-ditch" prank that has been trending on TikTok and other social media platforms, authorities said. The child, who police initially said was 10 years old, was pronounced dead at a hospital on Sunday afternoon. (ABC News)

• Giorgio Armani, the Italian designer who took over the world with a vision of elegant ease and then rewrote the rules of the Hollywood red carpet, has passed away at the age of 91 at his home in Milan. (W Magazine)

• Finally: After 38 years, Michael Stipe of R.E.M. revealed the actual corrected lyrics to the notoriously difficult to sing, "It's the End of the World as We Know It." (People)

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• Team Footprint represents all of the big, legacy retailers that spent millions, if not billions of dollars, building physical stores. Think of Walmart and Target— along with other big names that didn’t last.

• Team Last Mile includes the online-first brands that bet that they could deliver straight to customers’ doors. Amazon would be at the top of the list here, but there are so many now-forgotten companies that tried and failed.

If you’d asked me not long ago to name the winner (or likely winner) I would have said: Easy, Team Last Mile. But, like all good stories from history, this one comes with a twist.

In this case, it’s how some of the Team Footprint players figured out a way to turn their massive retail infrastructure from a potential liability into a big advantage.

The best example is Walmart. It’s been fascinating to watch how Walmart launched Walmart+ as basically a direct competitor to Amazon Prime, despite Amazon having a 15-year head start.

But there are other examples. The latest and greatest I can point to is the partnership that Best Buy and IKEA announced recently, and which we should start seeing in the coming months.

One store inside another

Let’s quote directly from the official announcement that both Best Buy and IKEA posted:

Beginning this fall, Best Buy shoppers in select markets can get inspiration, planning support and make purchases for their kitchens and laundry rooms like never before.

Best Buy and IKEA U.S. have partnered to pilot new in-store planning and shopping experiences that combine the latest and greatest major appliances from Best Buy with the well-designed, functional and affordable home furnishings from IKEA.

This is the first time IKEA products and services will be accessible through another U.S. retailer, creating innovative ways for both retailers to meet customer needs in a rapidly changing environment.

There’s a lot to unpack there, but bottom line, this seems like it could be the best combination since somebody thought up maple-glazed bacon. (I suppose that’s indicative of my personal tastes; feel free to replace with your own comparison.)

• Best Buy sells kitchen and laundry appliances (among many other things).

• IKEA sells kitchen and laundry setups and furnishings (among other things).

What better way can you imagine and locate a customer who might be interested in one retailer, than to set up a 1,000-square foot shop literally inside the other?

The never-ending story

Now, it occurs to me that there’s no vice-versa in the announcement, meaning no Best Buy display and setup within IKEA.

Maybe that’s coming, or maybe it’s a function of the fact that there are 1,054 Best Buy stores in the U.S. but only 52 IKEAs.

Also, this is just a test program with 10 stores total for now: five each in Florida and Texas.

That said, it seems like a very smart strategy in the ongoing battle. While both Best Buy and IKEA have robust e-commerce operations, I don’t think there’s much doubt that they’re both charter members of Team Footprint.

It’s a synergy that couldn’t exist if they weren’t both on that team to begin with.

And a reminder that in business, the best stories never really end.

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7 other things worth knowing

• The Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture, World Liberty Financial, put its namesake digital tokens up for sale on Monday, adding some $5 billion in paper value to Donald Trump’s family fortune. The token, known as $WLFI, fell in value on Monday in their first day of trading. (The Guardian)

• A federal judge declared Trump’s use of military troops in Los Angeles illegal, barring the Pentagon from using National Guard members and Marines from performing police functions, like arrests and crowd control. In a 52-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer warned that Trump appears intent on “creating a national police force with the President as its chief.” (Politico)

• Hours later, Trump pointed to the more than 50 people shot in Chicago over the Labor Day weekend as a reason for deploying the National Guard to the city. Separately, D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) on Tuesday welcomed federal law enforcement officials to stay in D.C. indefinitely, a powerful indication of her willingness to cooperate with Trump. (ABC 7 Chicago, Washington Post)

• Two more government announcements, and then we can move on: Trump said he's moving the headquarters of the U.S. Space Force to Alabama from Colorado, citing Colorado's mail-in voting and "automatically crooked elections." Also, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has approved sending up to 600 military lawyers to the Justice Department to serve as temporary immigration judges. (NPR, AP)

• Google must share data with rivals to open up competition in online search, a judge in Washington ruled on Tuesday, while rejecting prosecutors' bid to make the internet giant sell off its popular Chrome browser and Android operating system. Google has said previously that it plans to file an appeal, which means it could take years before the company is required to act on the ruling. (Reuters)

• Egyptian police have arrested dozens of teenage TikTokkers, accusing them of crimes ranging from indecency to money laundering. The police also confiscated their devices, froze their assets and imposed travel bans on them. (ABC Australia)

• A dinosaur dubbed one of the “strangest” ever boasted an elaborate armoury of long bony spikes and a tail weapon, according to findings published in the science journal Nature. Spicomellus, which roamed the earth 165 million years ago, is the world’s oldest ankylosaur, a herbivorous group of dinosaurs known for their tank-like bodies. (CTV News)

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Getting a Chick-fil-A is statistically harder than getting into Harvard, becoming a Navy SEAL, or landing most other major franchises. With thousands of applications for just a handful of spots each year, what separates the winners from everyone else?

I analyzed over 100 recent Chick-fil-A opening announcements to find out—and the results might surprise you.

Why Everyone Wants In

First, let's talk about why the competition is so fierce:

• The buy-in is ridiculously low: Just $10,000 to get started. Compare that to McDonald's (around $45,000 franchise fee plus $1-2 million total investment) or most other major chains that require six or seven figures upfront.

• The payoff is massive: Reports suggest the average Chick-fil-A owner brings home around $300,000 annually—and that's probably a conservative estimate from a few years ago. For context, that's roughly six times the median American household income.

• The process is brutal: Applications can take years to process. One successful candidate I found went through a "four-year journey" from initial application to opening day.

Think about it: you're essentially asking to invest $10,000 for a shot at a $300,000-per-year business. Of course everyone applies.

What I Discovered

I looked at every new Chick-fil-A that opened between October 2024 and late June, examining the backgrounds of 105 people who actually got franchises (86 men, 19 women). Here's what nearly all of them had in common:

They Already Worked for Chick-fil-A

This is the big one: 93% of successful applicants were current or former Chick-fil-A employees.

We're talking about everyone from teenagers who worked there part-time in high school to restaurant managers to corporate executives at their Atlanta headquarters. Some clearly took jobs at Chick-fil-A specifically hoping it would lead to franchise opportunities. Others had family members who were already franchise owners.

Bottom line: If you haven't worked for Chick-fil-A, your odds are essentially zero.

Many Had Multiple Locations

Here's something that surprised me: 17% of new franchise owners already operated at least one other Chick-fil-A restaurant. I used to think they limited people to just one location, but apparently not anymore.

The Leadership Pipeline is Real

About one-third of successful applicants had gone through Chick-fil-A's Leadership Development Program—basically a 2-3 year intensive training where promising employees travel around solving real business problems. It's like an MBA program, but for chicken.

The Rare Exceptions

Only seven people out of 105 got franchises without having worked for Chick-fil-A first. These outliers typically had one of two things:

• Deep local connections in areas where Chick-fil-A was expanding for the first time (think New York City, Puerto Rico, or Canada)

• Serious leadership experience, usually military service or high-level corporate careers

Geographic Flexibility Helps

About 20% of new owners were willing to relocate for their franchise. A Boston native opened a restaurant in Texas. Someone from Alabama took one in Indiana. Flexibility apparently pays.

What This Really Means

Let me be clear: I would be absolutely terrible at owning and operating a Chick-fil-A.

My interest here is purely academic—though I suppose spending this much time analyzing chicken restaurant announcements officially makes me some kind of poultry masochist.

But that's exactly why this is fascinating. Chick-fil-A isn't really in the franchise business—they're in the restaurant business.

They're not looking for investors who can write checks; they're looking for people who can run excellent restaurants according to their very specific standards.

Their strategy: identify talented people early, train them extensively, test them repeatedly, and then give the best ones restaurants to run. It's less like buying a franchise and more like earning a promotion after years of proving yourself.

For most of us, this means owning a Chick-fil-A isn't a realistic goal unless we're willing to spend several years working our way up through their system first. But there's a broader lesson here that applies to any career or business decision:

Companies with the best opportunities are incredibly selective about who they choose—and they usually know exactly what type of person succeeds.

The next time you're facing a major career decision or evaluating a business opportunity, ask yourself the question Chick-fil-A apparently asks every applicant over and over: "Why do you really want this?"

If you can't give a compelling answer that goes beyond just wanting the money, maybe it's not the right opportunity for you.

And if you really do want to own a Chick-fil-A someday? Well, now you know where you need to start: fill out that job application first.

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7 other things worth knowing

• A shooter opened fire on a morning mass at a Minneapolis church on Wednesday. Two children were killed and 17 people were injured. Sources have confirmed to KSTP that the shooter at Annunciation Church is 23-year-old Robin Westman. FBI Director Kash Patel confirmed his agency is investigating the shooting as “an act of domestic terrorism and hate crime targeting Catholics.” (KTSP)

• Expect your health insurance costs to rise next year, brokers and experts say. (AP)

• Federal prosecutors have been unable to persuade a grand jury to approve a felony indictment against a man who threw a sandwich at a federal agent on the streets of Washington this month. The grand jury’s rejection amounted to a sharp rebuke by a panel of ordinary citizens against the prosecutors assigned to bring charges against people arrested after President Trump’s deployment of National Guard troops and federal agents to fight crime and patrol the city’s streets. (The New York Times)

• At a time when grocery bills keep climbing, a few brands are clinging to nostalgia-priced staples — like Costco's $1.50 hot dog combo and AriZona's 99-cent iced tea cans. By holding the line on price, companies trade margin for loyalty, signaling to customers that "value" is part of their DNA. (Axios)

• Plus-size passengers on Southwest Airlines may soon find it harder to get reimbursed for their extra space. The airline long had a policy encouraging "customers of size" to purchase two seats when they book a ticket, and then apply for a refund for the second fare after they travel. Southwest will still allow customers to apply for the refund, but is restricting the conditions under which it will actually provide the reimbursements. (USA Today)

• Your next real estate agent may be a teenager: The share of Realtors younger than 30 grew from 1% to 4% in 2024, according to NAR's member profile, and sits at 3% in 2025. Several Gen Zers I spoke to for this story told me they find appeal in working in real estate because there's no ceiling on what they can earn. Rather than invest tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in a four-year degree, they can spend a few weeks or months training to receive licenses and start working in fields where their hustle correlates to their payday. (Business Insider)

• New York City's crackdown on Airbnb has been a jackpot for hotels. After the city effectively banned most short-term rentals in 2023, hotel prices jumped by up to $19 per night, netting the industry an extra $2.9 billion in just 18 months. The study, published in the European Journal of Political Economy, reveals how the hotel industry flexed its political muscle to shape the new rules. In 2023, hotels outspent Airbnb on lobbying by a staggering 20-to-1 margin. (Boing Boing)

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The latest research that caught my attention: A study co-authored by a Harvard Business School professor that examined what smiling profile photos do to the financial performance of Airbnb listings.

Bottom line upfront: Writing in a recent edition of the Journal of Consumer Research, researchers said they analyzed millions of images and found that consumer demand dropped about 3.5% when people didn’t smile, compared to listings from hosts who did smile.

Happy faces, happy results

Harvard Business School Assistant Professor Shunyuan Zhang and colleagues built a deep learning model that allowed them to categorize 3.3 million host images, and determine the gender and age of the people in them — along with whether they were smiling.

Among their findings:

• 75 percent of hosts smiled in their photos.

• Hosts who smiled were perceived by customers as “more warm and competent” than those who did not.

• The benefit to smiling was even more pronounced for men than women; men who smiled in their photos had 9 percent higher demand than those who did not.

While this study focused on Airbnb specifically, the research suggests a likely benefit in “any industry where trust is paramount, including those focused on customer service,” as a Harvard summary put it. As a result, Zhang suggested companies should “consider displaying happy faces strategically on their websites.”

“People make a lot of inferences based on the faces of other people,” Zhang said. While it can be “hard to quantify … it’s important in influencing our daily decision-making.”

A long line of smile research

The journal article, Serving with a Smile on Airbnb: Analyzing the Economic Returns and Behavioral Underpinnings of the Host’s Smile, was co-authored by Zhang along with Columbia Business School professor Elizabeth Friedman, Carnegie Mellon University professor Kannan Srinivasan, Ravi Dhar from Yale University, and Xupin Zhang, of East China Normal University.

However, it’s just one in a long line of other studies showing the quantitative advantages of smiling in profile photos:

• A study published in January in the Journal of Small Business Strategy found that crowdfunders who smiled in their LinkedIn photos: “The results suggest that LinkedIn profile pictures with a smile (versus no smile) increase perceptions of trustworthiness and investment interest.”

• A study published last month in Scientific Reports found that when entrepreneurs set out to raise money to fund businesses, “smiling in profile pictures is significantly associated with both higher likelihood of securing funding and higher amount raised.”

• Related: a study of 63,014 jobs “completed” on Freelancer.com didn’t quite involve smiles, but suggested that when it came to profile photos, “above and beyond demographics and beauty, there is a strong correlation between simply looking the part and perceived job performance.” (Granted, that’s a very subjective standard.)

What about on dating apps?

We can’t let this moment pass without also taking a look at the study Hinge did several years ago regarding how smiling affects people’s odds of making a good match on dating apps.

The results were striking — and maybe a bit sexist:

Women who smiled, showing their teeth in photos, were 76% more likely to get a like than those who didn’t.

But men were 43% more likely to get “likes” on their photos if they smiled without teeth.

Other Hinge advice: Don’t post beach photos, do post sports photos, do post candids, and don’t post selfies — especially bathroom mirror selfies.

Actually, I suppose that last bit of advice probably holds true for Airbnb, LinkedIn, and fundraising photos as well, although I’m not aware that anyone has tested it.

Bottom line? It seems Aaron Burr was right: “Talk less, smile more.“

The science backs it up.

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7 other things worth knowing

• More homebuyers are pushing for sleepovers before buying a property: ‘Try it before you buy it.' “If you can drive a car off a lot, why not test-drive a home?” asked Compass agent Ari Afshar, who once arranged a one-night stay in a $14.6 million Hollywood Hills spec house. (New York Post)

• Elon Musk’s chatbot gave tips on assassinating him: Chats leaked on Google show Grok users being provided with ‘detailed’ plans to kill the billionaire and advice on making DIY bombs and drugs. (The Times)

• How the Richest People in America Avoid Paying Taxes: A clever new paper puts concrete numbers to the taxes paid by members of the Forbes 400. (The Atlantic)

• President Trump indicated that he could move soon to rename the Department of Defense as the Department of War: "I have a feeling we’re going to be changing. Everybody likes that. We had an unbelievable history of victory when it was Department of War." (The Hill)

• Actor Dean Cain is a candidate for laughingstock of the Internet after a Fox News segment showed the former Superman star struggling through an obstacle course at an ICE training facility in Georgia last week. The video of Cain going through the obstacle course has gone viral, with multiple users dragging the one-time star of Lois & Clark: The New Adventures of Superman. (Mediaite, Twitter)

• Albania Seizes Its Moment in the Sun: Gorgeous beaches, unspoiled nature, unusual historical sites and low prices have made this former “hermit state” one of Europe’s newest destinations. I’m pushing for this destination for a Murphy family trip, FWIW. (New York Times)

• Thousands of climbing catfish filmed scaling waterfalls: New footage provides rare insight into the daring migration of an enigmatic fish. (Science.org)

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It’s hard to test. But about 50 years ago, researchers came up with a smart experiment. They wrote about it in the journal, Organizational Behavior and Human Performance.

(You’ll like the title: “I Knew It Would Happen: Remembered Probabilities of Once—Future Things.”)

To be clear: This was the early 1970s, and the researchers tested the idea by asking college students just before President Nixon’s 1972 trips to China and Russia to predict the outcome of the visits.

Afterward, they were asked to remember what they’d predicted.

Bottom line: Nearly everyone remembered incorrectly, aligning their recollections more closely what actually did happen.

This is what I thought of when I started thinking deeply -- very deeply -- about the return of Snack Wraps to McDonald’s.

A bright, shiny quarter?

Snack Wraps have apparently been highly successful in the short time since McDonald’s brought them back to the menu in the U.S. after a very long time, to the point where it seems like it was an obvious decision.

But maybe that’s just hindsight bias?

Let’s set the stage. McDonald’s has had a tough two years or so, because customers just haven’t been visiting or buying as much as they used to.

As McDonald’s CEO Chris Kempczinski explained in an earnings call earlier this year:

“McDonald’s can weather these difficult conditions better than most … [but] low- and middle-income consumers, in particular, are being weighed down by the cumulative impact of inflation and heightened anxiety about the economic outlook.”

McDonald’s tried a bunch of things to reverse that trend, most notably the $5 Meal Deal.

That seems like it might have helped — but McDonald’s reportedly only makes 25 cents profit on each Meal Deal it sells.

Besides, in terms of sheer customer excitement, it’s nothing compared to what happened after McDonald’s announced that it was bringing back Snack Wraps.

A brief history of Snack Wraps

Snack Wraps are simple concoctions: breaded chicken tenders, shredded lettuce, ranch sauce, and cheese — all wrapped in a tortilla.

McDonald’s rolled them out for American customers in 2006, and they lasted until 2016, becoming (at least in retrospect) a cult favorite.

Once they disappeared from the menu, McDonald’s customers spent literally a decade trying to bring them back.

There’s a fan Facebook group, of course, and a Change.org campaign with more than 18,900 signatures.

In fact, McDonald’s said on social media that a potential return of the Snack Wrap was its “most requested item of all time.”

“If you ever wonder if your posts here matter, if they have an impact, if we even care, let me tell you something, you and you only with your countless posts and requests and petitions made it happen,” McDonald’s senior marketing director Guillaume Huin posted on social media earlier this year. “You won, Snack Wrap fans. Thank you.”

See what I mean?

In retrospect, obvious—even game-changing.

A lettuce shortage

One of the wild things about living in our current age is that we can track what people do in real life, because we walk around with smartphones in our pockets.

As a result, we can look to geolocation data from a company like Placer.ai that says customer visits have jumped as a result.

Moreover, an analyst that closely tracks McDonald’s called Evercore ISI estimates that in the U.S., same-store sales at McDonald’s have are up 7% so far in the third quarter.

Oh, and they’re apparently so popular that they’ve caused a lettuce shortage at some restaurants, according to an internal memo.

“After nine years of pent-up demand, fans showed up in full force to celebrate the return of the Snack Wrap,” McDonald’s told Fox Business. “We’ve been blown away by the response, from packed restaurants with lines out the door to nonstop social buzz.”

Great news for McDonald’s.

But seriously: Why didn’t they do this months or even years ago?

A headache

Actually, it turns out there were some really good reasons:

First, while Snack Wraps are fairly simple, they were a “headache” to put together in a McDonald’s kitchen. This, from Bloomberg back then: “Wraps were time-consuming for workers to assemble and they never took off with many customers, said Jack Russo, an analyst at Edward Jones.

Second, McDonald’s marketed Snack Wraps as a healthier snack option — but back in the aughts and the 2010s, customers just weren’t into those ideas as much as they might be today.

Third, and this is the kicker: They just didn’t sell that well among McDonald’s core target customer demographic at the time — Millennials.

Of course, that was then. This is now.

‘Just throwing this out there …’

It almost seems customers remembered themselves loving Snack Wraps more than they actually did — thus sparking a social media maelstrom, which led McDonald’s to consider giving them another try.

McDonald’s didn’t reply when I asked for comment or more context, but you can almost imagine them coming up in some kind of “no bad ideas, people!” brainstorming session at McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago’s West Loop:

“Just throwing this out there … Millennials didn’t buy them during the Obama administration, but Millennials are 10 years older today. Plus, we’re targeting Gen Z, so maybe they’d be more into them?”

Next thing you know?

Snack Wraps are back, geolocation data tells a tale, and the whole thing looks inevitable in retrospect.

Not for the first time, I end with the conclusion there's a fascinating story and a practical business lesson to learn from McDonald’s.

I'll bet you knew that would happen.

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7 other things worth knowing

• The family of Epstein victim Virginia Roberts Giuffre say they're "outraged" that the Trump Justice Department released transcripts from convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell’s jailhouse interview. "During [Deputy Attorney General] Todd Blanche’s bizarre interview, she is never challenged about her court-proven lies, providing her a platform to rewrite history," the family of said. President Trump has not ruled out pardoning Maxwell or commuting her 20-year prison sentence. (NBC)

• In an "abrupt reversal," Trump indicated Monday he was leaning against deploying federal forces to fight crime in Chicago. Trump had said Friday that he planned to replicate his DC crime crackdown in the Windy City, followed by New York City — only to be met with local pushback. (New York Post)

• Struggling after 23 months of war, the Israeli army is looking to recruit members of the Jewish diaspora in the U.S. and France, along with the Orthodox community and even former deserters, who have been offered a one-time amnesty if they sign up. (France24)

• Thousands of people will paint a town red with tomato pulp Wednesday, flinging the fruit at one another in the 80th anniversary of Spain’s famous “Tomatina” tomato street fight. The hourlong event, inspired by a 1945 food fight, brings 120 tons of overripe tomatoes to the eastern town of Buñol, where tarp-covered buildings flank a crowd of up to 22,000 participants awaiting their ammo. “When it’s going on, it’s just a blur of tomatoes,” said Adrian Columb of Ireland, who attended in 1999. “It was a blast.” (AP)

• Cute and adorable Welsh corgis, widely known for their association with the British royal family, are in fact a breed of passionate racers. That’s at least according to the 120 teams from around Europe taking part in the Corgi Race Vilnius, in Lithuania. Thousands of Lithuanians gathered in the capital’s largest park on Saturday and Sunday to watch the events — a solo sprint, a contest for the “mightiest voice,” costume challenges, and group racing. (AP)

• In a box office twist, a film from the theatrical-averse Netflix appears to be No. 1 on North American charts. “Kpop Demon Hunters,“ sing-along version of the hit animated musical, is estimated to have earned $18 million to $20 million on Saturday and Sunday. It's also the second-most watched film ever on the platform while three of the film’s original tunes — “Golden,” “Your Idol” and “Soda Pop” — are currently in the top 10 of Billboard’s Hot 100 chart. (Variety)

• For centuries, getting a drink in Britain has meant going straight to the bar, finding a gap and making eye contact with the bartender. But now, more people are now ordering their pints from single-file lines, and it’s driving pub purists to distraction. (WSJ)

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