What do prison and business have in common? At first glance, nothing. One is a place where hope and trust are scarce, and every decision you make is a matter of survival. The other is a world built on innovation and collaboration, full of opportunities. But when you strip them both down to their core, youll find the same thing: leadership. And not the kind of leadership you read about in glossy books. Im talking about real-life, earned leadership.
My name is Andre Norman, and I was once sentenced to more than 100 years in prison. That kind of time breaks most men. But I worked day in and day out to earn my freedom and, after 14 years, I reentered the world as a completely different man. While I was behind bars, before I realized my life didnt have to end in prison, I rose through the ranks of the gang system. As a prison boss, I managed gang activities from within the maximum-security walls, one of the toughest environments on the planet. But I soon realized that, even though I had a sense of leadership, I was the King of Nowhere.
During two years of solitary confinement, I made a decision that changed everything. I set my sights on Harvard University. It was a big goal for someone in my position, but I knew if I wanted it badly enough, I could make it happen. From that moment, I worked backward, using the same skills that had helped me survive in prison: reading people, networking, communicating. And in 2015, my dream became a reality: I earned a fellowship at Harvard Law School.
In prison, leadership wasnt a titleit was survival. You had to know how to read people. If you make the wrong call, it could cost you your life. I didnt have the luxury of guessing. I had to know. Is this person going to kill me today, or are they someone I can work with? Behind bars, you learn quickly that loyalty isnt given, its earned. And trust? Trust is the most valuable currency of all.
When I got out and started working with CEOs and leaders, I realized that the business world is not so different from the world I left behindbesides the fact that nobody is coming to the table with a knife. Still, the principles of leadership dont change. In prison, nobody cares about your title. They dont follow you because you say youre in charge. They follow you because youve proven you can lead. Its the same in business. Your people arent going to trust you just because of your org chart. Theyll trust you because youve shown them that youre worth trusting.
If Ive learned one thing, its that leadership is universal. Whether youre behind bars or behind a desk, the same rules apply. Here are a few of the rules Ive picked up along the way:
Comfort is the enemy of success
Comfort is a trap. In prison, getting comfortable meant letting your guard down. And letting your guard down could mean losing everything. The same applies to leadership. When you and your team settle into a rhythm that feels safe, you stop growing. The best leaders embrace discomfort because its a sign of growth and progress.
Make better people, not just better businesses
Prison taught me that the strength of your crew determines the strength of your leadership. If youre only focused on hitting numbers or meeting deadlines, youre missing the bigger picture. In business, just like in life, better relationships build better outcomes. As a leader, your job isnt just to make sure the work gets done, its to help your team to grow into the best versions of themselves. When you invest in your people, the results take care of themselves.
Accountability isnt punishment
Holding people accountable doesnt make you the bad guy. Accountability is love. It means you care enough to challenge your team to be better, just like you challenge yourself to be a better leader. In prison, accountability was life or death. In business, its the difference between mediocrity and greatness. When you hold people accountable, youre not punishing themyoure showing them you believe in their potential.
Communication is everything
In prison, a single misstep in communication could lead to chaos. The same goes for business. Effective communication isnt just about what you say but how you say it. Even more importantly, its about how you listen. Great leaders read between the lines and notice whats been left unsaid. Their goal isnt to be the loudest voice in the room, but to create space for people to speak up. Communication is the glue that holds your team together.
Golden handcuffs are still handcuffs
Handcuffs trap leaders, too. The question is: Are you in your position because youre passionate about the work, or because of the allure of money, status, and power? Leadership can feel like a cage, even when its lined with perks. If you feel constrained, its time for a change. You can walk away. Or you can simply break free from monotony by seeking out fresh challenges that inspire and stretch you.
Leadership isnt a positionits a practice. Its something you work at each and every day. Leadership is earned through action and proven in the moments when you step up, even when its hard. So, you have a choice: to lead with purpose or to go through the motions. The leaders who make the biggest impact are the ones who never stop doing the work.
What does your leadership look like?
As a kid of the 1970s, I was fascinated by a short-lived art movement known as photorealism. The painters who practiced it created works that werent merely realistic. They were borderline indistinguishable from photographsan extraordinary feat to pull off with oil on canvas. If the genre hadnt involved so much painstaking effort, it might have gained more momentum.
Thanks to generative AI tools such as DALL-E and Midjourney, which can turn a written prompt into a photo-like image in seconds, we now live in an era of point-and-click photorealism. The results often dont amount to anything more than internet chum. I certainly didnt consider any of it to be artuntil last week, when I read about a Costa Rican artist named Matias Sauter Morera. He made the news by selling an image hed created using AI to the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, where it will be included in an upcoming exhibit called Queer Lens: A History of Photography.
In an interview with Artnets Adam Schrader, Sauter Moreraan accomplished photographerdiscussed this image and others hed made using AI, all inspired by the secret lives of 1970s Costa Rican cowboys. I encourage you to check out the Artnet storys pictures and explanation of why Sauter Morera chose to synthesize them rather than take them with a camera. He didnt just type prompts into DALL-E and then claim the results as his own creation. Instead, he says, his process involves multiple AI models, Photoshop, and months of labor; though he emphasizes that the results are not photos, they clearly benefit from his photographers eye.
What Sauter Morera is doing has real emotional punch to it: It has more in common with the photorealism of the 70s than with the spammy, soulless AI slop of 2025. But I do admit to being taken aback by the way Artnet and other media outlets that reported on his Getty sale bandied about the term AI photograph. Im not even sure how I feel about the august museum including one of his computer-generated pictures in a photography exhibit.
After all, the fact that an image looks an awful lot like a photograph does not make it one. Photos start out as light captured via a photosensitive surfacetoday, usually an electronic sensor, and a strip of film before that. They record a moment in time that actually occurred. Sauter Moreras AI images do not; thats their entire point. (He says he opted for AI in part to add a speculative element, as well as avoid invading anyones privacy.)
Now, the line between photography and reality as we might envision it has always been blurry. For one thing, even unedited photos have the power to mislead as well as inform. The act of pointing a lens at something is as much about what doesnt get into the frame as what does; youre never seeing the whole story, and maybe not even a good-faith subset of it.
More than a century and a half ago, famed photographer Mathew Brady shot a photo of then-presidential candidate Abraham Lincoln, had an assistant retouch it to be more flattering, then took a picture of that picturebasically that eras equivalent of applying a beauty filter. Today, Google and Apple both tout smartphone AI that lets you quickly and easily erase people and objects from photos. That might be pretty innocuous if youre excising random photobombers from a snapshot of your family at the beach, but its still a decisive move away from photography being documentary evidence of anything.
I believe its worth preserving the distinction between a photoeven its been through the AI wringerand something that closely resembles one. Im not just worried about the prospect of people being deceived by simulated photos produced by AI: That computer-generated horse is already out of the hyperrealistic barn. Itll only run more rampant as algorithms eradicate the remaining telltale signs of an images synthetic origins. (Incidentally, did you know that AI still cant figure out how to show left-handed people writing?)
What has me particularly jittery is the prospect of peoplemany of whom are perfectly content luxuriating within bubbles of misinformationnot caring whether an image depicts something that actually happened. Conflating photo-like images with photos can only encourage such a scenario.
Even now, this isnt a theoretical problem. Facebook is awash in bargain-basement AI imagery that doesnt seem to be fooling members so much as providing the same dopamine hit as a real photo. And last year, during Hurricane Helene, an AI-generated image of a sobbing child and adorable puppy being rescued via boat went viral on Twitter. The picture tugged at heartstrings, but was also weaponized in attacks on the Biden administrations response to the disaster. After its authenticity was questioned, one member of the Republican National Committee continued to call it a photo and said she didnt care about its backstory.
She might not, but we should. Technologies and standards for authenticating the provenance of digital imagery are vital, but they presume a desire to separate the real from the fake. As that distinction gets tougher to make through mere eyeballing, well need to work harer to maintain it. Reserving the term photograph for images shot with a camera is not a bad first step.
Youve been reading Plugged In, Fast Companys weekly tech newsletter from me, global technology editor Harry McCracken. If a friend or colleague forwarded this edition to youor if youre reading it on FastCompany.comyou can check out previous issues and sign up to get it yourself every Wednesday morning. I love hearing from you: Ping me at hmccracken@fastcompany.com with your feedback and ideas for future newsletters. Im also on Bluesky, Mastodon, and Threads.
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Welcome to Pressing Questions, Fast Companys work-life advice column. Every week, deputy editor Kathleen Davis, host of The New Way We Work podcast, will answer the biggest and most pressing workplace questions.
Q: What should I do if I feel like my company is failing? A: This is a bleak question, and unfortunately not uncommon right now. Ill address it from two different angles: 1.) If you feel the failure of the company is unfixable or that you arent in a position to help; and 2.) If you have hope that you might be able to turn things around.
When the failure of your company is certain (or unfixable)
First, here are some of the signs that things are going south. One of two can just mean the company is going through a rough patch, but if these start adding up, its harderbut not unheard offor a company to recover.
The company you work for has been losing significant amounts of money for more than a year
The company has had a significant round of layoffs, or more than one round of layoffs in the past year. Or employees are being offered early retirement or buyouts
The company has a hiring or raise freeze
Several star employees leave
Consultants are brought in to revamp things
The vision and strategy of the company changes or seems uncertain
Upper management suddenly starts conducting a lot more closed-door meetings
There is a significant drop in customers or clients
Projects are cancelled with no explanation
Thats a simplified and not comprehensive list, but if you are asking this question, youve probably noticed a few of those signs along with the general things are not great vibes. And regardless of if or how soon your company might close, go bankrupt, be sold, etc., it can feel pretty demoralizing to work for a company thats not doing well. You likely have a feeling like nothing you do will matter and you certainly arent motivated to do your best work.In this case the ending is the same: You will have to find a new job. How you arrive there is your only choice. You can look for your next role, resign (yes, you should still give two weeks notice), and leave before the ship sinks. Your other choice is to wait it out. The reason to do that is to collect any possible severanceespecially if youve been with the company for a long time.
When theres hope that you can turn things around
Now that weve gotten the worst case scenario out of the way, lets end on a slightly more hopeful note. If you feel like things are bad but can still be turned around, your ability to effect change depends a little bit on your role. The general spirit is the same, however. You can either:
Return to what worked before: Use your institutional knowledge and lean on your strengths.
Try something totally new: Throw out the notion of what worked before and get creative with fresh ideas.
Yes, those are completely opposite tactics. But both can be helpful depending on the issues facing your company. Heres how to decide what to try: When to lean on what worked before: Sometimes businesses go astray because they venture too far from their core mission or what made them successful in the first place. If you’re in a leadership position and there have been a lot of changes over recent years or a move away for what worked in the past, its a good time to realign your team’s goals with those core principles and eliminate the obstacles that get in the way.
That can even mean things like how you work. If your team was happier and more productive working remotely and output and morale has dropped since a company wide RTO policy, make the change back. Admitting you were wrong is uncomfortable. But its also the sign of the type of emotionally intelligent leader who people want to work for.
If you arent in leadership, but see that new policy is hurting the company, you can still suggest changes. Just make sure you are armed with data. Show, for example, that your customer or sales numbers were higher before the company cut back on contracting with certain suppliers or that the candidate pool has shrunk since the company ended its DEI initiatives.
When to try something totally new: Companies often fail because times change and they dont. If your company is stuck in a this is how its always been done mindset, it might be time to try something new. This is a huge mindset shift and individual employees cant overhaul for the whole company. But that doesnt mean you cant get a little experimental.
If there are too many layers of bureaucracy in the way of making change, it might mean trying something a little unofficially. While the notion of asking forgiveness instead of permission is certainly riskier, if your company isnt doing well anyways you have less to lose. This could mean things like collaborating across departments or changing a workflow or reevaluating departmental budgets.Feeling like you are on a sinking ship is a tough spot to be in at work, but it can also give you the freedom to step outside of your comfort zone.Need some more advice on navigating a tough business climate? Here you go:
This is how to be an empathic leader during stressful times
How to motivate employees in difficult times, according to a psychologist
4 ways to keep your teams happy and productive in tough times
As demand for EVs declines, electric automaker Rivian is taking this time to adapt its business and expand its brand. Rivians founder and CEO RJ Scaringe joins Rapid Response to explore the companys recent $5.8 billion partnership with Volkswagen, the ongoing risk assessment for self-driving features, and how Rivian’s AI-enabled ‘technological plumbing’ can accelerate the brand beyond incumbent manufacturers.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by the former editor-in-chief of Fast Company Bob Safian. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
I want to ask about AI because everyone’s focused on how it will impact car experiences. What are you doing at Rivian, and how far are we from a driverless world? Should we have one?
I think it’s incredibly important. It arguably becomes the most important part of the businessthe vehicle’s ability to drive itself. Consumers start getting their time back. Even if you enjoy driving, the ability to leave and have the car take you is a nice feature. This is a big focus for us. When we launched our first products, we had a limited highway assist feature that allowed hands-on wheel and eyes on the road, but the vehicle drives itself.
On our Gen 2 vehicle, we started working on designing an entire camera set, with 55 megapixels, more than any other vehicle sold in the U.S. We have five radars, including a front imaging radar. We control that entire stack and use emerging technologies to train the platform. Self-driving developed before 2021 was heavily rules-based. But now, we can use end-to-end training, using modern techniques akin to what’s used in large language models and transformers. It’s completely changing self-driving development and speeding it up.
We announced a hands-free feature, where the vehicle will drive itself on highways with hands off the wheel, coming very soon. After that, we’ll expand it to other roads, then to hands-free, eyes-off. There are exciting features coming.
I want to make sure I really understand this. So the car can essentially be driven without you doing anything, but it’s not safe enough to turn it entirely over to the car in all situations. But as it improves, you’ll update the software to allow that safely, without changing the vehicle.
When we release or enable our self-driving features, we start in domains with extremely high confidence. It’s a bit of the Wild West because there’s no legal body arbitrating the level at which to expose these features.
It’s your judgment about what you feel confident in and the risk you’re willing to take?
Every brand makes this decision differently. We’ve really erred on hyper-focus on safety, making sure that before we expand the operating windows to, let’s say, neighborhood roads or school zones, we want to really be robust in the solution.
We’re talking about autonomy, which is one slice of AI in the vehicle. We’ll see other AI elements emerge.
Think of something as simple as navigating. Imagine if you don’t know where you want to go. You get in the car, and say, “I’m hungry.” And the car says, “Well, what do you feel like?” And you say, “I don’t know.” And it says, “Well, yesterday you had Italian. What do you feel about burritos today?” And, you know, so just the ability to be conversational and contextual. It’ll be one of those kinds of changes, I think, where it’ll happen, we won’t even fully realize it’s happening. And then we’ll look back and be like, how did we used to live?
When you think about AI applications beyond self-driving, how important is it for Rivian to be at the forefront versus following along?
Early on, we realized software was going to be important. At Rivian, we’re controlling the whole software stack, not using suppliers for all these computers. We’re making our own, with all our own computers.
It requires fundamental shifts, not relying on third-party suppliers for software or computers. This architecture I’ve described underpins what we’ve achieved.
We did a $5.8 billion joint venture and licensing deal with Volkswagen Group, the second-largest car company in the world. We’re providing software and electronics to enable what I just described, allowing them to step massively forward in network architecture and software topology.
And, that’s of course what we architected. If you don’t have that, it’s hard to imagine integrating AI properly. Step one is getting the plumbing right. You’ve got to get the network architecture right. You’ve got to get the topology of computers right. You’ve got to get the right levels of compute. I mean, down into the basics of like, what level of memory do you have? What’s your graphics capabilities?
And these are things that are going to be really hard without making a big break from the traditional model for existing manufacturers. So I say all this because I think we’re at this inflection point where the cars of the historical past in terms of architecture and the cars of the future in terms of architectureI put ourselves, I put Tesla in that category. And the features are sort of similar, like they’re mostly the same. And it’s easy to confuse features for capability, but the platforms are totally different. And so the growth potential of those two platforms in terms of adopting future technology is wildly different. So where they end up in, let’s say five to 10 years, is in very, very different places. And so I think we’re gonna see a lot of existing incumbent manufacturers work very hard either through partnerships like what was done with us, or through other means to move to these newer technology platforms.
China has become a leading EV producer. I’m curious about the implications for the car industry. How do you view China’s developments and their impact on your business?
Well, the world is electrifying. The U.S. market is slower than Europe or China.
But probably the singular issue that I’d say there’s very clear alignment between both the Democratic side of the United States and the Republican side of the United States is that the United States needs to continue to lead in technology and to continue to really serve as an economic superpower. And in order for that to be true, we also need to continue to be great at the world’s future technologies.
China benefited from government support for EVs. If America wants to stay at the forefront in this technological development, how important is government support?
China has many electric car companies, a lot narrowly differentiated. Their regions provided much financing, leading to intense price competition to capture a growing market. However, there’s uncertainty about whether these products can be sold in the U.S. and the tariffs involved.
Probably, in the short term, there’s going to continue to be not a lot of trade from the U. S. shipping products to Chinaand vice versa China shipping products and vehicles to the United States. But I think in the long term everyone should be thinking about this, to say, let’s imagine a world where we can all compete freely, meaning we’re competing head to head.
And so we spend every day thinking about How do we make our products better? How do we look at what others are doing and embrace the competition and see it as an opportunity for us to run faster? That’s the mindset we built into the business.
This interview is part of a Rapid Response partnership with Stripe.
During Robert F. Kennedy Jr.s Senate confirmation hearing for secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Democratic Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota asked him about his stance on people who take antidepressants.
“I know people, including members of my family, who’ve had a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than they have getting off of heroin,” Kennedy responded.
While many of Kennedys beliefs are questionable, hes voicing a common misconception around SSRIs, or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors. Approximately 13% of Americans take SSRIs, which are a type of antidepressant that work by increasing serotonin levels in the brain.
To begin with, Dr. Sarah Hartz, a professor of psychiatry at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, points out that there is a difference between being addicted to a substance and taking a medication for a chronic condition. With the latter, your symptoms may come back if you stop taking medicationwhich can be the case for people who have severe anxiety or depression, or high blood pressure.
In addition, several medications require patients taper off of them slowly, or theyll experience unpleasant side effects. These include blood-pressure and heart medications, and, yes, in some cases SSRIs.
A 2024 analysis of 79 studies encompassing 21,000 patients found that approximately one in 30 patients have severe symptoms when they stop using antidepressants.
With SSRIs, people have different tolerances for how quickly they can get off of them. Some people have to taper, some dont, Hartz says.
Furthermore, addiction itself is a tricky term to unpack.
In the most general sense, addiction means a person cant quit a substance even if they want to. Technically, sugar and caffeine are addictive. So is alcohol. Yet, using them regularly is widely accepted. Likely, when Kennedy compared heroin to SSRIs, he was referring to severe addiction, or what psychiatrists call substance use disorder.
Substance use disorder has 11 different criteria, which can be grouped into four categories:
Physical dependence: Developing a tolerance for increased amounts of the substance and experiencing withdrawal symptoms when you stop.
Risky use: For example, using the substance while driving or continuing to use it despite experiencing mental or physical problems.
Social problems: For example, neglecting responsibilities or continuing to use the substance despite it causing problems in relationships.
Impaired control: Taking the substance longer than your meant to, having cravings, experiencing an inability to stop, or spending significant amounts of time obtaining, using, or recovering from the substance.
Hartz points out that SSRIs dont cause these four categories of problems. While, some people do experience withdrawal symptoms and others need to increase their dose, usually taking SSRIs improves someones ability to functional socially.
Furthermore, it takes a few weeks for SSRIs to kick in, so they are less likely to be abused or cause impaired control.
You cant get high from SSRIs, says Hartz. You can take five times the recommended dose and you wont get high. Theres no instantaneous mood change so people are less likely to misuse them, unlike opioids or stimulants for ADHD.
SSRIs are also accompanied by side effects such as decreased libido, inability to climax, headaches, and nausea. I dont see people taking them when they dont need them, Hartz says. Most people dont want to take a pill they arent getting a benefit from.
Hartz notes that Kennedys statements echo existing stigmas around mental health.
Psychiatric medications are singled out in a way they shouldnt be, Hartz says. People think mental health conditions such as anxiety and depression arent medical problems. They think its about self-control and behavior so they feel guilty about seeking help. But depression and anxiety can be debilitating and we have treatments for them.”
A new technology can pinpoint victims of intimate partner violence four years earlier than other detection systems and with 80% accuracy.
The Automated Intimate Partner Violence Risk Support System (AIRS) utilizes clinical history and radiologic data to pinpoint patients seen in the emergency room who may be at a risk for intimate partner violence (IPV). Developed over the past five years, AIRS has been rolled out to the Brigham and Womens Hospitals Emergency Rooms in Boston as well as surrounding primary care sites. Currently, the tool has been validated at the University of California-San Francisco Medical Center and is being evaluated by the Alameda Health System for its role in clinical workflow.
Data labeling quality is a huge concernnot just with intimate partner violence care, but in machine learning for healthcare and machine learning, broadly speaking, says cofounder Irene Chen. Our hope is that with training, clinicians can be taught how to spot intimate partner violencewe are hoping to find a set of cleaner labels.
AIRS is an AI-based program that is run on the Electronic Health Record data. It takes an individual patients EHR dataincluding past radiographic imaging results and patient clinical historyand uses an algorithm to evaluate a patients risk for and severity of IPV. This is followed by a “silent study” where the algorithm makes recommendations for patient care for patients who have been labeled as victims.
Both the radiological data and the patient clinical histories have been revealing for Chen and her cofounder Bharti Khurana. For instance, Chen shared that many victims of intimate partner violence who were detected through AIRS had experienced a broken ulna (a bone in the forearm), a defensive injury. When questioned, they had lied that they had fallen down but did not have the instinct to catch themselves, which is more likely to lead to a broken wrist rather than a broken ulna. Ulna fractures signaled an attack by someone from above and were a strong indicator of IPV.
AIRS clinical data comes from three sources: patient diagnosis codes (usually intended for billing purposes), whether patients opt-in to hospital resources correlated with IPV (including social workers or legal assistance), and direct interviewing of clinicians to incorporate into the algorithm for AIRS. That latter data source can often prove to be most challenging as many physiciansdespite their years of trainingare not taught to spot IPV. This gap in training is significant: A May 2024 study published in Nature found that only 25% of IPV cases are correctly diagnosed, underscoring the need for more systematic detection methods like AIRS.
Suzanne Freitag, director of the Ophthalmic Plastic Surgery Service at Massachusetts Eye and Ear, who has decades of experience treating victims of IPV, cautions against treating AI as a magic font of knowledge that can replace a clinician’s training. While she believes in the pattern recognizing power of AIRS that is a hallmark of radiology, Freitag remains cautious about using patient clinical history as a ground truth for IPV diagnosis.
I try to be careful not to stereotype because domestic violence happens to people of all ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses, sexualities, and education levels, Freitag says.
Chen and Khurana, for their part, believe that AI can eliminate implicit biases to provide a clearer diagnosis for IPV victimization. The two first connected in February 2020, Khurana saw Chen (then a PhD candidate in electrical engineering and computer science at MIT) deliver a talk on algorithmic bias in medicine at Harvard; shortly afterward, Khuranaan radiology professor at Harvard Medical Schoolapproached Chen to discuss collaborating to apply machine learning to intimate partner violence detection. Five years and one $3.2 million National Institutes of Health grant later, Chen and Khurana have not only built and validated AIRS but are now working to expand its implementation across multiple hospital networks.
Social work staff have also been crucial to the implementation of AIRS at Brigham and Womens Hospital, where Chen and Khurana have tapped into records from an existing program called Passageway. A free, voluntary, and confidential resource, Passageway allows patients afflicted by IPV to gain access to social workers and legal representation to seek help. Chenwhile not blinded by imperfections of implementing machine learning in clinical settingsfeels optimistic about AIRS implementation. She points to a 2023 study by the Pew Research Center which found that 38% of a sample of 10,000 Americans believed that AI would improve patient outcomes. While skepticism of AI is alive, Chen feels that it is important not to surrender to it.
Annie Lewis OConnor, a nurse practitioner and founder of the Coordinated Approach to Resilience and Empowerment Clinic at Brigham, believes that clinicians and technology must work in tandem to care for patients experiencing intimate partner violence. OConnor, who assists in AIRS prediction model, appreciates its help in diagnosing IPV risk and severity as well as in assisting with clinical decision support.
To understand the usability, feasibility, and application of AI and machine learning tools, we must be diligent in gathering evidence on outcomes from the use of such tools, OConnor writes in an email. [AI] is something that compliments and assists the clinician in the care and treatment of patients experiencing IPV.
The Humane Society of the United States is going global.
The nonprofit animal advocacy organization has officially rebranded as the Humane World for Animals to better communicate its existing, broader work. Beyond the local shelters it’s perhaps best known for, the group works on behalf of animals to combat wildlife trafficking, factory farms, and animal testing, among other causes, globally. The new name and look, which its sister organization Humane Society International also adopted, is an attempt to reflect that.
Building a brand to communicate international advocacy
The rebrand also follows existing international coordination among its former country- and region-based entities. As the Humane Society grew beyond the U.S., these entities were already working closely together, sharing resources, and collaborating on strategy, according to the organization. The switch to a single global brand better reflects how it operates today and “better encompasses our mission and global presence,” Humane World for Animals chief development and marketing officer Alison Corcoran tells Fast Company.
“The name immediately conveys our organizations global impact and focus on animals, and it states what we strive to achievea more humane world,” Corcoran says. “It is both a name and a vision. With this evolved brand, were expressing who we are more clearly, compellingly and comprehensively.”
Signifying the interconnected relationships of a more humane world
From top: The new logo vs. the old [Image: courtesy Humane World for Animals]
The group’s previous logo, which it’s had since 2006, used silhouettes of animals to create a map of the continental U.S. The new logo simplifies that concept. The silhouettes of just five, easily identifiable animals are arranged into a globe to communicate the organization’s worldwide mission. Its name is spelled out in big, easy-to-read sans-serif type.
“Working with the Humane World for Animals, we always knew the new logo needed to celebrate the brands advocacy for animals across the sky, land and sea,” says Brendán Murphy, global creative director at Lippincott, the agency that worked on developing group’s new name, logo, and brand positioning. “To evoke this message, we evolved the original mark, taking a core set of animals from the original logo and redrawing them to create an emotional connection and drive impact.”
The use of interlocking animals in motion, he says, “speak to the dynamic animal ecosystem and our interconnected relationships across the animal kingdom.”
Developing a multimodal pattern
Lippincott worked alongside the entertainment marketing agency FlyteVu and the production company Nexus Studios for the rebrand rollout, which included billboards in Australia, Canada, India, the U.K., and U.S., television and audio ads, a social media campaign.
Sia performs on Jimmy Kimmel Live! [Photo: courtesy Humane World for Animals]
The animal silhouette concept has applications outside the logo as well. A repeat pattern of the animal silhouettes, designed by FlyteVu, appeared as the background of an outdoor ad that a tiger’s paw appeared to rip away to reveal messages. Sia wore a dress with the pattern for an appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! earlier this month, where she performed a cover of Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill,” which soundtracks a new public service announcement for the Humane World for Animals.
The new streamlined branding and name for Humane World for Animals keeps the ever-important emotional resonance of the previous visual identity intact, but recontextualizes it to communicate a mission that’s more than just animal shelters, and bigger than just one country.
On February 15, protestors swarmed in front of Tesla stores and charging stations in dozens of cities across the U.S., armed with posters reading, No one voted for Musk, Go steal data on Mars, and more. Today, federal workers will head to Tesla storesalong with other locations, including a SpaceX site and federal buildingsto protest cuts to vital services and mass layoffs. More protests at Tesla will follow this weekend, all aimed at Musks work to control swaths of the government with the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
Its one way to target Elon Musk where hes most vulnerable: Teslas car sales are dropping, and his political work is pushing consumers away from the brand. Meanwhile, most of Musks wealth is tied up in Tesla stock.
We need to hold Elon Musk accountable, says Saqib Bhatti, cofounder and executive director of the Action Center on Race and the Economy (ACRE), a nonprofit that is helping support the national protests. We think if Musk is going to wreak havoc on our communities, then he cant expect business as usual in showrooms.
People participate in a “Tesla Takedown” protest against Elon Musk outside a Tesla showroom in Seattle, on February 15, 2025. [Photo: Jason Redmond/AFP/Getty Images]
DOGE, led by Musk, has helped push thousands of federal workers out of critical jobs, from the FDA and the CDC to the FAA. (The layoffs also included workers responsible for the country’s arsenal of nuclear weapons, though the government then scrambled to attempt to rehire them.) Musk also deleted the humanitarian agency USAID, stopping lifesaving medicine en route and abandoning aid workers in chaos. DOGE paralyzed the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which has saved consumers roughly $21 billion since it was founded in 2011; the agency also had a plan to save consumers another $15 billion a year in overdraft fees. DOGE workers reportedly accessed sensitive taxpayer data at the Treasury Department, and the team now wants to get even more from the IRS. The list goes on.
All this work likely breaks multiple laws, and lawsuits are underway. But protestors say that citizens need to do more now. I think its been disheartening to see the sense of resignation and despair from the people who are supposed to be leading the resistancethe Democrats in Congress, says Bhatti. Were getting out there and saying, Heres whats happening, heres what this means, heres what you can do about it. Because we know that people can fight back. We know from other countries that when people take on fascist, corporate takeover of the government, they can turn the tide back.
A Tesla drives past protesters gathering in front of City Hall in Long Beach, California, on Monday, February 17, for the nationwide “Not My President’s Day” protest. [Photo: Juliana Yamada/Los Angeles Times/Getty Images]
On the website TeslaTakedown, citizens keep planning new demonstrations. For protesters, standing in front of Tesla stores is partly a way to bring more attention to the havoc that DOGE is wreaking in D.C. But if it meaningfully pushes Tesla sales down even further, it’s also a logical way to put more pressure on Musk.
Musk has already damaged Tesla’s brandand the company’s EV sales were already dropping as other automakers keep rolling out new electric models, giving consumers have more options. In Norway, where Teslas have been incredibly popular in the past, sales dropped nearly 38% the past month. In Spain, they fell 75%. Even Tesla fans who run Tesla-focused websites have started selling off their own cars. Sales are slumping in California. And though Tesla stock shot up after the election, it’s down by a third since then. A Motley Fool analyst suggests that it could potentially drop by another 50%, or more.
The category of unbuilt and fantastical design ideas known as paper architecture may have no better exemplar than the radical British architecture group Archigram.
Founded in the early 1960s, its experimental architectural concepts envisioning everything from temporary cities to inflatable structures have never been builtbut nonetheless have become staples of modern architecture canon.
Archigram initially published its iconoclast ideas in the form of a self-published, self-titled magazine, which came out in 10 issues between 1961 to 1974. These days though, the magazines are rarely seen. Only a few complete sets exist in libraries. That is until now.
[Photo: courtesy D.A.P./Designers & Books]
For the first time since they were originally published, the entire 10-issue run of Archigram magazine is being reissued in a boxed reproduction that hews as closely as possible to the original’s unique physical form. This authorized reissue is being brought to life through a $75,000 Kickstarter campaign by publishers D.A.P. and Designers & Books. The boxed set will start at $114 during the first week of the campaign, which will run through March 18.
[Photo: courtesy D.A.P./Designers & Books]
“Many, many people know who Archigram are, but very, very few people have actually laid eyes on this thing,” says Thomas Evans, editorial director of D.A.P. “Of the 10, maybe only three or four ever appear online and those tend to sell for a minimum of $400 or so.”
Your favorite architects’ favorite architects
[Image: courtesy D.A.P./Designers & Books]
Arguably far ahead of its time, Archigram explored architecturally adjacent concepts through its magazine, including prefabrication, ecological decline, resource scarcity, space exploration, and ephemeral urbanism. They saw architecture as a tool for meeting society’s changing needs, and recognized both the promise and danger of technofuturism. Archigram influenced generations of architects, from students to some of the biggest names in the field like Renzo Piano, Richard Rogers, and Bjarke Ingels.
[Photo: courtesy D.A.P./Designers & Books]
A cavalcade of visuals
Created in collaboration with members of Archigram, the magazine reissue project will create fresh copies of the original and highly unconventional magazines as they first appeared. Unlike a typical bound magazine, Archigram’s publications featured bespoke designs with centerfolds, pockets, posters, and cut-out and pop-up elements. Issues were printed on 12 different paper stocks and in a rainbow of colors, sometimes differing from one page to the next. One issue even included a carbon film resistor used in electronic circuits.
The magazines were conceptually, historically, and materially exceptional, according to Evans. “Those three things don’t often come together,” he says.
The magazine issues themselves were a cavalcade of visuals, with shades of pop art, comic books, science fiction imagery, collage, stage design, and the psychedelia of late ’60s counterculture. Produced in a variety of unconventional formats, the magazines sometimes resembled pamphlets, but at other times they were almost art objects.
[Photo: courtesy D.A.P./Designers & Books]
One standout example is a pop-up page from Archigram issue 4 that features cutout lines and folding instructions to turn flat paper into a 3D building landscape. “I’m fairly literate with complex, adventurous publications across, you know, a few terrains in art and poetry and the history of the avant-garde,” Evans says. “I really can’t think of a publication in any of those fields that is as materially wild and complex as this, or as ingenious.”
[Photo: courtesy D.A.P./Designers & Books]
Unconventional ephemera, preternatural staying power
To re-create these issues in their original form, Evans worked closely with Archigram’s Dennis Crompton, who scanned original elements of the publications and advised on how best to produce some of the magazine’s more unconventional elements.
Crompton, who died in January at age 89, was also instrumental in shaping the reader’s guide that accompanies the Archigram magazine reissues. The guide includes new and archival essays and tributes from architects and critics like Norman Foster, Tadao Ando, Moshe Safdie, Reyner Banham, and Kenneth Frampton.
[Image: courtesy D.A.P./Designers & Books]
The reissued box set also includes a first-ever index, which covers all 10 issues of the magazine. This turned out to be one of the more difficult parts of an already difficult publication process. “I don’t know how many issues of the original you might have come across, but there’s an awful lot of information on a given page of Archigram magazine,” Evans says. “It was like indexing a medieval manuscript, to go over this six-point type and look for mentions of Buckminster Fuller and Pink Floyd or whatever.”
Evans says he expects the reissue project’s Kickstarter campaign to hit its $75,000 goal, and to result in thousands of box sets ending up in the hands of architects, librarians, and students. “There’s a real cross-generational appeal to this,” he says.
It will be a chance for people to fully explore Archigram’s influential work as it was originally intended. “In my mind, Evans says, the core of their legacy is actually in the magazine itself.
While Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin decide the future of Ukraine in Saudi Arabia, the war keeps raging on in Europe. Kiev doesnt give up and continues to unleash a seemingly endless swarms of drones against Moscows assets, from heavy bombers to light first-person view (FPV) drones, explosive-loaded kamikaze flying vehicles controlled with gamepads and AR goggles designed to eliminate armored vehicles, trucks, and infantry units. The drones have had a devastating impact on the much larger Russian forces, so effective that Ukraines Unmanned Systems Forcesthe first of its kind in the worldhas inaugurated a new era of warfare and jump-started a novel arms race.
On the ground, the relentless barrage of ultrafast FPVs has forced Russian forces in the Bakhmut sectorin Eastern Ukraineto resort to a low-tech, desperate measure: a mile-long tunnel constructed of netting designed to intercept the tiny, explosive wasps.
In theory, this constructionwhich stretches along a critical supply route between Bakhmut and the city of Chasiv Yarstops the FPVs before they reach their targets, too far from the troops on the ground to do any damage. The Russians claim it works, though requires constant maintenance because the FPVs keep piercing the improvised structure. According to Ukrainian drone operators, however, it is not as effective as the Russians had hoped.
Old trick, new enemies
Similar low-tech solutions have been employed throughout history, often arising from a need to counter a technologically superior or novel threat with readily available materials. During World War II, for example, barrage balloons were deployed extensively by the British and also the United States, with the 320th Barrage Balloon Battalion deploying them after the Normandy landings to protect the Allies beachheads. These large, tethered balloons were intended to deter enemy aircraft from dive-bombing and strafing ground positions and cities, forcing airplanes to fly higher to avoid colliding with the tethering cables, thus making bombing less accurate.
Barrage balloons protect ships unloading cargo at Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, in June 1944. [Photo: United States Coast Guard]
Instead of dive bombers, the Ukrainians are using FPV drones. Instead of balloons and cables, Russians are using nets.
Ukrainian drones so effective that the Russians now refer to open roads in battle areas as roads of death. X and Telegram are full of videos that highlight this big problem for Moscows forces, showing long stretches of roads littered with the charred remains of countless vehicles destroyed by FPV drones. Anton Gerashchenkoformer adviser to the Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukrainecounts here a whopping 90 destroyed Russian vehicles: a mix of trucks, vans, and what appears to be a tank, all piled up along a short stretch of road in the Donetsk region. Another video posted by war analyst Special Kherson Cat depicts a seemingly endless column of destroyed Russian supply vehicles on the Pokrovsk front.
Developing countermeasures for drones
Before these nets, the Russian military experimented with various countermeasures against drone attacks. Initially, they attempted to use electronic warfare systems to jam drone signals. However, the rapid evolution of drone technology, including the use of varied frequencies to control them, fiber optic cables, and artificial intelligence to avoid remote control, has rendered these jamming efforts largely ineffective. And while tank crews have been building improvised anti-drone armors around themmaking them look like grotesque steampunkish turtlessoldiers dont have that luxury. So they had to improvise and build the netted tunnel.
[Photo: Ukraine Ministry of Defense/Wiki Commons]
The news about the tunnel was picked up from Russian TV for Western media by WarTranslated, a Estonian military analyst who has been reporting on news on the war. The video shows the skeletal framework of this unusual defense. Russian soldiers in the video explain that the netting is intended to protect vehicles and personnel from drone attacks on this exposed stretch of road. Our group maintains more than two kilometers of anti-drone nets. We constantly improve the technology, one of the soldiers who is working on these contraptions says in the video. The nets are placed in the most exposed sections of the road to ensure the safe movement of our equipment. We strive to continuously expand the coverage area, enhancing the installation technology to set them up more quickly.
The installation technology looks like nothing more than patches of plastic netting of different sizes and colors, which are hung using existing and improvised posts along the road. Parts of the road have nets covering both the sides and the top. Sometimes they don’t build the “roof” and instead install banners of the material connecting posts across the road. The Russians believe that these banners will acts as obstacles, makin it difficult for Ukrainian drone operators to maneuver into the road, and hopefully stopping the FPVs from diving in for a bombing run.
https://twitter.com/wartranslated/status/1888536416008729027
The Ukrainians are not impressed
The Ukrainian pilots disagree. While netting can indeed capture drones, preventing them from detonating on impact, they remain unimpressed. They point out that fragmentation munitions, effectively flying claymore mines, can be detonated remotely, showering shrapnel through the netting.
Even more concerning for the Russians is that the netting itself can become a trap. Ukrainian forces are exploring the use of incendiary dragon drones known as Dracarys, maneuvering inside the tunnels to spray thermite (a mixture of metal powder and metal oxide that burns at 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit). This substance produces intense heat on contact thanks to a chemical reaction where the metal powder steals oxygen from the metal oxide, releasing a tremendous amount of energy in the process. It can burn through any armor and, according to the Pentagon, kill anyone in under 10 seconds.
Another possibility is that they will use anti-tank mines to destroy sections of the netting, creating openings for other FPVs to exploit. Once inside the tunnel, the Russian vehicles and personnel cant disperse easily, becoming an easier target for the FPVs.
So despite these nets, Russians could easily find themselves back at square one. But in any case, the construction of these tunnels is a testament to the effectiveness of Ukrainian drone attacks and the desperation of the Russian military to protect its supply lines. They highlight the ongoing cat-and-mouse game of military innovation in Ukraine, with each side constantly developing new tactics and countermeasures. The roads of death are likely to remain a feature of this conflict until Trump and Putin strike a deal reported to erase Ukraine’s effort and sacrifice for their benefit.
