With no end in sight for the political standoff that shuttered the federal government, funding for some key programs is drying up.
More than 40 million Americans may not see their food stamps issued next month, as the government shutdown extends into its third full week. Some states have begun warning their residents of the looming threat to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP.
Because Republicans in Washington D.C., failed to pass a federal budget, causing the federal government shutdown, November 2025 SNAP benefits cannot be paid, a notification on Pennsylvanias SNAP info page reads.
New York Governor Kathy Hochul demanded that the federal government release funds for SNAP recipients, accusing the Trump administration of deliberately enacting a cruel, senseless and politically motivated punishment that could be avoided.
Im outraged that Washington Republicans are deliberately withholding federal funding from millions of New Yorkers who rely on SNAP to put food on the table, Hochul said in a press release, highlighting the three million New Yorkers who stand to be affected by a SNAP shortfall.
Ronald Ward, the acting associate administrator of SNAP, warned states in a letter that the program was only funded through October, Axios reported earlier this month. That budget shortfall could leave 42 million people without the benefits they rely on, beginning in November. The letter cautioned states to hold off on distributing funds to SNAP recipients EBT cards until further notice.
Blame game
The federal shutdown has turned into a heated blame game, even compared to past shutdown standoffs. At the end of September, Democrats refused to support a bill to fund the federal government, seizing on the rare opportunity for political leverage to demand an extension to the tax credits that reduce the cost of health insurance for millions of Americans. Democrats have also called for Republicans to roll back Medicaid cuts from the Big Beautiful Bill that passed in July.
Because Republicans cant hit the 60 vote threshold needed to fund the government without Democrats, the shutdown is a stalemate unless one side backs down.
The Trump administration has taken extraordinary measures to associate the shutdown with his political opposition, even ordering airports to play a video of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem blaming Democrats for shutdown-related travel delays. Many airports refused to air the video, citing policies against displaying political content.
Noem isnt the only member of Trumps cabinet to spread that messaging. Democrats are putting free healthcare for illegal aliens and their political agenda ahead of food security for American families, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on X, blaming what she referred to as the Democrat shutdown.
During the shutdown, some government websites are displaying unusually partisan messages. The USDAs website is currently topped by a banner noting that it wont be updated and blaming the Radical Left Democrat shutdown. President Trump has made it clear he wants to keep the government open and support those who feed, fuel, and clothe the American people, the message reads.
Selective funding
Most of the federal government is shuttered in light of the political standoff, but the Trump administration is finding ways to fund its own political priorities.
Trump ordered the Pentagon and the White House to use all available funds to pay active-duty members of the military, avoiding the political fallout of servicemembers missing paychecks. The White House also opted to fund the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, better known as WIC, using money collected from tariffs. “The Trump White House will not allow impoverished mothers and their babies to go hungry because of the Democrats’ political games, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt told Axios.
The Democrats are so cruel in their continual votes to shut down the government that they forced the WIC program for the most vulnerable women and children to run out this week.Thankfully, President Trump and the White House have identified a creative solution to transfer https://t.co/tj9Xt7f4yQ— Karoline Leavitt (@PressSec) October 7, 2025
Trump went around Congress to allocate those funds, but Congress also has the ability to selectively dole out cash for programs that would otherwise have their funding cut off during a federal shutdown. Still, the food stamps program may not be a priority for Republicans given the partys willingness to slash SNAP dramatically to fund tax cuts and defense spending in the massive bill that passed this summer.
The federal shutdowns short-term hit to SNAP could be devastating for Americans who rely on the program to put food on the table, but lasting changes to the program mean fewer Americans will be eligible for food assistance when the spigot of federal funds does eventually open back up.
Hannah Elsakr says that Adobe’s top clientsthe owners of some of the most protected, most valuable brands and IP in the worldhad a stark message for the company regarding Firefly, its generative AI engine: They wanted more, and they wanted better.
“They told us they actually needed models that understood all their products, all their brands, their creative direction,” says Elsakr, Adobe’s VP of GenAI New Business Ventures. “They have characters, they have particular motion styles, and they needed us to train on that.”
Fireflywhich uses prompts to create assets across all Adobes vector, bitmap, and motion appscouldn’t do this because it doesnt understand brands at the IP level. “We consider that a feature, not a bug,” Alsark tells me. Firefly is a generic engine, but Adobes top clients need to create millions of assets for dozens of different platforms and marketing media, all of them conforming to their own strict IP rules and brand books.
This is why the company has built a new consultancy arm for Fortune 2000 companies to develop bespoke AI models that could craft hundreds of thousands of images, illustrations, and videos that conform strictly to their IP and creative guidelines. Its name: Adobe AI Foundry.
[Image: Adobe]
The million-asset problem
The move comes as a direct response to a mathematical nightmare facing every major brand. Alsark calls it the “combinatorics math problem”. A company with just eight products that wants to market them across 15 channels in 35 languages with a few refreshes a year is already looking at creating half a million individual assets. “With social, we know we’re doing probably three refreshes a week,” she explains. “So the real numbers are in the millions and millions and millions.”
Before now, that scale was simply impossible. Time, budgets, and human resources are all finite. “The only unlock here is responsible AI,” Alsark insists. This crushing demand from the attention economy is precisely why Adobes biggest clients, companies like The Home Depot and Walt Disney Imagineering, came to them. They needed an industrial-scale solution, but one that respected their most valuable assettheir intellectual property.
Adobes public Firefly model was a start, but it was designed to be IP-agnostic. While brands applauded this safety-first approach, they needed an AI that could learn their worldtheir characters, their color palettes, their unique aesthetic. Last year’s self-serve “Custom Models” were a step in that direction, allowing companies to train the AI on a single concept, like a specific style or shape. But clients wanted more. They wanted the whole kingdom, not just one castle.
[Image: Adobe]
A bespoke AI partnership
Adobe AI Foundry isn’t a piece of software you buy off the shelf; it’s a deep, consultative partnership that feels more like hiring a boutique division of AI experts from Accenture or IBM than licensing a tool. Adobe targets the Fortune 2000, a customer base where it already has deep roots through its Creative Cloud and marketing software suites.
“You actually get a team of allocated experts from Adobe,” Alsark says, listing “applied scientists, engineers, [and] creative workflow experts.” These teams work directly with a client to build a unique generative AI model from the ground up, trained exclusively on that company’s private data and assets.
The process is intensive and can take a couple of months just to get the first results. It begins with use-case discovery, where Adobes team identifies the core business problem, whether its creating seasonal ad campaigns for a retailer like Amazon Fresh or generating limitless variations of a hero image for a beauty brand like MAC.
Then comes the heavy lifting. Adobes engineers surgically reopen their foundational Firefly models to retrain them on the clients proprietary IP, a process involving billions of parameters. After months of training and untold GPU cycles and consumed watts, the final model inherits all the world knowledge of the base Firefly engine but is then overfitted to speak the client’s brand language fluently and exclusively. The output is locked down; it belongs to the client and will never be mixed with another company’s data.
The trust factor
The entire proposition hinges on two things Adobe believes it alone can offer at this scale: commercial safety and seamless integration. The company has been careful to build its foundational models on licensed Adobe Stock data, shielding its clients from the copyright nightmares that have plagued other AI models. Foundry extends that protection by creating a secure vault for a brands own IP.
This focus on safety and its existing enterprise presence is Adobes strategic moat against competitors like Canva, which is also aggressively pursuing the corporate market. When I bring up the competition, Alsark doesn’t seem to be concerned. She claims that clients came to Adobe after experimenting with everything from startups to hyperscalers because they trust Adobe to understand the entire creativity landscape.
“They are already deeply into our creative tools. We’re in their marketing stack, and we are enterprise-grade,” she says. The ability to plug a custom, brand-aware AI model directly into the Photoshop, Illustrator, and After Effects workflows that a company&8217;s creative teams already live in is a killer advantage. Molly Battin, the CMO at The Home Depot, an early Foundry customer, calls it “an exciting step forward in embracing cutting-edge technologies to deepen customer engagement.”
For an old guy like me, tired of seeing Silicon Valley promising revolutions every other week, this feels different. The initial AI craze, as I called it in my chat with Alsark, is still about public-facing tools that felt like creative toys. For most of us, anyway. Adobe AI Foundry represents the next, far more serious phase: AI is being forged into a bespoke, industrial-grade weapon for the worlds biggest brands.
Its no longer about a single person creating a wild image or helping with a creative roadblock; its about a corporation generating a million on-brand assets before lunch. Its less of a craze and more of a quiet, brutally efficient corporate takeover of the creative process.
Stocks are climbing on Wall Street Monday and pulling near their records following last weeks roller-coaster ride.
The S&P 500 rose 1% and got back within 0.4% of its all-time high set earlier this month. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 358 points, or 0.8%, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.4% higher just before noon Eastern time.
Cleveland-Cliffs helped lead the way with a jump of 24% after the steel companys CEO, Lourenco Goncalves, said it would provide details soon about a potential deal with a major global steel producer that could mean bigger profits. He also said Cleveland-Cliffs has potentially found rare earths at sites in Michigan and Minnesota.
Such materials have thrust into the global spotlight after China put curbs on the export of its own rare earths, a move that President Donald Trump earlier this month characterized as hostile. Trumps ensuing threat of higher tariffs on China triggered big swings for Wall Street, but the concerns eased a bit after Trump said such high tax rates are unsustainable.
Another source of worry for Wall Street, from the banking industry, also appears to be easing. Stocks of smaller and midsize banks climbed Monday, recovering some of their losses after a couple raised alarm bells last week by warning about potentially bad loans theyve made.
The disclosures had raised questions about whether the growing list of problems is just a collection of one-offs or a signal of something larger threatening the entire industry.
Zions Bancorporation rose 2.5% following its 5.1% drop last week. It will report its latest quarterly earnings after trading ends for the day, and scrutiny will be high after it said its charging off $50 million of loans where it found apparent misrepresentations and contractual defaults by the borrowers.
This will be a heavier week for corporate earnings reports generally. Big names delivering their latest results will include Coca-Cola on Tuesday, Tesla on Wednesday, and Procter & Gamble on Friday.
The pressure is on companies to show that their profits are growing because they need to justify the big gains their stock prices have made. The S&P 500 is still near its all-time high, which was set earlier this month following a torrid 35% run from a low in April.
Delivering bigger profits is one of the easiest ways for companies to quiet criticism that stock prices have gone too high. The other is for stock prices to fall.
Corporate profit reports have also taken on more importance because theyre offering windows into the strength of the U.S. economy when the U.S. governments shutdown has delayed many important economic updates.
Thats making the job of the Federal Reserve more difficult, as it tries to decide whether high inflation or the slowing job market is the bigger problem for the economy. Fed officials have indicated theyre likely to cut interest rates a few more times through next year in order to give the economy a boost. But that could be a mistake if inflation worsens, because low interest rates can push prices even higher.
On Friday, the U.S. government will issue an update for inflation during September. The report was supposed to arrive earlier in month, and the Social Security Administration needs the numbers to calculate cost-of-living adjustments for beneficiaries.
But the government said, No other releases will be rescheduled or produced until the resumption of regular government services.
In the bond market, Treasury yields held relatively steady. The yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 3.99%, from 4.02% late Friday.
Treasury yields have been falling recently, and lower yields help make stock prices look less expensive by encouraging some investors to buy stocks when they otherwise would have bought bonds.
On Wall Street, Amazons stock held up despite a widespread outage for its cloud computing service that caused disruption for internet users around the world early Monday. Amazons stock rose 0.8%.
In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia.
Japans Nikkei 225 jumped 3.4%, after its governing Liberal Democrats found a new coalition partner, securing support for its leader Sanae Takaichi to become the countrys first female prime minister. Investors expect Takaichi to push for low interest rates, higher government spending, and other policies that could help the market.
Indexes rose 2.4% in Hong Kong and 0.6% in Shanghai after China reported its economy grew at a 4.8% annual pace in the last quarter, supported by relatively strong exports as companies increased shipments markets other than the U.S.
Still, it was the slowest pace in a year. The worlds second-largest economy is still struggling to emerge from a prolonged downturn in its property market and to encourage consumers and businesses to spend more.
By Stan Choe, AP business writer
AP Business Writers David McHugh and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed.
President Donald Trump and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese signed a critical-minerals deal at the White House on Monday as the U.S. eyes the continents rich rare-earth resources when China is imposing tougher rules on exporting its own critical minerals abroad.
The two leaders described the agreement as an $8.5 billion deal between the allies. Trump said it had been negotiated over several months.
Todays agreement on critical minerals and rare earths is just taking the U.S. and Australia’s relationship to the next level,” Albanese added.
This month, Beijing announced that it will require foreign companies to get approval from the Chinese government to export magnets containing even trace amounts of rare-earth materials that originated from China or were produced with Chinese technology. Trump’s Republican administration says this gives China broad power over the global economy by controlling the tech supply chain.
Australia is really, really going to be helpful in the effort to take the global economy and make it less risky, less exposed to the kind of rare earth extortion that were seeing from the Chinese, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White Houses National Economic Council, told reporters on Monday morning ahead of Trumps meeting with Albanese.
Hassett noted that Australia has one of the best mining economies in the world, while praising its refiners and its abundance of rare earth resources. Among the Australian officials accompanying Albanese are ministers overseeing resources and industry and science, and Australia has dozens of critical minerals sought by the U.S.
The prime minister’s visit comes just before Trump is planning to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping in South Korea later this month.
For Albanese’s part, the prime minister said ahead of his visit that the two leaders will have a chance to deepen their countries’ ties on trade and defense. Another expected topic of discussion is AUKUS, a security pact with Australia, the U.S., and the United Kingdom that was signed during U.S. President Joe Bidens Democratic administration.
Trump has not indicated publicly whether he would want to keep AUKUS intact, and the Pentagon is reviewing the agreement.
Australia and the United States have stood shoulder to shoulder in every major conflict for over a century, Albanese said ahead of the meeting. I look forward to a positive and constructive meeting with President Trump at the White House.
The center-left Albanese was reelected in May and suggested shortly after his win that his party increased its majority by not modeling itself on Trumpism.
Australians have chosen to face global challenges the Australian waylooking after each other while building for the future, Albanese told supporters during his victory speech.
By Seung Min Kim and Aamer Madhani, Associated Press
Get ready to hurry up and wait.
As delays and cancellations continue to pile up at the nations busiest airports during the weeks-long government shutdown, some travelers who have been anticipating extra headaches are hedging their bets with extra insurance protections.
According to data shared with Fast Company from the price comparison service InsureMyTrip, 10% of travel insurance policies purchased in September and into October have included cancel for any reason (CFAR) coverage.
Thats the highest percentage of the year so far and above the average of 8% seen from January through August, InsureMyTrip says.
The additional protection, which can increase your insurance costs by upwards of 50%, according to NerdWallet, can be a kind of safety net for travelers who are willing and able to spend the extra cash.
Travel delays are among the most visible impacts of prolonged government shutdowns, adding increased uncertainty and chaos as air traffic controllers who are being forced to work for partial or no pay call in sick or take leave.
Over the weekend, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) confirmed that staffing shortages were causing delays at airports in Dallas, Chicago, Atlanta, and Newark, according to Reuters.
With no end in sight to the political impasse that led to the shutdown, the problem is likely to get worse as thousands of air traffic controllers are expected to miss their paychecks at the end of this month.
A hedge against government dysfunction
Travel disruptions caused by government regulations are not covered under standard insurance plans, according to InsureMyTrip.
Additionally, travelers who had planned to visit one of Americas national parkswhich are only partially open or have reduced services during the shutdownmight find they have little recourse under a standard plan.
CFAR coverage offers more protection against the unexpectedor against the expected, depending on your level of confidence in our governments ability to function the way its supposed to.
The increased interest in CFAR coverage tracks with a recent report from the trade publication Insurance Business, which cited consumers seeking extra protections in a perpetually uncertain world.
According to InsureMyTrip, travelers who opt for that extra coverage can be reimbursed up to 75% of their trips non-refundable costs, provided they cancel 48 hours before they actually leave.
Would-be fliers may be considering doing just that. Data from flight tracking service FlightAware shows that delays and cancellations into, within, and out of U.S. airports spiked again this weekend, with some 7,806 delays on Sunday alone.
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Americas tourism industry was already facing headwinds before the shutdown, with the U.S. Travel Association expecting total inbound spending to fall 3.2% to $173 billion in 2025, its first decline since 2020.
Still, domestic leisure travel had been a bright spot. It’s expected to grow 1.9% to $895 billion this year, according to the associations fall travel update.
Whether or not it hits that number might yet depend on a number of possible outcomes, including the most unlikely of all: elected officials doing their jobs.
President Donald Trump responded to this weekend’s massive No Kings protests with an AI-generated video of him in a fighter jet, dropping what appears to be sewage (or poop) on American protesters, and told reporters on Sunday that the nearly 7 million people who attended the nationwide rallies “are not representative of the people of our country.”
“The regime can’t decide if this was a violent insurrection or if it was such a bust that it never happened, but regardless, Trump is clearly pissed,” Ezra Levin, co-executive director of the protest’s organizing group, Indivisible, said in a statement emailed to Fast Company.
In that 19-second video, which Trump posted on Truth Social, the president of the United States is pictured riding in the cockpit of a fighter plane, wearing a crown, in what appears to be a nod to the movie Top Gun as its iconic “Danger Zone” song by Kenny Loggins plays in the background.
Loggins requested his music be removed immediately, according to Rolling Stone.
This is an unauthorized use of my performance of Danger Zone, Loggins said in a statement. Nobody asked me for my permission, which I would have denied . . . I cant imagine why anybody would want their music used or associated with something created with the sole purpose of dividing us.
Meanwhile, Vice President JD Vance took to Bluesky in what also appeared to be an attempt to mock the protests, posting a black-and-white AI-generated meme of Trump wearing a crown and pulling out a shiny sword, as former House Speaker and current U.S. representative Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats bend down on one knee to him. (Some critics have said Trump and Vance’s posts only prove the protesters point that he is, in fact, acting like a King.)
It’s not the first time this administration has used generative AI to mock Democrats. Amid the government shutdown, Trump posted a deepfake video on Truth Social with doctored audio of Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer saying, nobody likes Democrats, we have no voters because of our woke, trans b-shit,” and standing next to House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, who had a fake mustache and was wearing a fake sombrero.
And according to NBC News, Trump has posted dozens of such AI-generated videos to his Truth Social account since the beginning of his second term, half of which appeared in August and September. Those videos came from other accounts and were then promoted by Trump.
Looking back even further, to his campaign, Trump also posted on Truth Social a fake AI-generated image of musician Taylor Swift endorsing him for president along with other such “Swifties for Trump” memes. The original image depicted Swift as Uncle Sam, and read, Taylor wants you to vote for Joe Biden. The singer said Trump’s meme inspired her to endorse Kamala Harris for president.
Apple stock just soared to an all-time high, and it might be thanks to the new iPhone 17.
On October 20, Apple shares (NASDAQ: AAPL) surged to more than $264 apiece, topping out their last peak at $258.10 in December 2024. As of this writing, the company is trading up 8% since the start of the year and more than 11% year-over-year.
The spike appears to be a reaction to a study published today by the technology market research firm Counterpoint. According to the report, the iPhone 17 series has outsold the iPhone 16 series by 14% in its first 10 days of availability in the U.S. and China.
While the numbers are not yet official (Apple is expected to share more details in its fourth-quarter earnings report on October 30), investors appear to be optimistic about the companys current trajectory.
Why is Apple stock soaring?
The iPhone 17 series, which was unveiled on September 9 and debuted for purchase 10 days later, is one of the companys most significant product launches of the past several years. It includes the base model iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, iPhone 17 Pro Max, and the new iPhone Air, Apples skinniest iPhone ever.
Several key software and hardware updates have been made across the iPhone 17 suite. These include ProMotion, which offers smoother on-screen motion through a higher refresh rate; a 48-megapixel ultrawide camera; increased storage and charging speeds; an improved chip; and a sturdier glass called Ceramic Shield 2.
Counterpoints report found that, so far, the iPhone 17 base model is driving the launchs success in the U.S. and China, with sell-out up nearly one-third compared to the iPhone 16 series launch in 2024. This model is performing particularly well in China.
The base model iPhone 17 is very compelling to consumers, offering great value for money, Mengmeng Zhang, a senior analyst at Counterpoint, said in a press release. A better chip, improved display, higher base storage, selfie camera upgradeall for the same price as last years iPhone 16.
In the U.S., the iPhone 17 Pro Max is the model thats seen the highest spike in demand, a trend that Counterpoints analysts attribute to deals offered by T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon. Reached by Fast Company, Counterpoint declined to share specific sales numbers from the iPhone 17 series thus far.
In a note to clients on October 20, Loop Capital senior analyst Ananda Baruah cautioned clients that todays share spike is baking in some degree of outperformance from AAPLs iPhone 17 family of products. Still, he added, we believe there remains material upside to Street expectations through CY2027.
In a stunt thats surely destined for Netflix adaptation, this weekend a group of thieves broke into the Louvre in broad daylight and stole nine pieces of priceless jewelry in less than seven minutes. Prediction markets are already betting on whether the robbers will be caught.
Prediction markets, including popular sites like Polymarket and Kalshi, are platforms dedicated to betting on current events including elections, sports events, and even cultural moments. In the past, they’ve been used to gamble on the next pope, the incoming editor of Vogue, and even whether the Coldplaygate couple would each get a divorce.
Now, as French police desperately search for the whereabouts of the missing jewelry, armchair experts on these sites are looking to turn their own profits by intensely speculating on whether the thieves are destined for justice. Most betters think it’s not a question of if the perpetrators get caught, but whenand they’re casting votes for the most likely date of their arrests.
What was stolen from the Louvre?
The heist took place at about 9:30 a.m. on October 19. According to French Interior Minister Laurent Nunez in an interview with the AP, the crew accessed the museums Apollo Gallery via a basket lift, cut its window panes with a glass cutter, grabbed the jewels, and fled on motorbikes. French media is currently reporting that two perpetrators were dressed in yellow safety vests on the lift, while another two were each waiting on a scooter (though authorities are still investigating and have not confirmed these details).
The jewelry that was lifted included a diadem worn by Empress Eugénie featuring nearly 2,000 diamonds and more than 200 pearls; an emerald necklace and earrings gifted by Napoleon to his second wife Marie-Louise; and a diamond-and-sapphire jewelry set worn by multiple different queens.
Despite successfully making off with some high-priced jewels, the robbers left one rather large breadcrumb in their wake: According to Frances culture ministry, Eugénies ornate gold crown was found lying outside the Louvre.
Tobias Kormind, managing director of the jeweler 77 Diamonds, told the AP that its unlikely the stolen jewels will ever be seen again. Professional crews often break down and re-cut large, recognizable stones to evade detection, effectively erasing their provenance, he added.
How prediction markets are responding
On Kalshi, the question, Will the Louvre Crown Jewel thieves face charges this year? has amassed a nearly $11,000 bidding pool as of this writing. The most popular option among bidders so far is Before 2026, with 60% of the pool, followed by Before December with 37%, and, finally, Before November with 16%.
Voters on Polymarket are betting within a much smaller time frame. The question, Will any Louvre heist robbers be arrested by…? has attracted more than $65,000 in betting volume, with the three top options being October 20, October 24, and October 31. Currently, betters have signaled a 2% chance of arrest by October 20, a 14% chance by October 24, and a 25% chance by October 31.
On September 30, OpenAI launched its new Sora social network, powered by its Sora 2 video generation model.
To call Soras launch successful is a gross understatement. Despite invite only access and restrictions outside North America, Sora exploded to over one million users in only five days. Thats faster than ChatGPTs user base grew after its own record-setting launch.
Sora is a vertical video app, aping the interface and user experience (short clips, vertical swiping to select a new video, Likes and Shares) of every other app in its category. Except with Sora, theres a key differenceevery video on the app is explicitly and joyfully fake.
I resorted to begging colleagues, lurking on obscure Discord channels, and constantly refreshing my own Sora app in order to get an invite.
Finally, I got in and was able to try Sora firsthand. Im convinced that its the perfect social network. It could take down TikTok. Heres why.
Suspending disbelief
When you first sign into Sora, the app pops up a window warning you that You are about to enter a creative world of AI-generated content. Some videos may depict people you recognize, but the actions and events shown are not real.
The warning reminds me of the famous sign at the entrance to Disneyland. That sign reads Here you leave today and enter the world of yesterday, tomorrow and fantasy.
Disneylands sign is an invitation to suspend disbeliefto enter a world in which everything is kind of real, but is also explicitly curated and fabricated to delight you; a purified, enhanced reflection of reality. Sora feels similar.
After accepting the warning, youre offered a blank box where you can type a description of any video you want to see.
When you enter text in the box, the Sora app uses the Sora 2 video generator (OpenAI has never been much for clear naming conventions) to make whatever youve asked for, complete with synchronized audio and even music.
Crucially, you can also begin to scroll through the AI creations of other users.
Delightful deepfakes
I didnt expect that an app filled with bespoke deepfakes would be fun to use. Turns out, it is. Wildly so.
Many of Soras users creations are bizarre, engaging, and uproariously funny. In one popular video, a chicken hangs from a drone, flying over a drab British neighborhood while rapping about his predicament in a strong Cockney accent.
In another, Jesus and his disciples ride a roller coaster. He speaks in bible verses while the disciples scream in the background at every turn and drop.
Some of the best videos feature celebrities. In one, the ubiquitous 1980s painter Bob Ross stands in a Target store, furiously scribbling a mountain scene on a wall.
Angry employees approach him, saying professionally but assertively Sir, you cannot draw on our wall, to which Ross responds, I know, Im trying to stop while scribbling even faster.
Then stop! the employee commands. Just more shadow, I promise, Ross says as the employee grows more frustrated, yelling No sir, give me the marker.
It needs a cloud . . . Ross says plaintively as security arrives to escort him out of the building.
In another clip, Queen Elizabeth speaks at a press conference. Apparently having received a critical question, she says You know what? Im sick of you guys! before cackling and flying straight up into the sky with a woosh.
An alarmed newscaster yells Shes going up! Your majesty, come back! as the crowd screams and the Queen ascends into the clouds.
No one asked for reality
Sora is far more fun to use than I expected. I hate vertical video apps, and have defiantly avoided spending any of my precious time on this planet scrolling through TikTok. Yet, I find myself returning to Sora again and again.
Why? For one thing, the apps incredibly realistic video generation capabilities let users create anything they want. That unlocks a huge amount of pent up creativityas well as a hefty dose of Monty Pythonesque silliness.
But the appeal goes deeper than that. Social media used to be funa melange of quirky local news stories, cat videos, updates on the lives of people you vaguely remember from high school, and photos of your friends breakfasts.
Today, though, social networks are filled with highly-polished, aspirational content posted by brands, influencers, and the mini Kardashians in your own social circles.
Fire up Instagram or its ilk and youre likely to see a stunning shot of a perfectly-styled, impossibly beautiful person sipping Negronis in Majorca, or a pic of your friend living it up at a fancy restaurant you cant afford.
Youre unlikely to see footage of that same friend attempting (and failing) to troubleshoot her air fryer, or spending 45 minutes on hold with her insurance company. Everything is carefully selected and curated.
Increasingly, youre also likely to see plenty of truly fake AI content masquerading as the real thing. More than 40% of Facebook content is now created by AI.
Using social media has thus become a dispiriting slog through machine-generated slop and aspirational images, where youre constantly forced to question whats real and whats fakeor at least highly polished and edited.
Its exhausting. No wonder that even teenagersthe most voracious users of social appsare fed up. Pew reports that 48% of teens now believe that social media is bad or their mental health.
Sora sidesteps all this drudgery by ignoring authenticity altogether.
Everything is fake! Theres no need to question what youre seeingyou can just enjoy the storytelling, the visuals, the delightful insanity and spectacle of it all.
Its a weirdly liberating experience. Rather than feeling like wading in a cesspool of AI drek, using Sora feels like watching a very clever movie.
Movies are fake, after all. Yet people spend billions of hours enjoying them. And here, if you like something you see, you can leap in and make your own version of it with a simple prompt and the press of a button.
Turns out, people never wanted reality. Sora captures all the spectacle, drama, and storytelling that keeps people engaged with TikTok and Reels, but without any of the shame, exclusion, and need to constantly keep your digital guard up. Plus, you can tell any story you want on Sora, physics be damned!
Its a seductive combinationfun, silliness, joy, and freedom from the limits of reality. No wonder people are already joining the network by the millions. TikTok and the other peddlers of depressing, soulless, obsessively curated semi-realities should be very, very afraid.
How do modernist transportation planners recommend handling congestion? By recommending new vehicle lanes. What happens when you build new vehicle lanes to handle traffic congestion? The vehicle lanes fill up with more traffic congestion. As they themselves have said for decades, you cannot build your way out of congestion. But every week you can do a quick internet search to see a bunch of new attempts.
Induced demand
Ive been hearing planners and engineers say we cant build our way out of congestion since the 1990s, when I began my career. The wonky term that describes why adding more lanes doesnt eliminate congestion is induced demand. Transportation professionals have understood the induced demand phenomenon for decades. Consider the hypothetical (or is it?) Route 60.
Route 60 has two lanes in each direction with turn lanes at each signalized intersection. Most of the real estate fronting the corridor is retail or office, but thousands of single-family homes, townhomes, and apartments are just behind the other land uses. As you might expect, people choose to frequent the shops closest to home.
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The department of transportation adds one more lane in each direction. After construction, people choose to visit more retail centers further from home because theres suddenly more space on the corridor. It gets to the point where enough people have made the same choices that car traffic on the corridor is back to its preconstruction levels.
In response, the department of transportation builds one more lane in each direction. Now with four lanes in each direction, the corridor is wider than the nearby interstate. And once again, people who were avoiding the traffic jams on Route 60 now choose to get back on the road and drive further. Enough people make the same choice to drive further from home and the car traffic is back to preconstruction levels.
The might-be-fictional Route 60 is the same never-ending story of induced demand in communities across the country. Road expansions only temporarily reduce traffic congestion, but professionals only temporarily remember expansions dont work.
A better way
Its no secret that public agencies are strapped for cash, and its no secret that public agencies continue to spend depleted accounts on road expansion projects. Meanwhile, the average citizen continues to point out problems with existing infrastructure: potholes, withering landscaping, crumbling sidewalks, and poor street lighting. Taxpayers financial contributions deserve good stewardship. Public agencies shouldnt be building something that cant be maintained, let alone expanding something thats destined to attract even more traffic and thus maintenance.
Induced demand isnt inherently bad or goodits just a description of an economics principle of scarcity and choice. Theres a way for departments of transportation to take advantage of induced demand by creating bicycle networks that will fill up with new bike traffic. Robust bicycle infrastructure gives people the freedom to make short trips without having to rely on a motor vehicle. And of course, bicycle infrastructure yields an extraordinary return on investment when compared to car-oriented infrastructure.
Culture plays a tremendous role in the planning and construction of transportation systems. When Danish streets were convenient for high-speed vehicular traffic and long commutes, thats exactly how people behaved. Following a fundamental shift in design philosophy, bicycling was made convenient and Danes naturally opted for the easier travel mode. Copenhagen wasnt always Copenhagen. They deliberately redesigned streets to make riding a bike an easy option, and just like that, the bike lanes filled up with people making obvious transportation choices.
Americas rural villages, sprawling suburbs, and big cities have so much potential. Well meet that potential as future generations lead the culture shift by using the induced demand principle for the greater good.
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