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The Bronx stands apart from New York Citys four other boroughs in stark ways. Home to 1.4 million residents and the nation’s poorest congressional district, it once flourished as fertile farmland. Today, were restoring this landnot to its agricultural roots, but as fertile ground for raising healthy, happy, and prosperous children. And in the process, were cultivating opportunity for a new generation of citizens. My wife Lizette and I founded and run Green Bronx Machine (GBM). Our nonprofit is dedicated to rewriting the narrative about the Bronx and its residents. Inside Community School 55, just across the tracks from rows of dilapidated public housing towers, sits an unexpected oasis: a thriving garden where fruits and vegetables grow alongside young dreams and possibilities. All year long, grandmothers find respite in the greenery while children eagerly plant seeds, harvest crops, raise chickens, and gather eggs. But this transformation didn’t begin outdoorsit started in a classroom. AN “UNEMPLOYED” TEACHER I playfully call myself an “unemployed teacher.” An educator/administrator since 1984, I left formal employment determined to launch a program that has now spread to more than 1,000 schools across the United States and a dozen countrieswith ambitious plans to scale that impact. Dubbed A Miracle in the Bronx, we combine urban agriculture, project-based learning, and community engagement that transforms educational outcomes in areas where success seems improbable, if not impossible. GBMs classroom model began almost by accident. When struggling to engage my students, I received a box of daffodil bulbs. Instead of discarding them, I tucked them behind a radiator. Weeks later, the bulbs sprouted and bloomed, and with them, a change in students’ engagement and attendance. These kids, who wouldn’t come to school to see me, were suddenly showing up to see plants. That was my a-ha moment. We planted 25,000 bulbs all across NYC that year. [Photo: Green Bronx Machine] Today, the program features indoor Tower Gardens and Babylon Micro-Farms, where students grow vegetables year-round in classroom settings, along the way learning math, English, biology, even phys. ed. The results extend far beyond agriculture. Participants show improved academic performance, higher attendance rates, better nutritional habits, and increased environmental awareness. Teachers are similarly inspired and engaged. Meanwhile, the produce students grow is sold to provide much-needed jobs and income, or taken home by students to feed their families. I learned that when a child plants a seed and nurtures that plant to harvest, they never go hungry againnot intellectually, emotionally, or physically. THE VISION DEFICIT IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS It is common to think that America’s educational challenges stem primarily from limited funding. But the more fundamental issue is a clear vision of whats possible in todays schoolssomething increasingly scarce in an environment dominated by misinformation, politics, and eroding social cohesion. For children growing up today, the harsh reality is that in America, despite our cherished narrative of meritocracy and individualism, ones ZIP code remains the primary determinant of social, educational, and health outcomes. Thats exemplified in marginalized areas like the South Bronx. This geographical determinism is driven by many things. That includes schools in low-income areas being starved for funding, experienced teachers, and enrichment opportunities. Students also face additional barriers such as food insecurity, housing instability, and exposure to environmental hazardsall impacting their ability to learn effectively. END ZIP CODE DESTINY By transforming schools into centers of community wellness, individual excellence, and environmental stewardship, weve demonstrated that innovative approaches can overcome systemic barriers. We’re growing high performing schools, engaged citizens, responsible neighbors, vibrant communities, jobs, and we’re growing healthy foodall together. The program has driven impact across a wide variety of communities, national and international, and that impact is captured in a documentary, Generation Growth, which highlights the program’s success and led to GBM being named a 2024 Most Innovative Company by Fast Company. SCALE A TRANSFERABLE MODEL What makes GBMs method so impactful is its transferability across states and international borders. Schools in diverse settings, from rural Alabama to suburban Colorado, have successfully adapted it to local needs while maintaining core principles. Were projected to impact 30,000 schools in the United States by 2030. This isn’t just about the Bronx. There is a Bronx in every American city and around the world; weve built a turn-key program that serves all of them. This is about transforming how we think about education, community, sustainability, poverty, and progress everywhere. [Photo: Green Bronx Machine] Many think I have a larger-than-life personality, but you dont need that to be effective. Its about community engagement. Ana Christina Garcia of Sloan Kettering and a GBM board member notes that “Green Bronx Machine capitalizes on community assets and unlocks the potential, desire, and passion that children, principals, and teachers already have. Community engagement is about making organizational resources more accessible to unlock people’s existing talents and power. It’s a two-way street where everyone benefits from sharing their wonderful talents as human beings and creating stronger community connections.” I call this social vitamin fortified with human capacity. We’re not just growing plants, we’re growing hope. And hope is the most powerful seed we can plant. In 2026 Id like to shake hands with other thought leaders to continue bringing this proven program across the country. It takes a village, of course, but it also takes an inspiring vision. Join me please. The author thanks Joel Makower and Jeff Senne for their contributions to this article. Stephen Ritz is founder of Green Bronx Machine.
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Ralph Lauren revealed Team USA’s Milan Cortina Winter Olympics looks Thursday, complete with Americana knit sweaters and plenty of vintage call-backs.The formal opening ceremony look pairs a patterned red, white and blue knit sweater with tailored cream trousers and a matching wool coat. Moving sportier, the closing ceremony outfit features a graphic puffer coat inspired by vintage ski kits over a color-blocked sweater.“We are creating something that we know has to become timeless and has to be something that people will wear forever and appreciate forever,” said David Lauren, the Chief Branding and Innovation Officer at Ralph Lauren. “So in creating jackets like this and creating things, we’re looking at the things that we most cherish. Things that are already enduring parts of the Ralph Lauren lexicon, and then we’ll build on that.”Beyond the ceremony looks, a Team USA collection, which will also be given to athletes as Olympic village wear, became available to public Thursday.The collection follows similar design themes as the opening and closing ceremony looks, with classic red, white and blue patterning on lots of knits, and includes Ralph Lauren’s versions of winter staples like bomber jackets and hockey jerseys.The process of creating these looks is a long one. The Ralph Lauren team, which has been designing Team USA’s Olympic apparel since 2008, starts on each Olympics’ looks about 2 1/2 years out from the Games, meeting with athletes and brainstorming ideas for the kits. As Milan-Cortina’s looks are unveiled, Lauren said the looks for the 2028 Los Angeles games are already months in the making.He knows the cultural importance each Olympics’ outfits holds, and the attention they garner in the fashion world and among American consumers.“The fact that we know people will want them and collect them and chase them down across eBay, is just an exciting part of the game,” he said.Sometimes, even international Olympic athletes are on the lookout for them. Beyond being an addition to an American athlete’s Olympic wardrobe, the pieces are also sometimes used as bargaining tokens in the Olympic village.Para snowboarder Brenna Huckaby and snowboarder Red Gerard explained to The Associated Press that there’s a tradition of swapping team sweaters and jackets with other nations at the Olympics, if there’s a certain country’s design that catches an athlete’s eye. That’s only if there’s a piece of their collection that they’re willing to let go of, that is.“I rarely trade, because I almost always love every single piece of Team USA stuff,” said Huckaby, modeling the color-blocked closing ceremony sweater that she said “is going to be on rotation after.”“But every now and then there will be some random thing that another country has. And it’s so hard to sit with all my bags, all my stuff open, like, ‘OK, what am I willing to part with?’ That is probably, aside from competing, the hardest part of the Games,” she said. AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics Alyce Brown, AP Sports Writer
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Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. Im Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy. This week, Im focusing on the increasing pressure on the AI industrys wunderkind, OpenAI. I also look at the change in AI leadership at Apple, and at the music industrys new cooperation with AI music generation apps. Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan. Is OpenAI still the king? The AI industry has always been very competitive, and its getting even more so. A relatively small group of AI labs are slugging it out to release the smartest models, and, by extension, the smartest chatbots. Ever since OpenAI released its ChatGPT chatbot three years ago, the upstart company has been seen as the leader, but that status has been called into serious question by Googles new Gemini 3 Pro model (and the Gemini app).ChatGPT has grown quickly. The official number is 800 million weekly active users. Googles number is 650 million monthly active users for the Gemini chatbot. So, apples and oranges. SimilarWeb provides a somewhat better comparison, saying that Geminis share of web traffic grew from 5.7% a year ago to more than 15% today. Meanwhile, ChatGPTs 87% share a year ago shrunk to 71.3% today. OpenAI is feeling the pressure from Gemini (and probably from Anthropics new Claude Opus 4.5 model). CEO Sam Altman sent a memo to staff Monday declaring a “code red” effort to improve ChatGPT, according to The Information and other outlets. The effort includes reducing investments in enhancing the health information available on ChatGPT, as well as reducing work on the shopping experience, and the advertising that could go around that. “Our focus now is to keep making ChatGPT more capable, continue growing, and expand access around the worldwhile making it feel even more intuitive and personal,” ChatGPT product lead Nick Turley tweeted Monday. In a wider sense, OpenAI is losing billions, and spending billions, a fact that must make its investors both nervous and curious. Leaked documents and analyst estimates show OpenAI will lose between $9 billion and $11 billion in 2025 (spending roughly $22 billion while bringing in about $13 billion in revenue). The company recently told investors that its spending through 2029 could rise to $115 billion. Altman has said his company, partners, and investors will commit as much as $1.4 trillion to infrastructure (chips, data centers, etc.) in the next eight years. OpenAI is an aggregator, as the analyst Ben Thompson points out. The fact that its willing to de-emphasize its shopping and advertising experiences, which are potential revenue generators, shows that its still in the mode of growing users, and not yet in the mode of growing revenue. And the way that aggregators (like Facebook) grow is by becoming more things to more people in order to maximize attention and engagement on its platform, regardless of whether the users are paid subscribers. In the aggregator model, actually monetizing all those eyeballs comes later. The confidence in that model, which requires constant growth toward a critical mass of users, has afforded OpenAI a certain swagger, and even a cavalier attitude about making returns for its investors. One of those investors, Altimeter Capitals Brad Gerstner, asked Sam Altman during an October podcast (12:30 mark) how he explains to the markets spending more than a trillion on infrastructure when his company is operating deep in the red. Altman was exasperated. Brad, if you want to sell your shares, Ill find you a buyer, he said. I just . . . enough. But it’s no longer clear that OpenAI has the best models and the go-to chatbot. Setting aside the shopping and advertising work, OpenAI is right to reassign its talent to work on new models and new skills for ChatGPT. This also might mean taking talent off fun projects like the Sora app, which seems far afield from the mission of making ChatGPT the highest performing chatbot available. On the other hand, things can change very quickly in the AI world. Reports say OpenAI is already set to release a new reasoning model codenamed Garlic that will overtake Gemini 3 on a number of key benchmarks. Well see if Garlic gets a better reception than GPT-5. Apple must keep publishing AI research under Subramanya This week Apple announced that its AI boss, John Giannandrea, will be leaving the company. Giannandrea had been a successful AI leader at Google, but his name is linked to Apples failure to seize on generative AI to improve its Siri voice assistant and make the iPhone and other iDevices smarter and more personalized. Hell be handing the reins to another Google vet, Amar Subramanya, who once led engineering on Googles Gemini chatbot, and is stepping down after seven years on the job. Apples stock price got a slight boost on the news, as some investors saw Apple signaling a new urgency to bring AI to its devices. Subramanyas remit will be restoring Apple to some kind of parity with its peers in developing AI models and applying them in meaningful ways. As Mark Zuckerberg can attest, achieving that goal will depend on recruiting and retaining top-shelf AI researchers. Giannandreas AI/ML group saw a lot of churn and lost a number of top shelf researchers to Meta and others, including Ruoming Pang and Robby Walker. One reason for this was the groups habit of investing time and labor in technical approaches to problems only to see them scrapped. Another was the slow pace of developing and releasing new AI features for products like Siri. Another problem is publishing. Apple is famously secretive about its R&D in all areas of the company. The company likes to talk about customer-facing products, and dislikes talking publicly about the technology that makes them work. AI researchers arent OK with that. They want to publish their research. They want the exposure and influence that can bring within an ultra-competitive industry. When Giannandrea came to Apple, the company began allowing its AI talent to publish more of their researchto the extent they could do so without revealing trade secrets. Apple now has a Apple Machine Learning Research web page that lists published papers, technical reports, and conference submissions. It will be crucial that Subramanya keeps this practice going, or expands it. Otherwis Apple risks losing key researchers to competitors. Record Labels are having their iTunes moment with AI The Music Industry has stopped suingAI music generation appsinstead, its making deals with them: The three major record labels have now signed licensing agreements with AI music startups. Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment have made licensing deals with an AI music startup called Klay Vision. The agreements grant Klay Vision permission to train its music generation models on music catalogs owned by the labels, replacing previous models that relied on scraped or unauthorized data. AI-generated music is getting more popular. An AI-generated song using a simulation of a real human country singers voice recently hit number one on the Billboard Country Digital Song Sales ranking. Suno, another AI music company that previously faced lawsuits from major labels, has signed what it calls a “first-of-its-kind partnership” with Warner Music. The deal moves the company toward licensed, artist-opt-in AI models. The moment feels similar to the record labels decision in the early 2000s to sell digital music on Apples iTunes platform. The labels saw CD sales tank as consumers downloaded free MP3s from sites like Napster and Limewire. More AI coverage from Fast Company: The Trump administration keeps taking stakes in chipmakers it may come back to haunt them Will chatbots ever be funny? Why these comedians arent worried about an AI takeover, yet Can your AI adapt to multiple cultures? 10 ways I use AI to be a better journalist Want exclusive reporting and trend analysis on technology, business innovation, future of work, and design? Sign up for Fast Company Premium.
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