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Today's Edition6 October 2026
Business & Power

Women now outnumber Men at work but not because Men are getting Fired

Women now outnumber Men at work but not because Men are getting Fired

For eight straight months, women have outnumbered men in the US workforce — the longest such stretch since 2010. But the reason is the opposite of what it was back then. In 2010, men were losing jobs. This time, men are roughly flat and women are simply gaining. There are a million fewer employed men than a year ago, and the explanation isn't discrimination or decline. It's which industries happen to be growing.

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Top Stories
Business & Power
A Daughter changes how a Man runs a Company

Economists found something unsettlingly specific in Danish payroll data: when a male manager has his first daughter, the women who work for him start getting hired, promoted, and paid more. The manager didn't take a diversity course or read a memo. He just had a kid — and his behavior toward half his workforce quietly shifted.

2 min read
Science & Discovery
A strong El Niño actually means fewer Atlantic hurricanes, but the Pacific has been extra stormy

It's late September, peak hurricane season, and the Atlantic hasn't produced a single hurricane — something that hasn't happened in over a century. Meanwhile the Pacific is throwing record-breaking storms. Two oceans behaving in total opposition, and the same force is behind both: a "Godzilla" El Niño shaping up as one of the strongest ever recorded.

2 min read
Deep Dives
Do you know that Walter White and Jesse Pinkman served alcohol at Downtown Disney?

Yes, really. Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, who played Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad, were spotted behind a bar at the “happiest place on Earth,” pouring shots for fans. The show, which holds the Guinness World Record for the “Highest-Rated TV series”, ended in 2013… but the friendship? Yeah that never ended.

2 min read
AI
AI won a Nobel but still can't prescribe you anything

A recent NBC News/Decision Desk poll found 70% of US adults are more worried than excited about AI, and it polls badly in nearly every corner of life — with one clean exception: scientific research and medicine. Dr. Dhruv Khullar, a physician at Weill Cornell and New Yorker writer, says the optimism holds up, and that healthcare is absorbing this technology faster than any he's seen. His theory for why is bleak: the system is so broken — unaffordable, inaccessible, uneven — that the appetite for any change is enormous.

2 min read
Technology
Spotify just handed you full control of its algorithm

Spotify recommendation engine used to be a mystery box; it would follow your choices of music and recommend the next one for you automatically without any input from your side. However, the newly added Taste Profile option allows you to give your preferences and recommendations in ordinary language. It is an easy option with an even more profound meaning regarding who controls the feed.

2 min read
ThinkAbout · On the Record

The story underneath the headline — the system it sits on, and who controls it.

Get it 3 times a week →
AI won a Nobel but still can't prescribe you anything AI

AI won a Nobel but still can't prescribe you anything

A recent NBC News/Decision Desk poll found 70% of US adults are more worried than excited about AI, and it polls badly in nearly every corner of life — with one clean exception: scientific research and medicine. Dr. Dhruv Khullar, a physician at Weill Cornell and New Yorker writer, says the optimism holds up, and that healthcare is absorbing this technology faster than any he's seen. His theory for why is bleak: the system is so broken — unaffordable, inaccessible, uneven — that the appetite for any change is enormous.

2 min read
Brussels just pried open Google's two biggest moat

Brussels just pried open Google's two biggest moat

On 16th July 2026, Under the Digital Markets Act, the European Commission issued two binding orders against Google. One forces the company to hand anonymized search data to rivals. The other forces Android to treat competing AI assistants the way it treats Gemini. Neither is fine. Both are just structural - and Structural remedies are the ones that actually change markets.

3 min read
The AI Layoff was a story. The Rehire is the Bill.

The AI Layoff was a story. The Rehire is the Bill.

Klarna said its chatbot did the work of 700 people and would add $40 million a year. Then it started hiring humans back. Roughly half the companies that cut staff for AI are now paying more to get that staff returned. The strange part isn't that the technology underdelivered — it's that most of those companies were never really firing people because of AI in the first place.

2 min read
AI won't replace you. You'll be replaced by the person using it

AI won't replace you. You'll be replaced by the person using it

This line was thorn around a lot during a recent TIME100 panel in Cannes. Four executives - from Nespresso, Luma AI, Philip Morris International, and Publicis Sapient - sat down to argue about what AI is actually doing to the creative work. Not the Sci-Fi version but the version that you use every day and the one that shows up in your inbox on a Tuesday.

3 min read
The internet is Filling Up with AI… We don’t have any idea how much

The internet is Filling Up with AI… We don’t have any idea how much

You scrolled past something AI-made today. Probably more than once. A caption, an image, a video that felt just a little too much of what the internet calls ai slop.It doesn't hit the same anymore.

2 min read

Technology

View all →
This startup is trying to make it rain for $100 millionTechnology

This startup is trying to make it rain for $100 million

A three-year-old company just raised $100 million to fly drones into clouds and squeeze rain out of them. Rainmaker says its Alaska tests pulled 19 million gallons of precipitation from the sky in three hours. If that number holds up under scrutiny, the business of manufacturing fresh water on demand stops being science fiction and starts being a market.

2 min read
AI won a Nobel but still can't prescribe you anything

AI won a Nobel but still can't prescribe you anything

A recent NBC News/Decision Desk poll found 70% of US adults are more worried than excited about AI, and it polls badly in nearly every corner of life — with one clean exception: scientific research and medicine. Dr. Dhruv Khullar, a physician at Weill Cornell and New Yorker writer, says the optimism holds up, and that healthcare is absorbing this technology faster than any he's seen. His theory for why is bleak: the system is so broken — unaffordable, inaccessible, uneven — that the appetite for any change is enormous.

2 min read
Spotify just handed you full control of its algorithm

Spotify just handed you full control of its algorithm

Spotify recommendation engine used to be a mystery box; it would follow your choices of music and recommend the next one for you automatically without any input from your side. However, the newly added Taste Profile option allows you to give your preferences and recommendations in ordinary language. It is an easy option with an even more profound meaning regarding who controls the feed.

2 min read
A shovel grounded thousands of flights

A shovel grounded thousands of flights

Not hackers, not storms, not software malfunctions. In New Jersey, construction workers cut a Verizon fiber line. As a result, all major airports in New York were paralyzed. More than 1,000 American flights had to be canceled because of that. What is frightening is not what caused the problem but how easy it was to cause it.

2 min read
Brussels just pried open Google's two biggest moat

Brussels just pried open Google's two biggest moat

On 16th July 2026, Under the Digital Markets Act, the European Commission issued two binding orders against Google. One forces the company to hand anonymized search data to rivals. The other forces Android to treat competing AI assistants the way it treats Gemini. Neither is fine. Both are just structural - and Structural remedies are the ones that actually change markets.

3 min read

Business & Power

View all →
Women now outnumber Men at work but not because Men are getting FiredBusiness & Power

Women now outnumber Men at work but not because Men are getting Fired

For eight straight months, women have outnumbered men in the US workforce — the longest such stretch since 2010. But the reason is the opposite of what it was back then. In 2010, men were losing jobs. This time, men are roughly flat and women are simply gaining. There are a million fewer employed men than a year ago, and the explanation isn't discrimination or decline. It's which industries happen to be growing.

2 min read
The Job market where nobody hires and nobody leaves

The Job market where nobody hires and nobody leaves

A $150-an-hour remote assistant job drew 2,000 applicants in days. That's not a fluke — it's the shape of a labor market economists now call "low-hire, low-fire," where almost nobody gets laid off and almost nobody gets hired either. For job seekers, it's the worst kind of stuck. And the instinct it triggers — fire off hundreds of applications — is exactly the move experts say makes it worse.

3 min read
A Daughter changes how a Man runs a Company

A Daughter changes how a Man runs a Company

Economists found something unsettlingly specific in Danish payroll data: when a male manager has his first daughter, the women who work for him start getting hired, promoted, and paid more. The manager didn't take a diversity course or read a memo. He just had a kid — and his behavior toward half his workforce quietly shifted.

2 min read
The $10 Trillion number is hiding a simpler problem

The $10 Trillion number is hiding a simpler problem

Gallup says disengaged workers cost the world $10 trillion in lost productivity last year — nearly 9% of global GDP. Companies read that number and reached for the obvious lever: bring everyone back to the office. The data says they're pulling the wrong one. Remote workers, it turns out, are the most engaged group of all.

2 min read
Red lines set the Stage. Chokepoints write the script.

Red lines set the Stage. Chokepoints write the script.

A week after a U.S. red line was crossed, the expected airstrike still hasn't landed. Not because of restraint — because of the map. With Hormuz, Bab el-Mandeb, and the Black Sea all under pressure at once, the endgame isn't being written on the battlefield. It's being written in the oil market.

1 min read
Indonesia just swapped its money chief again - and the real story is who's holding the purse Economy

Indonesia just swapped its money chief again - and the real story is who's holding the purse

In two years, Indonesia has burned through three finance ministers. The latest firing came by phone, mid-hearing, while the minister was answering questions about next year's budget. Markets cheered the replacement. But the more interesting question isn't whether the new technocrat can steady the ship — it's how much of the ship the president is now quietly steering himself.

3 min read
The $10 Trillion number is hiding a simpler problem

The $10 Trillion number is hiding a simpler problem

Gallup says disengaged workers cost the world $10 trillion in lost productivity last year — nearly 9% of global GDP. Companies read that number and reached for the obvious lever: bring everyone back to the office. The data says they're pulling the wrong one. Remote workers, it turns out, are the most engaged group of all.

2 min read
China is growing and shrinking at the same time

China is growing and shrinking at the same time

One China is riding the global AI boom — factories humming, exports at a four-year high. The other is frozen: property in freefall, consumers too scared to spend, local governments too buried in debt to build. In Q2 2026, the collapsing half finally started dragging the whole country down. Here's the structural trap Beijing can't easily escape — and why the one engine still running may be the one that starts its next trade war.

5 min read
The Currency weapon most countries don't have

The Currency weapon most countries don't have

India just pulled a lever, almost no other economy can reach. in roughly six weeks it moved more than $17 Billion - and the clever part isn't the numbers. When a currency slides, the central bank has a table with just few bad options to choose from. It can either burn thought its reserves buying its own currency in the open market -- expensive, and visible to every trader watching the tape, or it can hike interest rates to make the currency more attractive to hold - which will choke the growth at home. Or it can simply(not that simple) borrow dollars from abroad and hope the market calms down before the bill comes due.

5 min read
Why Your Grocery Bill Keeps Climbing Even as Inflation 'Cools'

Why Your Grocery Bill Keeps Climbing Even as Inflation 'Cools'

Inflation slowing doesn't mean prices fall — it means they rise more slowly, from a higher base. Here's why the number on the news and the number at the till feel like different worlds.

1 min read

Science & Discovery

View all →
This startup is trying to make it rain for $100 millionScience & Discovery

This startup is trying to make it rain for $100 million

A three-year-old company just raised $100 million to fly drones into clouds and squeeze rain out of them. Rainmaker says its Alaska tests pulled 19 million gallons of precipitation from the sky in three hours. If that number holds up under scrutiny, the business of manufacturing fresh water on demand stops being science fiction and starts being a market.

2 min read
A Dead Star Is Doing Something Physics Can't Explain

A Dead Star Is Doing Something Physics Can't Explain

730 light-years away, the burnt-out core of a dead star is blasting a shock wave across space — a structure it has no known way of producing. No disk to feed it, no mechanism to power it, and it's apparently been running for over a thousand years. Astronomers found what one calls a "mystery engine," and the honest answer to what's driving it is: they don't know.

2 min read
A strong El Niño actually means fewer Atlantic hurricanes, but the Pacific has been extra stormy

A strong El Niño actually means fewer Atlantic hurricanes, but the Pacific has been extra stormy

It's late September, peak hurricane season, and the Atlantic hasn't produced a single hurricane — something that hasn't happened in over a century. Meanwhile the Pacific is throwing record-breaking storms. Two oceans behaving in total opposition, and the same force is behind both: a "Godzilla" El Niño shaping up as one of the strongest ever recorded.

2 min read
Melting plastic into gasoline at oven temperature

Melting plastic into gasoline at oven temperature

For decades, the formula for producing fuel from waste plastic has required extreme conditions: high temperatures like a furnace and expensive metallic catalysts. But now, a research group from Oak Ridge has done the same in an inexpensive liquid bath of aluminum salt at a temperature that an average household oven can achieve and yielded 60 percent gasoline. It’s a tricky problem, to be sure, but the figure is tough to overlook.

2 min read
The First mRNA Flu Shot Just Got FDA Approval — And It Almost Didn't

The First mRNA Flu Shot Just Got FDA Approval — And It Almost Didn't

3 min read

Deep Dives

View all →
Do you know that Walter White and Jesse Pinkman served alcohol at Downtown Disney?Deep Dives

Do you know that Walter White and Jesse Pinkman served alcohol at Downtown Disney?

Yes, really. Bryan Cranston and Aaron Paul, who played Walter White and Jesse Pinkman in Breaking Bad, were spotted behind a bar at the “happiest place on Earth,” pouring shots for fans. The show, which holds the Guinness World Record for the “Highest-Rated TV series”, ended in 2013… but the friendship? Yeah that never ended.

2 min read

More from ThinkAbout

View all →
The Diet Coke Trap: Why Your Brain Can't Go Back to Regular SodaDeep Dives

The Diet Coke Trap: Why Your Brain Can't Go Back to Regular Soda

There was a time when you took a sip of your first Diet Coke, and after months of making Diet Coke a habit, now regular sodas feel like you are drinking excessively. It wasn’t just a habit; your brain...

2 min read
A shovel grounded thousands of flights Technology

A shovel grounded thousands of flights

Not hackers, not storms, not software malfunctions. In New Jersey, construction workers cut a Verizon fiber line. As a result, all major airports in New York were paralyzed. More than 1,000 American flights had to be canceled because of that. What is frightening is not what caused the problem but how easy it was to cause it.

2 min read
Your pancreas might not be running out of insulin. It might be running out of coordination.Science & Discovery

Your pancreas might not be running out of insulin. It might be running out of coordination.

The problem was never raw materials. A June PNAS study reveals that insulin's assembly line jams when one of two partner proteins goes missing — and no amount of the abundant resource fixes it. The constraint is almost never the input you're counting.

2 min read
Top 10 Business books to read in 2026Business & Power

Top 10 Business books to read in 2026

I’ve been reading books in the Business space for quite some time, and the amount of knowledge I’ve acquired over the past few years is immense. In business, being exposed to the right information/knowledge at the right time can give you a crucial advantage against your competitors or an advantage i

8 min read
Every Major Milestone Humanity Has Achieved in SpaceScience & Discovery

Every Major Milestone Humanity Has Achieved in Space

How do we remember space? A grainy photo of a footprint. A blurry TV broadcast of a man in a bulky suit and somehow a gray-haired, clean-cut television anchor with a neatly trimmed Gray Mustache and classic, black-rimmed glasses.

4 min read
Melting plastic into gasoline at oven temperature Science & Discovery

Melting plastic into gasoline at oven temperature

For decades, the formula for producing fuel from waste plastic has required extreme conditions: high temperatures like a furnace and expensive metallic catalysts. But now, a research group from Oak Ridge has done the same in an inexpensive liquid bath of aluminum salt at a temperature that an average household oven can achieve and yielded 60 percent gasoline. It’s a tricky problem, to be sure, but the figure is tough to overlook.

2 min read
Your phone beats a $3,500 AR headset Technology

Your phone beats a $3,500 AR headset

A four-person team says the future of AR won't need a headset — or the cloud. A talking cat has just perched itself on the couch of a reporter and told him some jokes. The cat responds to actual barking dogs, syncs itself to the music playing in the room, and most importantly, it doesn’t send a single piece of information about anything it sees or hears to the cloud. The cat is a toy; the underlying bet is definitely not:

3 min read
Indonesia just swapped its money chief again - and the real story is who's holding the purse Economy

Indonesia just swapped its money chief again - and the real story is who's holding the purse

In two years, Indonesia has burned through three finance ministers. The latest firing came by phone, mid-hearing, while the minister was answering questions about next year's budget. Markets cheered the replacement. But the more interesting question isn't whether the new technocrat can steady the ship — it's how much of the ship the president is now quietly steering himself.

3 min read
Are we in an AI bubble? What’s the Future of AI?AI

Are we in an AI bubble? What’s the Future of AI?

So with the recent crash in Market crash, nearly wiped out $4.02 trillion. It was mainly the AI stocks that took the most hit along with gold, silver, and bitcoin. This raises some questions, though - Are we in an AI bubble? And now what’s the Future of AI? Was this a bubble burst?

4 min read
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