Cream cheese shortage bagel shops In recent days, New Yorkers, facing a sudden cream cheese shortage that’s being reported everywhere, have started asking if they’ve not suffered enough already. Some of the city’s top bagel shops say they’re at risk of running out of supplies in mere days: Zabar’s is low, Tompkins Square Bagels...

Free water near me Millions of plastic bottles are sold around the world each minute. Many of those are water bottles that end up in the trash a few minutes later, despite the fact that the people who buy them are not far from a drinking fountain or a restaurant willing to refill...

Service design examples This piece is part of a series explaining each category in Fast Company’s Innovation By Design Awards. We live in a world full of design choices that few of us ever really appreciate. Consider the last time you went to the airport and flew in an airplane. You might...

Karen and ken It was a weekend full of Karens—the nickname du jour for entitled white women on a rampage. On Saturday morning, there was Grocery Store Karen, who pitched a fit in Trader Joe’s after being told to wear a mask. She was quickly trailed by Fajita Wife Karen, who stared...

Stressed meme They say humor is the best medicine, so don’t forget your daily dose of internet culture! It turns out your hours scrolling through Reddit—plopped in front of the computer over months-long quarantines—may actually have been good for your body. Surprise! That’s because it might have helped you cope with the gloom...

what went wrong at starbucks In Midtown Manhattan, on the ground floor of an office building, there’s a coffee shop that’s easy to miss. When you walk in, there’s no menu, just a metal riser supporting drinks waiting to be picked up, and in back, some plush banquettes and tables. Display cases...

Peccy First of all, he is—I mean this as a statement of fact, not a criticism—a dumpy little blob. His arms are jointless, fingerless nubs. His legs are so vestigial that it’s not clear whether he’s ambulatory. From his head to the toes he doesn’t have, he’s bright orange: Amazon Orange, or...

New york flooding subway After Hurricane Sandy devastated New York and flooded its subway system in 2012, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) knew it needed to act. The storm caused an estimated $5 billion in damage, mostly from water getting in where it shouldn’t have. “Track, rails, signal cables, escalators—every piece of equipment...

Adbe A recent viral moment highlights just how nervous the artist community is about artificial intelligence (AI). It started earlier this week, when French comic book author Claire Wendling posted a screenshot of a curious passage in Adobe’s privacy and personal data settings to Instagram. It was quickly reposted on Twitter by another artist...

Interviews amazonyorktimes Those pee-bottle stories were just a whiff of how Amazon workers are treated. A blockbuster New York Times exposé, published on Tuesday morning, delves deep into many of the persistent problems plaguing Amazon’s workers, on multiple fronts, with a focus on how those problems reached a fever pitch during the pandemic....