Inc.com columnist Alison Green answers questions about workplace and management issueseverything from how to deal with a micromanaging boss to how to talk to someone on your team about body odor.
Heres a roundup of answers to three questions from readers.
1. Ive fired my new employee before
I recently took a new job in my same industry and city. In my new role, Ill have a team of eight reporting to me in various capacities and functions. During the interview process, I got a brief read-out on the team and a high-level talent assessment. Nothing stood out as an issue. On my first day, I met the team reporting to me. One of the people on the team is someone who worked for me before and whom I terminated for cause because of performance at my previous company.
What do I communicate to my management team or HR about this situation? It feels weird to say nothing because ultimately this could be a management issueIm sure this employee doesnt feel great about the situation. On the other hand, I dont want to risk harming this persons reputation at this company if they are doing a good job so far. This person is pretty new here too, and my impression is they are either doing a better job in this role or management has not yet identified an issue with their performance.
Green responds:
Have you talked to the employee yet? Thats important because they are undoubtedly really uncomfortable, if not outright panicking. Ideally, youd tell them that youre happy to be working with them again, youve heard good things about the work theyve been doing (if thats true), and while you know your last time working together didnt go the way either of you wanted, this is a different situation and, as far youre concerned, both of you are starting fresh.
I do think youre right that you need to mention it to your management team or HR. Its unfortunate, because this person is entitled to a fresh start without the firing following them to a different job, but its relevant not as a predictor of the persons work now, but because it could affect the dynamic between the two of you, and either of you could struggle not to interpret things through that old lens. You can keep it very briefI managed Jane at a previous company, and unfortunately the fit wasnt right and we ended up parting ways. Im very willing to start fresh with her and Im hopeful the role shes in could be a great match, but I wanted to flag the prior work relationship. Also, if its been a while since you worked together, stress that, too.
2. Why do people respond to emails with a phone call?
Whats the etiquette on responding to people youve emailed who respond with a phone call? I understand there are times when a phone call is necessary. Ive been getting dozens of phone calls (after sending out a ton of emails on a certain work issue) and they all ask me to call them back. Im just frustrated because if I email someone, its because I dont want to talk on the phone. And the question is usually easily answered via email. Whats the best way to respond?
Green responds:
I get being annoyed, but its not always up to youand sometimes it makes sense.
Sometimes people will call you back because they thinkoften rightlythat itll be faster. They might not be sure about the meaning of your email and they want to clarify before responding, and figure theyll just jump on the phone rather than going back and forth. Or their answer might take a long time to write out but be easier to deliver over the phone. Or they just prefer the phone, just as you prefer email. And not everyone feels they communicate as well in writing as they do out loud.
For an email fan, this can be annoying. When you like email, it feels efficient and convenient and respectful of everyones time. Plus, sometimes its helpful to have a written record of what was discussed as a reference you can look back at later if needed. And if youre having an especially busy day or suspect a call will be 30 minutes when it should be five, it might be fine to let the call go to voicemail, and then email later with, Got your voicemail. Im in back-to-back meetings and will be hard to reach todayany chance email will work? Maybe it will, and theyll tell you if it wont. But save that for when you really need itbecause while you get to have your preferences, they get to have theirs, too.
3. Setting boundaries on requests for help from your significant others network
I am engaged to a wonderful person. We both work in the same field, though for different organizations. We are working to create healthy boundaries between our personal and professional lives and it is important to both of us that we are able to pursue careers independently.
My organization is bigger and engages in some grant-making activities. A coworker of my fiancés recently reached out to me for more information on how their organization could acquire funding. I directed her to publicly available resources, but she responded seeking a personal introduction to our grant officer. This made me uncomfortable; Im happy to connect anyone who asks to see public information, but it felt like she was leveraging my personal relationship to gain access. I know the importnce of networking and personal connections, but I have no professional relationship with this person and weve met only once in passing.
My fiancé and I discussed the need for a policy on how to deal with these kinds of inquiries as we see this being a recurring issue as we move forward in our careers. I would love advice on how to navigate these kinds of requests.
Green responds:
The way you handled it sounds just fine. When she asked for an introduction to the grant officer, you could have said, Oh, we get such a high volume of interest in funding that we ask all grant applicants to follow the process listed on our website. And if she still pushed: Im sorry I cant help. Were really rigorous about asking everyone to use the process on our website so that everyone is treated the same. Thanks for understanding!
In other words, not so different from how youd probably handle it if your fiancé werent in the picture. Explain what the person should do, and then reiterate that if necessary. Be warm and friendly, but hold firm on what you are and arent willing or able to do.
My answer would be different if the person had been requesting something different. If she were asking for something like an informal chat about moving into your fieldas opposed to this kind of special treatmentId encourage you to consider that, like you presumably would consider other similar requests that came through a mutual contact.
Want to submit a question of your own? Send it to alison@askamanager.org.
Alison Green
This article originally appeared on Fast Companys sister publication, Inc.
Inc. is the voice of the American entrepreneur. We inspire, inform, and document the most fascinating people in business: the risk-takers, the innovators, and the ultra-driven go-getters that represent the most dynamic force in the American economy.
Netflix’s decision to quietly remove the ability to cast content from its mobile apps to smart TVs and streaming devices has caused a bit of an uproar on social media. The complaints are the usual ones you see when a company removes a feature. Some blame greed. Some are upset their method of end-running subscription sharing has been shut down. Some just jump on the opportunity to complain about Netflix.
But frequent travelers could have a legitimate grievance about the company’s decision to largely end casting.
The change was enacted without warning and without fanfare in November, with some of the earliest complaints from users coming on Nov. 10. Netflix has since changed the help page on its Website to say it no longer supports casting shows from a mobile device to most TVs and TV-streaming devices.” It follows a 2019 decision by the company to remove support for Apple’s AirPlay feature.
Netflix says the casting feature was rarely used by subscribers. But many business and other frequent travelers have come to depend on casting to watch Netflix on hotel TVs instead of their phone’s screen.
The days of free HBO being a sufficient draw to attract travelers are long gone. Today’s hotel visitor wants to be able to connect to their streaming service of choice while they’re on the road. (Missing a screening of a movie you’ve seen before isn’t a big deal. Missing the new Stranger Things and risking spoilers for the rest of your trip can be.)
Hotels, meanwhile, encourage guests to use streaming services, as it puts the cost burden of entertainment programming on the traveler, helping the chain cut expenses.
There’s no universal way to watch streaming services in your hotel room. Some chains let you connect your laptop to your in-room TV, though you’ll need to remember to pack an extra HDMI cable to take advantage of this. Some offer apps directly on the television, letting you scan a QR code to verify the connection on your phone, then access your streaming service. Despite protections by those hotel chains (all login information is wiped at user checkout, something the hotels are contractually obligated to do by the streaming services), many people are still hesitant to link their personal accounts to a public television.
That leaves casting. Many hotels prefer this option, says Richard Leonarz, director of product management for Hospitality Television at Samsung, as it takes the responsibility of clearing user credentials off of their shoulders. (Once the guest and their phone are out of range of the TV, the casting ends.) Casting is also a strong preference for visitors to Airbnb and Vrbo destinations, as owners of those facilities often don’t wipe the credentials of previous guests.
International travelers also frequently prefer a casting option, as it lets them access services that might not be available in the U.S. or a built-in option on a hotel Smart TV.
That said, casting isn’t a perfect solution for hotel visitors. It requires the proper software to be installed on the in-room TV (usually Chromecast) and there needs to be a system in place to ensure a guest’s cast goes to their own TV, not one in the room next door.
Netflix, apparently, hasn’t completely done away with casting. Some older Chromecast devices and TVs that support Google Cast are still able to utilize the technology. That’s only available to subscribers who pay for an ad-free plan, though. Ad-supported plans are unable to cast no matter where they’re attempting to do so.
Several weeks ago, Mozilla Firefox dodged a bullet aimed at its business model — a potential court-ordered cutoff of the Google search-default payments that constitute its primary course of income. But that escape from one feared outcome of the U.S. search-antitrust case against the web giant doesnt change two other things: Firefox remains in an embattled position. That’s bad news for users. Without Firefox, web competition itself would be in a far more dire state. To address its longstanding competition problem, Mozilla’s developers are putting AI to work — albeit, in a less pushy manner than their competitors.
A conversation with Mozilla CEO Laura Chambers at Web Summit in Lisbon in November featured many such things-could-be-worse moments, starting with my question about the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia handing down a ruling in the antitrust case that allowed Google to keep paying browser developers to make its search engine their default. We spent a lot of time working on the case, and we wrote amicus briefs and worked with the judge, Chambers said. I think he really heard our perspective around the importance of keeping browser engines and browser competition safe.
Nine months earlier, Chambers had voiced serious concerns about the prospect of that revenue stream getting dammed. The 2023 annual report of Firefoxs nonprofit corporate parent, the latest available, shows that $495 million of its $653 million in total revenues and support that year came from royalties, meaning a certain percentage of revenues earned by its partners through their search engines incorporated in the Firefox web browser — in other words, Google.
The 230-page opinion by District Judge Amit Mehta opened up a little more latitude for browser developers by holding that Google could not pay for exclusive payment in every browser-usage scenario. But Mozilla has not rushed to explore possibilities created by that ruling, such as making a non-Google, privacy-optimized search site the default for private-browsing windows. We still have Google search as the default, but we continue to add different options, Chambers said. For example, Firefox recently added the AI search tool Perplexity to the menu of search sites available in its address bar.
AI, but for whom?
Mozillas rollout of in-browser AI tools, unlike those of competing browser developers, has not included preset defaults. Firefoxs AI sidebar introduces itself with a choice of AI chatbots, including the big three of OpenAIs ChatGPT, Googles Gemini, and Microsofts Copilot, along with Anthropics Claude and the less-obvious option of Paris-based Mistrals Le Chat.
Its upcoming AI Window, revealed the day I spoke to Chambers, doesnt have a preset default either, although Mozilla has not announced which AI services will be available through this waitlist-required option. I think there’s about 12% of the general population in the U.S., France, and Germany that don’t want to use AI, she said. My guess is it’s probably a little higher of Firefox users.
But she said Mozillas efforts to make AI an option to choose rather than a default to refuse have helped. We don’t jam it down their throats, she said. We do them all in a very privacy-preserving way. In particular, Firefox relies on on-device processing for such features as language translation and automatically organizing an overwhelming array of browser tabs.
Chambers also stressed that Mozilla wants to ensure that AI doesnt close off the open web. It’s incredibly important that people can still discover things, that they can verify, that they can explore around, she said. Yet, the AI Overview answers of its Google default seem to be discouraging that sort of exploration all too well.
As an organization, Mozilla has not leaned too hard into AI. Saying the code that we launch is all still written by people, Chambers added that Mozillas developers have found Anthropics Claude Code and other tools more useful for things like testing and for working through bugs and so forth.
Market share matters
Mozillas core problem, however, is not making new AI features easy to find its finding new users. The browser that singlehandedly destroyed Internet Explorers near-monopoly and then held a quarter of the desktop-browser market in 2011 now sits in fourth place, with under 4% of the market worldwide and in the United States, per Cloudflares statistics.
Chambers said that this tide is slowly turning in Europe thanks to the EUs Digital Markets Act, which requires companies designated as gatekeepers to take such extra steps to avoid favoring their own products as browser-choice screens in Android and iOS. Mozilla says its since seen a 149% jump in daily active mobile users in France and a 130% boost in Germany.
Chambers called the DMA a really great boost for us, saying people get to choose browsers, and then they’re choosing us. She described the desktop market as tougher, offering this overall assessment: Our market share is pretty steady, but we’re making some really good progress.
Whatever slice of the browser market Firefox holds also matters for web compatibility — its the only vaguely mass-market browser that doesnt use WebKit or the Blink engine inside Chrome and browsers written on its open-source Chromium software, such as rave and Vivaldi.
Developing and maintaining a web-rendering framework outside of that duopoly is no easy task, but Chambers called it incredibly important to do. In our earlier conversation, she emphasized that Mozilla owning its own engine gives it a seat at the table in web-standards discussions.
Business horizons
Mozilla has spent years struggling to develop lines of business beyond its Google search-default royalties, with iffy results it shut down its read-it-later Pocket service this summer. But it continues to sell an add-on VPN based on Mullvads service, which Chambers said will soon be integrated into the browser.
In June of 2024, Mozilla stepped into Googles lane by buying the ad-tech firm Anonym, which Chambers said does a better job of still providing high-quality advertising results while keeping information more private through such privacy-preserving techniques as differential privacy. She expressed some hope for an upcoming revision to the EUs e-privacy rules that could help this division better compete with the likes of Google.
But zooming out, much of Mozillas pitch does not involve features or options as much as it centers around what Firefox and the organization behind it are not. As people look around at the people that are shaping the future of the world and the web, a lot of them are billionaires, a lot of them don’t seem to be very aligned with values that they may hold, and I think they’re looking to different leaders, right? she said. They’re trying to find people that are fighting for a better internet, which we’re doing.
Chambers leaned on Star Wars in describing Mozillas work as a little bit of a new version of the Rebel Alliance, Chambers explained, calling this a return to the internets early days when open-source people banded together and they created really great alternatives.
Asked if Google or Microsoft would be the Empire in this analogy, she waved off the question. I think it’s the traditional big tech companies. Mozillas role? Jedis. Definitely Jedis.
Disclosure: I moderated three panels at Web Summit, in return for which the events organizers paid for my hotel and are reimbursing my airfare.
Reducing the visibility of polarizing content in social media feeds can measurably lower partisan animosity. To come up with this finding, my colleagues and I developed a method that let us alter the ranking of peoples feeds, previously something only the social media companies could do.
Re-ranking social media feeds to reduce exposure to posts expressing anti-democratic attitudes and partisan animosity affected peoples emotions and their views of people with opposing political views.
Im a computer scientist who studies social computing, artificial intelligence, and the web. Because only social media platforms can modify their algorithms, we developed and released an open-source web tool that allowed us to re-rank the feeds of consenting participants on X, formerly Twitter, in real time.
Drawing on social science theory, we used a large language model to identify posts likely to polarize people, such as those advocating political violence or calling for the imprisonment of members of the opposing party. These posts were not removed; they were simply ranked lower, requiring users to scroll further to see them. This reduced the number of those posts users saw.
We ran this experiment for 10 days in the weeks before the 2024 U.S. presidential election. We found that reducing exposure to polarizing content measurably improved participants feelings toward people from the opposing party and reduced their negative emotions while scrolling their feed. Importantly, these effects were similar across political affiliations, suggesting that the intervention benefits users regardless of their political party.
This 60 Minutes segment covers how divisive social media posts get more traction than neutral posts.
Why it matters
A common misconception is that people must choose between two extremes: engagement-based algorithms or purely chronological feeds. In reality, there is a wide spectrum of intermediate approaches depending on what they are optimized to do.
Feed algorithms are typically optimized to capture your attention, and as a result, they have a significant impact on your attitudes, moods, and perceptions of others. For this reason, there is an urgent need for frameworks that enable independent researchers to test new approaches under realistic conditions.
Our work offers a path forward, showing how researchers can study and prototype alternative algorithms at scale, and it demonstrates that, thanks to large language models, platforms finally have the technical means to detect polarizing content that can affect their users democratic attitudes.
What other research is being done in this field
Testing the impact of alternative feed algorithms on live platforms is difficult, and such studies have only recently increased in number.
For instance, a recent collaboration between academics and Meta found that changing the algorithmic feed to a chronological one was not sufficient to show an impact on polarization. A related effort, the Prosocial Ranking Challenge led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, explores ranking alternatives across multiple platforms to promote beneficial social outcomes.
At the same time, the progress in large language model development enables richer ways to model how people think, feel, and interact with others. We are seeing growing interest in giving users more control, allowing people to decide what principles should guide what they see in their feedsfor example, the Alexandria library of pluralistic values and the Bonsai feed reranking system. Social media platforms, including Bluesky and X, are heading this way, as well.
Whats next
This study represents our first step toward designing algorithms that are aware of their potential social impact. Many questions remain open.
We plan to investigate the long-term effects of these interventions and test new ranking objectives to address other risks to online well-being, such as mental health and life satisfaction. Future work will explore how to balance multiple goals, such as cultural context, personal values, and user control, to create online spaces that better support healthy social and civic interaction.
The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.
Tiziano Piccardi is an assistant professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The next big meeting on your calendar might not have any other attendeesit might just be you. A growing number of high-performing leaders, including managers at Google and other Fortune 100 companies, are carving out protected focus blocks and treating them like mission-critical meetings.
With constant pings, shallow tasks, and back-to-back calls, this might be the only way to produce strategic, high-value work. Google and Microsoft have even rolled out Focus Time features that automatically block off calendars to protect deep work.
Paige Donahue is a product marketing leader at Google who helps YouTube creators grow their communities and monetize their followings. She says shes started using the Focus Time feature inside Google Calendar to carve out protected blocks for deep work. Before, my day was really just a stream of constant meetings, and I think a lot of people can relate to that, she says. It was meeting after meeting, ping after ping, and I was finding that I didnt have a lot of time to do the deep work thats really important to move things forward. Now, she notes, its much easier to see forward momentum. [The focus time feature] is really helping me get in the groove and tackle projects . . . instead of getting bogged down by endless meetings.
Deep work has become a job requirement
While the idea of deep work isnt new, the urgency around it is. Leaders can no longer treat focus as a luxury. In todays reactive workplace, carving out uninterrupted time for thinking and creating has become a core leadership responsibility.
And employees want this just as much as executives. According to a recent Twilio survey of over 1,200 UK workers, 47% said they prioritize distraction-free focus time, and 36% said theyd like their employers to formally schedule such quiet periods. This suggests that protecting focus isnt a personal quirkits a cultural shift waiting to happen.
But its all too easy to let your week get sucked up by shallow work, the work that may appear urgent (such as last-minute requests and fire drills) but rarely move you towards the end-of-year KPIs that determine your bonus and future promotion potential.
At Lifehack Method, where we coach executives and teams on productivity, we see this firsthand: when leaders skip focus time, teams flounder in shallow work. When they protect it, they model a culture of depth, clarity, and results. Every Friday, our clients practice a Weekly Planning ritual where they calendarize the entire week, ensuring strategic work has nonnegotiable slots before the week fills up with reactive tasks.
Forget time management, start managing your attention
The calendar is a useful tool, but the deeper shift is about what we choose to protect. As organizational psychologist Adam Grant points out, the old paradigm of time managementsqueezing as much as possible into the dayhas limits and can even be detrimental. The new frontier is attention management: the art of focusing on getting things done for the right reasons, in the right places, and at the right moments, as Grant defines it in a New York Times essay.
When we coach leaders in our programs, we encourage them to embrace this mindset shift. The question isnt How do I fit this in? but Does this deserve my attention? That pivot can mean the difference between a week lost in shallow work and a week that produces breakthrough outcomes. Use your deep work blocks to empty your mind of those pesky urgent tasks and give yourself the gift of diving into your most leveraged activities. These are often not even on your to-do list, thats how little attention they tend to get!
When a calendar block isnt enough, bring a buddy
Of course, protecting time on a calendar doesnt always mean using it well. Getting forward momentum is tough when youre facing procrastination and anxiety about how to start. Thats where accountability comes in. Enter virtual coworking, a rising trend that pairs you with a partner online to ensure you show up and do the work. Many of our clients here at Lifehack Method rely heavily on coworking sessions as a force multiplier to speed through otherwise procrastinated tasks.
Science backs this up. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience found that real-time, subtle feedback during lapses of attention helped participants regain focus. The researchers concluded that it may be more effective to intervene during low-focus moments than to simply enforce long, uninterrupted blocks. For high-stakes or creative work, this suggests that lightweight accountability systemslike coworking sessions or structured check-inscan serve as the feedback nudges that keep people in the zone.
Virtual coworking platforms are seeing traction among enterprise employees. Taylor Jacobson is the Founder & CEO of Focusmate, the worlds No. 1 virtual coworking community. He shares that Fortune 500 Focusmate members currently average 31% more sessions than the average user, and 13% more time spent on the platform.
Donahue shares that at work, she uses both virtual and in-person coworking to ensure she says on task. I am a big fan of coworking. I feel that it adds a layer of accountability and its just nice to sit around the campfire with other people who are in it as well. Its a great way to do deep focused work almost like a sprint.
How to make focus time impactful
Protecting focus blocks isnt just about willpower. It requires communication and culture change. Leaders who succeed tend to:
Treat focus time like a sacred meeting. Dont reschedule unless its truly urgent.
Communicate clearly. Let your team know when youre offline for focus and when youll be available again.
Pair protection with accountability. Use tools like Focusmate, oras we do at Lifehack Methodstack focus time with rituals like our Winning the Week Method planning process, which makes deep work part of the weekly rhythm.
Model the behavior. When managers visibly protect focus, employees feel empowered to do the same.
Protect your focus to future-proof your job
As tools evolve and workplace demands intensify, the rarest resource is no longer money, ideas, talent, or even time. Its unbroken attention. Leaders who defend it will drive innovation; those who dont risk drowning in noise. Focus time is not indulgent. Its the only way to do the kind of workcompanies actually pay leaders to do.
I saw my first holiday-themed ad on TV before Halloween. I was startled, yet not surprised. Kind of a funny feeling, really.
Yes, the annual holiday shopping sprint is upon us. For years, the process has been defined by frantic comparison searches and endless product review scrolling. But this year, you can finally delegate the busywork to an army of digital assistants.
AI is no longer just a party trick: it’s a legitimate, price-savvy, personal shopping engine. Want to skip the agonizing research and focus on finding that perfect gift without blowing your budget? Here are four essential AI tools you should be using right now.
Gift Idea Generator
You need a thoughtful gift for someone whose interests are scattered or obscure. Traditional gift guides are useless here. Enter AI.
Feed your favorite generative AI tool a rich, conversational prompt: “My uncle is 70, retired, loves restoring classic cars, collects vintage vinyl, and just started learning Italian. What are three unique gifts under $150?”
The AI cross-references these details against a massive product database to suggest items youd never dream up on your own.
For brainstorming with conversational prompts, services like Gemini, ChatGPT, Copilot, or Claude are perfect. If you want tools that link directly to purchasable products, check out dedicated gift AI tools such as Gift Genie or Giftruly.
Price Tracker
In the volatile holiday market, timing is everything. AI price-tracking tools eliminate the need for manual site refreshing and guesswork.
Flag a specific item or product category you want, and set a target price. The AI monitors thousands of product pages and vendor histories across the web, analyzing historical pricing data to determine if a “sale” is actually a good deal and alerts you the moment the item hits your desired price point.
You can use specialized browser extensions such as Camelcamelcamel for monitoring prices on large e-commerce sites, or utilize general AI search tools such as Google Shopping and Gemini to track price drops and historical pricing directly within search results.
Agentic “Just Buy It” Tools
This takes price tracking a step further. Agentic AI can do more than just find the deal; it can be instructed to execute the purchase for you.
Instead of merely entering a search query, issue a full command: “Find the best-rated stainless steel coffee maker with a thermal carafe under $100, and purchase it when a verified deal brings it under $85. Ship it to my home address.”
The AI agent, using your pre-approved payment and shipping details, actively monitors the market and, upon meeting your criteria, completes the entire checkout process – all without you lifting a finger.
Look for platform-specific agents like Gemini with Google Shopping or systems based on OpenAI’s Agentic Commerce Protocol, which are authorized to perform actions such as completing a checkout.
Automated Review Summaries
Before you commit to a purchase, you need the full picture on quality and common defects. But nobody has time to read 2,000 product reviews filled with shipping complaints and single-sentence praise.
AI uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to consume all available customer feedback, from star ratings to lengthy complaints, and generates a concise summary.
It intelligently extracts and aggregates the key themes, such as “battery life is excellent,” or “setup is too complicated,” presenting a balanced overview in a few short paragraphs or bullet points. This allows you to vet a product in seconds rather than hours.
Many large online retailers, such as Amazon, now have built-in AI summary capabilities displayed above the customer review section. Alternatively, you can simply paste the text of a bunch of reviews into a chatbot such as ChatGPT and ask it to summarize the sentiment and list the pros and cons.
Tennis is experiencing a resurgence, with almost 26 million people playing in the U.S. alone. That number has been on an upward trajectory five years in a row. While the sports renewed cultural relevance can be attributed to multiple factors, brands across fashion, entertainment, and even sports leagues like Major League Baseball are capitalizing on the trend through unconventional opportunities.
On December 8, LoanDepot Park, home of baseballs Miami Marlins, will undergo a temporary redesign to host the Unified Events Miami Invitational, a one-night, first-of-its-kind exhibition featuring top tennis stars Carlos Alcaraz, Joo Fonseca, Amanda Anisimova, and Jessica Pegula in a city with a strong appetite for elite tennis.
Brazilian tennis player Joo Fonseca [Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins]
While they have the Miami Open, there is such a fervor for tennis in the Miami market, especially for those players, says Molly Pendleton, SVP of MLS, Touring, and Unified Events.
To tap into the markets enthusiasm, Pendleton and her team originally planned to host the event in a traditional arena, a common choice for these exhibition matches. However, due to scheduling conflicts and the time needed to set up the courts, Unified Events decided not to take that route. Since both United Events and the Marlins work with sports and culture company IMG, the partners explored creative ways to bring tennis to a baseball stadium. They selected LoanDepot Park because it offered optimal sigh tlines and a high-quality fan experience.
I was skeptical until I saw the renderings of what it could look like and what the fan experience would be, says Pendleton. [I] got on board with the idea [that] this could be a really unique experience for fans and the players.
Anthony Favata, Vice President of Operations & Events for the Marlins, and his team created CAD renderings to visualize the transformation, which sealed the deal.
We have an extremely versatile building, says Favata. Tennis was always on the road map.
A Stadium Built for Adaptation
[Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins]
Historically, LoanDepot Park, formerly known as Marlins Park, was built to accommodate a variety of events. After opening in 2012, it hosted an international soccer game, and over the years, expanded to other entertainment, including concerts. Now, with recent investments in its infrastructure, the organization is reimagining the stadiums design to expand its non-baseball slate.
For the Marlins operations team, months of site visits, engineering assessments, and software modeling informed how they will compress the stadiums 130,000-square-foot footprint with 37,442 seats into an 8,700-square-foot environment with 12,000 seats for a quality viewing experience.
Its very important that you have that intimacy and the premium feel of being as close to the court as you can get, Favata explained. One thing that [was] created for us is the need to remove the pitchers mound.
Design Challenges and Transformations
Unlike a tennis court, the typical dimensions of a baseball field is not rectangular but rather a snow-coned shape. To achieve the level of intimacy spectators want during a tennis match, the Marlins will place the court in front of home plate. Based on their CAD visualization, the team decided that the court will run diagonally from first base to third base.
[Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins]
One of the most complex design challenges in creating an intimate environment is the full removal of the pitchers mound, an undertaking requiring roughly eight hours by a dedicated five-person crew.
We’ll remove [the] clay, and we’ll make sure it’s flat so that our flooring can come on top of that mound and then we can come on top of it with the cork, explains Favata. This step ensures the installed court sits at the ideal distance from spectator seats so fans have up close and clear views of play.
Previously, LoanDepot Park featured a natural grass field. However, the stadium later transitioned to a turf surface. Leveraging the stadiums in-house flooring system has proven beneficial, allowing adaptability of its turf surface for various events. A team of up to 20 people will lay down a thick, plastic event decking or protective flooring called Terraplas directly on top of the clay comprising the pitchers mound. To further avoid impacting the clay underneath, the team will place a cork-rubber blend called Regupol Aktiv atop the Terraplas, followed by another layer of wood. Finally, additional workers will lay down the professional hard court, which will be transported overnight from the Charlotte Invitational happening just before the exhibition match in Miami.
[Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins]
The Marlins operations team will get a head start on the mound removal for another event occurring two days prior to the match. However, the majority of the conversion will happen overnight, involving about 37 people across multiple vendors working from roughly 10 p.m. on December 7 into the morning hours of December 8.
Enhancing the intimacy created by removing the pitchers mound will be the addition of roughly 600 temporary seats. The team will also recline the foul ball netting. While the main event will occur infield, the Marlins plan to restrict access to the outfield.
As Favatas team reconfigures the field into a tennis court, ensuring player safety is critical.
Although it’s an exhibition, we want to make sure that the court is at the highest level of play, Favata said. Some of the best in the world are going to be performing. We want to make sure it’s safe for them.
Creating a Premium Tennis Environment
Beyond the technical build, the team will deliver a complete tennis environment with premium courtside seating, hospitality, and signature cocktails (Miami Ace and Sunset Invitational) inspired by the U.S. Opens Honey Deuce. Partner brand activations include Segafredos specialty desserts and coffee, Geicos tennis bracelet activation, and Penguin Tennis Apparels pop-up retail shop to create an immersive experience.
[Photo: Courtesy of Miami Marlins]
Depending on its success, Unified Events anticipates this invitational being an annual event in Miami. Its already nearing capacity with about 9,500 seats sold, with tickets starting at $40.
In the meantime, the Miami Marlins are preparing for other events in the new year, like the Winter Classic in partnership with the National Hockey League.
We’re very much involved in trying to continue to put this venue at the forefront of the concert and live entertainment business [with] some of those sports that you don’t typically consider in a baseball diamond that are cool, that are splashy, that are global, Favata said. [We want to] draw an attendee base to the facility that may not already be familiar with the venue in hopes that we give them a great experience and they return for Marlins baseball.
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Zillow economists use an economic model known as the Zillow Market Heat Index to gauge the competitiveness of housing markets across the country.
This model looks at key indicatorsincluding home price changes, inventory levels, and days on marketto generate a score showing whether a market favors sellers or buyers.
Higher scores point to hotter, seller-friendly metro housing markets. Lower scores signal cooler markets where buyers hold more negotiating power.
According to Zillow:
Score of 70 or above = strong sellers market
Score from 55 to 69 = sellers market
Score from 45 to 54 = neutral market
Score from 28 to 44 = buyers market
Score of 27 or below = strong buyers market
Nationally, Zillow rates the U.S. housing market at 48 in its October 2025 reading, published last week.
That said, Zillows reading varies significantly across the country.
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Among the 250 largest metro-area housing markets, these 20 are the HOTTEST marketswhere sellers have the most power:
Rochester, NY 120
Syracuse, NY 80
Hartford, CT 76
Bridgeport, CT 70
Racine, WI 67
San Francisco, CA 66
New York, NY 65
Albany, NY 65
Lancaster, PA 65
Manchester, NH 64
San Jose, CA 63
Poughkeepsie, NY 63
Anchorage, AK 63
Springfield, MA 62
Norwich, CT 62
Providence, RI 60
Kingston, NY 60
Richmond, VA 59
Buffalo, NY 59
New Haven, CT 59
Among the 250 largest metro-area housing markets, these 20 are the COLDEST marketswhere buyers have the most power:
Florence, SC 8
Jackson, TN 10
Gulfport, MS 14
Lafayette, IN 18
Longview, TX 19
Charleston, WV 20
Macon, GA 20
Terre Haute, IN 22
Brownsville, TX 25
Evansville, IN 25
Asheville, NC 26
Fayetteville, AR 27
Daphne, AL 28
Beaumont, TX 29
Hickory, NC 29
Lubbock, TX 30
Naples, FL 31
Saginaw, MI 32
Bowling Green, KY 32
Lincoln, NE 33
Does ResiClub agree with Zillows assessment?
Directionally, I believe Zillow has correctly identified some regional housing markets where buyers have gained the most powerparticularly around the Gulfas well as markets where sellers have maintained (relatively speaking) somewhat of a grip, including portions of the Northeast and Midwest.
Based on my personal housing analysis, I consider much of Florida (particularly southwest Florida) and chunks of Texas (particularly areas with a lot of new single-family home construction) the weakest/softest chunk of the U.S. housing market. Not too far behind are pockets of Colorado, Georgia, and Arizona markets where theres built-up unsold spec inventory.
What did this Zillow analysis look like back in spring 2021 during the pandemic housing boom? Below is Zillows October 2021 reading, published in November 2021:
This years busiest shopping day was a boon for live-shopping apps.
Even at a time of inflation and economic uncertainty, Americans were ready to spend come Black Friday. U.S. online spending was up 9.1% from last year, according to data from Adobe Analytics.
While holiday spending has typically been dominated by traditional e-commerce, live-shopping platforms TikTok Shop and Whatnot also reported record-breaking sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday.
On Black Friday, the livestream marketplace Whatnot reported more than $75 million in single-day live sales, tripling last years total. On average, shoppers bought 40 items per second.
One small business in the sports card category sold more than $1 million in a single show. The highest-priced item sold on Black Friday was a sports card box for $80,000.
“The way people shop is changing, and live is leading it, Armand Wilson, VP of categories an expansion, told Fast Company. People want more than a transaction. They want to connect with sellers, see the product live, and be part of the moment.
These record-breaking sales come as livestream content on the platform has reached 20 million minutes per week. Whatnot also reported a fourfold increase in first-time buyers this year compared with last years Black Friday event.
Whatnot isnt the only platform finding success with livestream shopping over the holidays. According to TikTok, its live-shopping feature also delivered a record-breaking performance this year.
Brands and content creators held more than 760,000 livestreams on the platform, generating 1.6 billion-plus views throughout the Black Friday period. These efforts paid dividends, with this years livestream sellers experiencing 84% more sales growth than last years, according to the company.
Pop Mart, maker of the viral Labubu toys, had one of the most popular livestreams during TikToks Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale. The Skullpanda x Wednesday Plush came out as the top-selling item.
From household name brands like Crocs and Kim Kardashians Skims to small businesses and content creators, live shopping is gaining traction across the U.S.
Live shopping is where brand love starts. Its a dynamic, interactive experience that deepens how our users connect with brands on TikTok, Patrick Nommensen, head of strategic initiatives for TikTok Shop in the Americas, told Fast Company.
While it still represents a small percentage of the e-commerce market, consumer trend forecaster WGSN has found that conversion rates for live shopping are 10 times higher than those for traditional e-commerce.
That immediate, real-time engagementintroducing audiences to new products, demonstrating their value, and facilitating direct interactionis what builds trust, strengthens community, and turns interest into long-term loyalty, Nommensen said.
Nearly half (46%) of U.S. consumers have now purchased through a livestream event and would do so again, according to data from market research firm Mintel.
If this years Black Friday sales are anything to go by, that number is only going to go up.
Which terms best represent 2025?
Every year, editors for publications ranging from the Oxford English Dictionary to the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English select a word of the year.
Sometimes these terms are thematically related, particularly in the wake of world-altering events. Pandemic, lockdown, and coronavirus, for example, were among the words chosen in 2020. At other times, they are a potpourri of various cultural trends, as with 2022s goblin mode, permacrisis, and gaslighting.
This years slate largely centers on digital life. But rather than reflecting the unbridled optimism about the internet of the early aughtswhen words like w00t, blog, tweet, and even face with tears of joy emoji () were chosenthis years selections reflect a growing unease over how the internet has become a hotbed of artifice, manipulation, and fake relationships.
When seeing isnt believing
A committee representing the Macquarie Dictionary of Australian English settled on AI slop for their word of the year.
Macquarie defines the term, which was popularized in 2024 by British programmer Simon Willison and tech journalist Casey Newton, as low-quality content created by generative AI, often containing errors, and not requested by the user.
AI slop, which can range from a saccharine image of a young girl clinging to her little dog to career advice on LinkedIn, often goes viral, as gullible social media users share these computer-generated videos, text, and graphics with others.
Images have been manipulated or altered since the dawn of photography. The technique was then improved, with an assist from AI, to create deepfakes, which allows existing images to be turned into video clips in surreal ways. Yes, you can now watch Hitler teaming up with Stalin to sing a 1970s hit by the Buggles.
What makes AI slop different is that images or video can be created out of whole cloth by providing a chatbot with just a promptno matter how bizarre the request or ensuing output.
Meet my new friend, ChatGPT
The editors of the Cambridge Dictionary chose parasocial. They define this as involving or relating to a connection that someone feels between themselves and a famous person they do not know, a character in a book, film, TV series . . . or an artificial intelligence.
These asymmetric relationships, according to the dictionarys chief editor, are the result of the publics fascination with celebrities and their lifestyles, and this interest continues to reach new heights.
As an example, Cambridges announcement cited the engagement of singer Taylor Swift and football player Travis Kelce, which led to a spike in online searches for the meaning of the term. Many Swifties reacted with unbridled joy, as if their best friend or sibling had just decided to tie the knot.
But the term isnt a new one: It was coined by sociologists in 1956 to describe the illusion of having a face-to-face relationship with a performer.
However, parasocial relationships can take a bizarre or even ominous turn when the object of ones affections is a chatbot. People are developing true feelings for these AI systems, whether they see them as a trusted friend or even a romantic partner. Young people, in particular, are now turning to generative AI for therapy.
Taking the bait
The Oxford Dictionarys word of the year is rage bait, which the editors define as online content deliberately designed to elicit anger or outrage by being frustrating, provocative, or offensive, typically posted in order to increase traffic to or engagement with a particular web page or social media content.
This is only the latest word for forms of emotional manipulation that have plagued the online world since the days of dial-up internet. Related terms include trolling, sealioning, and trashposting.
Unlike a hot takea hasty opinion on a topic that may be poorly reasoned or articulatedrage baiting is intended to be inflammatory. And it can be seen as both a cause and a result of political polarization.
People who post rage bait have been shown to lack empathy and to regard other peoples emotions as something to be exploited or even monetized. Rage baiters, in short, reflect the dark side of the attention economy.
Meaningless meaning
Perhaps the most contentious word choice in 2025 was 6-7, chosen by Dictionary.com. In this case, the controversy has to do with the actual meaning of this bit of Gen Alpha slang. The editors of the website describe it as being meaningless, ubiquitous, and nonsensical.
Although its definition may be slippery, the term itself can be found in the lyrics of the rapper Skrilla, who released the single Doot Doot (6 7) in early 2025. It was popularized by 17-year-old basketball standout Taylen Kinney. For his part, Skrilla claimed that he never put an actual meaning on it, and I still would not want to.
6-7 is sometimes accompanied by a gesture, as if one were comparing the weight of objects held in both hands. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer recently performed this hand motion during a school visit. The young students were delighted. Their teacher, however, informed Starmer that her charges werent allowed to use it at the school, which prompted a clumsy apology from the chastened prime minister.
Throw your hands in the air?
The common element that these words share may be an attitude best described as digital nihilism.
As online misinformation, AI-generated text and images, fake news, and conspiracy theories abound, its increasingly difficult to know whom or what to believe or trust. Digital nihilism is, in essence, an acknowledgment of a lack of meaning and certainty in our online interactions.
This years crop of words might best be summed up by a single emoji: the shrug (). Throwing ones hands up, in resignation or indifference, captures the anarchy that seems to characterize our digital lives.
Roger J. Kreuz is an associate dean and Feinstone Interdisciplinary Research Professor at the University of Memphis.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
