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When Gabriela Flax left her corporate position managing 40 people to work on her career coaching businesses solo and moved from London to Sydney, the first thing she noticed was the silence. Without the constant movement, office hum, phones, and elevator dings, she says, she could finally bask in the quiet shed always craved. But, she quickly realized, Oh, wow, there’s no one around me. Flax, a career coach and founder of the newsletter Pivot School, says, I initially named my Substack No One’s in the Kitchen. I’d get off a work call super excited [because I] signed a new client . . . go to my kitchen to make a coffee, and no one’s there . . . just my dog looking back at me. Running a business alone can feel liberating, but it can also come with a cost: a unique type of loneliness research suggests stems from acute uncertainty, resource constraints, responsibility, and time pressures. Online, subreddits, creator cohorts, and Discord groups brim with solo founders seeking to manage loneliness. Loneliness is a mental health emergency in many cases, says Dr. Michael A. Freeman, a San Francisco-based psychiatrist who works exclusively with entrepreneurs. Ironically perhaps, entrepreneurs often feel quite alone despite the fact that they have very large networks and communicate with lots of people every week, he explains, because those are largely transactional role relationships and solopreneurs, particularly, are pursuing a uniquely personal vision. The loneliness can come from a lack of people, but it can also come from being the only person who holds your why so tightly, says Flax. Identifying the loneliness loop Particularly in a ventures early days, solopreneurs are living and breathing their new business, explain researchers Ashley Evenson, lecturer of creative enterprise at Goldsmiths, University of London and Beki Gowing, lecturer in fashion enterprise at London College of Fashion, who coauthored a study on entrepreneurial loneliness and burnout. Loneliness, they say, [can be] the catalyst for other mental health difficulties, [eroding] decision-making, creativity, and emotional resilience. Social interactions slip, overwork rises, and a vicious and toxic cycle takes hold. Diane Sullivan, business professor at the University of Dayton, calls this the regulatory loop of loneliness: Some founders respond by building connections and hobbies, while others withdraw, potentially making isolation worse . In Flaxs case, she had to get creativedigital lunch invites via TikTok, long-form writing for other solo-foundersto cultivate relationships in her new role and city. In what Flax describes as an eat what you kill field, solopreneurs can ill-afford to let loneliness derail their purpose. Heres how experts recommend fighting it. Seek deep social experiences Taking the first step to get out of a loneliness rut can feel awkward, but its key to make the effort to engage offline, even if it feels uncomfortable at first. Juliana Schroeder, associate professor in the Management of Organizations group at Berkeley Haas, says one of the major instigators of loneliness is that people are trading deep social experiences for shallow social experiences. Shallower social experiences are those that leverage AI connection, online engagement (particularly on social media platforms), and prioritize more superficial types of interactions, like short text-based conversations, for example, or group conversations over one-on-ones. Other potential connections, like talking with neighbors or disagreeing counterparts (say, talking across the political divide), are starting to disappear entirely, she says. I suggest setting up environments that involve regular contact with community members, having recurring deep conversations to maintain and grow friendships, and stretching outside of your social comfort zone when any opportunity arises. And it may not be as hard we imagine. We find that people’s psychological intuitions about some of these interactions are miscalibrated, she explains, and the awkwardness and depletion we anticipate is often overridden by the pleasantness of the interaction and how good both parties feel afterwards. Flax recommends seeking connection outside of work: If you go to the gym at 3 p.m. on a Tuesday, or a coffee shop at 11 a.m. on a Thursday, not everyone in those spaces is going to be self-employed or building their own thing. But . . . chances are they might not have a [traditional] nine-to-five, she explains. It’s hard the first five times you [introduce yourself]. By time number six, you’re like, oh, whatever. Quality over quantity Preempting loneliness, at least initially, may also help proactively manage it, says Freeman, who recommends, engaging in a rich set of relationships that do not involve being a leader and ultimate decision-maker. One of the founders I work with belongs to a football team that is part of a regional amateur league. He has many friends on the team, which he doesnt have to lead, and the camaraderie gives him a lot of social support, he adds. Flax agrees, noting online cohorts, while full of a unanimous understanding of were all in this together, can lose meaningful connection when they exceed six to seven people. Dont just put us all in a room, she says, adding that breakout rooms on a Zoom call, for instance, help foster one-on-one connection. Back to basics, away from the drawing board Tim Michaelis, assistant professor in the department of psychology at North Carolina State University, founded and runs an annual Health in Entrepreneurship Conference. Physical activity and sleep, he says, are two big recommendations, citing additional research that leisure activities can provide a way to detach from entrepreneurial work and improve venture performance. Engaging with a local university or community college can help connect with like-minded people, feel less alone, and improve wellbeing, he adds. A small step could be going to watch a pitch competition or email a profesor to see if they need help with a guest lecture . . . Sometimes its a clear win-win. Ultimately, its worth remembering that loneliness does not increase just because youre a team of one. Claude Fernet, an organizational behavior professor at Université du Québec Trois-Rivires, who studies job stressors in small and medium enterprises, raises an important point. Solo founders may actually have a bit of an advantage when it comes to job stressors and loneliness. Thats because “owner-managers” (or entrepreneurs with a small team of employees) feel the additional responsibility for others wellbeing and salary, leading to, the burden of shielding others from stress. Still, he adds, That said, the psychological toll of isolation remains a significant concern in both cases. Flax, meanwhile, recommends thinking of loneliness in stages. Dont fight [it], she says, Because solitude is a part of building something meaningful . . . The day will come where the work you put into it is seen by others and you can create incredible community off the back of it.
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Tiny fragments of microplasticsfrom clothes, car tires, packaging, and other sourcesslip through most water filters. But at a water treatment plant on the coast in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where plastic-filled wastewater would normally flow into the ocean, new technology has captured hundreds of millions of microplastic particles over the past year. The technology, from a startup called PolyGone, can also clean microplastic out of lakes and rivers or treat wastewater at factories. The startup spun out of research at Princeton, where the founders drew inspiration from aquatic plants that can naturally attract microplastic. The plants have fibrous roots coated in a hydrophobic gel that pulls in pollution. We managed to imitate the geometry and hydrophobility of the aquatic plant root, says cofounder Yidian Liu. It has a lot of unevenness on the surface that creates little cavities for smaller pollutants to be trapped inside.” [Photo: PolyGone] Wastewater treatment plants are a pathway for microplastic pollution to enter the ocean, which is now filled with trillions of particles. Most wastewater plants in the U.S. don’t use advanced treatment before releasing water back into nature. Of those that do, most existing filters only catch larger microplastic, between 1 and 5 millimeters. Tinier fragments, invisible to the naked eye, slip through. Another type of fine mesh filter in use in some plants captures more, but then the plastic just ends up in landfills. In lab tests, PolyGone’s system captures 98% of microplastic. After the filters are full, they can be cleaned and reused. The plastic is concentrated and sent for reuse. In Atlantic City, where the company launched its first wastewater pilot in September 2024, it has already captured more than 520 million particles of microplastic, exceeding performance targets. The plastic goes to other companies: one that turns it into chemicals, another that is beginning to use it to make fuel. [Photo: PolyGone] The utility now plans to expand the pilot into a full-scale operational system. PolyGone, which recently raised a $4 million seed round of funding, designed a new filtration unit that automatically lowers itself into water and cleans itself on a schedule. The unit fits inside a standard shipping container, with all of the tech fully assembled inside so it can be deployed in a day at a wastewater plant. The company also designed another version of the technology that fits into wastewater pipes at factories. The first pilot of that system just launched at an industrial plant in Dubai. “This system is a very simple way for them to plug and play and get rid of microplastic before the water goes into their effluent,” says Liu. Other manufacturers are also beginning to test the technology, including clothing companies working to cut microplastic pollution from synthetic fabric. Cost varies depending on the system, but ranges from roughly $15,000 to $50,000. The technology is much less expensive than other advanced filtration, in part because the filter works passively to “dramatically reduce energy consumption compared to traditional advanced filtration systems that rely on high-pressure pumps,” Liu says. The open design avoids clogging, so it needs less maintenance. It also can easily be added to existing infrastructure, she says, rather than requiring expensive retrofits. [Photo: PolyGone] The tech can also be used directly in nature, and the company has tested a Roomba-like robot that filters water as it moves across a lake. But funding is harder to secure for this approach. There’s more demand for industrial use, especially from brands that are trying to tackle sustainability goals. And at wastewater treatment plants, some states may soon consider new regulations that would require better pollution filtering. “California is leading on microplastic regulation,” says Liu. The state already requires microplastic testing in drinking water and is working on a new drinking water standard, though wastewater filtering isn’t mandated yet. “A huge reason is they don’t know what methodologies or systems are available for [wastewater plants] to quickly adopt for microplastic removal,” Liu says. “Our pilot is actually giving them a very good case study to understand okay, it is a problem that can be solved.”
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AI models have a voracious appetite for data. Keeping up to date with information to present to users is a challenge. And so companies at the vanguard of AI appear to have hit on an answer: crawling the webconstantly. But website owners increasingly dont want to give AI firms free rein. So theyre regaining control by cracking down on crawlers. To do this, theyre using robots.txt, a file held on many websites that acts as a guide to how web crawlers are allowedor notto scrape their content. Originally designed as a signal to search engines as to whether a website wanted its pages to be indexed or not, it has gained increased importance in the AI era as some companies allegedly flout instructions.In a new study, Nicolas Steinacker-Olsztyn, a researcher at Saarland University and his colleagues analyzed how different websites treated robots.txtand whether there was a difference between sites measured as reputable versus not reputable, specifically in terms of whether or not they allowed crawling. For many AI companies, “It’s kind of a do now and ask for forgiveness later thing, Steinacker-Olsztyn says.In the study, more than 4,000 sites were checked for their responses to 63 different AI-related user agents, including GPTBot, ClaudeBot, CCBot, and Google-Extendedall of which are used by AI companies in their effort to soak up information. The websites were then divided between reputable news outlets or misinformation sites, using ratings devised by Media Bias/Fact Check, an organization that categorizes news sources depending on their credibility and the factuality of their reporting. Across all 4,000 sites assessed, around 60% of those deemed to be reputable news websites blocked at least one AI crawler from accessing their information; among misinformation sites, only 9.1% did so. The average reputable site blocks more than 15 different AI agents through its robots.txt file. Misinformation sites, by contrast, tend not to shut out the crawlers at all. The biggest takeaway is that the reputable news websites keep well up-to-date with the evolving ecosystem as it pertains to these major AI developers and their practices, Steinacker-Olsztyn says. Over time, the gap between those who are willing to let bots crawl their sites and those that arent is widening. From September 2023 to May 2025, the proportion of platforms locking out crawlers increased from 23% to 60%, while the share of sites peddling misinformation stayed flat, the study found. The result, Steinacker-Olsztyn says, is that less reputable content is being hoovered up by and then spat out of AI models used routinely by hundreds of millions of people. Increasingly these models are also being used simply for information retrieval, replacing traditionally used options such as search engines or Google, Steinacker-Olsztyn adds. The conundrum over legitimate data For AI models to stay up-to-date on current events, they are trained on reputable sites, which is exactly what these sites dont want. The war over copyright and access to training data between AI companies and news sites is increasingly spilling into courtsThe New York Timess lawsuit against OpenAI, the makers of ChatGPT, for example, carried on into last week. Those lawsuits are prompted by allegations that AI companies are illegally scraping data on news websites to act as regularly updated, ground-truth-based training data for the models powering their AI chatbots. In addition to litigating their disputes, reputable news websites are blocking AI crawlers. Thats good for their businesses and rights. But Steinacker-Olsztyn is concerned about the broader impact. If reputable news is increasingly making this information unavailable, then this gives reason to believe this can affect the reliability of these models, he explains. Going forward, this is changing the percentage of legitimate data that they have access to. In essence: It doesnt matter to an AI crawler whether its viewing The New York Times or a disinformation website run out of Hoboken. Theyre both training data, and if one is easier to access than the other, thats all that matters. Not everyone is quite so certain about the negative impact of blocking crawlers. Felix Simon, a research fellow in AI and digital news at the University of Oxford-based Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism, says he wasnt surprised to learn that sites trafficking in misinformation would want to be crawled, whereas traditional publishers have an incentive at this point to prevent such scraping. Some of these traditional publishers, he adds, still allow some scraping for a plethora of reasons. Simon also cautions that just because misinformation sites are more likely to open their doors to AI crawlers, it doesnt necessarily mean that theyre polluting the information space as much as we may fear. AI developers filter and weigh data at various points of the system training process and at inference time, he says. One would hope that by the same means by which the authors have been able to identify untrustworthy websites, AI developers would be able to filter out such data.
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It looks like nothing more than a bedside fan. To program it, you hit the on button once. But what happens next could improve your memory by 226%. This is Memory Air, a new product born from decades of science charting the relationship between our nose and our brain. Each night, Memory Air cycles through 40 different, undisclosed scents, twice. As you sleepeven though you dont consciously smell these scentsresearch suggests that it can measurably improve your memory within weeks. [Photo: Memory Air] How is that possible? As the companys founderUC Davis professor emeritus Michael Leonexplains, We are functionally odor deprived. Whereas humans evolved in a scent-filled world, where we didnt even shower, he suggests that whatever room youre residing in now probably smells like nothing by design. Thats difficult, as our cognition and ability to smell are closely linked. “All memory loss precedes or is accompanied closely by olfactory loss,” notes Leon, who points out many of us experienced brain fog and loss of scent during COVID-19. “In most neurological diseases its the first symptom.” We don’t need to completely untangle the relationship between smell and memory to understand that they affect one another. Smell is a learnable behaviorand often a re-learnable behavior. And relearning that behavior can actually improve our memory. [Photo: Memory Air] Leon believes that smell has such a powerful effect on memory because the olfactory system has an anatomical advantage. It is the only sense that has a straight pathway to your hippocampal cluster, which manages memory and emotion. (Meanwhile, all other senses take a detour through your thalamus first.) By feeding this region of your brain new odors, research has found you can actually increase gray matter and neuroplasticitygenerating new connections in your brain. Smells appear to be a way to exercise and strengthen the very area of your brain that handles memory. In 2023, Leon published a study demonstrating that by routinely exposing people to smells, you could improve some of their mental faculties. A randomly assorted collection of people ages 60 to 85 were exposed to one of seven smells each night for two hours over six months. After that time, his team observed that the smelling group tested with a 226% improvement in memory over a control groupand fMRI scans exhibited positive shifts in brain structures supporting memory. But Leon is quick to point out that his findings are not special; rather, they are increasingly the norm. There are now about 20 studies that have used olfactory enrichment to improve memory, he says, noting that the methodologies vary wildly. I think the strength of literature as a whole is what we should look at. This is such a strong phenomenon. Who does it, and how they do it, is not as important as getting more odor to the brain. [Photo: Memory Air] Turning research into product To develop this science into a functional product, Leons team raised an undisclosed sum from a group of wealthy investors. They also tapped Christian Garnett, from Garnett Design Group, to spend three years transforming theory into intervention. For the final product, Leon wanted to mirror similar research out of South Korea, which subjected participants to a full 40 smells twice a day (and found similar gains around memory, while noting that it reduced depression and increased facilities with attention and language, too). But how do you fit 40 smells in a box? It was probably the biggest challenge, to figure out how to turn on and off scents at will, Garnett says. Memory Air needed to run through dozens of scents, twice, making each distinctive with no lingering odor that would blend them from one to another. That meant each had four minutes to appear and dissipate. Most of the scent industry is optimized to do the opposite: get the most scent out and have it last as long as possible, Garnett says with a laugh. Garnetts team tested all sorts of ideas. It tried developing a white odor technologythink white noise but for smellswith so many frequencies that everything cancels out into nothing, blinding your nose. It tested enzymes, as used by Febreze, to break scents down to clear them out of the room. But ultimately, it landed on an idea thats part Glade PlugIn, part machine gun. When setting up the device, you load it with a belt that looks like a bandolier. Instead of bullets, its filled with 40 individual essential oilsscents the team refuses to detail but insists are nothing unusual. (The order appears irrelevant, but the sheer number helps reduce habituation.) As the bandolier rotates through the night, it uses a bit of heat on the active oil pouch. With a phase-changing material, scent diffuses out when warmed while a large, low-speed fan quietly wafts the scent toward the sleeping person. The same moment you feel air from the fan hit you, you get the scent. The moment the fan cuts off, you don’t smell anything, Garnett says. This way you get 20 to 30 seconds of scent exposure before the fan tuns off, cools, and clears te room. This whole experience is designed to be automatic. Garnett pared back the product, removing lights and test modes to ensure anyone could use it perfectly. When you set up the Memory Air, all you do is slip in the scent belt and hit the on button right before bed. From there, it will know when to kick on. And while the scent belt will run out after a month, a subscription ships replacements to customers on a schedule. [Photo: Memory Air] A UX you dont experience The oddest part of Memory Air is that if it works as advertised, you wont actually even know its working. It runs in your sleep, leaving no olfactory footprint by design. And Leon notes that smells dont wake people up (smelling salts, incidentally, rouse people through irritation, not scent). In a way, its the opposite of sleep tracking. Memory Air isnt actively measuring anything. Its UX is largely imperceptible. But its value, if it works as research suggests, is that it could vastly impact someones mental capacity. Leon believes users could discover other effects too: In his 2023 study, he discovered people whod done the olfactory battery got 22 minutes more sleep per nightbut hes validating the idea before making any bold claims around Memory Air as a sleep aid. We think there are a number of other medical conditions that may be treatable with this same approach; weve identified 139 different medical conditions, all accompanied by olfactory loss, he says. Benefits of Memory Air could be significant, while the only real cost is the price itself. Memory Air is available now for $799, including the first months scent belt. Replacement belts cost $39 with a monthly subscription.
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A 220-pound, fully functional, solid-gold toiletonce offered to President Donald Trump as a satirical giftjust sold at a Sothebys auction for $12.1 million. The commode is a work of art called America created by Maurizio Cattelan in 2016. Cattelan is most well-known for his surreal, conversation-starting, and often controversial art concepts, like the 1999 piece La Nona Ora, which depicts a life-size Pope John Paul II getting struck by a meteorite, or the infamous 2019 piece Comedian, which is, put simply, a banana taped to a wall (which sold at auction for $6.2 million). After America debuted at the Guggenheim Museum in September 2016, it became an instant subject of public fascination, inspiring dozens of think pieces and even a front cover of the New York Post. In the nine years since, the intrigue surrounding the work has only grown after it was the target of a high-profile heist. Perhaps the most enduring legacy of America, though, will be its emergence as a striking symbol for Trumps first terma connection made even more poignant by the timing of its sale during Trumps second term, itself most visually recognizable by its glut of gilded motifs. The original America, on display at the Guggenheim Museum in 2016 [Photo: William Edwards/AFP/Getty Images] The storied, sometimes unbelievable history of America When it debuted to the public, America was not sequestered on a pedestal or inside a gallery space. Instead, it was located in the Guggenheims bathroom, where visitors were allowed five minutes each to, as one New York Post article put it at the time, crap all over America. In all, more than 100,000 guests lined up to do just that. At the time, the Guggenheim said that the artwork represented the American dream, with its utility ultimately reminding us of the inescapable physical realities of our shared humanity. Cattelan put it more bluntly to The New Yorker: Whatever you eat, a two-hundred-dollar lunch or a two-dollar hot dog, the results are the same, toilet-wise, he said. In 2019, the loo was sent to Englands Blenheim Palace, where it was to be put on view to the public for a second time. Just as the exhibition was set to open, a group of thieves broke into the palace, used sledgehammers and crowbars to pry the toilet out of the floor, and escaped in under five minutes. Two of the people involved in the theft were sentenced to prison in June of this year, but the original America has never been recovered. The America that just sold at Sothebys is actually a second version of the work, which Cattelan had previously alluded to but did not reveal in public until the sale. According to Sothebys, its the only other version of America in existence. People wait in line to use the fully functional installation of America at the Guggenheim Museum, 2016. [Photo: Christina Horsten/Picture Alliance/Getty Images] An 18-karat-gold throne In a new YouTube video about the whirlwind history of America, several Sothebys experts note that Cattelans reticence to provide much context about America is one of the reasons it became iconic. But the toilets connections to Trump were never exactly subtle. When America arrived at the Guggenheim just two months before Trump was elected in 2016, the museums then-blogger, Caitlin Dover, wrote in a post, The aesthetics of this throne recall nothing so much as the gilded excess of Trumps real-estate ventures and private residences. When Dover asked Cattelan about the connection, he said that while Trump wasnt top of mind when he conceived the piece, it was probably in the air. The allusion got a lot more explicit in 2018. That year, the Trump administration contacted the Guggenheim to request that the Vincent van Gogh painting Landscape With Snow be borrowed for Trumps private living quarters. According to The Washington Post, then-curator Nancy Spector, who wrote a book about Cattelans work in 1999, declined to lend the painting, suggesting America instead. The White House, it seems, did not respond to the subtle act of protest. A gilded symbol Trumps penchant for gold decor dates back decades. In 2004, he told reporters that the reign of Louis XIV represented his favorite styleand the gilded, rococo-esque aesthetic has become a visual hallmark of both his presidencies. This year alone, Trump has decked out the Oval Office in golden objects, accepted a luxury jet from Qatar filled with gold furniture, and begun construction on a new White House ballroom that will be, predictably, very gold. In some ways, a golden toilet feels like the ultimate symbol of a second term in which Trump has repeatedly strengthened his ties with billionaire investors while the average American is in the midst of a cost-of-living crisis. But when asked about the goal behind agreeing to offer America to the Trump family in 2018, Cattelan told The Post that his reasoning was a bit more lighthearted. “What’s the point of our life? he said at the time. Everything seems absurd until we die, and then it makes sense.” The original America at Blenheim Palace, 2019 [Photo: Leon Neal/Getty Images]
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