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A little while ago, Id submitted my article to a well-respected publication that Id done a lot of research for. I was beyond excited and delighted when, following an encouraging meeting with a senior editor, Id heard that they accepted it for publication. It had taken months to get the article to this point, many previous failed submission attempts, and over a decade of expertise and experiencebut Id finally done it! And it was going to be career-changing. Unfortunately, what happened next was anything but. After an initial follow-up email from the editor, I was informed that the article was under revision and would be sent for review shortly. Weeks went by, and I politely followed up and heard nothing back. A month passed, and another polite follow-up resulted in silence. Another month passed, and then another. Over a period of six months, my follow-ups resulted in total silence. Finally, I resigned myself to the fact that Id been professionally ghosted. Id expect this from a Tinder date, but not from an editor of a prestigious journal. I felt shocked, confused, and disappointed. When I confided in a close colleague, they shared a recent experience of being ghosted for a promotion. A senior manager had made that promise but never spoke about it again. That made me wonder: Is professional ghosting becoming the norm rather than the exception? The definition of ghosting “Ghosting” is a term that originally stemmed from internet culture, and people use it to describe when one party abruptly ceases communication without explanation. People often talk about it in the context of online dating, but it has made its way to the professional context. Now, its a description for a job interview you never hear back from, clients pulling contracts abruptly and ceasing all contact, or a colleague simply ignoring email after email. Being ghosted is confusing at best, and at worst, it can completely kill your confidence. Thats because ghosting creates what psychologists call an “ambiguous rejectiona rejection that lacks clarity and closure. An ambiguous rejection is distressing because our brain has no resolution, so it stays stuck in a loop of hope and disappointment, and is unable to complete the “ending process.” Professional ghosting is exactly that: an end of a relationship without an actual end. And the uncertainty this creates is malignant. Neuroscience shows that it triggers our threat response, which activates our nervous system and spreads anxiety and stress in the body. And if its happening within a company, research shows that it can kill employee trust quicker than you can say “boo.” Its no wonder that being ghosted can feel utterly destabilizing. Is professional ghosting on the rise? Research suggests that ghosting has become more commonplace since the pandemic. In Meghan Walsh’s recent article for the global consulting firm Korn Ferry, she cites data showing that three-quarters of employers were ghosted by a new hire in the past year, with an even higher percentage of job seekers saying theyd been ghosted during the interview process. So whats causing this? There are a multitude of reasons why ghosting might be on the rise. It might be due to an increasingly competitive job market, shifting digital communication norms, and the seemingly ever-increasing time constraints of modern life. But in any case, in the age of artificial intelligence and automationwhere you can literally have a bot write an email for you in less than three secondsIm calling BS on these excuses. I think its time we found our courage and relearned what quality communication looks like. The politeness paradoxwhy silence feels safer (even when its much worse) The psychological phenomenon called the politeness paradox explains why you might think its okay to ghost someone. The politeness paradox is when you avoid giving someone bad news out of fear that it will be more hurtful than silence. However, in actuality, people overwhelmingly prefer clarity over nothing at all. It feels worse to be dealing with the ambiguity of being ghosted rather than being told a simple “no.” Let this be a call to action: Have the courage and the respect to communicate thoughtfully and transparentlyand close the loop so people can move on. Your moment of discomfort delivering “bad news” saves someone else from agonizing over a lack of closure. As someone whos been on the receiving end of ghosting, I assure you that the kindest thing to do is to put someone out of their miseryrather than leaving them in the brutal “what if’ limbo. Here are five steps to help you move forward from professional ghosting. 1. Acknowledge the disappointment Ghosting is an emotional roller coaster. Youll experience a wave of different feelings as you try to make sense of it: hurt, disappointment, and rejection. Dont gaslight yourself by minimizing your experience. Being ghosted absolutely sucks. Acknowledge your emotions and confide in a trusted friendthis helps process the experience and regulate your nervous system. 2. Dont take it personally Ghosting says more about someone else’s avoidance patterns, and nothing about your worth. Your mind will create stories about your inadequacies or capabilitiesnone of these are rooted in the truth of the situation. 3. Meet yourself with self-compassion Be the friend you need right now rather than your own worst enemy. The experience of being ghosted can quickly descend into negative self-talk, overanalyzing what we might have done wrong, or berating ourselves. In Buddhist teaching, we call this the second arrow. By judging yourself harshly, you amplify your suffering. Instead, offer yourself comfort, words of kindness, and gentle encouragement, as you would a friend. 4. Let go of finding closure The reality is that you might never get an explanation. That is outside of your control. Closure becomes something yo need to offer yourself, not something you wait for others to give you. This takes you from feeling powerless to reclaiming your agency. 5. Move forward with intention Being ghosted was a moment of clarity for me. I refuse to replicate this behavior to others. Instead of letting my anger drive my future behavior toward others, Im allowing it to transform my perspective so I can do better by others. Id rather have an uncomfortable conversation than leave someone else in the distress of ambiguous loss. Silence is easy, but kindness takes courage. Ghosting may be becoming more common, but that doesnt mean we should normalize or accept it. To create workplaces that are more human, we need to invite humanity back into how we communicate. That means replying (even if briefly), closing loops, delivering an honest message with kindness, and recognizing that our own discomfort is not an excuse for disrespect. Professional ghosting can leave a real scar. But it was also a moment of clarity for mea choice to lead from a place of clarity, courage, and empathy. And if youve been ghosted, let it sting, but dont let it shrink you. Take the lesson, and let it remind you of the kind of person you want to be.
Category:
E-Commerce
As always, many of this year’s best apps are ones you’ve probably never heard of. Sure, there are some big names on this list, particularly in the buzzy field of artificial intelligence, but the real standouts of 2025 innovated on a smaller scale. They give you better ways to take notes or remember things, write with just your voice, have fun snapping photos, or even indulge in some gaming classics. For this list, “apps” include desktop and mobile software, along with browser extensions and web tools. Some apps are entirely new, while others received transformative updates that make them worthy of a fresh look. Hopefully, you’ll discover something that quickly becomes a must-have. Productivity Raycast: Open Raycast with a keyboard shortcut, and you can quickly find files, search the web, access your clipboard history, paste frequently written text snippets, reposition your windows, look up emojis, ask AI questions, and more. It’s a Swiss Army knife of time-saving tools for power users, and it finally arrived on Windows and iOS this year to complement the long-running Mac version. (Windows, Mac, iOS) Payload: Cloud storage is great, but sometimes you need a faster way to send files to yourself. Payload checks your Wi-Fi network for any devices where its app is installed, then uses that connection to transfer files almost instantly, without ever leaving your local network. Previously desktop-only, Payload arrived on mobile devices this year and launched an optional online service for remote file sharing. (Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android) Ghost Capture App: This free app streamlines the act of adding items to your to-do list. Just long-press the little ghost icon and say what you’re trying to accomplish, and it will create a task that syncs to either Apple Reminders or Google Tasks with no extra buttons to push. (iOS) Monotype: Typewriter Simulator: If you miss (or, for that matter, remember) the feel of writing with a typewriter, this app is for you. It provides an on-screen typewriter that produces a satisfying clack with each key press, followed by a ding and the need to hit Enter (or, more appropriately, Return) at the end of each line. When you’re finished, you can copy the text into whatever document editor you normally use. Thankfully, the app allows you to delete without any Wite-Out. (Mac) Antinote: Apple’s default TextEdit app is too clunky when you’re just trying to jot down some quick thoughts. Antinote speeds things up with a clean, plain-text scratch pad, which you can pop open with a keyboard shortcut (Option+A by default). You can also create to-do lists by typing “todo” at the top of a note, or perform calculations by typing “math” at the top. It’s a $5 onetime purchase after a free trial. (Mac) Orb: Most internet speed test tools just give you a snapshot of upload and download speeds. Orb instead lets you run persistent speed tests throughout the day, providing a clearer view of overall reliability. You can even set up the app on multiple devices around the house to see where the connection is weakest. (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android) AI Proton Lumo: While most AI companies keep a record of your chat history and may even share conversations with human reviewers, Proton’s Lumo AI makes a point of being oblivious. Proton doesn’t log users’ chats or use them to train its models, so the company has no way of accessing your chat history. (iOS, Android, web) Perplexity Comet: Amid a wave of AI web browsers, Perplexity stands out for its ability to navigate the web on your behalf. Try letting it cancel your subscriptions, search across multiple flight deal sites, or even put a single question to multiple AI tools to see how their answers differ. Just be careful about letting it access sensitive data. (Windows, Mac, Android) Wispr Flow: Your phone or computer’s built-in voice dictation features are fine if you don’t mind doing a lot of manual cleanup. Wispr Flow manages to be a lot more accuratesometimes eerily soas it uses AI processing to both clean up your text and learn from your writing tendencies over time. It’s also just convenient to use in short bursts with push-to-talk keyboard shortcuts. (Windows, Mac, iOS) [Screenshot: Jared Newman] Superwhisper: Another voice dictation app, Superwhisper stands out by letting you use on-device speech-to-text models with no online processing. This allows for unlimited usage without any privacy concerns while still offering handy shortcuts for push-to-talk mode. (Windows, Mac, iOS) Google Gemini: Google’s AI assistant isn’t new, but its built-in “Nano Banana” text-to-image model that arrived this year would be a killer app on its own. Start by uploading any image, then ask to render it in a different visual style, remove objects (including chain link fences), zoom and enhance, or add more images to the scene. You can even draw around parts of the image to show where the edits should go. (iOS, Android, web) Dia: The most thoughtful of the AI browsers, Dia lets you @ mention your open tabs to synthesize information from them, ask questions about your browser history, and take action in web apps like Gmail and Google Calendar. Its smartest feature, though, is its search box, which automatically routes your queries to AI or web search, based on what you write. (Mac) Sora: What if there was a social network where you didnt need to stop and wonder if something was generated by AIbecause everything was generated by AI? Thats the premise behind OpenAIs Sora. You can even create an AI doppelgänger of yourself and control who can use it in their videos (just you, just your friends, or everyone). Yes, deceptive Sora deepfakes leaking onto the rest of the internet with their watermarks removed is an issue. But at its best, the app itself is silly, fun, and not at all misleading. (iOS, Android) Photo and video Affinity: Serif’s image editing suite is a popular subscription-free alternative to Adobe’s Photoshop, Illustrator, and Designer, so users got nervous last year when the company was acquired by Canvaitself a subscription-driven business. This year, Canva didn’t just honor its promise to offer Affinity without a subscription, it released the entire desktop suite for free. The only catch is that you need a Canva accountand a subscription if you want to use some AI tools. (Windows, Mac) Not Boring Camera: This iPhone app offers a more fun way to take photos, with skeuomorphic buttons and knobs for zoom, exposure, focus, and more. The two-second preview of snapped photos that appears in the viewfinder is an especially nice touch, allowing you to quickly discard a bad picture while staying in photography mode. (iOS) Cassette: The self-proclaimed “Home Video Player” app offers a fun way to revisit all the footage you’ve captured on your iPhone. The app groups your videos by year, presenting them as VHS tapes on a shelf. Tapping on a cassette gives you a stream of auto-playng videos, which you can either swipe through TikTok-style or advance through with the fast-forward and rewind buttons. (iPhone, iPad) Google Vids: Google’s foray into multitrack video editing lets you combine multiple video and audio clips with transitions, voice-overs, and subtitles. Of course, there’s an AI angle, with an option to generate video clips using Google’s Veo 3 model, but otherwise it’s just an easy way to edit videos online for free. (Web) Detail: Apple’s winner for “Best iPad App of the Year,” Detail is a handy tool for professional (or aspiring) content creators. It helps record video in a variety of ways, including making reaction videos and reading script from an on-screen teleprompter, and its AI editor can help trim out unwanted bits. The real power, though, comes from being able to combine multiple iPhones and iPads for things like split-screen video podcasts, live monitoring on an iPad while shooting on your phone, and recording top-down iPhone footage while speaking into an iPad. (iOS, Mac) Camo Streamlight: The free Windows app makes you look better on Zoom calls by surrounding the outer edges of your screen in bright white. It takes inspiration from those ring lights you can attach to your screen, and while the effect is subtle in a well-lit room, it can make a big difference when the room lightning isn’t great. (Windows) Shutter Declutter: If your Apple Photos library is swimming in tens of thousands of images you couldnt care less about, youre not alone. Shutter Declutter can help you finally make progress at pruning them. It lets you efficiently swipe to delete the detritus, and reminds you each day to review pictures you took on todays date in previous years. The fewer fuzzy and/or accidental shots that remain, the more you can enjoy the photos worth preserving. (iOS, iPadOS) Security and privacy UBlock Origin Lite: Apple’s Safari browser finally has the free, open-source, customizable ad-and-tracker blocker it’s been missing. This offshoot of the venerable uBlock Origin does a great job decluttering web pages, and you can dig into its settings menu to tailor the filtering rules to your likingfor instance, to hide cookie notices or social media widgets. The same extension is also available for Chrome. (iOS, Mac) Have I Been Pwned?: For more than a decade, Have I Been Pwned? has been invaluable for checking whether your email and passwords have been exposed in data breaches. (The answer is almost certainly “yes.”) This year, the site added a personal dashboard with a full history of breaches for your email address, the types of data exposed, and optional email addresses for the next time your email is compromised. (Web) Proton Authenticator: Proton’s two-factor authentication app is what Authy used to be before it discontinued its desktop apps. It allows you to set up 2FA codes that add an extra layer of protection to your online accounts, then back up and sync them to your other devices. This makes 2FA more convenient while reducing the odds of getting locked out. (Windows, Mac, Linux, iOS, Android) Leisure time WikiTok: This clever website takes the addictive infinite scroll of TikTok and applies it to random Wikipedia pages, so you can swipe through until something catches your interest. The experience is far less scintillating, but that’s kind of the point. Try using it before bed. (Web) Iconfactory Tapestry: If you’re feeling burned out by social media, Tapestry lets you stitch together a chronological feed of your favorite internet content sources. Those can include publications, YouTube channels, Reddit forums, Bluesky accounts, and even custom sources such as a Gmail inbox. (iOS, Mac) Pocket Casts: This venerable podcast player continues to establish itself as the best option that works on any device, not just those made by Apple. This year, Pocket Casts made its web player free, and it syncs your progress from the mobile app for picking up where you left off. It also overhauled its search function, added recommendations for similar podcasts, and launched searchable transriptions as a paid feature. (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, web) DOSBox Pure Unleashed: This free app drastically simplifies the previously complex task of running old DOS games on your computer. Instead of having to deal with command prompts, you can just drag and drop the files into the DOSBox window and select the .EXE file you want to run. All you need to do beyond that is supply the games, which are easily obtainable from sources like the Internet Archive and My Abandonware. (Windows, Mac, Linux)
Category:
E-Commerce
Two years ago, a $575 million battery factory planned in St. Louis, Missouri, was set to be the first large-scale lithium iron phosphate (LFP) facility in the U.S. This November, after the Trump administration withdrew a grant for the project, it was cancelledbecoming one of more than 50 major clean energy projects to be scrapped or scaled back in 2025. From January through November, as federal policy turned against clean energy, companies abandoned more than $32 billion in investments, according to the most recent data from E2, a nonpartisan organization that tracks clean energy projects in the U.S. Some companies are still announcing new projects, but lost investments are now outpacing them by three to one. “The scale of cancellations shows how fragile this moment is for Americas clean energy economy,” says Michael Timberlake, director of research at E2. The list includes a new $4.3 billion General Motors EV plant in Michigan that’s being retooled to make gas-powered vehicles, a $3.2 billion Stellantis battery factory in Illinois that was cancelled, and a $2.6 billion battery factory in Georgia that was scrapped by a Norway-based manufacturer, among dozens of other projects. The majority of the cancelled projects are factories, not clean energy generation plants, though some solar or wind farms may not show up on the list because their cancellations are harder to track. (Though there is some evidence the administration is changing its mind about batteries, specifically.) The cuts add up to nearly 40,000 lost jobs, according to E2. Republican congressional districts lost the most large-scale projects, 37 in total. What’s harder to track than cancellations is how many projects might have been announced under different political conditions that now won’t ever break ground. Up until the 2024 election, Timberlake says monthly announcements consistently exceeded $1 billion in investment. Last month, that total was $550 millionless than the value of the cancelled battery project. “We’ll never recover those jobs and those investments that were going to be announced in 2025 under a different political environment,” says Timberlake. “And thats going to add up over time to a significant loss in step with the rest of the world. We’ve now lost a lot of what could have been, and it’s going to be hard to ever get that back.” It’s not clear yet what will happen in 2026. Still, despite the setbacks, the industry still has strengths. The fact that the list of cancelled projects wasn’t longer “is a good sign of the health of the clean energy economy and how robust it is and how the economics still work,” Timberlake says. Nearly all of the energy added to the grid in 2025 came from solar, wind, or batteries, despite the Trump administration’s efforts. As the surge in energy demand continues, driven in part by data centers, clean energy is still a quick, affordable way to meet that demand. And some projects are continuing to move forward. “The market is still there,” he says.
Category:
E-Commerce
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