Author: David Reyes

One term that appears so frequently in corporate restructuring announcements that it has nearly become meaningless is “excess capacity.” On March 27, 2026, KPMG UK used it to discreetly notify employees via an internal memo that about 600 jobs, mostly in its audit division, were in jeopardy. The wording was methodical and cautious. The reality it portrayed was more straightforward: the company had too many employees at a particular level and not enough work to support their retention, so the company decided to let them go because they weren’t quitting on their own. The numbers show that about 440 of…

In the technology and entertainment sectors, a certain type of corporate whiplash has become almost commonplace, but Take-Two Interactive was able to execute a version of it that is still startling. During an earnings call in early February 2026, CEO Strauss Zelnick informed investors that his company was “actively embracing” generative AI, that the technology was already driving efficiencies and cutting costs, and that, in a statement that now reads somewhat differently, AI would actually increase employment rather than decrease it because technology always raises productivity, and productivity raises everything else. A few weeks later, Take-Two fired its Head of…

Just the name is intriguing. It is customary for scientists to look to mythology, such as Cerberus or Kraken, or celestial imagery, such as Eris and Stratus, when tracking and naming new COVID variants. The rationale behind their choice of “Cicada” for BA.3.2 was both biological and somewhat poetic. Cicadas go underground for years, sometimes more than ten, before suddenly emerging, noisily and unmistakably. Surprisingly, this variation accomplished the same thing. It vanished. Then it returned. And now it’s quietly spreading through 23 countries and appearing in wastewater samples from 25 US states, raising questions that the scientific community is…

A grocery store closing has a subtle, devastating quality. It’s not a corporate office park or a tech campus. It’s a place where people buy milk on a Tuesday night, where the produce section smells authentic, and where the checkout employees know regular customers by name. 138 employees will lose their jobs when two Albertsons-owned stores in Tarrant County, North Texas, close by late April 2026. The neighborhoods surrounding those stores will also lose something more difficult to measure. What local reports had been circulating for days were confirmed by the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification filings that companies are…

Sometimes mornings simply make a difference. It must have been extremely confusing for thousands of Oracle workers to wake up on March 31, 2026, reach for their phones as most people do, and discover an email telling them that their role had been eliminated, that today was their last day of employment, and that the decision had already been made. The manager hadn’t called. There was no planned HR discussion. As early as 3 a.m. Pacific Time, some employees on the US West Coast found they were locked out of Oracle’s internal systems—locked out before they even realized they had…

This song’s origin story is almost too compelling to be scripted. In a clip from a 2024 Guardian interview, Elizabeth Taylor’s son Chris Wilding compared the pop star to his late mother. Taylor Swift was in a car, simply riding, chatting with her parents, and processing something they’d shown her. Swift responded to that comparison in a different way than most things do. In the middle of her statement about how much she admired Elizabeth Taylor, a melody began to play. She sang it directly into her phone. failed to stop the vehicle. didn’t hold out for a studio. Just…

Checking your phone first thing in the morning can cause a certain kind of anxiety. The majority of people scroll through the typical clutter, such as news alerts, weather updates, and perhaps a message from a friend who lives in a different time zone. Tens of thousands of Oracle workers followed the same procedure early on March 31, 2026, only to discover something completely different: an email notifying them that their employment with the company had ended, effective immediately. “As part of a larger organizational transformation, we have decided to remove your position after carefully evaluating Oracle’s present business requirements.…

A grill brush is currently waiting for the first warm Saturday of spring somewhere in America, either hanging in a garage or standing in a bucket on a back porch. Perhaps it’s a little worn, with the handle faded from sitting in the sun and the bristles slightly bent from a season or two of use. It’s the kind of thing that no one considers twice. You purchase it from Home Depot for ten dollars, use it to scrape the grates before putting the burgers on, and then forget about it until the next cookout. That essentially covers a grill…

In the history of Magic: The Gathering, there are nine cards that serious players simply call the Power Nine. They are the nine most costly, but not because of that. They are the nine most well-known, but not because of that. The reason for this is that they were printed in 1993, instantly acknowledged as having catastrophic power, and were never intended to reappear in a new set. In the more than thirty years that the game has been around, Ancestral Recall—one blue mana, draw three cards—is widely regarded as the most potent card ever printed. It was placed on…

Like these things occasionally do, it started when one person noticed a problem. a complaint from a customer. Somewhere in Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, or Quebec, someone opened a two-liter carton of milk, discovered what appeared to be glass, and followed protocol by telling someone. On March 25, 2026, a voluntary recall encompassing six distinct products from three of Canada’s most well-known dairy brands was issued, marking the end of a series of events that proceeded at an unprecedented pace for a company of Agropur’s size. The majority of Canadians don’t think of Agropur by name. However, they are…