2025-03-24T10:23:40Z Read in app Amazon's CEO Andy Jassy said he tried different fields like sportscasting, product management, and investment banking before he joined Amazon. Thos Robinson via Getty Images This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? Amazon shared Andy Jassy's top five career tips in a recent blog post.Jassy said people should be experimental and driven in how they approach their careers.Jassy said learning from mistakes and having a strong work ethic is important, too.Build trust, find your passion, and try new stuff: These just might be some of the secrets to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy's success.In a blog post published on Friday, Amazon rounded up five of Jassy's career tips for staffers who want to build successful careers. His tips largely boil down to being experimental, driven, and open to learning.Jassy's first piece of advice is to seek out work that builds on your passions, which will allow you to do work you find fulfilling."You spend a lot of your waking hours thinking about and at work, and you want to work on something that really is fulfilling to you and that you can be great at and makes you feel good about how you spend your days," Jassy said.Next, Jassy said it's important to adopt an experimental approach to your"Before I got to Amazon, I had tried sportscasting and sports production, I coached a soccer team, I worked in a retail golf store, I did product management, I tried investment banking, I tried sales, I tried a lot of things," Jassy said.Jassy's third tip is to not fear failure. Instead, he advises being self-aware and learning from mistakes."Every important lesson I've ever had as a professional, or in my life, frankly, have been mistakes that I've made or been a part of," Jassy said.Jassy's fourth piece of advice for succeeding in the workplace is to have a strong work ethic and be a good team player. Position yourself as someone people can trust, he said.Lastly, Jassy said one needs to be a "great learner" to excel."The truth is, if you work in an active, dynamic area, like all of us do, you should be learning all the time," Jassy said.Jassy's tips in Amazon's blog post align with the advice he's given in the past.Last year, Jassy told Ryan Roslansky, the CEO of LinkedIn, during a video interview that a person's success often hinges on their attitude to work."Do you work hard? Are you more can do than nay saying? Do you do what you said you were going to do? Can you work on a team?" Jassy told Roslansky."You know, those things seem so simple, and there's so many things you can't control in your work life, but you can control your attitude," he added.Jassy joined Amazon in 1997 and became CEO in 2021 when founder Jeff Bezos stepped down. He was the CEO of Amazon Web Services from 2016 to 2021.Jassy is executing a push to keep Amazon nimble by eliminating red tape.In September, Jassy said in a memo to staff that he wants to operate Amazon "like the world's largest startup" by empowering employees to act fast and independently.On Tuesday, Jassy told employees during an all-hands meeting that he wanted them to "move fast and act like owners," BI reported."One of the strengths of Amazon over the first 29 years is that we've hired really smart, motivated, inventive, ambitious people who have been great owners," Jassy said."What would I do if this was my company? And by the way, it is your company. This is all of our company," he continued.Representatives for Jassy at Amazon did not respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

2025-03-24T09:46:01Z Read in app Remote job scams target applicants looking for flexible work and competitive pay. d3sign/Getty Images This story is available exclusively to Business Insider subscribers. Become an Insider and start reading now.Have an account? Remote job scams are on the rise as more people seek flexible work options.Scammers often exploit inexperienced job seekers by masquerading as appealing offers.Experts told BI that caution, careful research, and networking can help you avoid falling for scams.Portia Moore had already been working from home for five years before the COVID pandemic made flexible schedules popular. She said sifting through scams has always come with the job."I got spoiled, working from home," Moore, who runs a job board that lists remote gig work that she vets, said. "Back in 2015, 2017 it was before remote jobs were very popular. So, I kind of really learned how to find legit remote jobs that weren't scams because scams were everywhere."They're even more prevalent now, Moore added, since "everybody's going after remote jobs."More and more Americans are taking on extra work to cope with the rising cost of living. Communities have emerged on sites like TikTok, dedicated entirely to finding legit, lucrative side hustles. Gig remote work such as copywriting, data entry, and one-off jobs on sites like Fiverr often offers attractive rates of pay and flexible hours. It is enjoying a resulting boom in popularity.Jackie Mitchell, who gained traction on TikTok for documenting her goal of making $100 a day through side hustles, said scams often advertise themselves similarly to legitimate remote jobs, luring in searchers with less experience spotting clear red flags. In particular, those in dire financial straits searching for a temporary stopgap are most vulnerable."I feel like the side hustle culture kind of becomes while I need to have second streams of income at this time in my life I think the mantra now becomes that everyone should, because why wouldn't you want more money?" Mitchell said. "And I think that becomes dangerous."Red flags, green flagsFor her part, Moore has also seen plenty of scammers try to prey on her audience and says it fits the typical pattern of bad actors aligning themselves with a legitimate brand in order to build trust."I just had a TikTok go viral over the weekend, and there's so many scammers in the comments saying, 'Hey, I hire data entry for $40 an hour,'" Moore said. "And I'm like, 'No, guys. That's not real.' So it's mostly people who'll say a legit, popular job title, like data entry."Many will pretend to be real, big-name companies, Moore said and with the advent of AI tools, she's seen the phishing websites people are redirected to become harder to distinguish for the genuine article. She's developed a series of red flags she keeps in mind when searching for listings to add to her site."If you're getting asked for money, that's a huge red flag," Moore said."It's a job. You shouldn't be paying. If you go to a website and something looks off, or and I know this is hard to believe but if someone uses the word 'kindly,' that's usually a red flag."Kristi Roe-Owen, a freelance writer who supplements her income with gig work for companies like Data Annotation, said a green flag for her is when the sign-up and interview process is complex."They wanted a lot of information about my skills, my contributions, and what I had to offer as a writer," Roe-Owen said. "And then immediately after I finished that initial sign-up process, I was prompted to go through qualifications. That was green flags across the board, for me."Roe-Owen added that building out a network of other freelancers or gig workers helps her learn about postings by word of mouth, even if it's just via a post in her Discord group."A green flag is also that I've actually read an experience from someone else who's doing it successfully," Roe-Owen said. "That gives me an idea of what to expect."Mitchell agrees a quick search on social media always helps confirm her hunches."I find a classic Reddit search does you wonders," Mitchell said.Keeping your wits about you is the most important part of the process, Moore said, and added to avoid being guided by desperation. She also believes that age-old advice endures for a reason."If it sounds too good to be true, it most likely is too good to be true, and you want to do your due diligence," she said. "When you're looking for remote jobs, you do have to take your time. It's a numbers game. You just can't believe that somebody's selling you gold."

If you know the name of a case the Supreme Court will hear on March 31, Catholic Charities v. Wisconsin Labor & Industry Review Commission, you can probably guess who will prevail. The Courts Republican majority almost always rules in favor of Christian litigants who seek an exemption from a federal or state law, which is what Catholic Charities is looking for in this case. (Notably, the Courts Republicans have not always shown the same sympathy for Muslims with religious liberty claims.)But, while the outcome in Catholic Charities seems unlikely to be a surprise, the stakes in the case are still quite high. Catholic Charities seeks an exemption from Wisconsins law requiring nearly all employers to pay taxes that fund unemployment benefits. If the Court grants this exemption, the justices could give many employers a broad new power to evade laws governing the workplace.Like every state, Wisconsin taxes employers to fund benefits for workers who lose their jobs. Like most states, Wisconsins unemployment benefits law also contains an exemption for church-run nonprofits that are operated primarily for religious purposes. The states supreme court recently clarified that this exemption only applies to nonprofit employers that primarily engage in religious activities such as holding worship services or providing religious education. It does not apply to employers like Catholic Charities, which provide secular services like feeding the poor or helping disabled people find jobs even if the employer is motivated by religious faith to provide these secular services.Catholic Charities, however, claims that it has a First Amendment right to an exemption, arguing, among other things, that Wisconsins limited exemption for some religious nonprofits and not others discriminates against Catholics.None of its arguments are persuasive, at least under the Supreme Courts existing decisions. But precedent plays hardly any role in how this Court decides religion cases. The Republican justices routinely vote to overrule, or simply to ignore, religion cases that they disagree with. The Courts very first major decision after Justice Amy Coney Barretts appointment gave Republicans a supermajority on the Court effectively overruled a decision governing worship services during the Covid-19 pandemic that was only a few months old.Realistically, in other words, the Court will likely decide Catholic Charities based on the justices personal preferences, rather than by following the doctrine of stare decisis, which says that courts should typically follow their own precedents.That said, it remains to be seen how far this Court might go in its ruling. It could choose to distinguish Catholic Charities which is a legitimate charity that does genuinely admirable work from employers who claim religious exemptions only to hurt their own employees. But if it chooses to be expansive, it could overrule a line of precedents that protect workers from exploitative employers who claim a religious justification for that exploitation.Religious liberty doesnt mean religious organizations get civil societys benefits and none of its costsIn order to understand the Catholic Charities case, its helpful to first understand the legal concept of a corporation. Corporations are entities that are typically easy to form under any states law, and which are considered to be entirely separate from their owners or creators. Forming a corporation brings several benefits, but the most important is limited liability. If a corporation is sued, it can potentially be liable for all of its assets, but the owners or controllers of that corporation are not on the hook for anything else.Corporations can also create their own corporations, thus protecting some of their assets from lawsuits.Think of it this way: Imagine that Jos owns two businesses, one of which sells auto parts, and another that fixes cars. If these businesses are incorporated, that means that Joss personal assets (such as his house) are protected if one of his businesses are sued. Moreover, if both businesses are incorporated as two separate entities, a lawsuit against one business cannot touch the other one. So if, say, the auto parts company sells a defective part, that company could potentially be put out of business by a lawsuit. But the car repair company will remain untouched.Catholic Charities is a corporation that is controlled by the Roman Catholic Church. According to its lawyers, the president of Catholic Charities in Superior, Wisconsin, is a Catholic bishop, who also appoints its board of directors. The Catholic Church gains significant benefits from this arrangement, because it means that a lawsuit against Catholic Charities cannot touch the churchs broader assets.Under Wisconsin law, however, the churchs decision to separately incorporate Catholic Charities also has a cost. Wisconsin exempts employers that engage in religious activity such as worship services from its unemployment regime, but it does not give this exemption to charitable corporations that only engage in secular activity. Because Catholic Charities is a separate legal entity from the church itself, and because it does not engage in any of the religious activity that would exempt it from paying unemployment taxes, it does not get an exemption.Presumably, the church was aware of all of these consequences when it chose to separately incorporate Catholic Charities. The Catholic Church has very good legal counsel, and its lawyers would have advised it of both the benefits of separate incorporation (limited liability) and the price of that benefit (no unemployment exemption). Notably, Catholic Charities has paid unemployment taxes since 1972.But Catholic Charities now claims that this decades-old arrangement is unfair and unconstitutional. According to its brief, the Diocese of Superior operates Petitioners as separately incorporated ministries that carry out Christs command to help the needy, but if Catholic Charities were not separately incorporated, it would be exempt. That very well may be true, but if Catholic Charities were not separately incorporated, it also would not benefit from limited liability.That brief alleges three separate constitutional violations it claims that Wisconsin discriminates against religious groups with more complex polities (that is, with more complex corporate structures), and it also raises two claims that both boil down to an allegation that Wisconsin is too involved with the churchs internal affairs because its law treats Catholic Charities differently if that entity were not separately incorporated.The discrimination claim is weak, because the Constitution does not prohibit discrimination against entities with complex corporate structures, it prohibits discrimination on the basis of religion. Wisconsin law treats Catholics no differently than anyone else. If a Muslim, Hindu, Protestant, Jewish, or nonreligious charity also provides exclusively secular services, it also does not receive an exemption from the states unemployment law.Similarly, Wisconsin law does not entangle the state in the churchs internal affairs, or otherwise dictate how the church must structure itself and its subordinate entities. It merely offers the church a bargain that it is free to turn down the church may have limited liability, but only if it accepts the consequences of separate incorporation.A decision for Catholic Charities could have disastrous consequences for workersRealistically, the immediate consequences of a decision for Catholic Charities would be virtually nonexistent. The church maintains its own internal program that pays unemployment benefits to laid off workers, and it claims that this benefit program provides the same maximum weekly benefit rate as the States system. So it appears that, no matter who prevails before the Supreme Court, unemployed former employees of Catholic Charities will still receive similar benefits.But other religious employers may not offer benefits to their unemployed workers. If Catholic Charities prevail in this case, that victory would likely extend to all organizations which, like Catholic Charities, engage in secular charitable work motivated by religious belief. So workers in other organizations could be left with nothing.Historically, the Supreme Court was reluctant to allow religious employers to seek exemptions from laws that protect their workers, and for a very good reason abandoning this reluctance risks creating the situation the Court tried to ward off in Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation v. Secretary of Labor (1985).Tony Alamo was often described in news reports as a cult leader. He was convicted of sexual abuse against girls he considered to be his wives. One of his victims may have been as young as nine. Witnesses at his trial, according to the New York Times, testified that Alamo had made all decisions for his followers: who got married; what children were taught in school; who got clothes; and who was allowed to eat.The Alamo Foundation case involved an organization which was nominally a religious nonprofit. But, as the Supreme Court explained, it operated a number of commercial businesses, which include service stations, retail clothing and grocery outlets, hog farms, roofing and electrical construction companies, a recordkeeping company, a motel, and companies engaged in the production and distribution of candy. Tony was the president of this foundation, and its workers received no cash salaries or wages although they were given food, clothing, and shelter.The federal government sued the foundation, alleging violations of federal minimum wage, overtime, and record keeping laws. And the Supreme Court rejected the foundations claim that it was entitled to a religious exemption from these laws. Had the Court ruled otherwise, it could have allowed people like Tony Alamo to exploit their workers with little recourse to federal or state law.The Alamo Foundation opinion warned, moreover, that permitting the foundation to pay substandard wages would undoubtedly give [it] and similar organizations an advantage over their competitors. Cult leaders with vulnerable followers would potentially push responsible employers out of the market, because employers who remained bound by law would no longer be able to compete.Indeed, the Supreme Court used to be so concerned about religious companies gaining an unfair competitive advantage that, in United States v. Lee (1982), it announced a blanket rule that when followers of a particular sect enter into commercial activity as a matter of choice, the limits they accept on their own conduct as a matter of conscience and faith are not to be superimposed on the statutory schemes which are binding on others in that activity. Religious entities were sometimes entitled to legal exemptions under Lee, but they had to follow the same workplace and business regulations as anyone else.Its important to be clear that the Catholic Church bears little resemblance to the Alamo cult, and Catholic Charities certainly does not exploit its workers in the same way that the Tony and Susan Alamo Foundation was accused of doing. But the Court paints with a broad brush when it hands down constitutional decisions, and the Constitution does not permit discrimination among religious faiths. So, if the Catholic Church is allowed to exempt itself from workplace regulations, the same rule will also extend to other religious employers who may be far more exploitative. Should Catholic Charities prevail, religious workers can only pray that the Court writes a cautious opinion that doesnt abandon the concerns which drove its decision in Alamo Foundation.See More:

This story was originally published in The Highlight, Voxs member-exclusive magazine. To get early access to member-exclusive stories every month, join the Vox Membership program today.In the middle of the Caribbean Sea, over 1,000 rhesus macaques live on an island that measures less than a tenth of a mile across. Descendants of a monkey colony imported from India 86 years ago sunbathe, climb trees, and wade in the ocean on Puerto Ricos Isla de los Monos.The island serves as a 38-acre open-air laboratory, with these semi-wild macaques as subjects. The monkeys offer a tantalizing opportunity for scientists hoping to observe animal behavior as close to the wild as they can get, while also having ready access to the monkeys brains, bodies, and genes. That often means killing them.One morning in 2021, researchers transported a monkey, like thousands before him, to a laboratory at the Caribbean Primate Research Center (CPRC) at the University of Puerto Rico less than 50 miles away. We watched him die, former research assistant Alyssa told me in a video call last summer. And then we did what we always do, which is take him apart. (Vox has changed her name to protect her from retaliation.) Killing and dissecting monkeys up to seven per day, she remembers was part of the labs standard protocol. During the culling season in the fall, hundreds of monkeys are killed to control the population of the tiny island. Rather than let their bodies go to waste, Alyssas team dissected them, meticulously preserving their muscles, organs, and brains for studies attempting to connect the monkeys social lives to their anatomy and genetics. Alyssa joined the lab in 2021, after graduating college. Before accepting the job, the labs principal investigator called her, asking whether she was comfortable with blood. She said yes she wasnt squeamish, and had no trouble dissecting frogs and lamb hearts in school. It didnt raise any flags for me at all, she said. Alyssas soon-to-be boss then described perfusion, a euthanasia procedure where, in their lab, a deeply anesthetized monkey is strapped to a table and pumped with saline and preservatives while their blood is pumped out. This preserves the animals tissue for study after death. But, Alyssa said, he left out that the researchers would be witnessing living animals die in front of them, no matter whether it was old, whether it was an infant She paused. We dissected infants. Every day, Alyssa watched at least one monkey die on an operating table, before she would immediately start cutting into it. Her job was to carefully separate all of the organs and tissues and store them in a freezer, preserving them until other scientists could analyze them. She wore a specially fitted mask to avoid breathing in bone dust while sawing through skulls. How I reported thisFrom day one of my Future Perfect fellowship exactly one year after my last day working with monkeys as a PhD student I knew I wanted to write this story. I was sure I wasnt alone in my post-animal research angst, but I wanted to find others willing to share their experiences with me.I ended up speaking with nearly a dozen people, these interviews capturing all of my own unspoken feelings: that its impossible to explain what one sees in these facilities, but dissociating from it is impossible, too.Over the next several months, I weaved pieces of these conversations together with my reporting on mental health in academia and animal testing regulation. The nuance of this piece was tricky, and my goal throughout was to highlight flaws in the academic system without undermining the value and necessity of the research itself.I worked with a team of editors, fact-checkers, and lawyers to get there. (The first draft of this piece was nearly twice as long as what youre reading now!)As she settled into her new routine, she realized just how difficult her day-to-day life would be to explain to outsiders. The thing that was so crazy to me, Alyssa said, was no one else will know what has happened here. She vented about the monkeys on her daily calls to her boyfriend some 1,600 miles away back home. But he couldnt handle story after story of relentless, visceral gore, so Alyssa turned to her therapist. After crying over the phone, she waited for the calm reassurance shed come to expect. Instead, her therapist told Alyssa that she was really worried for her mental health. I surprised myself with how alone I was feeling, she remembered.The night terrors began when she came back home. Culling season was over, but Alyssa woke up to panic attacks for months. Shed flinch whenever someone approached her from behind at work or surprised her in public. Symptoms piled up for months before a psychiatrist named what she was experiencing: post-traumatic stress disorder. A multimedia artist as well as a scientist, Alyssa started creating art inspired by the necropsies seared into her memory anything to make the images visible to the outside world. During our video call, she reached out of frame and pulled out a life-sized crochet replica of a macaques gastrointestinal system. In the necropsy lab, Alyssa cut each monkeys gastrointestinal tract from rectum to esophagus, picked it up with triple-gloved hands, and weighed it part of their standard protocol for collecting and preserving tissues after dissection. An adult macaques intestines can be over a dozen feet long, and weigh a good deal more than a ball of yarn. To make the plush guts feel as hefty as she remembered, I put beads inside them, she said, so when you lift it up, it would feel like what you would do every day. I made three: a big, a medium, and an infant-sized. Alyssa said, holding the tiniest replica, a fuzzy marble-filled snake, to the camera. I was obsessed with describing to other people what we had seen in that place.One of Alyssas crochet gastrointestinal tracts, photographed by her.Alyssas experience is anything but rare. Animal research, while largely hidden from public view, is widespread across the life sciences. Animals are used in everything from safety testing for medicines, cosmetics, and pesticides to exploring open-ended questions about how the mind and body work. The drugs we take, the products we use, and the medical breakthroughs we celebrate have been made possible in large part by lab animals and the people who, in the name of science, kill them. RelatedAnimal testing, explainedWhile its difficult to find the exact number of scientists, veterinarians, and animal caretakers working in research facilities, we know that somewhere around 100 million animals mice, rats, dogs, cats, rabbits, monkeys, fish, and birds, among others are used for research and testing worldwide each year. While the Government Accountability Office reported in 2024 that NIH spends about $5.5 billion annually to support animal research, other estimates by activist groups like PETA are significantly higher.Animal research is traumatic obviously for the animals unlucky enough to be involved, but also for many of the humans tasked with harming them. Yet from day one, institutions teach animal researchers that expressing discomfort is akin to weakness, or tantamount to dismissing the value of science altogether. To compete for increasingly rare tenure-track jobs, graduate students and postdocs have no choice but to learn to suppress their emotions and get the work done. Principal investigators, senior scientists who direct animal research labs, often dont care whether inserting electrodes into a conscious, chronically ill monkeys brain makes you squeamish. If you cant handle the heat, they say, get out of the kitchen. The costs have always been out there, bioethicist and former animal researcher John Gluck said. Theyve just been completely ignored. I would know. I spent thousands of hours immersed in the world of researching monkeys (known in the scientific community as NHPs, or nonhuman primates), attempting to study how the brain weighs options during decision-making. In 2023, I graduated from the University of California Berkeley with a PhD in neuroscience, questionable data, zero academic publications, and an intense combination of guilt, rage, and burnout that Im only just beginning to process. Its not clear exactly how many researchers suffer mental health consequences from their work, and its impossible to disentangle the psychological side effects of harming animals from those of trying to survive in an unforgiving, underpaid, and poorly regulated workplace. I do know that many people I know who worked in an animal research facility, myself included, left feeling broken. Everybody that I know has horror stories, Alyssa agreed.In an emailed statement, CPRC told Vox that it is deeply committed to supporting our researchers mental health and well-being, and that its researchers are encouraged to seek mental health resources. As an organization, we remain steadfast in our commitment to upholding the highest ethical, safety, and compliance standards. Our operations align with all applicable federal and institutional guidelines. We actively foster a professional, respectful, and collaborative environment where researchers can openly discuss challenges and seek support, the statement said. Academic institutions have long avoided talking openly about the trauma of animal research. In part, theyre afraid that acknowledging it might invite scrutiny from animal rights activists and undermine the publics already damaged trust in science. The reality is that its easier to downplay the emotional toll of animal testing than to confront the ethical and logistical challenges of dealing with it, given just how central it is to biomedical research. Now, as the Trump administration wages an unprecedented war on scientific institutions, this might feel like a particularly sensitive time to air uncomfortable conversations about painful aspects of science out in the open. But the scientific community can no longer avoid hard conversations about the psychological costs borne by young scientists. If universities and funding agencies admit that theres a problem, they can take meaningful steps like providing better mental health resources and investing in non-animal research methods to improve conditions for everyone.But if young researchers are left to suffer in silence, it is science itself that will suffer, as bright, empathetic minds turn away from some of the most important questions in research or worse, leave the field altogether.Why do we still experiment on animals?The practice of experimenting on animals is as old as biological science itself. To understand a machine, you have to take it apart and figure out how the pieces fit together. Living bodies are biological machines to understand how bodies grow, get sick, and recover, scientists have to take them apart.In the earliest days of Western science, dissection of both animals and human cadavers laid the groundwork for modern surgery and medicine. Today, scientists have many more tools at their disposal, enabling them to make specific cells in a mouses brain glow under a microscope or to remote-control a living fruit fly. What hasnt changed is that most of the time, animals are killed when an experiment ends whether by relatively hands-off methods like gas chambers, or wincingly hands-on methods like snapping their necks, which goes by the more clinical term cervical dislocation.For all its ethical problems, animal research has yielded medical breakthroughs that we take for granted today. Without lab animals, we wouldnt have polio vaccines, PrEP (an HIV-prevention medication that slashes sexual transmission risk by 99 percent), or deep brain stimulation for Parkinsons disease. But animals often make poor substitutes for humans. Much of biomedical science ends up stranded in what researchers call the valley of death: the huge divide between promising preclinical studies, many of which involve testing on animals, and genuine breakthroughs in human medicine. Over 90 percent of preclinical trials for cancer drugs, for example, dont translate to successful clinical trials, because treatments that seem to work in mice fail in humans. Complex socio-psychological conditions like depression are especially challenging to model in caged animals that cant have natural much less human-like experiences. Even monkeys, our close genetic relatives, are stressed and often behave abnormally when caged in a lab, making them poor proxies for uncaged humans.Some newer tools, like AI models and 3D-printed human tissues, are beginning to replace animals in some studies, But not all animal-based methods have alternatives. AI, for example, has to be trained on real-world data to accurately reflect real-world biology. If that data doesnt exist yet, scientists need to collect it usually from the body of a lab animal. And many of medicines most urgent, complex problems, like cancer, affect the whole body in ways that are hard to predict without invasively experimenting on a living organism.New initiatives like NIHs Complement Animal Research in Experimentation Program, which has funded the development of new human-based biomedical tools, may encourage some researchers to pivot away from animal testing. But funding agencies in the US and elsewhere are only just beginning to incentivize scientists to develop alternatives. Meanwhile, funding agencies and research institutions are striving to prove the legitimacy of animal research to the public even as the Trump administration seeks to defund science. Animal researchers know that their work is heavily scrutinized by animal rights activists, who are looking for vulnerabilities to galvanize the public around. Americans are divided on animal research, but the vast majority say it should be phased out in favor of non-animal methods. One postdoctoral researcher I spoke with, who works with mice, told me that a lab on her campus lost NIH funding following a PETA campaign, which also drove hate mail and threats against the scientists who worked there. These experiences breed defensiveness and close researchers off from engaging with critics. Our interactions with [animal rights] groups are often at conferences, with people protesting outside and yelling at you, she said. It just propagates that negative interaction. So young animal researchers with misgivings are told to keep quiet. When I was in grad school, senior scientists told me that publicly expressing discomfort or even sharing day-to-day details of my work would only enrage animal rights activists and potentially fuel further distrust in science. But this silence comes at a cost, stifling innovation and entrenching outdated methods. Were highly leveraged by the system to keep doing what weve always done, said Garet Lahvis, former graduate program director of behavioral neuroscience at Oregon Health and Science University. (Lahvis previously wrote about experimenting on caged primates for Vox.) Turning against a tried-and-true method would require a scientist to invalidate their existing body of work, or at least acknowledge that it was unethical, ineffective, or inefficient. So, many dont.Check out Animal testing, explained.Here, I walked through what experimenting on animals actually looks like, why scientists do it, and who is looking out for the welfare of the animals. I also spoke with some researchers who are developing new animal-free tools for biomedical research, and discussed what it will take to replace animals entirely.Over the past few decades, meanwhile, the grant application process has become increasingly competitive, driving scientists to do whatever it takes to make their project proposals sound appealing to potential funders. A 2023 survey of biomedical researchers found that reviewers of grants and peer-reviewed publications generally remain biased in favor of projects with animal-based methods, creating an incentive for scientists to use animals. Lisa Jones-Engel, a former senior scientist at the University of Washington National Primate Research Center (WaNPRC) and current senior science adviser at People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), recalled serving on the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, an ethics oversight panel responsible for reviewing and approving the universitys animal research proposals. She went line by line through each protocol to find ethical breaches worth addressing, but was constantly shut down by her colleagues, who she suspected were more interested in quickly pushing proposals through the pipeline than protecting animal welfare. We encourage responsibility and accountability for ensuring ethical and responsible animal care, science, and human welfare, WaNPRC told Vox in an email. The university did not comment on Jones-Engels experience, but emphasized that researchers are encouraged to report ethical concerns to their principal adviser, department chair, or anonymously, if necessary. I spent 17 years at the university, and it nearly killed me, Jones-Engel told me. I thought that I could single-handedly bring about change just by laying the science out in front of my scientific colleagues. It turns out that I wasnt able to do that.Why would anyone sign up for this?Madeline Krasno grew up loving animals, and hoped to follow in Jane Goodalls footsteps as a primatologist. In 2011, the then-20-year-old applied to be a student caretaker at the Harlow Primate Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There, she and one other undergraduate were responsible for weekend feeding, medication, and cleaning the rooms of over 500 monkeys. She believed what she was told: Those monkeys were contributing to important biomedical studies, helping scientists make necessary public health breakthroughs. At least, she recalled, Thats what you tell yourself to make this okay. To boost their chances of getting into competitive graduate programs, many undergrads and recent college graduates eagerly accept entry-level, relatively low-paid jobs like these.Day one at a primate research center in the US can shock even the most hardened scientist. As a neuroscience PhD student, I spent a lot of time in my labs monkey housing room, which always smelled like stale urine and honey. Netflix shows played for a few hours a day on a wall-mounted TV as veterinarian-approved enrichment for the animals, who lived in pairs in metal cages smaller than my full-size bed.A laboratory monkey interacting with an employee at the National Primate Research Center of Thailand. AFP via Getty ImagesSome research groups, like mine, introduce new trainees to these spaces right away to gauge whether they have the stomach for it. Others dont expose trainees to the most disturbing aspects of their work until theyve proven themselves trustworthy. Former research assistant Mayo Asada wasnt invited into her neurobiology labs back rooms, where surgeries take place, for the first month that she worked at the California National Primate Research Center at UC Davis (CNPRC) in 2021. The first time Asada saw her labs monkeys, it was necropsy day. She watched a handler bring a young male monkey into a sterile examination room, holding his hand to keep him calm. The monkey was anesthetized and pumped with saline, like the monkeys in Alyssas lab. As blood left the unconscious monkey, Asada watched as people began removing parts of his body. We know that you werent expecting to see this, Asada was told.I wasnt sure if he was conscious, or how aware he was of what was happening, Asada remembers, referring to the monkey. I was hoping by then that he was in an altered state. Asada paused. I honestly dont remember the rest. I just remember the pieces being separated onto different tables.Despite her shock and discomfort, Asada stuck around. Biomedical careers, especially in academia, often hinge on your superiors opinions. If your well-connected adviser likes you, their glowing letter of recommendation can open doors to prestigious jobs. If they dont, those doors slam shut. The vibe she remembered from superiors in her lab, Asada said, was: Dont mess with us. We will ruin your career.UC Davis told Vox in a statement that it offers free mental health counseling services to employees and students, and that harassment, discrimination, bullying, and other abusive conduct violates university policy. Anyone experiencing or witnessing such conduct is encouraged to report it: we take such reports very seriously and reports are investigated and addressed according to applicable policies and procedures. Many early-career researchers believe that the knowledge they gain from their experiments will justify the harm they will cause. After all, breakthrough treatments like gene therapy and organ transplantation were refined in lab animals before humans. I spent years convincing myself that by recording the brain activity of monkeys, I could uncover crucial information about mental health that would someday revolutionize how we treat depression. Eventually, the emotional labor of justifying the work outweighed my belief in its purpose. Monkey research makes up a small share of all animal research but working with much more widely used rodent species can still be harrowing, if to a lesser degree than for scientists experimenting on our primate cousins. On the subreddit r/labrats, an anonymous forum for over 650,000 biologists, many posts feature variations on the same existential crisis: reckoning with the intense pressure to harm animals, whether for the sake of public health or professional advancement.One recent post asked how people get past the initial ick of killing mice. Many users replied, quite simply, that you dont. In the comments, researchers describe a wide range of coping mechanisms: Sing to the animals. Thank each mouse before putting them in the carbon dioxide chamber. Practice until you can perform injections as painlessly as possible. Or, one user wrote, just do it until youre numb to it.While hosing down cages, Krasno blasted Adeles then-new album 21 through noise-canceling headphones to drown out the screeching monkeys around her. Now, she cant listen to Rolling in the Deep without being transported back to those rooms, and the guilt she felt in her complacency. Im just trying to do what I can for them, she remembered, but also to, like, get the fuck out.In an email statement, UW-Madison shared that it offers confidential counseling and crisis support to students and employees, and leads workshops on identifying and responding to stress related to caring for people and animals. How academia creates a culture of silence As an animal researcher, my life was dictated by animal care. Several times a week, I performed a standard procedure to keep the window into each monkeys brain a small hole cut through their skull open and infection-free. While listening to an episode of This American Life or All Songs Considered, Id fix a monkeys head in place, lift a plastic covering off his exposed skull opening, and gently swab and suction new wisps of tissue growth from the leathery membrane covering his brain. Picture a gloved dental hygienist, sticking a metal pick and a suction doodad in your mouth, casually chitchatting while youre stuck staring at the ceiling. Over time, I learned to dissociate enough to pretend I was just one of those hygienists. But intentionally separating your mind and body is exhausting work. After five years of drowning out screeches and whirring medical tools with podcasts and noise-canceling headphones, I couldnt feel anything anymore. I spent those years lying about my job on dates, omitting details from my closest friends, and filtering myself in calls with my therapist. At first, I told myself that they wouldnt understand. Eventually, as my experiments failed over and over, it stopped making sense to me, too.We are the mad scientists. We are like the people in horror films, torturing them. Its crazy what we do to handle it.Almost every researcher I spoke with had a similar experience. Andrew a former graduate student, whose name has been changed to protect him from harassment left his position at a major US primate research center in 2022, after spending two years studying infectious diseases in juvenile monkeys. A long-time animal lover, he was initially horrified by the deaths and dissections required to investigate the effects of viral infections on developing brains and bodies. To get through his masters degree, he dissociated. We are the mad scientists. We are like the people in horror films, torturing them. Its crazy what we do to handle it, he told me last summer. In the end, the forced apathy crushed what enthusiasm he once had for academic research. It felt like I was chewed up and spit out.For some researchers, the numbness, anxiety, and distress linger long after the work is done. At CNPRC, Asada turned to alcohol to self-medicate. I dont like drinking, but I would drink myself to sleep every night, she said. What prompted me to leave was realizing that no one that worked there was okay. (UC Davis, in a statement, said students can access support through Student Health and Counseling Services, and employees through the Academic and Staff Assistance Program.)Academic science has a well-documented mental health problem. A 2018 survey of about 2,300 early-career science researchers across 26 countries reported that 41 percent had moderate to severe anxiety, and 39 percent had moderate to severe depression often correlated with reports of poor work-life balance and bad relationships with advisers. One study of about 200 Korean scientists found that animal researchers had significantly higher anxiety scores than non-animal researchers. Since then, the problem has only gotten worse depression is so common in academia that researchers across fields accept it as part of the job. In Sweden where the population ranks far above that of the US in overall happiness researchers followed over 20,000 PhD students in the course of their studies, and found that for students in the natural sciences, use of psychiatric medication steadily climbed year after year, nearly doubling by the time they graduated. In other words, if 13 out of 100 people started their biology PhD program with a prescription for antidepressants, 26 were likely to graduate with one.Nor does it help that the scientific enterprise runs a bit like a feudal system, with powerful professors at the top, and postdoctoral researchers, graduate students, and research assistants at the bottom. The only real way to advance is through having a well-connected mentor at a prestigious, highly-resourced university. But that means anything that might alienate that senior scientist like questioning the labs animal care protocols or experimental techniques could place your job or even your scientific future at risk. So much of science relies on senior research leaders, who dont have to get their hands dirty anymore, convincing their junior colleagues they have no other options than to do work so violent and disturbing that it makes many of them suicidal, a pseudonymous X account, run by a graduate student in the sciences who works with non-animal models, posted last August.The limits of compassion fatigueWhat limited peer-reviewed research has been done on the mental health effects of lab animal care usually surveys of veterinarians and animal care technicians focuses on the concept of compassion fatigue, a form of burnout brought on by providing care in exhausting, traumatic environments. Institutions know that early-career scientists struggling with their mental health, even brilliant ones, are likely to leave academia. Academic departments with doctoral training programs also know that losing students looks bad on grant applications, leading reviewers to question their stability and leadership. Some universities are trying to respond to the crisis. Dare 2 Care, a program at the University of Washington, aims to remedy compassion fatigue by suggesting that workers do things like connect with peers, place heart-shaped stickers indicating planned euthanasia dates on mouse cages, and express gratitude to lab animals for their sacrifice. Giving workers the chance to emotionally prepare for the end of a study when animals like mice are usually killed fosters a sense of closure and reduces emotional distress, WaNPRC told Vox in an email. But these animals are not choosing to be sacrificed, said Krasno. Compassion fatigue training, she suspects, is more of a Band-Aid than a solution, with the primary goal of boosting staff retention by reframing an employees unease as a personal issue to be managed, rather than an inevitable consequence of their work. one study reported that over three-quarters of animal care workers surveyed felt that institutional compassion fatigue programs didnt help them manage their symptoms. WaNPRC pointed me to another report, which found that only 24 percent of surveyed animal care workers said compassion fatigue support programming helped improve their symptoms.What institutions ask of tech staff is hurting these people, said Jones-Engel, who worked with lab primates for 17 years before becoming a scientist at PETA. Theyre the ones that have to look in the eyes of the monkeys every day. They have to pull that mouse box out and see there were three cannibalized pups in there. Compared to care staff, none of the young scientists grad students, postdocs, and research assistants I spoke with felt that compassion fatigue was the best way to characterize their experience. Its a subtle but crucial difference: While care workers face burnout from tending to unhappy animals in bleak spaces, researchers have to view the animals as tools to be used and the researchers are the ones using them. Researchers are worn down by the pressure to treat animals as data points. A sick or uncooperative animal can derail months of work, jeopardizing their ability to graduate, publish papers, or compete for scarce academic jobs. Killing living things that youve intentionally distanced yourself from while convincing yourself that it serves some greater utilitarian purpose is part of the job. And then youre just supposed to go home and eat dinner and exist in your life, and not feel the impact of repeatedly taking someones life, said Krasno. Its a highly traumatic field, but somehow, animal researchers get forgotten.How do we fix this? However entrenched animal research feels right now, the world of biomedical research is on the brink of massive change. Within decades, invasive research on lab animals could be obsolete, as new technology allows scientists to test cancer treatments on tissues grown from a patients own cells, or create detailed maps of Alzheimers disease in human brains. Everyone recognizes that the goal is to eventually try to replace animals, Naomi Charalambakis, the then-associate director of science policy at the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, the largest biomedical coalition in the US, told Scientific American last year. The financial incentive to replace animal testing, too, is clear and compelling. Like keeping humans alive in prison, keeping animals alive in labs is incredibly expensive. Lab monkeys, which are in short supply, are especially costly, now selling for tens of thousands of dollars each. At this point, Jones-Engel believes its all but inevitable that animal testing will be phased out. Its just a matter of when. Its not just that the writings on the wall, she said. The writing is like, plastered. Its a giant neon sign saying Were done.But the push to phase out animal testing depends on more than just greater efficiency it calls for a reckoning with a legacy of harm. For the scientific community to truly evolve, it will need to confront its history and acknowledge the possibility of change. Helping animal researchers understand and grapple with their own experiences is a crucial first step.It may be tempting to dismiss people who experiment on animals as villains who dont deserve empathy or institutional support. Considering the well-being of those who cause harm for a living might feel incongruous, like imagining a peer support group for executioners. But new animal researchers often dont know what theyre getting themselves into, and sometimes even choose to work in these labs because they love animals. Many institutions know this, so they require first-year grad students to complete several lab rotations, or trial runs where trainees typically spend two to three months in a handful of research groups, before committing to the team theyll work with for the next few years. But not all programs offer such rotations, including programs where students could end up working with animals. They should. It is also crucial that institutions have trustworthy systems in place for reporting workplace safety and animal welfare violations without fear of punishment, and with the option of anonymity. And lab workers also need to have faith that when they report violations, their campuss Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC), an internal body that oversees each universitys animal research, will take them seriously. Right now, though, these panels are strongly biased toward approving animal experiments. To signal a genuine commitment to animal welfare, institutions should rebalance IACUCs to include a greater percentage of members who arent affiliated with the universitys scientific research.At bare minimum, institutions need to acknowledge the trauma they expose workers to and provide adequate mental health care for researchers. Simple measures like furnishing warm, naturally lit spaces for personal time and conversation during breaks and protecting that break time can make room for vulnerability in an otherwise sterile environment. University counselors should be trained to help animal researchers navigate complex feelings of guilt, grief, and anxiety, without pressure to reconcile those feelings with any particular ethical stance. In parallel, senior scientists many of whom were hired for their science chops, not their empathetic leadership should be taught compassionate mentorship, and how to respond to challenging situations with empathy and tact. Principal investigators dont get enough training as it is on how to mentor and train others, said Jocelyn Breton, a postdoctoral researcher at Northeastern University and soon-to-be neuroscience professor at Smith College. Breton has mentored many first-time animal researchers in the decade since she started working with mice and rats. Its really hard, she tells her students, and it doesnt get easier. Her current lab has a dedicated meeting every semester to discuss animal ethics and hold space for people to bring up concerns, and she checks in with her trainees frequently. Before exposing new students to animal death, she briefs them on what to expect. Afterward, she checks in, shares her own emotional experience, and gives students the freedom to set their own boundaries. Students have passed out watching perfusions, she told me, and some trainees quit. Creating a space where trainees feel comfortable choosing to leave is the point. You have to strive to have an ethical identity John Gluck, a research professor at the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University who built his career on animal research, credits this kind of openness to dialogue with changing his mind about the use of animals in science. As a graduate student in the 1960s, before animal welfare laws were established in the US, he worked in psychologist Harry Harlows infamous monkey lab at UW Madison, where Madeline Krasno cleaned cages decades later. Gluck remembers researchers performing brain surgery with their bare hands and relatively limited experience. Animal welfare was an afterthought. After our video call, John Gluck emailed me a list of suggestions for other academics, particularly principal investigators of animal research labs, who are ready to start exploring their ambivalence about animal testing. Here are his suggestions, edited for length: Keep a private journal of moments when questions concerning the validity of animal testing emerge.Sit in on relevant philosophy and ethics talks. If you have not yet served on an IACUC, consider getting an appointment. Remain mostly quiet as you take in the process, and consider: Is it a process that screens questionable science, and protects experimental animals from misuse? Make time to meet with students and caregivers working with the animals in your studies. Have open conversations about their concerns, and reflect on your own comfort and openness during these conversations.Engage individuals from animal welfare groups and listen to their point of view. Freely observe the animals associated with your research, with no particular focus. Learn about the natural behavior of animals commonly used in your research.With Harlows help, Gluck landed a tenure-track faculty job at the University of New Mexico, where he launched a monkey lab in Harlows image exactly as he was expected to. In 1977, two years after philosopher Peter Singers Animal Liberation was published, his lab was attacked by animal rights activists, who released all of the monkeys living there. Gluck was incensed.For years, my fury blocked the self-reflection that is expected of any scientist who harms vulnerable animals for presumed human benefit, Gluck wrote in a 2011 letter to the scientific journal Nature. I dismissed even reasonable ethical questions directed at me and my work.But over time, Gluck told me, conversations with students and veterinarians slowly opened his mind. Gluck took leave from his faculty job to immerse himself in a bioethics fellowship that ultimately convinced him to leave animal research behind. What can I say? You just cant keep publishing mistakes, he said.Scientists, including a younger Gluck, often dismiss animal welfare activists. He remembers one major scientist responding to protests by saying, Id have them all put in a psychiatric facility. In conversations Ive had with supporters of animal research, Ive sensed a similar disdain, even fear, toward people working for organizations like PETA. But Gluck says that animal researchers need to give them more credit, or at least actually talk to them: Were not listening.I asked him what advice he would give to other scientists considering shifting their research model. You have to strive to have an ethical identity, he said. Otherwise, what are you doing? You might as well be working in a bowling alley.Not every scientist will, or needs to, make the same radical shift as Gluck did. But there is power in openness, and in loosening ones grip on the way things have always been. And soon, scientists may be forced to confront the consequences of both the status quo and the sudden upheaval of their institutions by the Trump administration. The future of biomedical research will depend on rebuilding and sustaining a thoughtful, empathetic workforce and on our ability to ensure that discovery doesnt come at the expense of those who make it possible. Correction, March 6, 2025: A previous version of this story misstated the NIHs funding going toward research projects involving animals. The Government Accountability Office reported NIH funding at about $5.5 billion annually; other estimates are higher.Youve read 1 article in the last monthHere at Vox, we're unwavering in our commitment to covering the issues that matter most to you threats to democracy, immigration, reproductive rights, the environment, and the rising polarization across this country.Our mission is to provide clear, accessible journalism that empowers you to stay informed and engaged in shaping our world. By becoming a Vox Member, you directly strengthen our ability to deliver in-depth, independent reporting that drives meaningful change.We rely on readers like you join us.Swati SharmaVox Editor-in-ChiefSee More:

There is a lot of attention on young men and toxic masculinity at the moment. Its about time. The devastating Netflix drama Adolescence, about a 13-year-old boy accused of murdering a girl after being radicalised by the online manosphere, has drawn attention to the problem through the sheer force of its brilliant writing and a blistering lead performance from teenager Owen Cooper. Recently, former England football manager Gareth Southgate gave a speech about the state of boyhood in the UK, specifically about how young men, lacking moral mentors, are turning to gambling and video gaming, thereby disconnecting from society and immersing themselves in predominantly male online communities where misogyny and racism are often rife. There has been some kickback in the gaming press to the idea that games have provided a less-than-ideal environment for boys, but even those of us who have played and enjoyed games all our lives need to face up to the fact that gaming forums, message boards, streaming platforms and social media groups are awash with disturbing hate speech and violent rhetoric.Honestly, we have known this for a while. The 2014 harassment campaign GamerGate, which claimed to be about a lack of objectivity in games journalism, but was really a reaction to increasing inclusivity and progressive thinking in game development, was a testing ground for the radicalisation of young white men by alt-right influencers and news outlets such as Breitbart. Many of the apparatus of online rightwing extremism, including mass harassment and doxing of victims, originated in that rancid cauldron, where female and LGBTQI+ game developers, and game-makers of colour, were made to fear for their lives.The last thing we need from politicians and lifestyle gurus is a blanket statement that boys need to stop playing gamesIt didnt end there toxic fandom has continued to dog the games industry. Developers of games who have sought to diversify their characters and narratives, or have simply delayed the launch of much-anticipated titles, have faced mass online abuse and death threats. A friend of mine, once the media-visible executive producer of a major game series, was forced to accept a police escort for him and his family for several days after fans of the game disagreed with several new features of the latest instalment. More recently, its been reported that members of the team working on Assassins Creed Shadows were told by the company not to mention their role in the production on social media in case they were targeted and harassed. Shadows received a huge online backlash when it was revealed that one of the two lead characters would be a black samurai. Trump didnt come up with the idea of ludicrously misrepresenting the concept of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) to appease right-leaning voters toxic game communities have been doing this for years.The worry, in the current maelstrom, is that the nuance of the problem will be lost. Even while condemning gaming communities that worship influencers such as Andrew Tate and Sneako, that belittle women and share incel and red pill philosophies, it is important to recognise the hugely positive roles that online communities can play in the lives of teenagers. As the father of an autistic teen, I have seen my son flourishing through contact with other players in games such as Minecraft and Warframe. The last thing we need from politicians and attention-seeking lifestyle gurus is a blanket philosophy that boys need to stop playing games or that all games are unhealthy this isnt about screen time, its not about getting boys to touch grass once in a while. We have to understand that our children are digital natives, as at home online as they are in any physical space for many, there is no clear delineation. And honestly, if youre shaking your head at how sad that is while spending hours a day perusing Facebook, Instagram or TikTok, then I dont know what to say to you.What can be done? Of course, the games industry has a responsibility just like social media companies do to monitor its communities and make them safe. Robust online moderation and the use of AI to monitor in-game chat for key slurs and subjects, are a vital part of combating the problem. But in the long term, the problem of abusive, antisocial young men wont go away until we get to the source. Many young men in 2025 lack a sense of direction, identity and purpose. Traditional careers are disappearing; social changes are challenging historical masculine roles; mental health services are hard to access; city centres are dying. Whatever the truth of the matter, whatever we want to say about privilege, the world feels openly hostile to them. And into this vortex, come online influencers who will harness, direct and ultimately monetise that sense of hopelessness and rage, pointing it at easily identifiable targets women, immigrants, libtards, beta males, and yes, the makers of progressive video games.I have spent my whole career defending video games as a medium from those who seek to demonise the entire culture, but you simply cannot approach this subject without recognising that the games community traditionally dominated by young men interested in violent power fantasies is part of it. Young people often come to games to escape, to become virtual superheroes, but their vulnerability and lack of experience makes them targets and victims. Its going to take more than one brilliant TV drama to get society to address this pressing problem, but when it does, the games industry is going to have to be a big part of the difficult conversations to come.

Ready for the Switch 2 and desperate to hit that pre-order button? We've got good news the Switch 2 pre-order time may have been revealed, meaning you can skip the queuesTech10:23, 24 Mar 2025Just a few days until all is revealedWe're just over a week away from the reveal of the Nintendo Switch 2, and that means we're getting very close to finding out the console's price and its release date.The Switch 2 was was initially shown off with a short trailer in January (which feels like an eternity ago now), and Nintendo promised more news on April 2 and the big day is almost here.Article continues belowNaturally, if you're reading this then there's a good chance your'e as desperate to play the new console as we are (particularly if rumours of a backward compatibility boost are correct). Thankfully, we've pinpointed the pre-order time, meaning you can get your payment details ready.Expect a whole host of news on April 2The console is due to be revealed on April 2, with pre-orders expected to go live immediately afterwards which we expect to be 2pm UK time.Expect the console to be available from plenty of retailers across the globe, but it's worth remembering you can already register your interest and drop a small deposit at a couple of big stores already.There's a good chance some stores will offer bundles with some of the new launch titles whatever those end up being. We'd be very surprised, for example, if the new Mario Kart teased with the initial console reveal wasn't available on day one.As for the price and release date, we're expecting the Switch 2 to be around 400, and arrive in June, but we'll know more in just a few days time.The Nintendo Direct itself could be a long one, too. It'll have to show off the console, first-party games, and a few third-party titles.The latter is important, too while Metroid Prime 4 is expected to have a blockbuster showing from Nintendo, can the company convince us to buy Elden Ring again?Article continues belowThen there's the console's unique properties, like the AI boost for visuals, the return of Amiibo, and those mice-like Joy-Con.For more on Switch 2, check out our predicted launch lineup, as well as why power matters even less than before for Nintendo.For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.

We've heard that GTA 6 could 'save' the games industry, but another analyst has warned rivals to be wary of the pitfalls of trying to predict Rockstar's next moveTech10:04, 24 Mar 2025Updated 10:04, 24 Mar 2025Rockstar could headline one of the best years in gaming(Image: Rockstar)Grand Theft Auto 6 is, as far as we know, launching in 2025, although Rockstar has been more focused on GTA 5's Enhanced Edition for now.Reports had suggested that GTA 6 being priced higher than a standard video game release could 'save' the games industry, but one analyst has now predicted it could have the opposite effect for some companies.Article continues belowSpeaking to PCGamer, Ben Porter, director of consulting at games industry intelligence firm Newzoo said that companies hedging their bets on a GTA 6 release may end up regretting it.GTA 6 is still coming this year (apparently)(Image: Rockstar)"If you're a game company who's holding its breath waiting for GTA 6 to get out, and then it gets delayed by three, four, five, six months, what do you do?" Porter told PCGamer at last week's GDC."You either have to be able to launch into that big black hole that's been left open now, or you have to extend your run rate by an additional six monthsI'm certain some companies are going to tank as a result of that, right?"Given the small margins for error when planning a game's release date, it sounds as though there's a concern that some publishers may leave it too late particularly if GTA 6 does end up slipping into 2026.As for 'saving' the industry, Porter feels like it won't necessarily be "universally uplifting"."You do hear a lot of people who are saying that GTA 6 is going to rejuvenate the market," he explains."And I think that there's an element of truth to that, but I don't know that it's necessarily going to be universally uplifting."It will certainly have an effect. It will put eyes back on the games market from investors and things like that. But everybody that we're talking to, they're ships trying to move out of the way of this big iceberg that is GTA 6.""Everybody's trying to pull their game forward, push their game backtheir strategy is to get out of the way. So if that's what everybody's behavior is, then how do you believe that this is going to rejuvenate the games industry?"Until Rockstar says more, it's a strange limbo for the industry to be in but we might hear more as early as next week.Article continues belowFor more on GTA 6, check out when AI predicts the game will launch, as well as the series' best celebrity cameos so far.For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.

UNStudio, HKS, and Gehl Reveal First Images of the Design Framework for the Austin Light Rail in Texas, United StatesSave this picture!Austin Light Rail - Pleasant Valley Station Render. Image WAX Architectural VizualizationsIn March 2023, the Austin Transit Partnership (ATP) announced the selection of UNStudio, HKS, and Gehl to lead the architecture and urban design of Project Connect, an expansion of Austin's public transportation system in Texas, United States. Led by ATP, the system aims to connect communities, enhance public spaces, and integrate with the city's evolving urban fabric. The design framework, developed by the four entities, establishes the foundation for how the light rail will interact with Austin's neighborhoods. The design team states that the project's priorities are in people-first infrastructure and the creation of dynamic public spaces, which they seek to reflect in the newly unveiled images. As a voter-approved initiative, Project Connect actively encourages public participation, allowing Austin residents to provide feedback throughout its development.Save this picture!The initiative addresses Austin's rapid growth, which presents challenges to accessibility. Therefore, the project's primary objective is to create a human-centric transit system while improving mobility through an efficient and sustainable transportation network, according to the words of Ben van Berkel, Founder and Principal Architect of UNStudio. The Austin Light Rail will feature 15 stations spanning nearly 10 miles of rail. Phase 1 aims to enhance the transit experience, connecting people to major job centers, educational hubs, and key Austin landmarks. The project also includes new pedestrian and cyclist pathways, an expanded tree canopy for shaded urban corridors, and a new bridge over Lady Bird Lake.Save this picture!ATP, in collaboration with the consulting team led by UNStudio, HKS, and Gehl, conducted community outreach to ensure that the system reflects the city's character. The design images aim to convey the principles of intuitive, multimodal connectivity while fostering transit hubs that promote social interaction, support local businesses, and express Austin's identity. The firms' joint design guidelines consider the project at multiple scales, from individual user experiences to system-wide elements and site-specific opportunities. Related Article Not Just a Train Stop: The Evolution of Transit-Oriented Developments in East Asia These guidelines emphasize three main principles. First, each station is envisioned to be tailored to its surrounding neighborhood, creating distinct public spaces and encouraging alternative modes of transportation. Second, is the willingness to integrate sustainable solutions, defined so far in the inclusion of tree-lined streets and shaded public areas. Lastly, the third point stipulates that the new rail transportation system should be integrated with pedestrian, cycling, and other transit networks to allow for multi-modal connectivity.Save this picture!Save this picture!Other major projects currently in development across the United States include the new terminal for San Antonio International Airport, designed by Corgan and Lake|Flato Architects; the Mass Timber Tower for Boston University's Pardee School, designed by Diller Scofidio + Renfro; and BIG's armadillo-shaped Athletics ballpark in Las Vegas. In the field of urban design and planning, significant initiatives include Field Operations and RIOS' transformation of Chicago's West Side United Center parking lots into a mixed-use neighborhood, Heatherwick Studio's revitalization of a historic elevated riverfront space in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, and Perkins&Will's Florida Corridor Plan in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.Image gallerySee allShow lessAbout this authorCite: Antonia Pieiro. "UNStudio, HKS, and Gehl Reveal First Images of the Design Framework for the Austin Light Rail in Texas, United States" 24 Mar 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1028280/unstudio-hks-and-gehl-reveal-first-images-of-the-design-framework-for-the-austin-light-rail-in-texas-united-states&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Dragon House / no.ma architectenSave this picture! Stijn KnapenArchitects: ANA architectenAreaArea of this architecture projectArea:234 mYearCompletion year of this architecture project Year: 2023 PhotographsPhotographs:Stijn KnapenManufacturersBrands with products used in this architecture project Manufacturers: Diresco, Pretty Plastic, Reynaers, Sprimoglass, Winckelmans Lead Architects: Wim Van den berge, Cedric Rosier More SpecsLess SpecsSave this picture!Text description provided by the architects. A young couple was looking for an architect who could transform their recently purchased house into a flexible, challenging, playful and inspiring family home with a unique look and character. The clients had bought the house primarily for its location and the view of Vlierbeek Abbey. They had little affection for the house itself. The house lacked any contact between the rooms, and there was no relationship with the garden and surroundings either. no.ma architecten designed a new volume with a high-performance insulation shell on top of the basement floor. This way they were able to focus on a thorough spatiality with split-levels, internal diagonal sightlines and precisely planned window openings. The boundaries faded between inside and outside, the different spaces and their flexible use over time.Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Save this picture!Opaque and glass surfaces alternate. The closed surfaces block the view from neighbors and conceal less attractive views. The large glass surfaces draw rich light into the house and frame views of the sky, the farmland behind it and the abbey. Two large canopies cover the bike port and terrace on the one hand and create green zones at the level of the sleeping area and the bathroom on the other hand. They also provide passive sun protection. The furniture was also designed with flexibility in mind.Save this picture!The new volume is sheathed with a plastic roof and facade slats according to the upcycle principle. This makes this house the first project in Belgium with plastic diamond slats. This choice was determined not only by the sustainable quality, but also because of the color nuance and shading. Inside, white walls are combined with steel girders, wooden beams in sight, red-pigmented concrete on the ground floor and terrace, a bright red vinyl on the remaining floors, oak veneer, green-painted furniture elements and pink cement tiles.Save this picture!The bike port to the left of the house forms a covered entrance from the street side. You immediately enter the first living space. From this space, a staircase climbs to the upper floors, while a lazy staircase leads to the kitchen, about a meter and a half below, at the level of the backyard. The red pigmented concrete floor flows through several wall-to-wall steps into a basement-level seating area. A small desk area was built under the lazy staircase in the sunken living room. The kitchen cabinets merge into a storage closet, which includes the door to the tech room and guest toilet, both in the existing basement.Save this picture!On the second floor are two children's bedrooms, a bathroom and a second toilet. At the back, a void was created above the kitchen into which a trap net was stretched. This creates a diagonal line of sight with the floor below, the sunlight penetrates deeper into the ground floor and adds to the spaciousness. The rear facade was fitted with large sliding windows on each floor, allowing inside and outside to flow into each other.Save this picture!Project gallerySee allShow lessAbout this officeMaterialPlasticMaterials and TagsPublished on March 24, 2025Cite: "Dragon House / no.ma architecten" 24 Mar 2025. ArchDaily. Accessed . <https://www.archdaily.com/1028180/dragon-house-na-architecten&gt ISSN 0719-8884Save!ArchDaily?You've started following your first account!Did you know?You'll now receive updates based on what you follow! Personalize your stream and start following your favorite authors, offices and users.Go to my stream

Nature, Published online: 24 March 2025; doi:10.1038/d41586-025-00903-9Some low-profile meetings are helpful for parts of the scientific community. Others look like more of a cash grab.