This past year was marked by a fickle and ever-changing job market that became more competitive as the months passed. In fact, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, despite the average monthly job growth falling about 28% in 2024 compared to 2023, the demand for talent in industries like healthcare, manufacturing, cybersecurity, and more is still red hot and the available supply is not able to keep pace. This could be a direct result of economic uncertainty following geopolitical tensions and tech sector layoffs earlier this year, in addition to the 2024 election.Regardless of the cause, a hypercompetitive job market places the power with job seekers and puts employers in a tough position when competing for talent. Should these positions go unfilled, the organization has to worry about increased turnover due to overworked and burnt-out employees. The lack of necessary talent can also impact the organizations rate of innovation, and customer satisfaction, and have longer-term impacts that can hinder the success of companies.As a result, employers are forced to step up recruiting efforts to fill the necessary positions for their organization. There are many ways to do this, like increasing salaries and benefits, leveraging data-driven recruiting, and strengthening your employer brand. However, the most important thing a company can do right now, ahead of the new year hiring spree, is to focus on improving the candidate experience (CX).Why candidate experience is so importantIt might not surprise you that many organizations candidate experiences havent been prioritized or updated in many years. We see career sites daily that look like they havent been updated since 2005. Considering the career site is often the first interaction a candidate has with a company that sets the tone for their relationship, this site must be updated regularly and tailored to what the modern job seeker expects.According to the 2024 HireClix Candidate Experience survey, job seekers were equally likely to use their mobile phones to search for jobs as they were their computers. This tells us that a mobile version of your career site is necessary. The survey also uncovered that Indeed and LinkedIn are currently the top job search platforms, so organizations should make sure these platforms also house up-to-date information about what jobs are available and why your company is an employer of choice.When looking at the candidate experience, I recommend the talent acquisition team and HR leaders run themselves through the process of applying as if they were candidates. This can uncover some previously unknown stressors that could be turning away talent. According to that same HireClix CX survey, most interestingly, a long job application process was turning away 35% of job seekers. As the job market gets more competitive, this number could continue to rise, thinning out the available talent pool even further to abysmal numbers.How social media helps attract top talentInterest rate drops and the election being settled will prompt job seekers to start making moves in the new year. However, while there is expected to be an increase in active job seekers, supply and demand are still running a deficit. As a result, 2025 is expected to bring even more competition when attracting top talent to fill increasing labor shortages across industries. On the bright side, this also means more opportunities for employers willing to innovate and experiment with recruitment marketing efforts.For example, employers willing to invest in video content for recruiting will see massive dividends. This content can give a job seeker a valuable window into a companys workplace culture and the day-to-day happenings. Especially now, candidates are seeking out this type of content, which is why I predict YouTube and TikTok will be as important as Indeed for recruiting in the new year. Metas Instagram and Facebook will also continue to rise as top recruitment marketing platforms. These videos, although seemingly whimsical, can help level up the candidate experience and lead to higher engagement rates and more applicants who have an emotional connection to the employer.Regardless of the various mediums used to engage talent, one thing remains abundantly clear: The fight for top talent will be won by the organizations that invest now in improving their candidate experience.

Recent years have brought a new wave of excitement in American cities around the concept of highway removal. But examples of highway removals in the U.S. are few and far between.Highway removal,when done welllike inRochester,New York, can revitalize urban areas by reclaiming space for community-centered development, stimulating economic growth and reconnecting neighborhoods previously divided by freeways.The benefits for the communities living along highways are obvious: People have experienced health, environmental, economic and mobility harms for the last 70 years. Communities originally displacedlost billionsin generational wealth opportunities in the ensuing displacement and residents todaycontinue to bear harm.Through a climate lens, highways are the linchpin of our carbon-intensive car-driven transportation and land use system. As transportation accounts fora third of U.S. emissions, cutting back on highway infrastructures and spending now is vital for meeting global climate goals and safeguarding communities from environmental and health impacts.Looking at dollars and cents,highways are a poor economic investment. They occupy nearly 25% of U.S. urban landan area equivalent to West Virginia and valued at $4.1 trillionyet their supposed benefits dont justify these enormous costs.As highways meet the end of their useful life and are up for (potential) reconstruction, we have a rare opportunity to right these harms and reimagine a better future. Otherwise, the highway and all its attendant problems continue in perpetuity.So why dont more U.S. states and cities ditch highway addictions? Its complicated.Sluggish policy responsesOn the federal level, policymakers havent caught up to this push, favoring incremental tweaks to highway policy. The U.S. Department of Transportations recentreport to Congresson decarbonizing U.S. transportation did not mention highway removal once, favoring fixing existing highways and discouraging new ones.Some states likeMinnesota and Coloradohave turned to mitigation and vehicle miles traveled (VMT) reduction and greenhouse gas emissions targets.Implemented well, these measures can be effective at tamping down highway expansions if using modeling practices that accurately measure VMT implications and associated emissions. But in most cases, these policies focus on ratcheting down highway spending and mitigating emissions, not paving the way for highway removal.The federalReconnecting Communities Grant Programis perhaps the best example of creating policy approaches to address highway removal. The program created a competitive grant process to provide funding to study and implement community reconnection projects and to support local and state action to remove highways. But many funded projects over the first two years dontactually include removing highways, focusing on half-solution mitigation measures like highway caps and land bridges.The program will exhaust its funding in the 2024 cycletwo years ahead of scheduledue to concerns about potential policy changes under the next administration. Its future now depends on the congressional transportation reauthorization in 2026, where funding for more planning grants and connecting current grant recipients with capital funding opportunities will be critical, albeit unlikely under the Trump administration and a Republican-controlled congress.How DOTs are blocking highway removalState transportation departments across the U.S. maintain an outdated focus on highway construction but are creating new approaches to fight against highway removal efforts. Theirentrenched traffic engineering mindsets, earmarked funding and institutional resistance to change impede efforts to promote alternatives to highways, fromMinnesotatoTexas.In Minnesota, a state perceived as aforward-thinking transportation reformer, weve seen MnDOT strongly resist removing highways whilequietly widening others. Their toolkit for fighting highway removal includes a variety of approaches, ranging from evaluation metrics and modeling.Traffic modeling:On a procedural level, agency processes built for evaluating highway alternatives are inadequate to assess highway removals. A recent report by my team at Our Streets, a Minnesota nonprofit focused on transportation policy, and our partners, Norm Marshall ofSmart Mobilityfound thatMnDOTs travel demand model is highly flawedin its ability to analyze highway removal impacts and cannot provide reliable results.Like otherDOTs around the country, the agencys playbook uses the same models tojustify expanding highwaysaround the country, costing taxpayers billions and failing to reduce traffic. The DOT applies the same modeling logic to implementingMinnesotas greenhouse gas standardfor highway development, watering down its effectiveness through misleading modeling results.Evaluation metrics:MnDOTs own evaluation metrics do little to fairly evaluate highway alternatives. In many cases, weve seen the agency outline these criteria based onpurpose and needs documentsthat prioritize cars and fail to consider some of the benefits highway removal could bring to adjacent communities.For example, the Twin Cities Metropolitan Planning Organization defines equity as follows: Equity means expanding access to opportunity for people of all races, ethnicities, incomes, abilities, and national origins. By contrast, MnDOTs measure on theRethinking I-94process, the regions most ambitious potential highway removal corridor, evaluates equity with the following question: Does the project option have the potential to enhance transportation choices for individuals? (Yes/No)Climate, environmental justice, and sense of place metrics are similarly vague yes-or-no questions; with all options receiving similar scores, despite vastly different outcomes across the spectrum from highway removal to highway expansion.Land use analyses:Comparing MnDOTs land use analyses to those of other planning organizations throws the agencys priorities in sharp relief. MnDOTs Rethinking I-94 study, placing a potential boulevard centrally, showed less land use potential than areportbyToole Design,Visible CityandSmart Mobilityconsidering alternative road placements to maximize developable space.Inadequate public engagement:Most of us have never experienced pre-highway American cities. For the public to understand something entirely outside of their current understanding of and relationship with highway infrastructures, transportation agencies need to ensure renderings communicate these projects full potential implications.But MnDOTs high-level engagement materials are vague in representing highway removal options, failing to give the public the context needed to fully understand these proposals and their implications.Officials have also removed opportunities for public testimony at many critical advisory meetings for highway projects, removing the main touchpoint between elected and appointed officials and the general public. MnDOT claims that it was previously unable to respond to these comments because they were not in writing, closing off public comment periods in favor of written feedback that may not ever see the light of day or reach public officials.A new roadmap for removing highwaysTheres an urgent need for federal guidance to leverage successful highway removal initiatives, enabling more cities to pursue this transformative approach.The U.S. DOT should thoroughly study the implications of removing highways, creating a toolkit for state and local officials to implement such proposals. This should include funding and technical assistance to build the capacity to think big and implement ambitious projects and policy changes.Given the Trump administrations posture and past emphasis ofinvesting in highway expansions, these changes seem unlikely. Philanthropy and forward-thinking policy organizations will likely have to fill this critical funding and expertise gap in coming years.State DOTs need reform to properly assess and facilitate highway removal projects. Current procedures and technical practicesbuilt by and for highway projectsneed to shift as we focus on restoring divided neighborhoods, advancing our climate resilience and creating equitable cities.And state and federal funding earmarked for highways need to be broadened to facilitate funding for these efforts. First, we must expandhighway purposesto include funding for transit, biking and walking infrastructure that comes with highway removal; second, we must create a special funding bucket to advance these proposals. This is especially important as BidensBipartisan Infrastructure Lawhas provisioned $350 billion to states forhighway projects, doubling down on past planning logics.Just as cities around the country were used as laboratories for urban renewal and highway construction, cities today have the opportunity to be forward-thinking hubs for highway removal and other truly transformative mobility policies. Its time to be bold and push policymakers and agencies to change their ways and for American cities to finally start removing highways and restoring communities.This story was originally published byNext City, a nonprofit news outlet covering solutions for equitable cities. Sign up for Next Citysnewsletterfor their latest articles and events.

When taking a trip down memory lane, some might flip through a photo album or scroll through their phones camera roll. But would you think to check Google Maps?Since 2007, Googles Street View cars have been quietly documenting neighborhoods around the world. Now, in whats been dubbed the Google Earth trend, people are searching for their childhood homes on Street Views, taking screenshots, and pairing them with heartfelt memories. These images, originally snapped by Googles cameras, offer glimpses of everyday life frozen in time.The trend took off after TikToker @bladehall posted a slideshow of his childhood home. Alongside the images, he wrote: And somewhere on Google Earth, Im still 17. Its summer, Im back in my childhood neighborhood. Zero worries. The post has since racked up more than 902,000 views and sparked a wave of nostalgia.In another video, TikTok user @jayeyou revisits a younger version of herself crouched beside her car. The text reads, somewhere on google maps, its 2012 and Im a junior in high school crying because my car got egged. @jayeyou #googlemaps original sound noaidenno Others take comfort in seeing glimpses of beloved family members who have since passed away. TikToker @itsleeuhhh shared a particularly poignant post, now with more than 3.3 million views. Somewhere on Google earth its 2011, Im 17 having a first date in my driveway, she wrote. In the next slide she added, & somewhere else in 2016 my dad is still taking the trash out (RIP), followed by: And my momma is still coming home from work in 2017 (RIP) (This trend destroyed me).The comments section beneath these videos reveals just how deep the nostalgia goes. One commenter wrote: Our Google Maps picture hasnt been updated since 2008. I would have been 8. You can still see our playhouse in the yard and bikes in the driveway. Another person added, My dog has been seen on Google waiting on the steps for me to come home from school for 13 years now. She passed away 6 years ago.For those eager to search up their own address and walk through old memories, its easy to join the trend. Open Google Maps, enter an address, click Street View, and select See More Dates to access the backlog of images. As one commenter warned, I need to wait to do this on a day that I have all day to cry.

A perfect storm is upon us, and to confront it designers must this year help to lead a fundamental shift in the way we see the world, writes Pooran Desai."We have two years to save the world." So said Simon Stiell, United Nations climate chief, in April last year. We are now nine months more than a third of the way into those two years. We have run out of time. We have only two options before us: reimagine, or perish."Reimagine". Take this option and by 2050 we'll be enjoying a planet where the living systems on which we depend are regenerating and able to support a population of 10 billion.We are crossing numerous interconnected climatic, ecological, social, economic, technological and geopolitical tipping pointsWe will be improving our personal health and the health of our communities. We will have transformed from a consumer species, consuming the rest of nature, to a regenerator one, working as part of the rest of nature and returning the living planet to a healthy state.The second option is far less comforting. In this option we continue with our consumer economy with some incremental moves towards circularity and targets like net zero.They avoid saying it in public, but multiple scientists have told me they genuinely fear that if we follow this path, by the middle of the century we will be trying to survive on a planet only able to support maybe one or two billion people. A stark choice.Read: "Cutting out sustainability in the face of economic downturn is short-term and misguided"Why two polar outcomes? It is because we are crossing numerous interconnected climatic, ecological, social, economic, technological and geopolitical tipping points which interact and cascade in ways that move us away from a stable state. Climate change leads to drought, collapse in food production, mass migration and war.The big question we need to ask ourselves: can we tip from a degenerating to a regenerating state? I think so, and I believe it is simple.The good news is that a paradigm shift in science, culture and consciousness is emerging. This rebalancing from reductionism to holism, from rationality to intuition, from science to art, and from materialism to a sense of the sacred will be essential for resolving the polycrisis.Leading scientists are calling for us to fundamentally change how we teach scienceArchitects and designers work at the nexus of art and science, and so will be critical in manifesting the reimagining.In science the paradigm shift is a revolution every bit as dramatic as when Copernicus deposed our planet the centre of the universe. There is a growing and profound dissatisfaction with reductionism and materialism. Focusing on the detail and the parts, we are realising, fails to explain how the world hangs together.In medicine, contradicting all reductionist hopes, we now know that genes predict only 5-10 per cent of disease at most, and that the expression of our genes is affected by the wider environment, culture and, ultimately, the state of the whole planet.Read: Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture triumphs as Dezeen Awards 2024 sustainability winners revealedIn biology, scientists have been confronting the limitations of seeing the natural world as separate competing individuals and are instead now applying new mathematics that enables us to understand how species organise collaboratively to create a whole living planet. So serious are the shortcomings of conventional reductionist understanding that leading scientists are calling for us to fundamentally change how we teach science, particularly biology, at school and university.Increasingly hailed as the greatest thinker of our time, Iain McGilchrist, psychiatrist, neuroscientist, philosopher and author of The Matter with Things ascribes our polycrisis to a metacrisis, and how the two halves of our brain deal with, or attend to, the world. The left brain, which is dominant in our culture, sees the world as made up of parts which it literally cannot put together and lacks the intuition fundamentally needed to make complex decisions.Continuing on our current path will fail to see us through the perfect storm upon usThe right brain, by contrast, understands context and can see the world as an indivisible interconnected whole, which is closer to the ultimate truth and which is beyond reductionist understanding. The right brain opens us up to a sense of awe and the sacred vital for a healthy relationship with the rest of the life on this planet."Reimagine" shifts us to being led by our right brains. It will be arts- and meditation-led, supported by science, reconnecting us to each other, our communities and the rest of nature.Interconnectedness is key to the reimagining, and will gently corral us to collaborate to build resilient, regenerative communities. Already we see all this emerging around the world in artistic and community movements, from indigenous peoples to Brian Eno's Hard Art.Read: "The Paris Olympic Village air-conditioning debacle is a perfect illustration of the barriers to climate action"Designers, of course, balance both brain functions seeing possibilities and collapsing those into forms, or parts, which in turn transform the whole. They will play a central role: reimagining products and services so that they build the health of people, community and planet, replacing our consumer economy with a regenerator one. It will be a playful and joyful process, bringing us together.In contrast, continuing on our current path will fail to see us through the perfect storm upon us. Carbon emissions are rising. Climate change is accelerating. Insect populations are collapsing. Ninety-six percent of all mammalian biomass is now human or our livestock. The oceans have heated to record levels. Crustaceans and molluscs are dissolving as the seas acidify.And it's not just about collapse in climate and ecology. It's also about mass migration, economic instability, nationalism, geopolitical tension and nuclear war. Attempting to solve any of these problems without solving them all will mean a complete failure in our efforts. Unless we solve them all, we fail completely.It's all or nothing, and only imagination can take us thereHolism and "reimagine" is about how we want to live. It requires imagination and intuition beyond left-brain capacity. It's about imagining how we put together renewable energy, rewilding, peace, organic agriculture, joy, circularity, social equity, community, worship and thriving local economies.Like it or not, it's all or nothing, and only imagination can take us there. The choice is ours. Let's make 2025 the year of reimagining.Pooran Desai is a social entrepreneur, consultant and author with a background in neuroscience, medical science and sustainability. He co-founded Bioregional, an environmental organisation that created BedZED, the world's first zero-carbon urban village, as well as the One Planet Living framework, which formed the basis for the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. He founded sustainability-focused digital platform One Planet in 2018 and is currently working on a planet-regenerating artificial intelligence system. He was named an Officer of the British Empire in 2004 for services to sustainable development.The photo, showing the aftermath of flooding in Valencia in autumn 2024, is by Vicente Sargues via Shutterstock.Dezeen In DepthIf you enjoy reading Dezeen's interviews, opinions and features,subscribe to Dezeen In Depth. Sent on the last Friday of each month, this newsletter provides a single place to read about the design and architecture stories behind the headlines.The post "We have only two options before us: reimagine, or perish" appeared first on Dezeen.

I see Mickey Mouse in a whole new light.

It may seem like a perfect fit: dispassionate software that streamlines the agendas of dastardly regimes. But theyll find that the tech cuts both ways.

Not in this universe, a new study concludes.

Modern religious leaders are experimenting with A.I. just as earlier generations examined radio, television and the internet.

Hi-Fi Rush and The Evil Within developer Tango Gameworks is officially back with a slight name change. After joining Krafton, its now Tango Gameworks Inc., with a new tweet noting its excitement to continue crafting games that bring joy to players around the world.Though receiving extensive acclaim for Hi-Fi Rush in 2023, with Microsofts Aaron Greenberg remarking that the company couldnt be happier with its launch, Tango was shut down in 2024 alongside Arkane Austin and Alpha Dog Games by Microsoft. It was subsequently acquired by Krafton alongside the Hi-Fi Rush IP, with the company touting the sequel as more of an open world type of experience.While it wont be a fully open world, Maria Park, Kraftons head of corporate development, said there will be more dynamic environments for players to explore. Further details on a release date are unknown, and while Tango was working on a six-month-old build before meeting Krafton, the latter is keen to take its time. We want to make sure that the sequel is actually at a quality level that surpasses the communitys expectations, said Park.Hi-Fi Rush is available for Xbox Series X/S, PS5, and PC. Check out our review of the PS5 version.pic.twitter.com/XyTkKcFyzF Tango Gameworks (EN) (@TangoGameworks) January 1, 2025

President Dwight D. Eisenhower enthusiastically declares Alaska statehood on January 3, 1959. Corbis via Getty ImagesAmericas largest stateencompassing mountains, coasts, lakes and tundracaptures about $5.6 billion in tourism spending each year. Alaska is a gold mine, rich in natural resources like petroleum, seafood and literal gold.But the state, which became the United States 49th on this day in 1959, wasnt always considered a worthwhile investment.When U.S. Secretary of State William Seward purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, he negotiated a price of $7.2 millionabout $153 million todayfor almost 600,000 square miles of territory: less than 2 cents per acre. His big get was immediately dubbed Sewards Folly.Russia has sold us a sucked orange! announced the New York World. As another critic wondered, what use did America have for a land covered with glaciers, icebergs, bears and walruses?Russia had conquered Alaska back in the 18th century, during an era of expansion spearheaded by Peter I. In 1733, Peter ordered an ambitious exploration of eastern Siberia and the northern Pacific Ocean called the Great Northern Expedition. By 1741, Russian naval explorers had arrived at the east coast of Siberia, crossed the sea and found a new land: Alaska. The Russians quickly realized the territorys potential contribution to the Siberian fur trade, given its thriving population of sea otters.Soon, Siberian fur traders were trapping and harvesting pelts in the Aleutian Islands and around the island of Kodiak off Alaskas southern coast. They were brutal to Alaskas Indigenous population, harming and threatening the Aleut and Alutiiq peoples who had lived there for millennia. During the following decades, Russians engaged in constant conflict with Alaskan Natives, especially the Tlingit. By the mid-19th centuryamid other conflicts with European nationsRussia was looking to sell. When the United States bought the territory, it ended Russias 125-year hold on North American soil.Sewards Icebox, as Alaska was also called, was among a string of 19th-century American acquisitions. In the 1840s, the U.S. had expanded into Oregon, Texas and California. Seward was all for the stretching of the country, in accordance with Manifest Destiny, the idea that white Americans were fated to expand westward and spread democracy. Acquiring Alaska would mean additional American strength in the West. As Seward wrote in 1848, Our population is destined to roll resistless waves to the ice barriers of the north, and to encounter oriental civilization on the shores of the Pacific.Still, though the U.S. acquired Alaska in 1867, it didnt become a state until 1959. The century in between saw the territory develop from a sparsely populated region into a place Americans traveled and lived. In 1896, the discovery of gold in the Klondikenear todays Glacier Bay National Park in Southeast Alaskabrought a wave of gold-seekers to the territory. The profit soared from there, and by the mid-20th century, Congress was regularly introducing bills that would make Alaska a state.During the Cold War, Americans called Alaska the Guardian of the North and the Top Cover for America because of its proximity to the Soviet Union. President Dwight D. Eisenhower saw Alaskas potential statehood as a risk in this sense: If it were made a state, Alaska would bring the nation that much closer to its enemy.Nonetheless, Eisenhower signed legislation making Alaska a state on July 7, 1958. On January 3, 1959, Alaska was officially admitted as the 49th state. That same year, Hawaii would become the 50th.As Smithsonian reported in 2017, hundreds of billions of dollars in whale oil, fur, copper, gold, timber, fish, platinum, zinc, lead and petroleum have been produced in Alaska over the years. Today, its one of only nine U.S. states to forgo statewide earned income taxes. But Alaska is perhaps best known for its pristine wilderness. In 1980, the state gained an enormous public lands system thanks to the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act. More than 100 million acres of Alaskan land are now preservedprotected as national treasures in a state once considered a bad investment.Get the latest stories in your inbox every weekday.Filed Under: Alaska, Business, On This Day in History, Russia , Trade, Westward Expansion