Holiday Respite Countdown, 5 Days

It’s that time of year, the best of lists have arrived…. Happy Reading!

The Wall Street Journal featured the list of best-managed companies of 2024. The Management Top 250 ranking compares companies using the late management guru Peter Drucker’s principles to identify the most effectively managed businesses. Industry leaders attending The New York Times Dealbook Summit last week were asked about artificial intelligence, the economy, international relations and more.

Neil Blumenthal: Co-founder and Co-C.E.O., Warby Parker said, "In an increasingly unpredictable world, a leader’s role is to serve as a shock absorber..... The best leaders not only prepare teams for sudden swings in the business and geopolitical landscape but also help them maintain focus on their mission and the work at hand." I love this!

Fast Company editors offered a list of the “best of” across advertising, tech, and product design. Fast Company also released its list of 121 brands that mattered in 2024 and the top ten visionary CMOs of the last year in their inaugural “CMOs of the year.” TIME magazine named Elton John their icon of the year. President-Elect Trump was named TIME magazine’s person of the year.

The annual State of Consumer Media Spending report found consumers are playing a lot for Internet, mobile phone plans, streaming services, and cable TV. In collaboration with Deloitte, Fortune surveyed CEOs about the shifting political winds.

OpenAI is testing a deepfake feature with Sora. Merriam-Webster word of the year is “polarization.” Joanna Stern has reviewed the latest Apple Intelligence features and while she doesn’t anticipate them to drive a new sales cycle she did give them a virtual thumbs up. The Billionaires are showing up for Trump - Bezos, Zuckerberg, and Altman have all made one million dollar donations to Trump’s inaugural fund.

Turns out MadeGood bars were made bad. Select bars are being recalled due to fears that the treats could be contaminated with metal. Stanley has voluntarily recalled 2.6 million travel mugs. Still own a black plastic spatula, toss it.

Traveling to the UK, next year? Make sure to check all the boxes before you go.

What did you Google this year? Here’s what the trends show. Snapchat has shared an overview of its?usage insights for 2024. In all my reading I missed Fast Company’s AI 20 last week, sharing here for everyone to catch up.

Happy Friday the 13th and Tay-Tay Day!

What I Read This Week

·?????? News: Jay-Z Accused in Lawsuit of Raping 13-Year-Old Girl With Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs

·?????? Health: This data shows why America is so upset about health insurance costs

·?????? Administration: Trump says he can’t guarantee that his tariffs wouldn’t raise prices for U.S. consumers

·?????? Media: The Free Press hires a publisher amid expansion

·?????? Media: The Daily Wire eyes growth investment in 2025

·?????? AI: Their Job Is to Push Computers Toward AI Doom

·?????? Tech/Politics: Who Is David Sacks, Trump’s Pick for AI and Crypto Czar?

·?????? News: F.D.A. Tries Last-Ditch Move to Slash Nicotine Levels in Cigarettes

·?????? Leadership: Fortune 500 CEOs are brimming with confidence following swift and decisive Trump victory

·?????? Insurance: Your Home-Insurance Bill Has Only One Way to Go: Up

·?????? Tech: The 28 Best Tech Gifts of 2024, According to Our Gadget Gurus

·?????? Public Health: Kennedy’s Lawyer Has Asked the F.D.A. to Revoke Approval of the Polio Vaccine

·?????? Retail: 3 ways Levi’s puts the customer first online

·?????? Business: Bud Light gets more bad news as popularity continues to fall

·?????? Tech: ‘Identic AI’: Who owns your digital self?

·?????? Tech/Impact: Doomscrolling has reportedly made TikTok’s annual carbon footprint almost the same as the entire country of Greece

·?????? Social Media: Gen Z and Gen Alpha teens say YouTube is their go-to social app—and Elon Musk’s X is fading into irrelevance

·?????? Real Estate: Where Freddie Mac predicts the housing market and home prices will go in 2025

And More ...

·?????? Economy: Billions in Cocktails and Friendship Bracelets: How Taylor Swift Juiced the Economy

·?????? Media: The Rise of Theo Von, the Resident Quipster of Podcasting’s ‘Manosphere

·?????? Media: Advertising Firms Omnicom and Interpublic Nearing Merger That Would Reshape Industry

·?????? Tech: Internet Plans Now Come With ‘Nutrition Labels.’ No One Knows How to Read Them.

·?????? Tech: The Secret Weapon Helping Businesses Get Results From AI: Humans

·?????? Tech: Quantum Computing Inches Closer to Reality After Another Google Breakthrough

·?????? Workplace: Top career coach warns Gen X about 3 changes to the CEO playbook that hurt mid-senior-level executives

·?????? Workplace: The ‘Great Stay’ is leaving employees feeling stuck as ‘pent-up resentment boils under the surface’

·?????? Marketing: 5 great holiday ads that are actually worth watching

·?????? AI: Dave Clark hires Amazon chief scientist and other former execs for his AI supply-chain startup

·?????? AI: Ilya Sutskever hired him to create ChatGPT’s voice at OpenAI. Now, his startup aims to unlock AI’s emotional intelligence

·?????? AI: How Years of Reddit Posts Have Made the Company an AI Darling

·?????? Tech: Gemini 2.0 is the next chapter for Google AI

·?????? Media: Two Major Ad Agencies to Merge, Creating Global Giant

·?????? Tech: Character.ai is being sued for encouraging kids to self-harm

·?????? Impact: Saudi Arabia will host the 2034 World Cup. Groups call FIFA’s human rights record a ‘sham’

·?????? Workplace: Return-to-office mandates are associated with an exodus of high performers, research finds

·?????? Tech: How Rocket Companies’ first-ever CTO is deploying AI aimed at making home buying easier

·?????? Fortune Brainstorm: Mastercard exec wants companies to reskill workers before AI comes for their jobs

·?????? Fortune Brainstorm: Three chip leaders on what drives them to compete against $3 trillion Nvidia — and where the opportunity is

·?????? Design: 5 colors that are going to be big in 2025 (and they’re not Mocha Mousse)

·?????? Politics: Biden Announces Largest Single-Day Act of Clemency in Modern History

·?????? Workplace: Netflix’s Extraordinary Parental Leave Was Part of Its Culture. That’s Over.

·?????? Workplace: Meet the People Who Refused to Go Back to the Office and Lost Their Jobs

·?????? Finance: Trump Advisers Seek to Shrink or Eliminate Bank Regulators

·?????? Politics: Biden Announces Largest Single-Day Act of Clemency in Modern History

·?????? Health: The Emerging Breast-Cancer Treatment: No Surgery Required

·?????? Politics: Jeff Bezos’ Amazon Plans to Donate $1 Million to Trump’s Inauguration

·?????? Politics: Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta Donates $1 Million to Trump’s Inaugural Fund

·?????? Media: YouTube Raises Price on TV Streaming Service to $82.99

·?????? Media: BuzzFeed Sells Brand Behind ‘Hot Ones’ Talk Show for $82.5 Million

·?????? AI: Get Ready for ‘Long Thinking,’ AI’s Next Leap Forward

·?????? Food: Kennedy’s War on Corn Syrup Brings a Health Crusade to Trump Country

·?????? News: F.A.A. Administrator Will Resign Before Trump Takes Office

·?????? Finance: New Federal Rule Limits Overdraft Fees at Large Banks

·?????? NYT/Dealbook Summit: Women Need More Help to Rise in the Workplace

·?????? NYT/Dealbook Summit: Technologists: Smarter-Than-Humans A.I. Will Likely Be Here by 2030

·?????? Workplace: UnitedHealthcare CEO’s death is being mocked on LinkedIn—a move that could hurt careers, says HR expert

·?????? Fortune Brainstorm: Big Tech wants AI data centers now. The reality: Clean energy infrastructure can take a half-decade or more to build

·?????? Fortune Brainstorm: Why a chief security officer spent $20 to create a deepfake of his CEO

·?????? Real Estate: Mortgage rates are going down, but U.S. home sales are still on track for the worst year since 1995

·?????? Retail/Food: The $1 Billion Cookie Empire That Teens Love and Parents Hate

·?????? C Suite: How Security Teams Protect Top Executives

·?????? Health: US obesity rates drop for 1st time in a decade, with possible help from weight loss medications

·?????? Tech: GPT is far likelier than other AI models to fabricate quotes by public figures, our analysis shows

·?????? Tech: Meta wants Threads to be more like Bluesky. Again