Bob Lutz is a former Marine who worked for Ford, General Motors, Chrysler, and BMW, usually as the resident "car guy" — a product guru who could guide the bean counters toward automotive glory and gruffly greenlight amazing machines. Now semi-retired, Lutz is partnered with designer Henrik Fisker at VLF Automotive, a maker of exotic,... Continue Reading →

Petco has launched a new kind of pet store that offers a suite of services, such as grooming, training, and veterinary care, at deep discounts for a monthly fee. The store, called PetCoach, is like a cross between Amazon Go, Amazon's cashierless convenience stores, a veterinary hospital, and a grooming salon. Shoppers can pay $9... Continue Reading →

After designing an incredibly cheap home, the 20K Initiative is now working with Fannie Mae and others to redesign mortgages and the other factors that make home ownership so expensive. When architecture students at Auburn University’s Rural Studio first started working on the 20K initiative in 2005, they had a straightforward–if ambitious–goal: to design a... Continue Reading →

Typically, engineers want to get bugs out of their creations. Not so for the U.K. engineering firm (not the famed carmaker) Rolls-Royce — it’s looking for a way to get bugs into the aircraft engines it builds. These “bugs” aren’t software glitches or even actual insects. They’re tiny robots modeled after the cockroach. On Tuesday,... Continue Reading →

After years on the fringe, Medicare for All is becoming a central plank of the Democratic Party. Dozens of Congressional Democrats are set to announce the formation of an official Medicare For All Caucus on Thursday, according to a source familiar with the plan. The caucus is expected to have over 60 founding members, or... Continue Reading →

Former President Barack Obama came out in support of an economic policy that is far to the left of anything being proposed by most sitting U.S. politicians. While delivering remarks Tuesday at the 16th annual Nelson Mandela Lecture in Johannesburg, Obama appeared to endorse the idea of creating a universal basic income, the policy where... Continue Reading →

One of the abiding realities of our political era is a major generational split anchored on the right by disproportionately conservative seniors and on the left by disproportionately progressive millennials and post-millennials. This is often thought of as a perfectly natural, even inevitable, phenomenon: Young people are adventurous, open to new ways of thinking, and... Continue Reading →

“Caging children is a crime. Salesforce, fuck your bottom line!” chanted about 40 protestors on July 9 outside the new Salesforce Tower that looms over San Francisco’s East Cut neighborhood. The chant encapsulates the sentiment of a growing number of tech industry employees, who’ve moved from apathy to activism in the last few years. They’re... Continue Reading →

On Thursday, ecologists at the University of California, Berkeley, released a study published in Science Magazine that indicates animals are adjusting their habits to avoid the stresses of human encroachment on their habitat. According to the research from Kaitlyn M. Gaynor, Cheryl E. Hojnowski, Neil H. Carter, and Justin S. Brashares, human population growth is... Continue Reading →

He is concerned that a coming wave of automation could put millions of people out of work and result in more extreme politics. Pointing to investments in autonomous vehicles by companies like Tesla, Amazon, and Uber, Pawar observed that long-haul trucking jobs, historically a source of middle-class employment, may become obsolete. More people out of work means more... Continue Reading →