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Don MacLeod

22,000 Wake Ups and Counting

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Don MacLeod

22,000 Wake Ups and Counting

Culture

The Villages: Where Gen Z Moves In and Boomers Need Their Services

Posted on February 23, 2026February 23, 2026 By Don MacLeod

The Villages retirement community in Florida just landed the #2 spot on a national ranking of Gen Z migration hotspots — right behind Minneapolis and ahead of Manhattan. A 55+ community. Second-hottest destination for people born between 1997 and 2012. MovingPlace analyzed nearly 15 million moves throughout 2025 and found…

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Business

Bathroom Demon and All: What Happens When Realtors Skip Quality Control

Posted on February 22, 2026February 23, 2026 By Don MacLeod

A rental listing in Fort Totten, just north of Washington, DC, briefly featured something no prospective tenant expects to see: a disfigured figure emerging from — and somehow also behind — a bathroom mirror. The listing has since been scrubbed from Apartments.com. Other versions remain on Redfin, minus the nightmare…

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Canada

We Turned Our Neighbor Into an Enemy

Posted on February 21, 2026February 21, 2026 By Don MacLeod

The US-Canada relationship just fell off a cliff, and if you grew up straddling that border as I did — Farmington Hills, Michigan, twenty minutes from Windsor — this one lands differently. Not abstract. Not academic. Personal. Politico just dropped five charts documenting how thoroughly we’ve torpedoed the longest undefended…

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Business

Hershey Swapped Real Chocolate for “Chocolate Candy” — The Reese Family Noticed

Posted on February 20, 2026February 20, 2026 By Don MacLeod

Brad Reese — grandson of H.B. Reese, the guy who invented Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups in his basement in 1928 — posted an open letter to Hershey last week, accusing the company of “quietly replacing” the milk chocolate and peanut butter that made the candy iconic. The changes to Reese’s…

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Business

AI Job Displacement Fears — When Panic Beats Logic

Posted on February 19, 2026February 19, 2026 By Don MacLeod

Wall Street’s latest panic cycle is eating through white-collar sectors like a brushfire through dry timber. This time, it’s AI job-displacement fears — and the casualties are piling up fast. Insurance brokers got hammered. Wealth managers took a beating. Freight logistics companies cratered 19% in a single session. The proximate…

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Business

Big Food Panics as GLP-1 Drugs Vaporize $12 Billion in Snack Sales

Posted on February 18, 2026February 18, 2026 By Don MacLeod

The snack aisle is having an identity crisis. According to a Reuters article about the effects of GLP-1 drugs on snacks, PepsiCo just launched a reformulated Lay’s line with shorter ingredient lists and smaller bags. Coca-Cola ramped up production of protein-infused Fairlife milk. General Mills released higher-protein Cheerios. Kraft Heinz…

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Culture

AI Doesn’t Just Hallucinate — You’re Hallucinating With It

Posted on February 17, 2026February 17, 2026 By Don MacLeod

Christmas Day 2021. Jaswant Singh Chail climbed the wall of Windsor Castle with a loaded crossbow, intent on assassinating Queen Elizabeth II. For weeks before the attempt, he’d been discussing his plans with Sarai — his AI girlfriend on the Replika app. Chail believed he was a Sith assassin on…

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Culture

We’re Still Knocking on Wood — And 11 Other Superstitions That Refuse to Die

Posted on February 16, 2026February 16, 2026 By Don MacLeod

The groundhog saw its shadow, someone broke a mirror at the office, and your coworker just threw salt over her shoulder because she spilled some on the conference table. Welcome to 2026 — where we carry supercomputers in our pockets but still believe trees contain protective spirits. Knocking on wood…

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Culture

Nine Ways to Be Terrible at Restaurants (And Why People Do It Anyway)

Posted on February 15, 2026February 15, 2026 By Don MacLeod

The restaurant industry is a rite of passage for anyone working in media or entertainment. Before the radio gigs, before the marketing director title in New York, there were shifts — bartending, cooking, dishwashing, pot washing, waiting tables, running errands, whatever needed doing. You learn rhythm. You learn timing. You…

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AI

The Week AI’s Mental Health Problem Became Impossible to Ignore

Posted on February 14, 2026February 14, 2026 By Don MacLeod

This past week, two major news organizations published investigations into AI chatbots and mental health. NBC New York surveyed over 2,700 psychiatrists and counselors. NPR profiled a woman who spent months convinced ChatGPT was helping her find her soulmate across 87 past lives. The timing wasn’t coordinated — but the…

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