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December brings candy canes, snow angels — and a reminder of just how much Lady Gaga you’ve listened to.Spotify Wrapped, an annual walk down memory lane available to the streaming platform’s more than 713 million users, is now a hallmark for the company, flooding social feeds for one day every year and spawning copycats.The project has grown rapidly; by the December launch date, Spotify is already working on next year’s Wrapped. What once took a handful now takes hundreds, from designers to engineers to data scientists.The annual wrap-up has also evolved over the years, assessing new mediums — podcasts, now…

A Fortec adaptive reuse project in Barrington, Illinois.Courtesy: FortecA version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Property Play newsletter with Diana Olick. Property Play covers new and evolving opportunities for the real estate investor, from individuals to venture capitalists, private equity funds, family offices, institutional investors and large public companies. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox.Rising demand from parents for early education is causing a boom in a small but fast-growing subsector of commercial real estate. The sector is so undersupplied that it’s increasingly attractive to both developers and investors. The U.S. child-care market is currently valued…

Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. Subscribe here to get it delivered to your inbox, and listen to the Up First podcast for all the news you need to start your day. Today’s top stories Today, Democrats in Washington introduced a bill that would limit who the Trump administration can appoint as a temporary judge. The bill, introduced by California’s Sen. Adam Schiff and Rep. Juan Vargas, would allow the attorney general to appoint temporary immigration judges who have served on appellate panels, are administrative judges in other agencies, or have at least 10 years of experience in immigration law. This legislation…

If AI feels overhyped now, Eric Schmidt suggests that businesses should brace themselves — the real disruption hasn’t even begun yet.In an interview with Professor Graham Allison at the John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at Harvard University on Monday, the former Google CEO pushed back on the idea that AI’s rapid growth is a speculative bubble, saying that the technology is actually under-hyped.”If anything, it’s under-hyped because you are fundamentally automating businesses,” he said.The real transformation, he said, is happening deep inside companies, where AI systems are beginning to take over the “boring” tasks that quietly consume billions in corporate…

Levi Strauss CEO Michelle Gass was out for a run in San Francisco last March when she first heard the song “Levii’s Jeans” from Beyonce’s latest album, “Cowboy Carter.” “Literally, I got chills,” Gass recounted to CNBC, adding the name check represented a “once in a lifetime” marketing opportunity she couldn’t afford to squander. “She is one of the most celebrated and influential artists of our time … We asked the question, ‘Could there be something more?'” Six months later, Levi announced Beyonce would star in a new global marketing campaign. Then, a pattern that’s repeated itself since Levi invented blue jeans…

Macy’s on Wednesday beat Wall Street’s sales expectations for the third quarter in a row and posted its strongest growth in more than three years as the company’s turnaround strategy showed signs of momentum.The department store operator raised its full-year sales and earnings outlook after its better-than-expected fiscal third quarter. The retailer now expects adjusted earnings per share of between $2 and $2.20, up from its previous expectation of $1.70 to $2.05, and net sales of $21.48 billion to $21.63 billion, compared with its prior outlook of $21.15 billion and $21.45 billion.Macy’s said it expects flat to roughly 0.5% comparable…

Left: Ed Martin was one of the authors of the law now known as IDEA. Before the law, children with disabilities were often turned away from public schools. “They were invisible,” says Martin. Right: Maggie Heilman and her daughter, Brooklynn, 14, at their home in a Kansas City suburb. Brooklynn has Down syndrome and her own special education plan thanks to IDEA. Thomas Simonetti and Katie Currid for NPR hide caption toggle caption Thomas Simonetti and Katie Currid for NPR Fifty years ago, just after Thanksgiving of 1975, President Gerald Ford signed the Education for All Handicapped Children Act, the…

Buddy and Josh in the spotlight in the 1997 Walt Disney movie, Air Bud. Walt Disney Pictures hide caption toggle caption Walt Disney Pictures When I first read about how Texas Republicans were preparing to engage in mid-decade redistricting, I sent a text message to a Republican aide in state government, jokingly wondering if Missouri would get in on the fun. It’s no secret that my interest in Missouri redistricting borders on obsession. Some of my love for the subject stems from its importance. The lines and where they are drawn can determine which party has a better shot at…

Applying for a home loan is a pain. You have to produce a heap of documents — bank statements, tax returns, employment records, tallies of investment accounts — to prove the stability of your financial footing, then wait for a mortgage underwriter to comb through all of it before giving you the thumbs up. I spoke with one exasperated homebuyer who described the process as a “borderline invasion of privacy.”While the average American submits to a financial colonoscopy en route to their dream home, wannabe real estate moguls have found a way to sidestep the hassle. With the help of…

San Francisco is going after food brands that produce “ultra-processed foods,” accusing the companies of fueling a public health crisis.The 64-page lawsuit, filed on December 2 by San Francisco City Attorney David Chiu, accused some of the country’s biggest food brands of selling dangerous, ultra-processed foods to residents of San Francisco.It named 11 brands as defendants: The Kraft Heinz Company, Mondelez International, Post Holdings, The Coca-Cola Company, Pepsico Inc., General Mills, Nestlé, Kellanova, WK Kellogg Co., Mars Inc., and Conagra Brands.The city attorney said the brands had profited from selling ultra-processed foods, which make people crave what they otherwise would…