Even more glaring than the perennial parent-child rift over what constitutes “cool” is the schism between employers and employees over WFH policy. The clash recently came to the fore when Amazon ordered its corporate staff back to the office five days a week starting in 2025—a decision many disgruntled workers are asking leadership to reverse.

The move made many people wonder whether the normalization of cats in the background of Zoom calls will be an enduring pandemic legacy after all. This week, on the heels of Amazon’s announcement, computer giant Dell told its sales staff to come back to the office full-time. Meanwhile, tech and finance giants including Microsoft, Apple, CitiBank, and Goldman Sachs have long pushed employees to show up in person at least three days per week.

WFH wars

Executives are more bullish on cubicles than they have been since the pandemic. The share of CEOs who expect companies will shift to full-time in-office work in the next three years jumped to 83% this summer from 64% the previous year, according to KPMG.

• Amazon CEO Andy Jassy claimed the company is going back to the pre-Covid way of doing things to stimulate collaboration and strengthen culture.
• The unofficial spokesperson of the RTO movement, JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, has previously said remote work stifles “spontaneous idea generation.”

Meanwhile, workers are not keen on greeting Debra from accounting with an awkward nod five times a week. A recent working paper from the University of Chicago found that top talent tends to ditch companies in response to RTO mandates. Indeed, 73% percent of Amazon employees said they’re now considering switching jobs. But that might be exactly what the company wants, with some interpreting its back-to-office call as a way to slash headcount without paying severance.

But WFH may not be done yet. The overall share of US employees who worked remotely for at least part of their job last month went up to 23% from 20% a year earlier, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics.—SK

Deadly Hurricane Helene brought floods to the Southeast. The storm made landfall Thursday night in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane, hitting an area still recovering from Hurricane Idalia before losing strength yesterday as it pummeled nearly 800 miles along the southeastern US, leaving at least 45 people dead across five states and millions without power. The heavy rainfall and storm surge also caused flooding that will likely result in billions of dollars’ worth of damage.

Israel bombs Beirut as Netanyahu vows to fight “until all our objectives are met.” Israel continued to escalate its attacks in Lebanon yesterday with airstrikes that leveled buildings in a densely populated area in what it said was an assault on Hezbollah’s headquarters targeting the group’s leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The bombing killed at least six people and injured dozens, according to Lebanon’s health ministry. The move came hours after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has brushed off international efforts toward a cease-fire, spoke at the UN and insisted that Israel’s campaign would continue. Lebanese and Palestinian officials addressed the assembly the day before, decrying Israel’s actions in its current conflicts.

Legendary actress Dame Maggie Smith has died at 89. The English stage and screen star’s sons said she “passed away peacefully” in a hospital yesterday morning, noting she was a “private person” and not revealing her cause of death. Smith’s decades-spanning acting career included Oscar wins for her roles in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and California Suite. More recently, she gained a new crop of fans as Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter films and the bon mot-spewing dowager countess in Downton Abbey.—AR

Browsing beachside mansions for fun is about to get depressing: Zillow’s US for-sale listings will soon feature data on extreme weather trends and insurance recommendations, the company announced yesterday.

On a scale of 1 to 10, properties will receive risk ratings for wildfires, flooding, heat, wind, and air quality. Listings may also show dystopian details, like how 95+ degree days at one Albuquerque listing are projected to spike 200% in the next 30 years. The data, provided by climate risk financial modeling company First Street, will be on Zillow’s website and iOS app by the end of the year and on Android in early 2025.

It marks the first time…aspiring homeowners will see climate risks alongside insurance recs, per Axios. And Zillow will sometimes recommend coverage even when it isn’t mandated:

• That’s because 78% of homes flooded by Hurricane Debby last month weren’t in areas requiring flood insurance, per First Street.
• Zillow’s new feature would’ve recommended coverage for 85% of those properties, the company said.

Climate risks and costs are growing. Last month, 16.7% of new Zillow listings had “major” risks for wildfires, and 12.8% had them for floods. Even if you’re outside disaster-prone zones, rising temperatures have pushed average utility bills up 25% since 2019, according to the Bank of America Institute.—ML

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Check on your boomers: A new copypasta is spreading through Instagram Stories.

Nearly 600,000 people have already shared the fake “Goodbye Meta AI” post. The image, which encourages people to reshare it, says it denies Meta the right to scrape a user’s posts and photos to train Meta AI. But the company said making a public declaration of “Meta, no swiping!” doesn’t do anything.

Even celebrities like James McAvoy, Ashley Tisdale, and Tom Brady fell for it. Kristen Bell shared an earlier version of the post in June but was revealed this week to be one of the celebs who cut a deal with Meta AI to use their voice in its new assistant.

The post is bogus, but the anxiety is real. Despite the general dread and disdain many people seem to be feeling about the onslaught of AI, Meta seems to be going full steam ahead. Its most recent MetaConnect conference focused heavily on its new AI features, including plans to show AI-generated content in users’ feeds.

Is there anything you can do? If you don’t want your posts training AI, you can make your accounts private. But Meta has probably already been using anything you’ve put on its platforms from as far back as 2007 to train its model.—MM

Patagonia stores in China might want to brace for an influx of traders looking to throw down some cash for a new fleece because Chinese stocks just finished their best week in over a decade after the government rolled out a $114 billion stimulus effort to boost the struggling market. The CSI 300 index of stocks listed in Shanghai and Shenzhen soared 15.7% for the week, its biggest weekly gain since November 2008 (perhaps not-so-coincidentally the last time China unleashed a massive stimulus package). Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s Hang Seng index jumped 3.6% over the week, its largest weekly increase since 1998, per FT. Demand was so strong that it led to glitches for the Shanghai stock exchange, according to Bloomberg. But it’s still too soon to say whether the stimulus and the enthusiasm for it will be enough to get China to its 5% economic growth target for the year.—AR