• Mark Lanier said he used AI before and during the social media addiction trial earlier this year.
• Lanier, who won the case against Meta and Google, said AI has transformed his workflow.
• He swears by an AI tool that he pays six figures annually for called Boodlebox.

One morning in February, Mark Lanier woke up after four hours of sleep and started preparing to cross-examine one of the wealthiest people in the world: Mark Zuckerberg.

His team had worked through the night, preparing material for the day ahead that he could then review in the hours before court, all with the help of AI.

Lanier, a nationally known Texas trial lawyer with a reputation for taking on major corporations in high-stakes trials, was representing the plaintiff in a landmark social media addiction case. He said AI allowed his team to do significantly more with the limited hours they had to prep outside the courtroom during the trial, which lasted over a month.

"It's as if I have 10 additional workers who are incredibly well-trained, who know the file inside and out, who work 24 hours a day and don't even need to take a break for the restroom, much less PTO," he told Business Insider, adding, "In the 10 hours I might be working outside of court, I can get 30 hours of work done."

AI in law has been touted both as a major opportunity and a cautionary tale, with many stories of hallucinations and fake citations. While the legal industry grapples with how to use AI, Lanier said it's been a "total game changer" for him.

Lanier won the case against Meta and Google, in which the jury found the companies negligent and ruled they knew their platforms were "dangerous" but failed to warn the plaintiff, who was awarded $6 million. The case was a bellwether for thousands of similar lawsuits brought against social media companies.

While Lanier had used the most popular AI products, he said the AI tool he relied on before and during the trial was Boodlebox, calling it "Disney World compared to a swing set in the backyard."

A leader in the education technology space, Boodlebox provides access to major models like ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, allowing users to switch between them or compare results. It's also collaborative, allowing Lanier and his team of lawyers to work with the AIs in the same digital workspace.

Lanier worked with Boodlebox to create a custom license that costs him six figures annually and is tailored to his needs.

"We could, in essence, take my brain, take 42 years of my experience, take the things that I have learned and studied and published and not published and incorporate it into the brain that drove my AI queries and results," he said.

He relied on AI before and during the landmark trial

Lanier is careful when talking specifics about how he deploys his AI. He says it's a matter of "trade craft" and that his firm is "doing some things that nobody else is doing."

One example he gave included taking transcripts from court each day and asking different models to evaluate them. He said AI is also great for finding a more creative or visceral way to describe something in court. He even would feed AI jury notes that came up during deliberations and ask it to evaluate where the jury was in the process.

At the end of court each day, they'd meet in his war room, debrief, and assign tasks to everyone, such as pulling the five most critical documents supporting point A. The team would then break and do much of that work in Boodlebox, allowing him to review what they've put together and how. He said he and his team, which includes several of his daughters, spent thousands of hours on the platform.

While most of Boodlebox's clients are big universities, a company representative told Business Insider that the platform is also exploring more enterprise and law adoption, in part because of its work with Lanier.

Lanier said he doesn't use AI in the way that often gets people into trouble. "I'm not going to say, 'Go do my research and write my brief,'" he said, adding that there was one instance in the case where AI cited something from the record and he knew it wasn't correct.

"It's not unbridled," he said. "You are an important part of the equation."

His advice to other lawyers trying to use AI was to keep up with the developments in the rapidly evolving field. He has an AI team at his firm that sends him a document every Friday with all the developments in AI, typically three pages single-spaced.

"Next trial, I will make what I did last trial look like Fred Flintstone and the Stone Age," he said.

• General Motors spent $10B on its Cruise robotaxi business before shutting it down in 2024.
• GM is now focusing on autonomy in personally-owned cars.
• The company's chief product officer said that technology will converge toward robotaxis.

General Motors may have shut down its dedicated robotaxi division, but it hasn't bowed out of the race.

Sterling Anderson, the former head of Tesla's Autopilot program and GM's chief product officer, told Business Insider in an interview that the company's focus on autonomy in personal cars could be applied to driverless ride-hailing services in the future.

Anderson said GM's approach is to develop self-driving technology by breaking the driving experience into pieces and examining where autonomy is most useful to car owners. That means first tackling long stretches of highway driving before expanding to arterial roads and urban centers.

Over time, the executive said GM's autonomous driving systems will be able to operate in enough regions to make a viable robotaxi service.

"Ultimately, the two converge. Our operating region looks identical to the operating region of a robotaxi company," he said. "The question at that point becomes, 'Why not offer them in a robotaxi-type application as well?'"

GM was once seen as one of the leading challengers to Alphabet's Waymo robotaxis, pouring more than $10 billion into Cruise, the robotaxi startup that it acquired in 2016. The division was shut down in 2024 after facing regulatory hurdles and a safety incident that forced Cruise to pause testing in California.

GM has since shifted its focus toward its hands-off, eyes-on driver assistance tech called Super Cruise, akin to Tesla Full Self-Driving. The company said in April that GM customers have driven one billion hands-free miles with the feature and that it plans to introduce eyes-off highway driving in 2028.

The shift has come with a rebuilding of GM's autonomous-driving ranks. Business Insider reported in December that it had hired Ronalee Mann, a former Cruise and Tesla executive, for its renewed self-driving focus inside the company. The Information reported last week that GM has rehired about 100 former Cruise employees to develop eyes-off driving capabilities.

Several other legacy automakers and EV startups are charting their own path to robotaxis. Hyundai-backed Motional launched a robotaxi service with Uber in Las Vegas this year and plans to commercialize fully driverless rides there by the end of 2026. Rivian is also developing autonomous driving for a future robotaxi fleet. The EV maker announced a $1.25 billion robotaxi deal with Uber in March.

While GM isn't jumping headfirst into a robotaxi play, Anderson said the company will be prepared to meet the demand.

"We'll be ready for it," he said. "If that's where the world goes, our autonomous vehicles will be capable of being robotaxis as well."

Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at lloydlee@businessinsider.com or Signal at lloydlee.71. Use a personal email address, a nonwork WiFi network, and a nonwork device; here's our guide to sharing information securely.

Brian Rezendes anticipates his retirement years will be filled with AI agents, algorithms, and APIs — along with the occasional vacation with his wife.

Rezendes, a former pool business owner, retired in April from a retail job in rural North Dakota. Like many retirees, the 64-year-old envisioned his post-work years as a time to relax, travel, and stay active. He did not expect to be neck-deep in conversations with chatbots, vibe coding websites, or building YouTube channels. Though he'd always been interested in technology, he rarely delved into the deeper plumbing behind it until a few years ago, when he became immersed in AI. Nowadays, he spends almost all of his time building apps… until the real world comes calling.

"My wife gets a little bit jealous when I spend too much time on the computer," Rezendes says.

Retirement has gone digital. In recent interviews, 15 retired Americans admitted they and their friends are glued to their screens, perhaps to a fault. Hours they could have spent tidying up the house went toward learning the best AI tools and, as three tech-savvy baby boomers put it, "staying current." Some post-career Americans who moved abroad said tech is all the rage in their beachfront expat communities. Retirement communities have swapped watercoloring for AI education. Starting an AI-powered business replaced the golf course. ChatGPT is the new nurse's assistant. Robots are some older Americans' new best friends.

Dee Humphrey is among them. The 73-year-old in Schenectady, New York, has used a companion robot called ElliQ for over three years. And while she's waiting for a new version to arrive, she's been having "withdrawals because I can't do anything with her."

The new reality of retirement isn't all screen addiction. Some of this development has been a boon for older people navigating a new phase of life. In Austin, Edward Perry, 72, said that he used AI after a terminal cancer diagnosis to "help me with living as rich and full a life in what time I have," including managing his health and finding ways to be more present in his family's lives.

"As I'm getting older, I have more aches and pains, but with utilizing these new technologies, I'm going to be able to do more and more," Rezendes says.

Many others acknowledged the risks of getting too hooked on tech. Most knew that relying too heavily on AI meant losing agency and receiving potentially faulty information. Others said being too invested in tech could mean less time staying active. Some noted that after decades of work, these were their years to relax, but they couldn't bring themselves to close their MacBooks.

If Gen Z is the first generation to grow up on the internet, baby boomers are learning how to be the first generation to retire on it.

Unexpected and omnipresent

For those in retirement, screen time of all types has been increasing. Surveys show that adults 65 and over almost doubled their YouTube consumption on TV from 2023 to 2025, and older Americans spend over four hours a day in front of screens. Brittne Kakulla, senior research advisor for AARP Research, says the group's Tech Trends survey found smartphone ownership among adults aged 50-plus skyrocketed from 55% in 2016 to 90% in 2025. Perhaps more striking was the number of older people trying out AI. Use nearly doubled from 2024 to 2025, from 18% to 30%, and many more said they are interested in experimenting.

Nearly all older tech superusers I spoke to were surprised by the amount the tools had become integrated into their retirements. Jan Friedlander, 81, used online databases in her real estate career, but only became hooked on tech a few years ago after she left her job. As she battled cancer and macular degeneration, she used AI to guide her treatment, and soon found herself relying on it to research clothing, plan vacations, and more. As she became more prompt-savvy, she felt confident enough to start teaching her peers.

"I've always had a curiosity about things that would come along that were new," Friedlander says.

She also began facilitating AI classes in Denver for those 50 and over with her friend Pat Smith, 73. Smith, who has a more technical background in consulting and pharmaceuticals, says the classes have attracted many "eager retiree students." Smith also sees both sides of the AI boom. On the positive side, she submitted her lab work to ChatGPT after having a reaction to an antibiotic, prompting her to follow up with her doctor and allergist. But she also bemoans the disappearance of human customer service and the online portalization of medical care. To combat the AI creep, Smith has monitored her tech usage, maintained a regular exercise schedule, and worked on mosaics.

"I have friends who are losing their mobility, moving into assisted living, and have gotten terminal diagnoses, and I know that's all around the corner," Smith says. "I'm hoping I get some more time to do what I've been enjoying the last few years."

Working with tech

While cutting-edge tools have become a retirement fascination for some, many older Americans are unexpectedly working into their later years and, by extension, learning new tech tricks. For my 80 Over 80 series, I spoke with dozens of workers in their 80s, many of whom couldn't afford to retire and now had jobs that required AI. At 72, Marcia Sweet's home is fully synced with robot vacuums and smart lights, and she runs a tech support business in Bradenton, Florida. She can't afford to stop working, as the extra money goes toward financing her eventual long-term care, and she hopes AI can supercharge her business.

"I'm still like a little kid with a toy about technology, with the same kind of excitement," Sweet says. "I'm kind of addicted."

Other older workers used tech to pivot later in their careers. A decade ago, Laura Noren, now 61, was weary of her career as a registered nurse, so she opted for an unexpected route — IT classes at a local college in Michigan. The learning curve was massive, as most of her 18-year-old classmates grew up steeped in tech. She later supplemented these classes with online courses on programming languages and databases.

"I envisioned myself retiring at 60 and no later than 62. My husband and I would be fully retired and never work again, moving into a condo and doing plenty of traveling," Noren says. Instead, "he left his job earlier than planned as a corrections officer, and I was managed out of my company. We had to change our plans."

The courses didn't necessarily prepare her for her current job as an Amazon Flex driver, which gives her the flexibility to care for her "technophobic" 84-year-old mother with memory issues. But her skills have come in handy when teaching her mother how to add phone contacts to favorites or avoid scams, and Noren hopes to find work down the line that better suits her skills. She still hopes to have some version of the retirement she envisioned years ago, but expects tech to play a bigger role.

Others who returned to school in their later years said they've integrated age tech into their lives for peace of mind. When Mark Bayer, 63, decided to retire from his community banking career at 60, he thought, "I will never have to sit through another damn Zoom meeting again, and I'll be the happiest person in the world." To his surprise, he began teaching English as a second language over Zoom and reenrolled in college to be "exposed to new ideas from younger minds." Bayer, who lives in Pennsylvania, expected his classmates to debate and brainstorm ideas off the top of their heads, but they all went to ChatGPT instead. Initially, he was dumbfounded. But when he saw the list of ideas for a group discussion, it exceeded what he would've come up with.

Ignoring AI, he says he realized, "is a way to say I'm done learning anything new, which is self-limiting."

There have been downsides: He's noticed that disconnecting from tech has become harder. He admits that if he gets a call while mowing the lawn, he will stop to pick it up. His wife is the same way, sometimes scrolling Instagram for hours without noticing. He hasn't quite erased the idea that face-to-face interaction has some merit, though.

A robot-enabled retirement

Many new high-tech tools are being built to help older Americans remain healthier and safer in their homes and assisted living communities. Chia-Lin Simmons, CEO of medical alert devices company LogicMark, tells me that technology in caregiving has become a necessity rather than a luxury, with the potential to predict falls and detect Alzheimer's early. AI is being trained to track behavioral patterns and health outcomes, though it sometimes falls short at triaging calls and often erases the human element, isolating older Americans who need the company most.

Some boomers are ready for this Jetsons-like future. Take Michelle Murphy, 64, who is pursuing an MBA with a concentration in AI. A photographer and instructional designer in Michigan, Murphy says her focus in her 60s has been pivoting to a new career— retirement isn't a good fit, she says. Down the line, she isn't opposed to using robotic healthcare workers to avoid assisted care, though she's keen on not becoming overly reliant on tech due to privacy concerns. For now, her goal is to get her coffee pot to start automatically.

"If there's an automation that can help me do the things I need to do, mow the grass for me, pick up heavy things, whatever it is, I'm totally on board with that," Murphy says.

There is a big market in making the idea of robot-assisted care a reality. Investment in age tech has boomed, particularly in products that make caregiving easier, like smart home automation devices, companion robots, and motion sensors. AARP predicts that by 2030, the age-tech market will be worth $120 billion. And given the rise, many hope age tech can alleviate some of the burden for younger generations.

"We've got 63 million family caregivers, 70% of them in paid jobs, and we're very familiar with childcare, but elder care is not well understood," said Diane Ty, managing director of the Milken Institute Future of Aging. "That's what's breaking the backs of so many workers right now."

Plenty of people and investors I spoke to also hope AI and other age tech can slow cognitive decline. However, various studies have shown that AI assistants contribute to reduced cognitive engagement and skill atrophy, meaning in some ways, relying too much on AI works counter to what these super-users may think.

80 is the new 25

As I wrote last year, America's octogenarians have been embracing tech in surprising ways. Frank Engelman, 82, has created apps, runs a YouTube channel, and writes a Substack about tech education. Luis Bautista, 82, told me he was using AI to write a book and start a business that he one day wants to pitch to Y Combinator. Phyllis Scalettar, 80, began an AI education and consulting firm. Karen Shapiro, 80, said this month that she uses AI for everything from planning vacations to Italy to managing finances — "tech will make life less confining and more enjoyable as we age," she says.

Study after study shows loneliness continues to grow among older Americans. According to AARP, 40% reported feeling lonely last year, up from 35% in 2018. Tech may be partly to blame, as an increasing number of older Americans are addicted to their phones — one survey found that 40% of the over 2,000 respondents ages 59 to 77 felt discomfort when pulled away from their devices.

For a lot of Americans, however, tech is a way to make the most of their golden years and to stay healthy for longer.

Marvin Honig, 88, takes AI courses, set up NotebookLM files for his St. Petersburg, Florida, condominium board, and use advanced tech to manage trust accounts for former law clients. Perhaps this could've been expected from an early tech adopter who received tech support from a young Michael Dell. Still, seeing many of his neighbors using all sorts of tech was perhaps not on his bingo card, and many of his interactions now revolve around tech recommendations and support. Like many older techies, the tech wave has also allowed him to luxuriate in the disconnected part of his life, from visiting museums and restaurants to attending in-person community events — he gets there using his Tesla's self-driving feature.

With the USA opening their World Cup campaign in such style last night, the other teams in Group D will want to start with a win in what's about to be a very interesting group. You'll find everything you need to know about where to watch Australia vs. Turkey right here, including options to livestream it free from anywhere in the world.

The Australia vs. Turkey live stream will be shown on FS1 in the US, ITV in the UK, SBS in Australia, and Tabii in Turkey, among others. All the links you need to access these channels are included below, and we can show you how to tune in to the free broadcasts from anywhere by bypassing international geo-restrictions with a VPN.

For more streaming details and match info for the whole tournament, make sure to check out our official where to watch the World Cup guide.

*Availability for local channels, like FOX, varies by market on Sling TV

• See also: Where to buy World Cup tickets

Where to watch Australia vs. Turkey for free

There are some great options for a free livestream of Australia vs. Turkey. Our top picks include SBS On Demand in Australia and ITVX in the UK. If you'd prefer Arabic commentary, head on over to Tabii for a free broadcast from Turkey. You'll need to create a free account and sign in, but that's it; no credit cards or other ID paperwork required. Some of these services offer a paid plan, but the free one is all you need for their World Cup coverage.

If you're outside any of these countries and want to tune in for free as well, we can help you get around geo-restrictions below. We've tested the VPN servers again today for these channels and checked local TV guides to confirm the matches will be shown.

How to watch Australia vs. Turkey from anywhere

As you'll find throughout the 2026 FIFA World Cup, every game will be streaming for free somewhere in the world, as is the case today with the examples mentioned above. You can enjoy these options, even if you're not in one of the free broadcast countries, via the use of a VPN (virtual private network) to bypass geo-restrictions. This will also let you continue using your home streaming services while traveling overseas.

These easy-to-use VPN apps let you temporarily digitally alter the location of your device, like your laptop, phone, or streaming stick, to appear as if you were physically in another country, in addition to helping bolster your online security.

NordVPN is our top recommendation for unlocking international streaming services and for digital privacy, and it ranks as the best VPN I've personally tested - and plenty of other tech writers have ranked it #1, too. Nord's global servers are perfect for streaming the World Cup online from anywhere, and the 30-day money-back guarantee makes it a risk-free, affordable spend that you'll have plenty of use for beyond the World Cup.

Where to watch Australia vs. Turkey in the US

The next 2026 World Cup game airs on FS1 in the US today (games are shared between FOX and FS1 throughout the tournament). So if you have these channels in your package already, or can access them via an antenna, you're all set.

If this is the jolt you need to finally join the world of cord-cutters to pick up a deal with a wider selection of channels, you'll find that the best live TV streaming services we've tested are a great place to start. Let's break down your specific options, all of which can be canceled at any time, with no contracts required.

YouTube TV is one of the best options right now for FOX and FS1, and we have an exclusive offer for you: save $15 a month for your first five months after your free trial, bringing the monthly price down to $67.99. That's a $75 saving if you keep it for five months, but you're free to cancel at any time.

DirecTV has the required FOX channels in their leading signature bundles and cheaper tiers like MyNews and MySports. Have a browse and see which channel selection speaks to your wider needs beyond soccer this summer. If you only want a sports-focused offering, MySports is the best, with a range of other sports channels, and the full ESPN Unlimited service for $50 a month for your first two months after a 5-day free trial.

Fubo Sports + News is another great choice, with 25 other channels and ESPN Unlimited bundled in for $46 for your first month ($56 after), and you can cancel at any time. It also includes a 5-day free trial.

Sling TV is another option, but it's not a fit for all World Cup fans in the US, as the FOX channels aren't available everywhere. Be sure to check coverage options in your zipcode before joining up. If you get the green light, look for the Sling Select or Sling Blue plans, as they both include FOX and FS1. Sling Select is the cheapest at $25 a month, and Sling Blue is $51, but offers more channels.

If you'd prefer Spanish coverage, there's a great-value deal: you can find it on Peacock Premium for just $11 a month. This covers every match of the tournament. Subtitles are also in Spanish.

Where to watch Australia vs. Turkey in the UK

As with any World Cup or Euro tournament, the BBC and ITV continue to share free coverage for football fans in the UK, meaning the BBC iPlayer and ITVX websites/apps are great places to enjoy all the action online.

ITVX has full coverage and a free Australia vs. Turkey live stream tonight. You'll need to create a free login to watch online.

Where to watch Australia vs. Turkey in Australia

We love it when viewing options are super simple, and Australia has the most straightforward setup for the entire World Cup, as SBS On Demand will be showing every game. Yes, all 104 of them, including Australia vs. Turkey.

You'll need to create a free account and sign in before hitting that play button, though.

Note: VPN use is illegal in certain countries, and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content may constitute a breach of the terms of use for some services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

During my time as a veterinary assistant, I regularly performed fecal tests to screen cats for worms. These intestinal parasites live hidden inside your cat where they silently cause harm. Fortunately, the best cat dewormers and parasite preventives can quickly eliminate infections like tapeworms, hookworms, and roundworms and keep them from returning.

There are many types of cat dewormers available, including oral and topical treatments. Some products eliminate active parasite infections but don't prevent new ones, while others treat worms and provide ongoing monthly prevention. Because different medications target different parasites, your veterinarian will need to perform a fecal test before you can deworm your cat. They will be able to identify the type of worm your cat has and recommend the appropriate treatment, such as one of the prescription dewormers highlighted in this guide.

To determine the best deworming medications, I consulted veterinarians about how they diagnose and treat worms in cats. I then evaluated products based on safety, effectiveness, parasite coverage, and ease of use. My top pick is Profender, an affordable topical treatment that kills the most common worms with a single dose. For some cats, a monthly preventive that controls many types of parasites may be appropriate. NexGard Combo is a spot-on treatment that eliminates existing parasites and protects against intestinal worms, fleas, ticks, and heartworms with ongoing monthly use.

Read more about how Business Insider Reviews tests and researches pet products.

Our top picks for the best cat dewormers

Best broad-spectrum dewormer: Profender Topical Solution - $16-$21 per dose at Chewy

Best tapeworm dewormer: Droncit Tablets - $5 per tablet at Chewy

Best topical for deworming and prevention: NexGard Combo - $32-$39 pet dose at Chewy

Best tablet for deworming and prevention: Interceptor Flavor Tabs (6-month supply) - $57-$68 at Chewy

Best broad-spectrum

A broad-spectrum dewormer eliminates multiple types of intestinal parasites at once. No other cat dewormer kills as many different types of worms with a single dose as Profender. The topical dewormer contains two powerful active ingredients, emodepside and praziquantel, which eliminate the two most common species of tapeworms, one type of hookworm, and one type of roundworm.

Aside from its effectiveness, Profender is easier to use than our former top pick in this category, Drontal, which is a pill that often requires a follow-up dose. To give your cat Profender, you only need to part the hair at the base of your cat's head and apply the solution directly to the skin. After application, keep your cat separated from other pets in the household until the solution has dried.

Profender is available by prescription only, so you'll need to consult your veterinarian before using it. This step is important, as your cat may have other parasites that even broad-spectrum dewormers won't eliminate.

Best for tapeworms

Droncit tablets tackle tapeworm infestations quickly and safely in cats and kittens over 6 weeks old. You can give the tablet whole or crush it and mix it into your cat's food.

Cats primarily become infected with tapeworms when they ingest fleas infected with tapeworm larvae. Droncit tablets contain praziquantel, an active ingredient that paralyzes and eliminates tapeworms within 24 hours. It's effective against the two most common tapeworm species and gets rid of them with a single dose.

Unlike the other tapeworm dewormer I considered, Elanco Tapeworm Dewormer, Droncit is conveniently available as single tablets, while Elanco is sold in a three-pack and at a slightly higher cost per pill.

To prevent further infections, you'll also need to treat your cat for fleas. For this reason, your vet may also recommend monthly flea prevention with NexGard Combo or another of the best flea and tick treatments for cats.

Best topical for deworming and prevention

NexGard Combo kills worms and other parasites with a single topical treatment and, when applied monthly, helps prevent future infections. It is also an excellent option for cats who won't take pills. Just squeeze the liquid onto one spot on the back of your cat's neck and let it dry.

You can use NexGard Combo once to treat an infestation of tapeworms, hookworms, or roundworms, or give it monthly to keep your cat free from intestinal parasites, fleas, and ticks and prevent deadly heartworms.

In general, Dr. Colleen Sawyer, a veterinarian with Rolesville Veterinary Hospital, prioritizes products that provide both flea and heartworm prevention. "Heartworm disease, although rare, is not treatable in cats and has a high fatality rate," she said. "Coverage for ticks, immature life stages of fleas, and intestinal parasites are also important, and fortunately now there are products available that protect against all the above."

NexGard Combo contains three active ingredients: eprinomectin, praziquantel, and afoxolaner. Eprinomectin and praziquantel work together to kill worms and prevent reinfection. These ingredients are effective against the two most common species of tapeworms, two species of hookworms, one species of roundworm, and heartworms. Esafoxolaner, a form of afoxolaner, treats and controls fleas and ticks.

Best tablet for deworming and prevention

Interceptor is a great choice for pet owners who prefer to give an oral preventive rather than apply a topical product, thanks to the many parasites it protects against. In addition to preventing deadly heartworm disease, Interceptor Flavored Tablets treat and control roundworms and adult hookworms with the active ingredient milbemycin oxime. Each chewable tablet provides 30 days of protection and is safe for kittens as young as 6 weeks.

Interceptor is one of only two chewable parasite preventives available for cats, the other being Heartgard. Unlike Interceptor, Heartgard only treats and controls heartworms and hookworms, while Interceptor also treats roundworms. You can offer your cat an Interceptor tablet as a treat or hide it in a small amount of wet food.

To purchase NexGard Combo, you'll need a prescription from your veterinarian. As with all heartworm preventives, your cat needs a heartworm test before starting this medication and once every year thereafter.

Our top cat dewormer picks compared

What to look for in cat dewormers

Before purchasing one of the best cat dewormers, it's important to see your veterinarian. If you suspect your cat has worms, the first step is to take them to the vet for a physical exam and fecal test, which is an examination of the stool that reveals what type of worms your cat has. Depending on the type of worms found, your cat might also need follow-up deworming and another fecal exam to ensure all parasites have been eliminated

Your vet can also determine if your cat has other health issues that need to be addressed. Certain single-celled microscopic parasites (protozoa), including coccidia and Giardia, cause symptoms similar to those caused by intestinal parasites, but they are not true worms. They require different prescription medications to treat them. "Generally speaking, if they have one parasite, they'll have multiple parasites," says Dr. Herman Jeffer, a veterinarian at Cornwallis Road Veterinary Hospital. "If they have roundworms, it's not uncommon to see tapeworms or other worms as well, or 'non-worms' like coccidia."

Parasites prevented and other considerations: Even though some dewormers are available over the counter, do not skip the vet visit since different drugs treat different worms. Some drugs may also be more appropriate for the region where you live and your cat's specific health needs.

Safety and efficacy: The medication you give your cat should be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The FDA's Center for Veterinary Medicine approves and regulates drugs for animals — you can search the Animal Drugs @ FDA database to see if a medication is considered safe and effective. Some flea and tick products for animals are instead regulated by the EPA since they contain pesticides. You can find out whether a flea and tick product is EPA-approved by searching the EPA's Pesticide Product and Label System.

Ease of use and precautions: A medication may be oral or topical. Consider whether you can easily give your cat a pill by hand or mix it in their food. If choose a topical medication, read the directions carefully to ensure you follow the appropriate precautions. You may need to wear gloves to apply some medicines and keep other pets, children, or pregnant people away from treated animals for a specific period of time.

Be on the lookout for counterfeit products: Counterfeit parasite treatments can harm animals and may be unsafe for humans. For this reason, you should only purchase dewormers and parasite preventives from your veterinarian or a trustworthy pharmacy. The American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) provides advice for determining whether a pharmacy is trustworthy, which includes checking to see if an online pharmacy is accredited by the National Association Boards of Pharmacy Pharmacy (NABP) Verified Websites Program. NABP-approved online retailers include Chewy, Petco, and Petsmart. The FDA also provides tips for verifying the legitimacy of a pharmacy, and the EPA says there are several ways you may be able to spot counterfeit products, including missing directions or directions that are not provided in English, foreign-labeled products, and lack of child-resistant packaging.

Meet the expert behind this guide

Jackie Brown, freelance pets reporter: My knowledge about intestinal parasites, their treatment, and prevention is informed by my experience as a veterinary assistant and my 20-year career writing and editing for pet and veterinary publications. Prior to my career in publishing, I spent eight years working in veterinary hospitals where I assisted veterinarians as they treated dogs, cats, rabbits, pocket pets, reptiles, birds, and one memorable lion cub. During that time, I worked in nearly every area of the clinic, assisting with medical procedures and surgery, administering medications and vaccines, conducting in-house lab tests, handling and restraining animals during treatment, grooming and nail trimming, and maintaining strict sanitation and safety protocols.

How we selected the best cat dewormers

For this guide to the best cat dewormers, I consulted two veterinarians for advice regarding the treatment and prevention of intestinal parasites like tapeworms, roundworms, and hookworms, as well as heartworms and ectoparasites like fleas, ticks, and mites. Although this information guided my product selection, my experts did not specifically endorse any of the products included in this guide. I also used the Quick Product Reference Guide published by the independent nonprofit Companion Animal Parasite Council. It lists all FDA- and EPA-approved parasite control products for small animals, including each product's active ingredients and uses.

Below are the main attributes I used to evaluate the best cat dewormers and preventives.

Safety and efficacy: I only considered FDA- or EPA-approved dewormers and preventives for this guide. I then consulted the Merck Veterinary Manual to ensure all ingredients in these products are known to be safe and effective for use in cats and kittens.

Number of parasites treated: With the exception of the tapeworm dewormer, the more parasites a preventive product covers, the higher I rated it.

Ease of use: Products were rated lower if they were more complicated to use than a similar product. For instance, treatments ranked lower if the pet owner must wear gloves to apply the product or if children, pregnant people, and pets must be kept away from the treated animal for a specified amount of time.

Cat dewormer FAQs

What is the best cat dewormer?

The best deworming medication for your cat depends on several factors and should be determined by your veterinarian. "It's important to see your veterinarian so they can identify what parasites are present and then prescribe the appropriate deworming medication," Sawyer says. "Your vet can also explain any risks for human disease, which is also parasite-dependent." Treatment options include single-dose deworming medications as well as monthly preventives that treat and control worms on an ongoing basis. Both types of treatments come in oral and topical forms.

Can I give my cat a natural dewormer?

Talk to your veterinarian before trying any natural deworming products. "When pet owners are looking for a product for their pet, I think they want research behind it," Jeffer says. "Most of the time you really can't guarantee that from a product that's labeled 'all natural,' which hasn't stood up to the research that FDA-approved products or EPA-approved products have gone through." He adds that conventional, veterinarian-recommended dewormers are highly effective and very safe. "They've all been used over decades, and there are very few to no side effects associated with them," he says.

Can indoor cats get worms?

Outdoor cats have the highest risk of intestinal parasites like roundworms and hookworms, as well as heartworms, fleas, and ticks. However, indoor cats still need parasite prevention. Fleas can be brought inside the house by other pets or even on clothing, and indoor-only cats can still be exposed to other parasites. Jeffer says heartworms are the biggest concern for indoor cats. "Even one heartworm can potentially be fatal to a cat," he says. "Even if a couple of mosquitoes get into the house that happen to be carriers for heartworm disease, there's a chance that an indoor-only cat can get heartworms and can actually die from it."

Should you give cats parasite prevention medicine year-round?

Veterinarians recommend year-round, broad-spectrum parasite prevention for all cats. Some people assume protection is only necessary in spring and summer, but different parasites are active during different months, and parasite activity can vary depending on region. Parasites can also become active earlier than expected, even in winter. "It's a little bit of a gamble, especially with climate change and the unpredictability of the weather in most areas of the country," Jeffer says.

Cats that spend time outdoors are at higher risk of contracting intestinal parasites like roundworms, hookworms, and whipworms. However, all cats, including those that live only indoors, need protection against deadly heartworms. Sawyer says parasites can enter the home in several ways, including via other animals like the family dog or small rodents. Fleas can also be carried in on shoes or clothing, and mosquitoes that transmit heartworm disease can enter through open doors or windows.

What are different types of worms in cats and their signs and symptoms?

Cornell University veterinarians estimate that as many as 45% of cats have intestinal parasites at any given time. In adult cats, parasite infestations may cause mild to moderate digestive symptoms like vomiting, diarrhea, and gas. However, heavy infestations, especially in kittens, can lead to more severe digestive symptoms, weight loss, anemia, malnutrition, and restricted growth.

"We'll see cats coming in, for example, if they've been in a feral situation. They are anemic, bloated, they have chronic diarrhea and vomiting, their coats are brittle and unkempt, and they can be very depressed," Jeffer says. "Kittens can actually die from parasite infestations."

Some of the most common worms seen in cats are tapeworms, roundworms, and hookworms.

Tapeworms: If you see something in your cat's feces that resembles grains of white rice, or you notice them licking or biting the area under their tail, they could have a tapeworm infestation. Cats contract tapeworms when they ingest an infected adult flea. As the tapeworm grows, segments break off and pass in your cat's stool.

"Probably the most common kind of worm that pet owners are going to notice is a tapeworm," Jeffers says. "The cat might have other ailments that need to be addressed, so there are a lot of reasons to bring your cat to the vet to sort out which worm it is and to make sure there aren't secondary issues that are resulting from that infection."

Roundworms: Common in cats, especially in kittens, roundworms are large (3 to 6 inches), smooth, and round-bodied. You might not notice symptoms, particularly if your cat has only a few roundworms. In kittens, large numbers of worms may cause a pot-bellied appearance, vomiting, diarrhea, low appetite, dull coat, and restricted growth. You might also see roundworms in your cat's stool or vomit.

Hookworms: Tiny worms nearly invisible without the assistance of a microscope, hookworms are blood-sucking parasites that attach to the wall of the intestines. Signs of hookworm infection in cats include anemia, weight loss, and dull coat. Hookworm-infested cats also sometimes have dark, tarry-looking stools.

The NBA Finals reach a fifth and potentially final game as the New York Knicks, who lead the series 3-1, look to clinch the title against the San Antonio Spurs. We've gathered everything you need to know about where to watch Knicks vs. Spurs in the 2026 NBA Finals, including global live streaming options.

If you're looking for quick answers, we've got you covered. You can live stream Game 5 on ESPN Unlimited or a live TV service in the US, Prime Video in the UK, Prime Video in France, and Prime Video or the NBA League Pass in most other countries. Keep reading to learn more about the series, including odds, venue, and scheduling information.

• See also: Where to watch the World Cup

Where to watch Knicks vs Spurs in the US

Game 5 will air on ABC in the US, along with any potential future games should the series extend beyond tonight. Game 5 will begin on Saturday at 8:30 p.m. ET, but NBA Tip-Off coverage will start at 8 p.m. ET on the network. Those with an antenna or cable will likely be able to access the network, but antenna-less cord-cutters will need a streaming service to watch the game.

ABC's direct streaming counterpart is ESPN Unlimited, a one-stop shop for all things related to ESPN's linear channels, along with ESPN on ABC content (like tonight's game) and streaming-exclusive ESPN Plus programming. Subscriptions cost $30 a month.

If you'd prefer a service with other channels beyond those found in the ESPN family (or you'd like an app with a free trial), a month-to-month live TV streaming service might be a better fit. Some of the best ABC-friendly options include DirecTV, YouTube TV, and Fubo. All the options below also include FOX and FS1, which will cover all World Cup matches if you fancy watching some elite soccer this summer.

DirecTV's MySports package is one of the most comprehensive options for sports fanatics in the US. The package carries around 20 popular sports channels, like ABC, and unlocks access to ESPN Unlimited. Subscriptions cost $65 a month, but new users can get $15 a month off their first two months after a five-day free trial.

YouTube TV is another popular live TV service. YouTube TV's Main Plan costs $83 a month, but a limited-time deal can help new users get $75 off YouTube TV for five months (that's $15 a month off each month over a five-month period). That means customers will pay $68 a month for five months. YouTube TV's Sports plan also carries ABC. While it usually costs $65 a month, new users can get $10 a month off their first 12 months of service. YouTube TV also typically comes with a free trial for first-time customers.

Fubo's Sports + News package is another solid sports-focused service that carries ABC. Subscriptions cost $56 a month, but new customers can get $10 off their first month after a five-day free trial. Sports + News also comes with ESPN Unlimited access.

How to watch Knicks vs. Spurs from anywhere

It's good news for NBA fans outside the United States. Live streams of the NBA Finals are pretty accessible around the world, especially this year. Notably, Prime Video will live stream the Finals in the UK, Ireland, France, Spain, Mexico, Argentina, and several other countries. Subscription prices vary by country, but Prime Video often has a free trial for new users. Fans can also live stream the NBA Finals through the NBA League Pass in most regions outside the US and Canada. Subscription prices vary by region.

If you find yourself traveling through an area where you're unable to access your usual streaming options, you can still keep up with them with the aid of a VPN. VPNs, or virtual private networks, are easy-to-use tech tools that allow people to temporarily change their virtual locations. Virtual private networks are also handy ways to upgrade cybersecurity and online privacy, even from home. The services we've recommended today require country-specific payment methods, so this option will work best for those who are simply traveling abroad right now.

NordVPN is one of the best VPNs on the market, based on our testing. The tried-and-true service is beginner-friendly and comes with a handy 30-day money-back guarantee.

Where does Game 5 of the NBA Finals take place?

Game 5 of the NBA Finals will be held at the Frost Bank Center in San Antonio, where the first two games took place. If the series extends beyond tonight, Game 6 will take place at Madison Square Garden in New York. Should the NBA Finals go all the way to Game 7, the series will return to Texas for a final winner-take-all game.

How much do NBA Finals tickets cost?

NBA Finals tickets are expensive, especially for games that occur in New York, so if you really want to attend, you might have better luck heading to San Antonio. The cheapest remaining original standard ticket left on Ticketmaster at the time of writing costs $3,838.60. The cheapest resale ticket listings (also at the time of writing) on StubHub and Vivid Seats start at $1,063 and $1,434, respectively.

Who won the first four games of the NBA Finals?

The New York Knicks are up 3-1 after winning the first two games, despite San Antonio's home-court advantage. The Knicks won Game 1 105-95 and Game 2 105-104. The Spurs fought back in Game 3, winning 115-111, and led for much of Game 4, but the Knicks mounted a dominant second-half comeback and ultimately won 107-106 after overcoming a 29-point deficit at the death.

Who is favored to win Spurs vs. Knicks?

The San Antonio Spurs are favored to win Game 5, while the New York Knicks are the overall favorites to win the NBA Finals. Ahead of Game 5 (at the time of writing), DraftKings has the Spurs as 5.5-point favorites and -198 on the moneyline, while the Knicks are the +164 underdogs.

NBA Finals schedule

• Game 1 on Wednesday, June 3 at 8:30 p.m. ET
• Game 2 on Friday, June 5 at 8:30 p.m. ET
• Game 3 on Monday, June 8 at 8:30 p.m. ET
• Game 4 on Wednesday, June 10 at 8:30 p.m. ET
• Game 5 on Saturday, June 13 at 8:30 p.m. ET
• Game 6 on Tuesday, June 16 at 8:30 p.m. ET (if necessary)
• Game 7 on Friday, June 19 at 8:30 p.m. ET (if necessary)

Note: VPN use is illegal in certain countries, and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content may constitute a breach of the terms of use for some services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

• A group of states is now investigating OpenAI.
• New York State Attorney General Letitia James sent a subpoena to the company on Friday.
• OpenAI said it's taking the concerns "seriously" and is "committed to learning."

OpenAI said it's "committed to learning" after a coalition of states launched an investigation into how the tech startup's products impact users.

An OpenAI spokesperson said in a statement that it's taking the states' concerns "seriously" and will "engage constructively with their offices."

"Today's ChatGPT includes a more protective experience for minors and people experiencing difficult situations, with safeguards that direct them to real-world resources and trusted human contacts," the spokesperson said.

"None of this changes what families have gone through, but we are committed to learning, improving, and getting this right," they added.

New York State Attorney General Letitia James served OpenAI a subpoena on Friday seeking a wide range of documents, The Wall Street Journal first reported. The documents pertained to user engagement and retention, the company's handling of health and consumer data, deep learning models, activities related to young and older users, and more, the Journal reported.

Friday's subpoena is the latest legal headache for OpenAI. The company has navigated copyright infringement claims, privacy lawsuits, and a high-profile trial pitting SpaceX CEO Elon Musk against OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.

Perhaps most concerning, however, are a handful of lawsuits that say ChatGPT contributed to decisions by users to die by suicide. In response to a May report by The New York Times, the company said ChatGPT "is not a substitute for medical or mental health care, and we have continued to strengthen how it responds in sensitive and acute situations with input from mental health experts."

The family of a victim in a fatal campus shooting at Florida State University in April, meanwhile, has also filed a lawsuit against OpenAI. The family says ChatGPT's guardrails failed to recognize the threat in the shooter's conversations with the chatbot. In June, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier filed yet another lawsuit against OpenAI and Altman over the shooting.

In that complaint, Ulthmeier says ChatGPT has "aided and abetted deadly rampages" and "encouraged vulnerable people into suicide." The state attorney general also says users have become addicted to ChatGPT, a tool that "feigns human compassion to collect their data with no parental oversight."

In response, OpenAI again said it has introduced further safety measures into its products. "Losing a child is the most devastating tragedy that can happen to a family and we know that no words can come close to addressing the pain of such a loss," the company said in a statement at the time.

The coordinated investigation launched by the state attorneys on Friday mirrors a similar investigation into TikTok, which resulted in a 14-state lawsuit now making its way through the courts.

Like the OpenAI investigation, the TikTok lawsuit is led by the attorneys general of California and New York. The states say TikTok knowingly uses addictive features to lure kids, which negatively impacts their mental health.

Lawyers told Business Insider that it's a common strategy for states to band together when they go after multibillion-dollar companies because they are more expensive for the companies to defend and, should a case falter in one state, the suit can continue in another.

It's also how the government went after Purdue Pharma, the maker of OxyContin, in 2017, and the tobacco industry in the 1990s.

• Founders and workplace experts said that post-pandemic AI startups have a different work dynamic.
• AI startup employees often voluntarily come to the office and work longer hours without an RTO.
• Founders said that in-person work fosters a high-trust environment that spurs innovation.

"What is an RTO?"

That was Together AI CEO Vipul Ved Prakash's response when asked by Business Insider whether he had ever had to send a return-to-work (RTO) memo to push employees back to the office of the cloud compute startup.

"People generally like to come in," said Prakash. "We've never enforced it."

Prakash's response illustrates a stark cultural difference between AI startups formed after the COVID lockdowns and long-established corporations, with people voluntarily coming to the office, sometimes on weekends.

Nicholas Bloom, an economics professor at Stanford University, told Business Insider that the age demographics and personal stake many startup employees have in their companies created a work mode that is "almost entirely in-person" and "100% work focused."

"For a single 23-year-old with equity worth $20 million, it makes sense to work in the office for 100 hours a week," said Bloom. "They don't work from home, they home from work."

The tight-knit culture of AI startups

Arvind Jain, founder and CEO of Glean, an enterprise AI for productivity, said he "was not eager" to bring his team members back to the office because finding an office is a hassle, but everyone wanted to be in person and return to their original mode of working when the company first started right before the pandemic in 2019.

"We just simply didn't know how to work from home because everybody was in this one small room," said Jain of the early days of the pandemic lockdown. "We used to be sitting next to each other, brainstorming what to build, and so we found that very, very hard."

Over time, said Jain, he learned to enjoy remote work and got to spend time with his family, but the team genuinely wanted to be together again.

"That's the difference — there's this startup spirit, and it's only 10, 15 people, and we want to be with each other," said Jain. "They love each other, they bond with each other, we used to play games together, and we have very fond pre-pandemic memories as a close-knit group."

Jain said that as Glean grew more rapidly in recent years, it has since moved into a larger office space and dedicated Thursday as its work-from-home day.

Spiros Xanthos, founder and CEO of Resolve AI, an enterprise technology startup that builds multi-agent AI systems, said the company has a "very strong culture" of in-person work and has never had to ask anyone to be in the office.

"We have a fairly big office now, and we have breakfast, lunch, and dinner," said Xanthos. "Most people have lunch in the office together with their colleagues, and many people stay to have dinner in the office."

Xanthos said that since founding the company in early 2024, "cohesion and culture and friendship" among employees has been critical for the company, and that he often brings colleagues based in New York to the Bay Area for offsite retreats so the team could get to know each other better.

"People will actively avoid working remotely at this point," Xanthos added. "Especially for some of the younger folks who didn't have many years of experience, but maybe worked remotely before this, many of them tell me it's day and night — the fact that they have so many friends at work now that they can trust."

AI's innovative nature demands in-person interactions

Richard Florida, an urban studies theorist and professor at the University of Toronto, said the AI wave has unique characteristics compared to other startup booms, which may generate greater in-person demand.

"Innovators have to be close to end users because end users are a part of the innovation system," said Florida, of why it's easier to work in person in the AI industry.

"If you're an AI company, the technology itself is interesting, and you can invent it, but what you really learn is by interaction with the end user, by interacting with your customers and clients," Florida added.

Xanthos said the demand for in-person attendance ultimately boils down to the nature of an innovative industry.

"As a company, we're solving very, very hard problems, and to solve these problems, you operate at the frontier," said Xanthos. "And this means that you need to experiment a lot, try a lot of things that might fail."

"That in turn requires a very high trust in an environment of psychological safety where people feel that they have the ability to innovate bottom up," Xanthos added, "Where they don't need to be told what to do, where there is communication velocity and bandwidth."

So the next time you speak to an AI startup founder, don't ask how their RTO is going — they're probably too busy trying to squeeze everyone into the office.

• The majority of competitive House districts have data centers either planned or under construction.
• Neither party knows how to handle their political fallout heading into the midterms.
• Data centers are shaping up to be a yearslong political slog for both parties.

More than 200 data centers are going up in dozens of competitive House districts — and neither party knows how to handle their political fallout heading into the midterms.

The energy-hungry computing infrastructure being built to meet the explosive demand for artificial intelligence has sparked opposition to rising electric bills, water consumption, use of farmland and influence of the tech industry. That stew of frustration has made data centers the target of campaign ads and a populist fervor that's toppled local elected leaders.

It has also become a rogue element in the races that will decide which party controls the House: The majority of competitive districts — 40 out of 69 — have data centers either planned or under construction, according to an analysis of Data Center Map data by POLITICO, which like Business Insider, is part of the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network.

Even though Republicans represent most of those competitive districts, data centers are shaping up to be a yearslong political slog for both parties. Some 1,500 of them are planned or being built in 232 congressional districts, with a nearly even partisan split. Interviews with and statements from more than 20 congressional candidates, political strategists, and activists make clear that while individual campaigns are trying to shape their positions, broader party messaging is essentially nonexistent.

"There's more political signs against AI in our region than for candidates in the upcoming races," said Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur during a hearing this spring. Kaptur is fighting to keep her seat in Ohio's 9th District, where Aligned Data Centers is building a data center that would be used for AI, cloud computing and more. "The public opposition that is arising, it's spontaneous combustion coming up from the grassroots."

The industry's exponential growth means that lawmakers from all parts of the country are now exposed to it, from the dense data center developments in the Virginia suburbs to the heart of the industrial Midwest.

Lawmakers are taking scattershot approaches that range from opposing data centers altogether to embracing them in the name of economic development and national security. Some are eschewing the issue as a local matter, while the White House and Congress grapple with how to regulate the data center buildout.

The White House announced a non-binding agreement in March with technology executives who pledged that their companies would provide their own power for data centers as a way of limiting the economic blow to everyday consumers. Lawmakers have also introduced a handful of bills with similar objectives, from GOP Missouri Sen. Josh Hawley's GRID Act to Democratic Virginia Rep. Suhas Subramanyam's Data Infrastructure Risk Reduction Act to a plan by progressives Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York to enact a federal moratorium on data center construction.

"People should not want their member of Congress deciding local zoning decisions," said Rep. Tom Barrett, a Republican whose Michigan district both parties' congressional arms are targeting — and where there are six data centers operating and six more planned. "It would be a dangerous precedent."

Data center proposals have spurred marathon city council meetings, scores of bills in state legislatures and ballot measure campaigns to ban their construction in California, Michigan, Nevada, Wisconsin, Maryland, Utah and Ohio, where residents are pushing to put a constitutional amendment on the ballot in November.

"There's not one big national message on this specific thing," said one Democratic strategist working on congressional races, who was granted anonymity to speak candidly. "But in certain districts, data centers are going to be a major, major player."

Asked about its strategy on data centers, Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee spokesperson Viet Shelton said, "While House Republicans fall in line behind failed policies that spike prices out of control, Democratic candidates and Frontliners are fighting for common sense solutions to provide meaningful price relief, encourage economic growth, and meet the unique needs of their communities." The National Republican Congressional Committee declined to comment for this report.

Although they're motivating politics more than before, the number of data centers has been steadily growing for decades. They have spread in lockstep with the growth of the internet, and more than 2,500 U.S. data center facilities are operating across 373 congressional districts, according to POLITICO's analysis. Virginia, Texas, and California contain the greatest number of data centers, and more than one in three Americans live within 5 miles of one that's already operating. In five states, most residents live within 5 miles of one.

Investors plan to spend hundreds of billions of dollars building new data centers, which would push utilities across the country to make massive electric grid upgrades to feed the facilities — expenses that can be passed to everyone who consumes power. Massive "hyperscale" facilities that are owned by major tech companies demand the most power. And though hyperscalers make up a relatively small portion of the facilities now operating, the number in development would increase their count by 74%.

Despite the demand for data centers, there are examples of proposals that are falling through due to community opposition or shifting business calculations. Just the announcement of a data center can be enough to pressure elected officials to act.

In Wisconsin, for example, four proposals have been canceled and one paused following local pushback, according to Healthy Climate Wisconsin, a nonpartisan public health nonprofit whose work includes raising awareness of data centers' environmental health risks.

"We've been hearing from policymakers across the state that data centers are the top issue they're hearing from their community, as far as concerns," said Abby Novinska-Lois, the organization's executive director. "Data centers will definitely be a factor in upcoming races in Wisconsin, and I would say they're a factor already for those who are holding office in their decisionmaking."

How candidates are reacting

Among 69 House districts expected to be competitive, nearly all already have at least one data center, and most have more on the way.

POLITICO asked the 10 House members in battleground districts with the most upcoming data centers what their stance was on data center regulations. Five of eight Republican incumbents, and one of two Democrats, responded.

Their answers illustrate an awareness that voters are in no mood to greenlight anything that will send electricity bills higher. Even the incumbents most supportive of data centers caveat their support with the need to protect consumers.

Iowa Rep. Zach Nunn — who represents a district with 31 data centers planned and 33 already operating, more data centers than any other Republican incumbent in a competitive race — said in a statement that his state is a "model for how workforce development and AI leadership can work hand in hand."

"But I also hear from Iowans who don't want higher utility bills or sweetheart deals for out-of-state tech companies," he said. "And they're right to be cautious."

The tech lobby has shaped up to be a key player in the midterm races. Candidates who are too critical — particularly incumbents — run the risk of losing support from the tech lobby or attracting fierce opposition.

"They're between a rock and a hard place," said Texas-based GOP consultant Brendan Steinhauser, whose clients have included Sen. John Cornyn and Rep. Dan Crenshaw. "Politically, it's not a very smart move to come out and be seen as too close to big tech or doing the bidding of Big Tech, but a lot of the money is flying to them through that."

The advertising so far this election cycle backs that up. All of the congressional and gubernatorial ads that mention data centers, as identified by the political advertising tracker AdImpact,are critical of the facilities. Most attack Republicans for supporting them.

Over an image of cables running from computer equipment, one such ad from the progressive Priorities USA PAC says: "Driven by higher demand for electricity from AI data centers, residents can expect to see a 3% increase in their electric bill. But Pennsylvania's Representative Scott Perry somehow believes we're winning the war on high prices."

Perry, a Republican, told POLITICO he does not support data centers in his district, which includes the cities of Harrisburg and York.

"I don't think it's the best place for it, quite honestly," he said. "Pennsylvania's got a lot of energy in the ground, and the data center to me should be right at this point of energy production and generation, which is kind of in the more rural parts."

Ads from Democrats, including Maryland Gov. Wes Moore, highlight their own records of regulating data centers. Democrats scored some early wins on energy affordability messaging last November as their candidates soared to victory in Virginia and Georgia, promising to place guardrails on data center growth and ensure they pay their share of power costs.

The League of Conservation Voters, an environmental group, launched similar ads targeting Virginia's state legislature incumbents and their data center interests in 2025, and those races were later won by candidates who positioned themselves against data centers. Sara Schreiber, the group's senior vice president for campaigns, said such advertisements were a "powerful" tool for driving home the connection between data centers and affordability.

"There is continuing concern around folks' rising electricity costs," Schreiber said. "They want to support candidates who are showing that they understand, they want to fight against it and have a plan to do so."

Still, Democrats up and down the ticket are open to their construction.

Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro announced requirements on May 27 for data center developments — including a plan for covering energy costs — but not a moratorium. Paige Cognetti, the mayor of Scranton, Pennsylvania, who is running to unseat Republican Rep. Rob Bresnahan, has said "we are ready for development," but that data centers should be on former industrial sites and not areas that could be used for housing or parks.

The Data Center Coalition, an industry association, has been supportive of the White House's "ratepayer protection pledge" and other policies that require data centers to cover more utility costs. The coalition's senior director of federal affairs, Cy McNeill, said that they're working to educate representatives as constituents increasingly voice concerns about water usage and energy prices.

"How do we provide the facts to the office, or to the congresswoman or congressman, to kind of help educate constituents on this?" McNeill said. "If we actually take a step back, look at the facts, I think the story is a lot different."

Environmental activists say consumer protections don't go far enough. While elected officials who are open to data center construction often focus on keeping energy costs down, activists are worried about other potential risks, too, including water quality and air pollution.

One of the most prominent disputes is out of Memphis, Tennessee, where residents are fighting Elon Musk's expanding xAI data center, the Colossus supercomputer. KeShaun Pearson, the executive director of Memphis Community Against Pollution, said federal action such as the ratepayer protection pledge still allows developers to use polluting energy sources without acknowledging environmental impacts.

The xAI facility, for example, burns enough methane gas to power 280,000 homes — motivating the Memphis organization to take the monitoring of pollution and health risks into their own hands as they push elected officials to act.

"We surely don't want data centers that are directly causing us health issues," Pearson said. "I think our politicians have to understand that and have to move accordingly."

Pavan Acharya and Sean McMinn contributed to this report.

Methodology

The data center locations used for this analysis were based on a combination of Data Center Map, geocod.io and public sources. POLITICO used automation and manual reviews to verify exact coordinates and district assignments, checking against U.S. Census Bureau files.

Data Center Map's data is as of April 30. Data centers included as "upcoming" are those that DCM labels as planned or under construction. The dataset is not an exhaustive list; it is based on voluntary data submissions and collections from providers or other sources. Government-owned data centers are not included.

Some data center companies operate within the same colocation building and lease space to other companies; those cases count as one facility. Facilities that are a part of a campus or multi-tenant building count individually. Cases where the exact facilities within a campus or multi-tenant building are unknown are counted as one data center.

Some data center facility addresses are approximate. In those cases, provided ZIP codes are used to determine congressional districts. In cases where a ZIP code overlapped with more than one district, or if no location information is disclosed for the facility, data centers are excluded from the district-level analysis. The population living within a five mile radius of a data center is determined using only facilities with exact addresses or intersections.

The number of data centers in midterm races account for newly redrawn boundaries finalized in Alabama, California, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri, North Carolina, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas and Utah. Competitive races are based on targets from the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, as well as POLITICO's own reporting.

The Axel Springer Global Reporters Network harnesses the resources of the company's newsrooms to publish ambitious scoops, investigations, interviews, opinion pieces and analysis. It allows journalists — including those from POLITICO, Business Insider, WELT, BILD, Onet and Fakt — to collaborate on major stories for an international audience of hundreds of millions across platforms: online, print, TV and audio.

• Testosterone-maxxing is a hot trend in fitness and longevity, but too much can have side effects.
• New research suggests a majority of men are getting testosterone therapy without the right safeguards.
• A urologist explains who can benefit from testosterone and who should avoid it to prevent risks.

America is reaching peak testosterone.

In 2026, interest in the hormone is everywhere, from T-maxxing trends on social media to the US government's MAHA campaign. Testosterone replacement therapy (TRT) use has quadrupled in the past three decades, up to as many as 11 million Americans.

For some of them, the treatment may be doing more harm than good, new research suggests.

A majority of men who are prescribed testosterone don't meet the current guidelines for safe, effective treatment, according to a study from the University of Michigan.

That could worsen the risk of serious side effects, including infertility, heart attack, and stroke, and long-term dependence on TRT, which can dampen the body's natural production of testosterone.

While testosterone is an essential hormone for health, finding the right balance is complex because there's no one-size-fits-all treatment. A urologist explains what to know about the risks and benefits of testosterone, and how hormone trends are changing the landscape of men's health.

Who can benefit from testosterone therapy?

Healthy testosterone levels are crucial for energy, sex drive, muscle, and metabolism.

T-maxxing influencers might promise that it can get you a six-pack and supercharge your focus and performance, but doctors say the benefits are much more modest — if you need a boost at all.

A blood test can check if you have low testosterone and could benefit from TRT. It's typically taken first thing in the morning, and confirmed with a follow-up blood test on a different day.

Low testosterone is anything below 300 nanograms per deciliter for most healthy adult men.

You should also rule out conditions like sleep apnea, which are linked to low testosterone but can worsen with testosterone therapy.

Men who could benefit from testosterone might experience symptoms ranging from brain fog and low energy to reduced libido and erectile dysfunction. It can take anywhere from a few weeks to a few months for TRT to make a difference, depending on the symptoms.

When T backfires

In the latest research, endocrinologists looked at data from 200 men who were prescribed testosterone at the university clinic.

They found that only 12% of the men met the criteria for treating low testosterone, confirmed by two blood tests.

That means the other 88% — 176 men — may have been inappropriately given TRT, including some who had sleep apnea or prostate cancer.

On average, the men studied were in their 50s, but some as young as 18 were also prescribed testosterone.

If they don't need it, young men on testosterone could be putting their long-term health at risk, since taking TRT can make it harder for the body to produce its own supply of the hormone over time.

High testosterone levels can also increase the body's volume of red blood cells, a risk factor for high blood pressure that, in extreme cases, may lead to a heart attack or stroke. It can also impair fertility by temporarily reducing sperm count.

And taking T can potentially exacerbate serious health conditions like prostate cancer, potentially fueling tumor growth, per the Mayo Clinic.

The findings are concerning, given how popular testosterone has become in the wellness industry and the potential for misuse without clear guidelines, said study authors Dr. Maria Papaleontiou and Dr. Sophia Sinha, both professors at the University of Michigan.

"Testosterone has been coined as the 'fountain of youth' to optimize performance through enhancing muscle and improving energy levels in social media," they told Business Insider in a joint email interview. "Testosterone therapy can help some people who truly have low testosterone, but it is not risk-free."

Major update coming soon for testosterone therapy guidelines

Doctors understand that this is not a black-and-white issue.

While testosterone treatment can have side effects, low testosterone is also a health concern, Dr. Justin Dubin, director of men's sexual health at Baptist Health Medical Group, told Business Insider.

Dubin, who was not involved in the study, said prescribing TRT outside the guidelines may not always be harmful. Yes, TRT can be overprescribed to men who don't need it, but it is also underprescribed to men who could benefit, Dubin said.

"Guidelines are guidelines, they're not law," Dubin said. "There are gray areas, and we need to give care in the gray. That's where most doctors live and where most patients live."

The benchmark for healthy testosterone is so nuanced, Dubin said, that the American Urological Association has gathered a panel to discuss a major update to its guidelines on treating testosterone deficiency in the coming year or two.

For now, Dubin said the growing popularity of testosterone is a good thing, as it's prompting a more proactive approach to medical care for men, who are notorious for avoiding the doctor's office until there's an emergency. As long as guys are going about it the right way by speaking to their doctor instead of just buying stuff online, he's all for it.

"I think that's a wonderful thing because this is a gateway to men's health. This is how we can access a lot of guys, get them in to learn about their blood pressure, whether they have diabetes, heart disease," he said. "I'm actually excited and hopeful."

• Weekly dinners with neighbors became a support system for both families.
• My children gained trusted adults outside of school and family.
• What started as convenience slowly turned into a real community.

When I first suggested a "kids' dinner" with our upstairs neighbor, I was mainly thinking about getting a night off.

Feeding my three kids (ages 4, 6, and 10) can feel endless — just when I think I've found a meal that works, one of them suddenly refuses to eat pasta, or rice, or chicken. Getting even one night off every other week sounded like a dream.

Thankfully, our upstairs neighbors had two kids who got along with mine, and the parents were just as eager for a break.

The logistics are simple

Every Tuesday night, one family hosts a kids' dinner. We switch off weeks, and the parents simply walk the kids to the other family's apartment door. Parents are welcome to stay, but are encouraged to take an hour for themselves.

We also made a key rule: no cleaning before dinner. This arrangement is supposed to make our lives easy, not harder.

I became a go-to adult for someone else's child

A couple of months into these dinners, my 6-year-old neighbor walked in, took my hand, her eyes welling with tears, and pulled me aside. We sat on the blue couch in my office — a room that's otherwise off-limits — and she told me about a fight she'd had with her mom. It was a big deal to her. And the fact that she wanted to tell me about it felt big to me, too.

Since that night, we've had more of these heart-to-hearts, and I've been surprised by how much they mean to me.

I've become a go-to adult in her life — a role I didn't expect to play for someone else's child, especially since living in Germany means I'm an ocean away from my nieces and nephews. When she gets especially mad with her parents, she threatens to run away. To me. It's the best-case scenario for her parents, who know she'd be two flights downstairs with a trusted adult.

And my neighbors fill this same role for my three children. On Tuesdays, after my kids drop off their backpacks in our apartment, they run upstairs, bursting to tell Laura what happened that day on the playground or try to stump Michael with a riddle they just learned.

Without grandparents or aunts and uncles around, weekly dinners have provided my children another set of adults — outside teachers — who know to ask about ballet practice, speech therapy, and report cards.

The kids built something of their own

Around the table, the kids have built something of their own. They plan what toys to bring for each other, negotiate over seating, and sometimes show up with handwritten notes.

They sit at the table by themselves, so their conversations aren't dominated by adults. The talk is about Pokémon cards or about whose birthday party is coming up this weekend.

After dinner, while I clean the kitchen, the five of them have free rein to play. Sometimes I find my 4-year-old daughter and my 3-year-old neighbor huddled in her room, "reading" side by side or listening to "Frozen" on her Tonie box. Other times, my ten-year-old reads to the younger kids or makes up games that everyone can play.

What started as a break became something more

Cooking for five kids instead of three has turned out to be surprisingly fun. Having two extra mouths to feed doesn't require much more food, and with a party-like atmosphere, I think about what could be fun (like I did in my pre-children dinner party days).

But dinners are still relatively simple. Chicken nuggets and fries. A charcuterie board of sliced meats and cut-up veggies. Breakfast for dinner. If I've got a bit of extra time, we'll make avocado sushi together.

When everyone is back in their own home, I get messages about how my children ate — whether my daughter, who tends to bulk up on preschool snacks and skip dinner almost entirely, touched anything, or whether my oldest son ate an entire pack of hot dogs on his own.

I was looking for a break from endless meal prep, but instead, my kids gained a second set of adults just two flights away.

One dinner at a time, it feels like we're building a community.

At this point, I have zero patience for bras that aren't comfortable. At some point in my 30s, my priorities changed: the lift and structure I used to care most about started mattering less than softness, flexibility, and all-day ease. The underwire bras that once felt nonnegotiable now mostly sit untouched, while stretchy bralettes have become the pairs I reach for most.

That said, finding a great bralette is more complicated because I wear a DD cup. There's a reason underwire has long been the default, and most bralettes simply aren't designed to offer the same level of support. I've tested plenty that seemed promising at first but lost me within an hour.

Still, after trying enough of them, I've learned what separates the good ones from the ones that don't make the cut. The best bralettes tend to have the same essentials: a wide, supportive band, adjustable straps, cups with enough depth to prevent spillover, and fabric that offers real hold instead of just stretch. When those elements come together, the result is the sweet spot — a bra that feels barely there but still delivers the support I need.

For more of our recommendations for folks with larger chests, see our articles on the best swimsuits for large busts.

Best overall: Evelyn & Bobbie Evelyn Bra

Executive Editor Sally Kaplan is deeply passionate about Evelyn & Bobbie's smoothing bralettes. We've featured the V-neck Evelyn Bra above, but she loves the whole collection — the Bobbie scoop-neck, the Beyond bra  and the Defy bra. 

"Evelyn & Bobbie's wireless bras are legitimately the most comfortable I've ever worn. They're supportive, structured, not too constrictive, and they actively take weight off my shoulders," says Sally. To hear her full thoughts, see our Evelyn & Bobbie review.

The comfort of the bralettes is down to a support feature called the "EB Core," a patented technology that helps maintain the bra's shape while preventing "pancaking." The bralettes also feature thicker straps that help distribute weight.

The Evelyn Bra, in particular, is fantastic for wearing under lower-cut tops because of the V-neck design. It's smoothing on your back while giving your breasts a lift that doesn't sacrifice comfort. 

Runner-up: Honeylove CrossOver Bra

The Honeylove Crossover Bra has it all: adjustable straps, a smoothing back, and a bonded cradle that offers strong support without uncomfortable wires. The straps can also be crisscrossed, making it versatile enough to pair with a variety of tops and dresses. I especially appreciate the adjustable band — a feature many bralettes still lack.

To be honest, there's not much I don't like about this bralette. It even features removable cups for occasions when I need a little extra coverage — and the mesh and lace detailing add some unexpected sex appeal.

"The bonded underband lifts the bust without the wires for a perky loo, and the rounded shape makes this a great non-wired t-shirt bra," says Katie Weir, the bra fitting expert and founder of Curvy Kate.

See more of our favorite Honeylove products and hear more about the Crossover bra in our Honeylove review.

Best seamless: Eby Relief Bra

I tested all of Eby's bras for my Eby review — even the ultra-viral Sheer Bralette (you may have seen this sheer floral piece on Instagram ads everywhere). But my favorite bralette from the brand was the Relief Bra, a smooth, flexible option that provides tons of support and even features wider straps on their DD+ sizes.

Here's what I said about it: "It's super comfortable, surprisingly versatile, and offers a decent amount of lift, support, and separation despite having zero wires.

Some noteworthy tech here: EBY's three-dimensional SmartWing support layer, which is built into the bra wings. The brand says it molds to your body for extra support while smoothing out side bulge — and in my testing, it actually delivered."

It also has customizable padding, which can be a plus or minus: "The padding here is pretty subtle, which I personally appreciate — I'm not usually eager to add bulk to my DD-cup bust — and I love that I have the option to take it out when I don't need or want the extra coverage. I did find that it's a little tricky to get the padding perfectly back into position since the slits are somewhat small, but to be fair, I have yet to find a bra with removable padding that doesn't have this issue."

Best budget: INLYRIC Women's Inbarely Bralette

I bought this bralette on a whim when I was looking for comfy underthings to sleep in — and I'm so glad I did. In fact, I ended up ordering it in several more colors — and luckily, there are a whopping 21 options to choose from. It's lightweight, seamless, incredibly stretchy, and my go-to for lazy Sundays and Friday nights in.

This Amazon-favorite bralette boasts a barely there feel, making it ideal for warmer months since. That said, it is worth noting that because the fabric is so thin and there's no padding, you may want to use nipple covers if you wear it out. (Or don't, you do you!)

I also appreciate that the straps are adjustable on this one. Since the band isn't adjustable, however, size down if you're between sizes to ensure adequate support.

Best with specific sizing: Montelle Intimates Cup-sized Bralette

Buying a bralette in alpha sizing is almost impossible if you have larger breasts. The band is always too tight or too loose, and the cups can create an unflattering squishing effect.

This bralette solves those issues by offering two cup sizes specifically for those with larger breasts: D/E and F/G. In addition, the pieces come in band sizes from 30 to 42.

The Cup-Sized Lace Bralette also has convertible straps and, unlike most bralettes, a hook-and-eye closure at the back. This means that you can keep using the piece even as the elastic stretches over time.

Best triangle cut: Harper Wilde Bliss Triangle Bralette

Despite the fact that this bralette has no cups, underwire, padding, or foam, it offers remarkable lift and separation. Best of all, it's available up to size 6XL, so it accommodates larger band sizes.

"I love the wide back band, and the fact that [larger sizes] have a higher center gore in front to ensure less spillage," says Weir.

The v-neckline gives this bralette some extra points in the versatility department, and the front-adjusting straps make finding your perfect fit so much easier. Did I mention that the fabric feels as soft as silk?

Best lace: Cosabella Paradiso Curvy Bralette

If you're looking for a bralette that's anything but basic, your search is over. This gorgeous little number proves that lingerie doesn't have to be uncomfortable: it's wireless, has plenty of stretch, and offers plenty of support thanks to the longline cut and wide straps. 

This is a great option for larger busts because both the straps and the band are adjustable, making it easier to achieve the perfect fit. Admittedly, it can take some time to fasten all the hook and eye closures in the back, but I like that there are three rows so I can tighten or loosen the band as needed. 

It's the details, though, that really make this bralette stand out — like the scalloped edge tricolor lace and multi-dimensional floral design.

Best cotton: SKIMS Fits Everybody Scoop Bralette

Like so many other SKIMS bralettes, this one is made with buttery soft fabric that's so comfortable you might even forget you're wearing it. I love that it comes in such a wide range of neutrals to accommodate every skin tone, and since it's so lightweight and breathable, you won't have to worry much about that dreaded underboob sweat.

The only caveat is that you can't adjust the band, and as many reviewers noted, it does run a little small.

Most comfortable: Negative Underwear The Sieve Non-Wire

I've been enamored with Negative Underwear for a while now — not only because of the minimalist designs, but also because of the brand's focus on sustainability: they only use high-quality fabrics that are free of harmful chemicals, and sourced from OEKO-TEX certified mills.

The Sieve Non-Wire is arguably the line's most supportive bralette, thanks in part to the Belgian micromesh that holds you up like a firm hug. In her Negative Underwear review, Insider Reviews Executive Editor Sally Kaplan raved about this one.

"Bralettes like these are really hard to get right for larger chest sizes, but this one worked incredibly well for my DDs (which are sometimes DDDs depending on the time of the month)," she said. "Of all the bralettes I've tested in my many years covering women's basics for Insider Reviews, this is my favorite. It lifts them up without separating too much or squishing together — plus, it's the perfect silhouette for V-neck sweaters or shirts."

Best everyday: Bombas Ribbed Seamless Bralette

Did you know that a majority of a bra's support comes from the band? I learned this during a bra fitting years ago, and it really stuck with me — I'd always assumed it was the straps or the cups that were holding my girls up. That's what made this Bombas bralette stick out for me: the ribbed band is wider than most, lending ample support and lift without the wires. In fact, it can accommodate up to an F cup size. It's also thoughtfully designed with a tighter knit in the center and around the sides for added support.

I often wear this bra to sleep because the fabric is super stretchy, seamless, and breathable — but it's also great for lounging around the house or running casual errands. Note that this bralette will feel pretty snug when you first put it on, but it stretches out a teeny bit with time.

FAQs

Can bralettes actually support a large bust?

Yes — but with caveats. Traditional bralettes are designed for light support, so not all styles work well for fuller busts. The best options for larger busts include wide bands, structured cups, and supportive fabrics that combine comfort with reliable hold — especially for everyday wear.

How should a bralette fit on a larger bust?

A well-fitting bralette should feel snug around the band without squeezing, and your breasts should feel supported without bulging out of the top or sides. If the band rides up or the straps dig in, it's probably not the right fit.

What should I look for in a bralette if I have a large bust?

Focus on support features:

• Wide, adjustable straps that help distribute weight
• A firm, wide underband for stability
• Structured cups or light molding to prevent spillage
• Side support panels or underwire, if you want extra lift

Do bralettes reduce bounce during exercise?

Most bralettes won't replace a proper sports bra for high-impact workouts. However, some structured bralette styles with strong bands and supportive fabrics can work for low-impact activities like yoga or walking. For running or HIIT, stick with a dedicated sports bra.

• Mayor Zohran Mamdani released New York City-themed World Cup jerseys on Friday.
• The $50 jerseys were meant to be an affordable alternative to the pricey FIFA version.
• People are now reselling the jerseys online at far less affordable rates.

Missed your chance to snag one of Mayor Zohran Mamdani's affordable World Cup jerseys? You might now have to pay resellers a very unaffordable price.

The New York City-themed jerseys popped up on sites like eBay and Facebook Marketplace hours after they went on sale, going for at least $400. Some sellers are asking as much as $999. That's a considerable upcharge from the $50 that residents paid for the same jerseys on Friday.

Mamdani unveiled the apparel earlier this week. In an Instagram post, he said they were "made by New Yorkers, for New Yorkers." Only 1,500 jerseys were available for purchase, making them a hot ticket item among his supporters and ardent soccer fans. People stood in line for hours outside the City of New York's official store to get their hands on one.

By comparison, official FIFA jerseys are noticeably pricier. The most expensive team gear costs $375, while the cheapest alternative costs $70.

Mamdani's administration has broadly pushed for affordability initiatives. In May, the mayor outlined a plan to expand affordable housing. A month earlier, he and New York State Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed a new pied-à-terre tax targeting wealthy people who own a secondary property in the city but live elsewhere.

Mamdani has also sought to make events affordable for New Yorkers.

Last September, he launched a petition urging FIFA to ditch its dynamic pricing model and lower ticket prices for New Yorkers. He also criticized the decision to allow ticket reselling on FIFA's official platform without a price cap.

Dynamic pricing — when businesses adjust ticket prices in real time based on factors such as demand and market conditions — has become a point of contention for ticket buyers expecting a fixed price. The resale market can also be volatile because vendors often upcharge tickets by hundreds of dollars.

Following negotiations with FIFA President Gianni Infantino, Mamdani secured 1,000 World Cup tickets for New Yorkers at $50 each in May.

"Last year we said we'd fight for cheaper tickets for New Yorkers, and today I'm proud to announce, just like Arsenal, we got it done," Mamdani, a lifelong fan of the London soccer club, said in a video posted to X in May.

New York City and New Jersey are among the host cities for this year's tournament. The first local match, held at MetLife Stadium, takes place on Saturday evening between Brazil and Morocco.

• Dario Amodei has warned that his latest AI model, Mythos, was so powerful it posed a serious threat.
• The Trump administration just ordered Anthropic to block foreign access to Mythos.
• Anthropic responded by shutting down the model altogether.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is famous for warning that his own products pose a threat.

In an essay published this month, Amodei cautioned that AI's power "has become undeniable." As an example, he pointed to Anthropic's latest model, Mythos, which he said presents "very real risks" to cybersecurity, the financial sector, critical infrastructure, and national security.

He then called for a more robust government intervention to address the risks.

On Friday, his warnings appeared to backfire when the US government suddenly intervened.

Anthropic cut off access to its Mythos 5 and Fable 5 after it said the Trump administration ordered it to block foreign access to the models. The Pentagon's chief information officer expressed support for the move in an X post, writing, "Some things are simply more important than revenue cycles, clickbait, and pre-IPO valuation."

The surprise development sent the tech industry into a tizzy.

Gary Marcus, the AI researcher and notorious skeptic, called the Trump administration's move "wildly overdramatic and also counterproductive."

Yann LeCunn, who is considered one of the godfathers of AI, blamed Amodei: "Dario Amodei's ridiculous fear mongering about Mythos/Fable (and AI in general) finally pays off," he wrote on X. "One reaps what one sows."

Amodei has long sought to position himself as the AI industry's adult in the room. Once an integral researcher at OpenAI, he left the company to start Anthropic over concerns that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman prioritized releasing products over ensuring their safety.

He has since issued a stream of statements that the things he is building and releasing to the general public, alongside OpenAI, Google, Meta, Amazon, and others, could upend life as we know it — for good as well as bad.

Amodei once warned that AI would eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs and cause unemployment to soar to levels not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, and before that, the Great Recession in 2008.

While Amodei has softened his tone on jobs in recent weeks as his company gears up to go public, he and his company have not held back on other safety concerns.

"The cyber risks that Mythos-class models present will not be the last that we must face," he wrote in his June essay. "I believe that biological risks may soon follow, and that serious AI autonomy risks may not be far behind."

He wrote that concerns by lawmakers were out of step with AI's rapid progress.

Earlier this month, his company called for a temporary halt to the development of frontier AI models in a paper cautioning that the latest models are getting closer to improving themselves, which it said, "might increase the risks of humans losing control over AI systems."

"We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology," Anthropic wrote.

That pause arrived on Friday, at least for Anthropic.

The FIFA World Cup is officially underway, almost four years since Argentina's victory, and Lionel Messi and his crew will attempt to defend their title against a stacked field. We've scoured the viewing options and rounded up everything you need to know about where to watch the World Cup, including free and global streaming options.

If you don't want to scroll any further, we've got you covered. You can live stream every game on FOX and FS1 via FOX One or a live TV service in the US, for free on SBS On Demand in Australia, and for free across BBC iPlayer and ITVX in the UK, among many other viewing options around the world (which we'll break down below). You can access your streaming options from anywhere with the help of a VPN. Keep reading to learn more about the tournament, whether you're hoping to watch from home or attend in person.

Where to watch the World Cup for free

Several countries around the world will offer free access to World Cup coverage. In Australia, all matches will be available for free on SBS On Demand. In the UK, all matches will be split across BBC iPlayer and ITVX.

Other regions offer select games for free, often focusing on their national team and major late-tournament matches, while the rest are available via a paid service. In Spain, select matches will be available for free on RTVE Play. In Italy, RaiPlay will offer free coverage of select matches. M6 offers some free matches in France. Tubi in the US also carried a couple of free matches, including Mexico vs. South Africa and USA vs. Paraguay.

Want to access some of these free World Cup viewing options from outside the above countries? We'll show you how to get around those geo-restrictions next.

How to watch the World Cup from anywhere

Football fans who are away from the location where their streaming service works during any notable matches can still access their free viewing options with the help of a VPN. Short for virtual private networks, VPNs are handy tech tools that let people temporarily change the virtual location on their electronic devices. They're popular among people looking to upgrade their cybersecurity and keep up with their usual websites and apps while traveling abroad.

NordVPN is our top recommendation and one of the best VPNs on the market. It's fast, offers a massive selection of global servers, and comes with a helpful 30-day money-back guarantee if you find that it's not helping you out.

Where to watch the World Cup in the US

All 104 World Cup games will air on either FOX or Fox Sports 1 (FS1) in the US. FOX offers a direct streaming counterpart, FOX One, for $20 a month with a three-day free trial. You can also sign up for the service as a Prime Video add-on. If you're looking for a service with additional channels or a longer free trial, one of the best live TV streaming services we've tested might be of interest.

DirecTV carries FOX, FS1, and around 20 other sports networks in its MySports genre pack. MySports also unlocks access to ESPN Unlimited at no extra cost. Subscriptions cost $65 a month, but new customers can get $15 a month off their first two months after a five-day free trial.

Fubo offers FOX and FS1 coverage in its Sports + News plan, along with 25+ other key channels. The streaming package also unlocks ESPN Unlimited access. Sports + News costs $56 a month, but new users can get $10 off their first month after a five-day free trial. FOX and FS1 are also available in the Pro and Elite plan.

YouTube TV is another live TV service with ample FOX and FS1 coverage. Until June 30, a special deal can help new users get $75 off YouTube TV for five months (that's $15 a month off each month over a five-month period). The sale brings the price of YouTube TV's main plan down from $83 a month to just $68 a month. There's also a sports plan with FOX and FS1, which costs $65 a month, but new users can get $10 a month off their first 12 months. The live TV service typically offers a free trial for new customers.

Sling TV also carries FOX and FS1 across several of its plans, with the cheapest being Sling Select. Sling Select starts at $20 a month for 10 channels (including FS1), but it jumps up to $25 a month when local channels (like FOX) are involved. However, Sling's local channel coverage varies widely by region, so check what's available in your area before signing up. Sling Blue also carries FS1 and FOX (when available). Plans start at $46 a month, but they go for $51 a month with local channels.

If you're looking for Spanish-language coverage, Telemundo has the broadcast rights in the US, and all 104 matches are available to stream on Peacock with Spanish commentary. Peacock's sports-friendly tiers start at $11 a month for Peacock Premium, but you'll be able to watch the first couple of days of the tournament with a pared-down Select plan as well.

Where to watch the World Cup in the UK

Every match at the World Cup will be available for free in the UK. Coverage is split across the BBC and ITV, meaning fans can live stream all matches via a combination of BBC iPlayer and ITVX. These are free streaming options that only require account creation to watch.

Where to watch the World Cup in Australia

It's good news in Australia. All 104 World Cup matches will be available in one place, through SBS, SBS Viceland, and SBS On Demand. That means that you can live stream all of the games via SBS On Demand, which just requires account creation if you haven't already made a login.

Where to watch the World Cup in Spain

RTVE will carry several World Cup matches in Spain. This means that fans will be able to live stream coverage for free on RTVE Play. You'll just need to create an account, and then you're all set to start watching. Coverage will favor games with Spain's national team, along with other marquee match-ups. Football fans in Spain hoping to watch every single World Cup match will need a paid subscription through DAZN.

Where to watch the World Cup in Germany

In Germany, select World Cup coverage will be available for free through ARD and ZDF. For full German coverage of the entire tournament, including all early group stage matches, fans will need a paid subscription to MagentaTV.

Where does the 2026 FIFA World Cup take place?

Typically, the FIFA World Cup is hosted by a single country, but the 2026 tournament will take place across Canada, Mexico, and the United States. In Canada, Toronto and Vancouver serve as host cities. In Mexico, host cities include Guadalajara, Mexico City, and Monterrey. US host cities include Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Miami, New York/New Jersey, Philadelphia, Seattle, and the San Francisco Bay Area.

Who is favored to win the FIFA World Cup?

Heading into the tournament, Spain is the favorite to win the FIFA World Cup. On DraftKings (at the time of writing), Spain leads at +450, followed by France (+475), England (+700), Portugal (+800), Brazil (+950), and Argentina (+950).

Previous FIFA World Cup winners

Argentina, led by Lionel Messi, won the 2022 World Cup. Previous winners include France (2018), Germany (2014), Spain (2010), Italy (2006), Brazil (2002), France (1998), Brazil (1994), West Germany (1990), Argentina (1986), Italy (1982), Argentina (1978), West Germany (1974), Brazil (1970), England (1966), Brazil (1962), Brazil (1958), West Germany (1954), Uruguay (1950), Italy (1938), Italy (1934), and Uruguay (1930).

When and where is the next men's World Cup?

The next men's World Cup tournament will take place in 2030. Most of the games will be hosted by Morocco, Portugal, and Spain, with one match each taking place in Uruguay, Argentina, and Paraguay. These South American games are in honor of the 100th anniversary of the first FIFA World Cup, which was held in Uruguay in 1930.

How do you get World Cup tickets?

Getting your hands on World Cup tickets has proven to be no easy task. The tournament is incredibly popular, and the initial FIFA ticket release was a bit confusing. Our team has found that some of the best prices and seating variety come from the resale market right now. You can learn more in our World Cup tickets guide.

2026 FIFA World Cup Schedule

Note: VPN use is illegal in certain countries, and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content may constitute a breach of the terms of use for some services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

• My partner is 17 years older than me. I've been calculating how much time we have left together.
• Since my mom died at 69, I can't stop worrying about what our future might look like.
• Despite my fears, we recently moved to Italy together.

On New Year's Day, I sat crying alone on the sofa while my partner, Max, slept. I wished it were just the one too many glasses of cava I had the night before. But it was something worse: a sudden, panicky feeling that time had moved faster than I realized.

When we met in 2015, I was 29, and he was 46 — 17 years my senior. He looked so youthful that I assumed he was in his late 30s. If I'm honest, the age difference made me hesitate, but the connection between us was too strong to ignore. He made me feel seen and wanted in ways no one else had before, and after a few months of resisting, I gave in to my feelings.

After 11 years, I worry about things my friends don't think about yet

In the early days, he used to say, "I wish I were 10 years younger so I could have ten more years with you." It sounded so romantic to 29-year-old me, and 10 years seemed like an eternity. I wasn't prepared for how quickly they would pass.

Over a decade later, Max still has the same energy and drive he had when I met him. Now 57, he's not showing signs of slowing down anytime soon, despite a few health niggles. He regularly spins records as a DJ, indulging in his passion for music.

But while friends my age are raising children or focusing on their careers, I worry about things that feel like they belong to someone much older. Those thoughts have intensified since my mom died unexpectedly at 69.

Losing my mom made me start calculating our time together

I often find myself calculating how long we have left together, as he's now just 12 years younger than my mother was when she died.

Will I still be with the same energetic man in another 10 years? Or will I spend my 50s or 60s as a caregiver? Would I even be able to handle that responsibility if it fell to me? I picture hospital visits, me pushing a wheelchair, and the man I've come to depend on becoming dependent on me.

Other times, I jump further ahead and picture what might come after. Will I end up alone at 50 or 60? Will I meet someone else, or build a new life on my own? I call these calculations "grief math."

Awareness of time keeps me grounded in the present

When Max woke up, I didn't say anything. How do you tell someone you've been contemplating their death? But when he asked what was wrong, I confessed. He wasn't upset; instead, he told me I should always talk to him.

I still catch myself doing grief math from time to time. But when I do, something else happens: all the daily annoyances, like how he interrupts me when I'm talking, or lets the dishes pile up in the sink, just evaporate. I just want to hug him and hold onto the feeling forever. So I do.

We recently moved to his hometown in Italy to be near his aging parents, which felt like a deeper commitment to a future that scares me. But if my mother's death taught me one thing, it's that time is never guaranteed, and not always in the way grief maths assumes.

Max could live to 100. I could die first. We could have forty more years together. Obsessing over worst-case scenarios only guarantees I'll have wasted the time we definitely have now.

Update: The final stretch of the 2026 NBA Playoffs has arrived. The New York Knicks won the Eastern Conference and advanced to the NBA Finals for the first time in 27 years. The San Antonio Spurs won the Western Conference Finals, beating the reigning champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder. The NBA Finals are underway on ABC, which can be live streamed via services like ESPN Unlimited, DirecTV, and Fubo. The original article outlining streaming options for the 2025-2026 NBA season follows:

The NBA has officially returned for the 2025 to 2026 season, and the broadcast schedule has undergone quite a shakeup. We've done the extra work for you and highlighted everything you need to know about how to watch NBA games, including the cheapest ways to live stream all games and which services you can probably do without.

Among the major changes for the new NBA season is the loss of NBA on TNT. For the first time in 36 years, NBA games won't be broadcast on TNT on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Tuesdays and Thursdays are instead split between NBC (and Peacock) and Prime Video, which are also new to the NBA scene. The one constant is ABC and ESPN, which will broadcast games on Sundays and Wednesdays, respectively.

Even if you have the most comprehensive cable package on the market, fans looking to watch all nationally broadcast games this year will still need to sign up for a couple of streaming services since there are some streaming-exclusive games each week, especially as the season wears on. Prime Video has gotten into the mix, and Monday night games are only available through Peacock (not NBC). Both NBCUniversal and Amazon are under 11-year media agreements with the NBA, so these viewing options are here to stay for the foreseeable future.

Confused? We get it. We've broken down all the essential details below, including the cheapest combination of streaming packages that will allow you to watch all nationally broadcast/streamed games in one place. We'll also explain how NBA League Pass works (and why it might be worth skipping this year).

• See also: How to watch NFL games | How to watch NHL games | Where to watch Premier League

How to watch NBA games in the US

Nationally broadcast games from the 2025-2026 regular season will be available through ABC, ESPN, NBC, Peacock, and Prime Video in the United States. NBC games will also be available on Peacock, but not all Peacock games (especially those on Monday) will air on NBC, so you'll most likely need a streaming service even if you already have access to NBC. NBA TV doesn't play a big role this year; instead, it will serve mainly as a highlight reel of key games, functioning a bit like NFL RedZone for the NBA. However, there will be a few stray games on NBA TV.

For cord-cutters, the cheapest way to live stream all nationally broadcast/streamed games isn't through one live TV streaming service. Instead, you'll want to subscribe to ESPN Unlimited ($30 a month) to access ABC and ESPN games, Peacock ($11 a month) to get NBC and Peacock games, and Prime Video ($9 a month) for games exclusive to that service. In total, that will run you $50 a month, making it more affordable than a live TV streaming package. Below, you can find a weekly schedule of nationally available games and the cheapest streaming counterpart for the broadcasts.

Peacock plans start at $11 a month for the Premium plan, which should unlock access to all NBC and Peacock NBA games. We'll test this as the season starts and make sure it's still the case. If you're looking to unlock 24/7 NBA live streams or want to stream on-demand content without ads, then you'll need to get the Peacock Premium Plus tier for $17 a month. Our Peacock streaming service guide breaks down other sports you can watch through the NBCUniversal app.

ESPN Unlimited costs $30 a month and unlocks the full suite of live streaming content across ESPN properties, including the flagship network and ESPN on ABC content. While the cheaper ESPN Select tier unlocks some programming, you'll need Unlimited to watch the bulk of the NBA action. You can learn more in our ESPN streaming service guide.

The good news is that if you have an Amazon Prime membership, you're all set to start watching Prime Video's streaming exclusive games. Amazon Prime costs $15 a month, but if you're only interested in Prime Video, you can subscribe directly for $9 a month. Prime offers a 30-day free trial for new customers or those who haven't subscribed in over a year. You can learn more in our Prime Video guide.

Another solid live TV streaming option is DirecTV MySports, which has quickly catapulted itself to the top of our list when it comes to the best live TV streaming services we've tested. The genre pack carries NBC, ABC, NBA TV, and ESPN in its 20+ channel line-up (although you should double-check what's available in your area due to regional local channel variability). MySports also unlocks access to ESPN Unlimited. Subscriptions cost $70 a month, but you can get your first two for $60 a month after a five-day free trial.

NBA League Pass can be very helpful or not helpful at all, depending on your interests. League Pass shows all out-of-market games, except those available through a national broadcast or streaming option (ABC, ESPN, NBC, Peacock, Prime Video). So, you'll need cable or the above streaming options to watch most notable games this season. NBA League Pass subscriptions start at $17 monthly. You can also add League Pass to Prime Video or DirecTV MySports as an add-on, which will cost the same as subscribing separately. Doing so through Prime Video will give you a seven-day free trial.

We recommend League Pass as an additional streaming option for those interested in having access to every single NBA game this season (in conjunction with the above streaming services) or those who are diehard fans of a team located in a region where they don't reside. If you're a casual NBA viewer or loyal to your local team, League Pass probably isn't necessary, especially since so many games are now on Peacock and Prime Video.

For example, if you're like me (a Celtics fan who lives in Boston), League Pass isn't a good option since I won't be able to watch any Celtics games, in addition to the national broadcast/streaming blackouts. But if you live in Boston and you're looking to watch every single Knicks game this year, then League Pass will be able to help you fill in some of the gaps not covered by national broadcast and streaming options.

How to watch NBA games from anywhere

If you're traveling away from home and hoping to tune in while abroad, you can access your usual watch options with the aid of a VPN. Short for virtual private networks, VPNs are easy-to-use cybersecurity tools that let people alter their virtual locations so that their usual services work from almost anywhere in the world. They're also great ways to improve online privacy and day-to-day security. The services we've highlighted require US payment methods, so this option will work best for Americans who are simply traveling abroad at the moment.

If we could draft any VPN as our No. 1 pick, it would be NordVPN. The top-rated service comes with an impressive selection of cybersecurity features and international servers. You can learn more about why we recommend the service in our official NordVPN review.

Note: The use of VPNs is illegal in certain countries and using VPNs to access region-locked streaming content might constitute a breach of the terms of use for certain services. Business Insider does not endorse or condone the illegal use of VPNs.

• Six months after college, I moved to San Francisco, but was struggling to find potential roommates.
• Instead of living alone, I signed a lease with three strangers I met through Facebook groups.
• Moving in with people I didn't know was scary, but it's been easier than rooming with friends.

When I graduated from college in 2023, I knew I wanted to return to Northern California, where I was born and raised.

But after living with my parents in the Bay Area suburbs for six months, I accepted a job in San Francisco and needed to move closer to the city for work.

There was just one problem: I didn't know a single person in San Francisco. Although I grew up in the area, all my friends had scattered across the country.

I debated living alone, but ultimately, as a natural homebody, I wanted roommates to help push me outside my comfort zone and be more social. Having people to split bills with would be nice, too.

Desperate to live with someone I even vaguely knew, I tried to connect with a few distant friends of friends, but preferences never aligned, and nothing ever worked out.

So, I decided it was time to expand my options and turned to Facebook groups of people looking for roommates in San Francisco.

After hours of scrolling through posts and vetting people through Instagram and FaceTime calls, I found three women — three strangers — to live with.

Signing a lease and moving in with people I didn't know was terrifying at first, but now, nearly two years later, I can truly say my life in San Francisco wouldn't be as full without them.

In my case, living with strangers gave me built-in exploration buddies and made dividing up chores easier

All three of my roommates were from out of state, and like me, they didn't know anyone else in San Francisco. That meant all of us were equally motivated to get out, explore, and say yes to any adventure.

During the first few weekends of us living together, we bar-hopped across our neighborhood. It felt like being a freshman in college all over again, except our campus was now an entire city.

My roommates slowly transformed from strangers to friends after each excursion, from attending a running club together to buying tickets to attend the Outside Lands music festival on a whim,

Much to my surprise, my three roommates even showed up to cheer me on as I ran the San Francisco Marathon — my first-ever half-marathon — just a month after we moved in together.

It felt great to make new connections and step out of my comfort zone.

If I'd lived alone with friends I already had and knew well, I don't think I would've felt the need to explore and branch out. It would've been easy to stick with what's comfortable and familiar, like hanging out at home or visiting the same routine places, instead of trying new things.

Another perk of living with people I didn't already have relationships with was that I felt more confident I could voice my needs.

When I'd lived with friends before, there was always the fear of ruining the relationship in the back of our minds, so unspoken tensions grew, and chores remained unfinished.

Some of the friends I lived with would leave the kitchen and living room a mess for days, but I never felt comfortable speaking up because I didn't want to be seen as the "nitpicky one" in our group or potentially jeopardize a long-standing friendship.

I no longer have this problem now that I live with people I don't have a history with and who are roommates first.

If one of us doesn't clean, forgets to lock the door, or neglects to take out the trash, I always feel like I can be upfront and ask them to pitch in.

The arrangement isn't always perfect, but living with strangers has worked well for me

Yes, there are some setbacks about living with strangers that I would be remiss if I didn't mention, like the initial awkwardness that comes with getting to know new people and the possibility of having incompatible living styles.

I'm definitely glad I spent time thoroughly vetting my would-be roommates via video calls and messages before signing a lease, since that helped lessen awkwardness and ease some of my anxieties.

I'm also grateful that the process of searching for potential roommates helped me make new friends before I arrived in San Francisco. I still keep in touch with several people I met in those Facebook groups, even though living together didn't work out.

Regardless, I understand that moving in with strangers doesn't work for everyone, and I got really lucky.

I'm so glad I kicked off this new season of postgrad life by seeking out new people to live with. It's gone so well that we have no plans to move anytime soon.

But if I do ever relocate to a different city, I know I'll be right back on Facebook, scouring through groups of strangers in search of roommates, eager to once again share a home with unfamiliar faces.

• ChatGPT analyzed puppy potty logs to create actionable metrics for Oliver's training efficiency.
• AI-generated CSV files helped track Oliver's potty habits, revealing key accident patterns.
• Consistent potty schedules, as shown by AI, reduced Oliver's accidents significantly over time.

A recent AI experiment involved feeding weeks of handwritten puppy potty logs into ChatGPT. My wife and I tracked every pee, poop, walk, and accident for our puppy Oliver, creating a new breed of KPI: Key Potty Indicators.

ChatGPT extracted the data from our scribbled notes and turned it into a fully formatted CSV file. Then it went to town charting the heck out of these KPIs.

It came up with a host of fancy metrics, including ARR (Accident Reduction Rate), LTV (Longest Time Void-free), PTP (Poop-to-Pee) ratio, WAF (Weekly Accident-Free) rate, and DPV (Daily Potty Volume).

This chart was useful, showing how accidents correlate with how often we walk Oliver.

And the AI analysis found that accidents weren't random. They clustered in two predictable windows: midday (roughly noon to 3 pm) and late evening (8 pm to 10 pm), often following meals, naps, or play sessions.

The biggest takeaway: Success comes from reducing the gap between "need to go" and "opportunity to go." According to Oliver's KPI dashboard, consistency beats discipline, every accident is a training opportunity, and our puppy is becoming increasingly forecastable.

Sign up for BI's Tech Memo newsletter here. Reach out to me via email at abarr@businessinsider.com.

• President Donald Trump is reshaping Washington, DC, from the White House to federal buildings.
• His $400 million White House ballroom plan has sparked legal battles and backlash.
• A proposed 250-foot triumphal arch celebrating America's anniversary would be the world's largest.

A new ballroom, a 250-foot arch, a memorial garden, and now, a UFC fighting ring: During his second term, President Donald Trump is leaving an increasingly visible mark on Washington, DC, from department name changes to 30-foot-tall banners of his portrait.

To commemorate his 80th birthday and America's 250th anniversary, the president has now erected a ginormous, eight-sided fighting cage on the White House South Lawn in collaboration with the UFC, which will host a primetime event outside the executive mansion on Sunday.

The Trump administration's renovation of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool was also completed this week. The $14.8 million project included sealing and painting the bottom of the pool "American flag blue."

They're the latest on Trump's long list of changes to America's capital. Reasons given for the projects include government efficiency, beautifying the city, and marking America's 250th birthday.

While many remain ongoing or in legal limbo, the changes the president has already made to the White House and its surrounding areas have altered the face of the nation's capital.

See some of the ways in which Trump has remodeled the White House, US government buildings, and beyond during his second term.

The shuttering of USAID was one of the first physical signs of the Trump administration's remodeling of the nation's capital.

Shortly after taking office, Trump's Department of Government Efficiency spearheaded a sweeping dismantling of the US Agency for International Development, or USAID.

The department froze the agency's foreign aid, slashed its staff and programs, and ultimately moved to dismantle much of the agency's operations and shift remaining functions to the State Department.

Former presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush joined critics in condemning the move, with Obama calling it a "travesty."

Administration officials framed it as a cost-cutting and accountability effort, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying USAID had "strayed from its original mission" and that "the gains were too few and the costs were too high" around the time of its effective shuttering.

The agency, founded in 1961 to counter the influence of the Soviet Union during the Cold War, was housed in the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in DC, alongside other government agencies.

Following the agency's formal folding into the State Department on July 1, 2025, its staff, offices, and signage were removed from the building that once housed it.

In May 2025, the US Department of Agriculture debuted banners showing Trump alongside Abraham Lincoln.

By the first spring of his second term, Trump's portrait started appearing on government buildings, with the first being the US Department of Agriculture building, the Jamie L. Whitten Building, in the National Mall.

The 31-foot-tall banners, which were installed to honor USDA's 163rd birthday, cost the department an estimated $16,400, the Washingtonian reported.

They "acknowledge the vision and leadership of USDA's founder, Abraham Lincoln, and the best advocate of America's farmers and ranchers, President Trump," USDA's then-director of communications, Seth W. Christensen, told The Washington Post in May 2025.

There is little modern precedent for the banners, which raised concerns about the politicization of federal buildings. Instead, the norm is for presidential portraits to be displayed inside government buildings and updated between administrations.

The Department of Labor building also features portraits of Trump alongside Theodore Roosevelt.

In August, the US Department of Labor debuted its own Trump banners, initially to commemorate Labor Day but kept up throughout the nation's 250th anniversary celebrations after receiving a "tremendous positive response," a department spokesperson told The New York Times.

The Department of Labor's banners read "American Workers First" and depict the president alongside Theodore Roosevelt, who helped lay the groundwork for the modern Labor Department.

A September report by Sen. Adam Schiff of California also mentioned that the US Department of Health and Human Services had solicited 88-foot-tall banners promoting health secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr's "Make America Healthy Again" slogan for an estimated cost of $33,726.

In February, a similar banner was hung at the Department of Justice's building.

The latest federal department to showcase the president's portrait is the Department of Justice, which has traditionally operated somewhat independently of the White House to curb political influence.

The banner, hung in February, features the president's portrait and reads "Make America Safe Again."

Among its critics, Gov. Gavin Newsom called the display "beyond parody," while New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim wrote on X, "The Department of Justice is supposed to work for and represent you, not him."

A DOJ spokesperson said, "We are proud at this Department of Justice to celebrate 250 years of our great country and our historic work to make America safe again at President Trump's direction."

The Kennedy Center board voted in December to add Trump's name to the institution.

In December, the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts was renamed by its board to the Donald J. Trump and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Center for the Performing Arts.

The name change came after a unanimous vote by the center's board of trustees, which was largely reshaped by the president.

"I was honored by [the renaming]," Trump said in the days following the name change. "Its board, it's a very distinguished board, most distinguished people in the country. And I was surprised by it."

Renaming the center, created by Congress as a memorial to US President John F. Kennedy, requires congressional approval. The board's decision to rename it faced criticism at the time, including from some members of the Kennedy family. Some performers canceled booked appearances in the center, while legal battles emerged as Democratic members of Congress seek to block the name change.

In March, the center announced it would undergo renovations starting this summer, during which it would temporarily pause operations, with work expected to last two years.

But on May 29, a federal judge ruled that Trump's name had been added illegally to the center and blocked the planned summer closure.

A spokesperson for the Kennedy Center said that the administration would be "complying with the court's order while evaluating all legal options to preserve this revitalization and recognize President Trump's leadership," the Associated Press reported.

The US Institute of Peace building also had Trump's name added to it in December.

The US Institute of Peace was another DC institution that saw Trump's name added to it.

The Congress-funded, nonprofit think tank was renamed by the administration in a State Department announcement that described Trump as "the greatest dealmaker in our nation's history," per a social media announcement.

"Marco named it after me," the president said at a Board of Peace meeting in February, referring to Secretary of State Marco Rubio. "I had nothing to do with it, I swear I didn't. I swear. I had no idea."

Rubio showed his support on X, posting, "President Trump will be remembered by history as the President of Peace. It's time our State Department display that."

The president plans to build the world's largest triumphal arch.

In October, Trump first proposed the building of a monumental arch, dubbed the "Independence Arch," to commemorate America's 250th anniversary.

The arch, proposed to be 250 feet tall, would sit across the Potomac River from the Lincoln Memorial on the Memorial Circle roundabout near Arlington National Cemetery.

While construction on the arch has not yet begun, surveying of the land plot has started, even amid an ongoing lawsuit in which a group of Vietnam veterans sued to block the administration from building the monument.

The group argued that the structure "would dishonor their military and foreign service and the legacy of their comrades and other veterans buried at Arlington National Cemetery," per the lawsuit.

In response to a legal challenge from congressional Democrats, a White House spokesperson told The Washington Post of the structure, "It will enhance the visitor experience at Arlington National Cemetery for veterans, the families of the fallen, and all Americans alike, serving as a visual reminder of the noble sacrifices borne by so many American heroes throughout our 250 year history so we can enjoy our freedoms today,"

In May, the Trump-appointed US Commission of Fine Arts approved the arch's design, partly clearing the way for its construction.

The approved revised design for the arch — which some have nicknamed "Arc de Trump" — features a figure reminiscent of Lady Liberty atop the structure, gilded eagles, gold-lettering inscriptions, and a 360-degree observation deck open to visitors.

The arch, which would be nearly half as tall as the Washington Monument obelisk, would dwarf France's historic Arc de Triomphe, the world's most famous triumphal arch, and be the tallest triumphal arch in the world.

A preliminary assessment by the National Park Service, released on June 8, estimated that the project would require year-round, 20-hour-a-day construction to be completed within a three-year timeframe.

The demolition of the East Wing began to give the People's House a new face.

In October 2025, the White House's East Wing was demolished, leaving only rubble behind and clearing the way for the president's 90,000-square-foot, $400 million ballroom project.

Previously, the largest event space in the White House was the East Room, which had a capacity of around 200 people. For larger events, tents were erected on the South Lawn.

"For more than 150 years, every President has dreamt about having a Ballroom at the White House to accommodate people for grand parties, State Visits, etc.," Trump wrote on Truth Social in October. "I am honored to be the first President to finally get this much-needed project underway — with zero cost to the American Taxpayer!"

The president has said the project will be funded by private donors, including Big Tech companies and wealthy individuals.

The demolition of the wing, originally added in the early 20th century and expanded in 1942, altered the facade of the president's mansion and forced the relocation of the first lady's staff offices.

It was met with criticism from preservationists, who said the president needed to obtain congressional approval for the project.

"It's not his house. It's your house. And he's destroying it," former Secretary of State and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton wrote on X after photos of the demolition emerged.

Trump has defended the project by pointing to past presidents' renovations, expansions, and modernizations of the White House, and by emphasizing the ballroom's importance for hosting large events. The administration has also dismissed criticism of the construction as "manufactured outrage."

When completed, the president's proposed ballroom will further transform the White House.

The ballroom will be the largest change Trump has made to the White House — others include Rose Garden renovations, new marble floors, and gold embellishments. The new ballroom will also impede the South Lawn's historic driveway, making it no longer circular.

The project was temporarily blocked by a federal judge on March 31, who ruled that the president must seek congressional approval before proceeding with the renovation.

A federal appeals court later paused the judge's order, allowing construction to continue while the case proceeds.

As of May, the ballroom construction is projected to be completed by September 2028, the president told reporters.

Renovations to the Rose Garden have already changed the White House's exterior.

In July 2025, the president renovated the White House's Rose Garden, which is often used for press conferences and larger gatherings.

The renovation paved over the grass with light-colored stone while keeping the garden's namesake rose bushes, citing the foot traffic during events as the main reason for the project.

It wasn't the first time the Rose Garden had changed looks, as it famously did under the Kennedy administration, when roses, magnolia trees, and other perennial and annual flowers were added.

In 2020, Melania Trump oversaw a garden renovation that included the addition of limestone walkways along the open lawn.

In the Potomac River's Tidal Basin, Trump has pushed changes to the East Potomac Golf Links.

Also on the riverside, alongside the Potomac River, is the East Potomac Golf Links, a public golf course that the president has also set his eye on for a potential takeover.

In December 2025, the Trump administration issued the National Links Trust — a nonprofit that operates and maintains public golf courses in Washington, DC, under a 50-year lease with the National Park Service — with a termination notice, The Athletic reported.

The National Links Trust said it was "devastated" by the decision, saying it "has consistently complied with all lease obligations as we work to ensure the brightest possible future for public golf in DC."

Of Trump's involvement with public golf courses, White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers told Golf Digest, "As a private citizen, President Trump built some of the greatest golf courses in the world, and he is now extending his unmatched design skills and excellent eye for detail to D.C.'s public golf courses."

In May, the Trump administration and the National Links Trust reached a deal keeping the nonprofit in charge of DC's three municipal golf courses while clearing the way for the renovations at East Potomac, Golf Digest reported.

During the demolition of the White House East Wing and the construction of the new ballroom, locals have reported that the park has been turned into a dump for construction rubble and debris.

A lawsuit filed in February sought to restrict Trump's takeover of the golf courses. It said that dumping the rubble on the course grounds is "unlawful and possibly hazardous" due to the possible presence of asbestos.

Testing results later released by the National Park Service found that the debris dumped on the fields contained harmful chemicals like lead, chromium, PCBs, pesticides, and petroleum byproducts.

Directly north of the White House, Lafayette Square was fenced off in January for a renovation project.

Lafayette Square, a 7-acre public park directly north of the White House, has also seen changes during the second Trump administration.

The park is a popular attraction for visitors thanks to its views of the People's House, but in recent months it has undergone a makeover.

In late January, the Washington Post reported that the park had been fenced off as part of an improvement project and that it had been designated a National Historic Landmark since 1970.

The work, initially expected to last through May, will focus on fixing fountains, sprinklers, benches, and curbs. It is part of a broader initiative undertaken by the National Park Service to "beautify," restore, and upgrade public parks in the nation's capital.

The New York Times also reported that the president was interested in replacing the park's brick walkways with granite to prevent protesters from removing bricks and throwing them.

By April 21, local news outlet DC News Now reported that the park's fountain was back in operation.

A statue garden dedicated to American heroes is planned to take over West Potomac Park.

West Potomac Park, located just west of the Jefferson Memorial along the Potomac River, serves as a public multipurpose field, where locals often organize sports and other events.

Trump's Garden of Heroes, a planned 250-statue monument commemorating American icons, is another of the president's many projects around Washington, DC.

In May, the president announced that the riverside park would soon be the location of the Garden of Heroes, despite lingering questions about project approval, timeline, and costs.

Trump described the existing park as a "totally BARREN field of Prime Waterfront Real Estate along our Mighty Potomac River" on a post on Truth Social.

A sudden repainting of the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool also raised legal concerns.

In April, the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, which stretches between the Lincoln Memorial and the World War II Memorial, started undergoing a makeover that was completed in June.

The renovation involved resurfacing the pool, which has long had leaks and algae blooms, with a waterproof compound and painting the formerly gray pool an "American flag blue," as the president described the color.

The administration defended the renovation as an expedited repair ahead of America's 250th anniversary celebrations, with a Department of the Interior spokesperson saying that the blue surface "will enhance the visitor experience by making the pool reflect the grand Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument."

There have been questions about the cost and process of the project, reportedly awarded under a no-bid contract. The Cultural Landscape Foundation, a DC-based preservation nonprofit, sued the administration days after the project began, alleging that the renovation was conducted without completing the proper reviews required under federal preservation law.

The renovation, initially described as a $1.8 million project, was later reported by The Associated Press to cost at least $14.8 million in contracts.

An Interior Department spokesperson told the Times that the higher price tag "reflects the effort necessary to expedite the timeline of completing the leak prevention coating project — more people, more materials, more equipment, and longer hours ahead of our 250th."

By June, the project was complete, and the updated color could be seen in satellite images (above).

A UFC fighting cage has transformed the White House South Lawn — for now.

A 4,000-seat arena was erected on the White House South Lawn for a UFC fighting event. The structure was built to host the "UFC Freedom 250" event on June 14, commemorating the nation's 250th anniversary and Trump's 80th birthday.

The 30-foot-wide, 600-ton steel cage features a 92-foot canopy — nicknamed "The Claw" — covering the fighting octagon ring.

An additional stage with large screens was also built in the adjacent Ellipse, a park south of the White House, where over 120,000 members of the public are expected to attend, organizers said. That's on top of the anticipated 4,000 spectators surrounding the ring, which will include at least 1,200 active-duty members of the armed forces as well as administration officials and other VIP guests.

A lawsuit filed by two Virginia residents against the National Park Service sought to block the event, alleging the administration's use of the South Lawn was unlawfully authorized by the agency.

Over $60 million has been spent by UFC and affiliated groups on funding the event and building the structure. The National Park Service court filing added that seven federal agencies, including the Department of Homeland Security, had also "allocated significant resources and manpower."

Trump later compared the fighting cage to France's Eiffel Tower, which was constructed as a temporary installation for the 1889 World's Fair and has remained in place since.

"We're building something in front of the White House that's quite attractive to a lot of people," the president said on a video posted to his TikTok account. "And I'm looking at it, and maybe we'll never ever take it down."

• After my millennial cousin convinced me to try mahjong, I'm hooked.
• It keeps me off my phone and engaged with my friends and family.
• Now I understand how people can spend hours around a mahjong table without getting bored.

A few months ago, if you'd asked me what I knew about mahjong, I probably would have said it's a game older women play, like my grandma, and that I was definitely not interested in learning.

Then I got hooked.

After my cousin moved closer to where I live, she told me she wanted to learn to play mahjong and asked if I'd teach her. My first thought was that if my cousin, a millennial, was interested, I (a Gen Zer) probably wouldn't be the only young person learning. Plus, I'd heard plenty of praise for the game from my mom's friends over the years.

Before long, my mom and our family friend wanted to learn, too, so the four of us signed up for classes together.

Mahjong, which has roots in mid-19th-century China, is seeing a surge in popularity as people seek out more face-to-face social activities — and after playing, I can see why.

Now, I spend multiple evenings a month gathered around a table with them, shuffling tiles, debating strategy, and trying to remember which discards will come back to haunt me.

Learning how to play

Mahjong arrived in the US from China in the 1920s, eventually developing into a variant known as American mahjong. When I sat down to play, the learning curve was much steeper than I expected.

At first, the colorful tiles looked interchangeable, and every game felt like controlled chaos. There seemed to be endless rules, strategies, and combinations to memorize. For the first couple of classes, I was completely overwhelmed.

There were moments I considered giving up. I couldn't understand how anyone kept track of everything happening on the table.

But after a few sessions, patterns began to emerge. The strategy became more intuitive. Instead of seeing random tiles, I began to recognize opportunities. The game slowly began to make sense.

Now, I completely understand why people can spend hours around a mahjong table without getting bored.

The best part isn't the game

Like many people my age, I wasn't just looking for another hobby when I started playing mahjong — I was looking for a reason to spend less time staring at a screen and more time interacting with people face-to-face.

My days are usually spent online. I work on a computer, communicate through Slack and email, scroll social media, and unwind by watching TV. Even many of my social interactions happen through text.

However, unlike these modern hobbies, mahjong demands your full attention. The pace of the game requires players to stay engaged, watch what everyone else is doing, and react in real time.

For a few hours, notifications disappear into the background.

The game has also created a social routine that feels increasingly rare: a few hours where everyone is actively participating in the same thing.

Younger players are picking up mahjong

The more I've played, the more I've realized that mahjong's growing popularity among younger people makes sense.

It fits into the larger trend of growing interest in activities that offer real-world connections — running clubs, book clubs, pickleball leagues, dinner parties — as players flock to clubs for a sense of community, as PBS reported. Yelp data showed searches for mahjong clubs and lessons grew by 4,000% last year, PBS reported.

Many mahjong clubs across the US have seen increased interest from younger players. San Francisco's Youth Luck Leisure Mahjong Club, for example, draws crowds of up to 200 people, often with waitlists, the Associated Press reported in 2025, while New York's Green Tile Social Club is popular with younger players hoping to connect with their cultural heritage, The New York Times reported in 2024.

Vogue also reported that younger players are heading to stylish mahjong clubs and themed events, and buying designer game sets, helping transform the game into a fashionable social activity.

Ironically, I probably wouldn't have started playing mahjong without seeing it pop up more frequently online, but what has kept me playing is the exact opposite of what most online platforms offer.

I've learned that mahjong rewards patience instead of instant gratification. It encourages real-life conversation over scrolling. And it gives me a reason to put my phone away for a few hours and focus fully on the people sitting across from me.

• Anthropic says the Trump Administration ordered it to block foreign access to two powerful AI models.
• In response, the company cut off all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5.
• The tech world reacted swiftly and with surprise.

Anthropic's announcement that the Trump Administration ordered it to block foreign access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — prompting the company to completely cut off access to those AI models — sent a shock wave across the tech world.

Here are some reactions on social media to the latest skirmish in the hostilities between the White House and Anthropic.

Dean W. Ball, senior fellow at the Foundation for American Innovation

"If this is true, it is just baffling. An administration whose posture is that we should export advanced AI chips to China, which also wants to ban… Britain (and every other non-American on Earth)… from using our best models? I have no words.

"I can't tell if this is lawfare against Anthropic in particular or extreme national-security hawkery. Regardless, it is simply cartoonish."

Peter Girnus, senior threat researcher at Zero Day Initiative

"Two things are true at once.

"First: Anthropic spent months marketing Mythos as too dangerous to release. Sam Altman said it was 'incredible marketing to say we have built a bomb. The Commerce Department has now formally agreed it is a bomb. If you describe your product as a munition in every press release, eventually a government takes you at your word. They wrote the legal predicate themselves and called it a brand.

"Second: we have run this experiment before. In the 90s the government classified encryption as a munition under ITAR. Activists defeated it by printing PGP's source code as a book, because books are protected speech and floppy disks were arms exports. A t-shirt with three lines of RSA Perl was legally a munition. The controls collapsed because math does not stop at customs.

"The new wrinkle is the 'deemed export' rule: showing controlled technology to a foreign national inside the US counts as exporting it abroad. Which is why Anthropic's own foreign-national employees are now locked out of the model they built. The munition is in the building and the people who made it are not allowed to look at it."

Marc Andreesen, partner at Andreessen Horowitz

Chris McGuire, senior fellow for China and emerging technologies at the Council on Foreign Relations

"I actually think targeted export controls on model access are prudent. But across the board controls on all countries on a single model, without any warning, is highly questionable. Imposing equally broad deemed export controls, which also restrict access to foreign nationals, is just absurd—and obviously will result in the model being pulled from distribution, as just happened.

"Export controls are a critical tool, and an extremely powerful one. Used correctly, they have the potential to massively extend the US lead in AI. Used incorrectly, they will stifle AI development. The Department of Commerce's export control strategy has been completely incoherent and sabotaging. It is sending powerful AI chips to China, not enforcing controls that would prevent Chinese smuggling, creating massive loopholes that allow AI chips to be sent to China, and preventing US AI companies from releasing their own models.

"This has to stop. We urgently need a smart export control strategy that applies robust export controls to deny our adversaries access to advanced technology, while advantaging US companies. Commerce and BIS are consistently doing the opposite. If BIS doesn't understand how to use its authorities or what the implications are of its actions, then it needs to find some new personnel who can actually execute a competent export control strategy. The current one is incoherent and self-defeating."

Matthew Pines, CEO of Physical Superintelligence

"this is gonna send shockwaves through every lab and neolab… U.S. export control laws operate under a strict liability standard… they are a very sharp blade…"

Dan Shipper, CEO of Every

"my take on this situation currently is that they'll unban it in a few days and the net effect will be increased demand for Fable

"however this kind of thing is extremely disruptive and distracting for people inside of the company. the only comparable scenario i can remember is Sam Altman's firing which was resolved relatively quickly. even though things went back to the way they were, i do think that disrupted their momentum for a while

"hoping for a good outcome here!"

Josh Pigford, founder of Baremetrics

"Anthropic has not done theirselves ANY favors with their hyperbole over the past 6-12 months. But I also guarantee this has zero to do with national security."

Peter Barnett, researcher at Machine Intelligence Research Institute

"If it's true that USG export controlled Fable because another company said they could jailbreak it, then we might be stumbling into a regime where AI companies red team each others' models before the USG allows deployment."

Yusuf Mahmood, director of AI policy at the America First Policy Institute

"The US government just ordered Anthropic to suspend all foreign-national access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5, inside or outside the US. As a reminder, huge percentages of technical employees at all the frontier AI labs (including Anthropic) are likely foreign nationals."

Jeremy Howard, cofounder of fast.ai

"I disagree with this decision and I don't like it.

"But also...

"HOW DID ANTHROPIC NOT SEE THIS COMING‽

"It is the obvious response to 'this is too dangerous for anyone except us to use', since that relies on a premise ('we are uniquely good') that almost no-one agrees with."

Ryan Brewer, member of technical staff at OpenAI

"Eventually you will only be able to access frontier intelligence in a small set of buildings in the Bay Area if the US govt continues in this direction. Shame"

Ketan Ramakrishnan, Yale Law professor

"The federal government is going to regulate AI developers aggressively. The question is whether this regulation will be done intelligently or not; whether Congress and public deliberation will have a role or just opaque executive action; etc"

Yann LeCun, executive chairman of AMI Labs

"Dario Amodei's ridiculous fear mongering about Mythos/Fable (and AI in general) finally pays off:

"The US government bans its use by non Americans, including by foreign employees in the US

"One reaps what one sows."

Peter Harrell, visiting scholar at Georgetown Law School

"I find it ridiculous and un-American for the government to tell me, as an American, I cannot use an advanced AI model because of a vague and non-public alleged security threat. We should regulate AI, but based on transparent and impartial rules, and not 5pm on a Friday diktats."

Alan Rozenshtein, research director at The Lawfare Institute

"This may become the first big First Amendment AI case."

Aaron Levie, CEO of Box

"This is a big turning point for AI regulation.

The government is starting to deem some models too powerful for certain uses, which creates a precedent for a range of possible controls in the future.

I'm in the camp that this is unnecessary and we should be primarily regulating the use of AI, as opposed to the underlying models. But, equally, there are plenty of people that actually prefer this outcome.

Either way, it's unlikely that we're going back to a world where the government doesn't have far more meaningful involvement in the rate of AI progress."

Gary Marcus, AI researcher

"Commerce's shocking decree this afternoon — which effectively shuts down Anthropic by cutting off access to Mythos 5 and Fable 5 for many of their own employees — seems both wildly overdramatic and also counterproductive for the US AI industry.

Perhaps it does China a favor, though. Certainly every Chinese person working in a US AI company (and there are many) will consider returning to the competition in China ASAP.

And investors will start to wonder whether American AI companies can thrive in this atmosphere.

If you want an example of an AI regulation that can stifle innovation, this is it."

Timnit Gebru, founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute

"Lol Anthropic made such a big deal about their model being 'dangerous' because they thought the only result was gonna be hype + something something preventing China from something."

• As a solo traveler who's visited over 50 countries, some have left a lasting impact on me.
• I'll never forget my time in Guatemala, where I saw a volcano erupt right before my eyes.
• Uzbekistan is one of my favorite places for incredible cuisine and breathtaking scenery.

I'm a solo traveler from Australia who dreams of visiting every country in the world, and so far, I've checked over 50 off my bucket list.

After traveling to so many different destinations, I often get asked which ones I'd recommend most. Even though I've visited so many memorable places in Asia, Central America, and Europe, it's challenging to pick my favorites.

But if I had to narrow it down, these are the seven countries I haven't been able to stop thinking about.

Mongolia is unlike any other place I've visited.

When I arrived in Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia, I was completely in awe of the architecture, specifically the mix of modern buildings and Buddhist temples.

Besides the unique architectural designs in the capital, however, the part of my trip that stood out to me most was visiting the Gobi Desert, where I spent weeks living off the grid with nomadic families.

Here, I experienced a dramatic range of weather conditions: extreme winds, dry heat, snow, and temperatures dropping below negative 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

Despite the unpredictable climate, spending time with these families and disconnecting from the rest of the world made my trip to Mongolia one of my favorites.

Plus, the lack of crowds and very intermittent cell reception in the desert truly allowed me to live in the moment.

In Bolivia, every moment was full of variety.

Bolivia kept me on my toes constantly: One minute, I was backpacking on foot, the next, I was riding cable cars high above the city — an experience I'll never forget, despite my fear of heights.

I was also blown away by the traditional Bolivian fashion, specifically the big, layered skirts, shawls, and bowler hats.

Overall, Bolivia — specifically the administrative capital of La Paz — felt so raw, colorful, and unlike anywhere else I'd been to in South America.

The landscapes in Ethiopia took my breath away.

Ethiopia quickly became one of my favorite places to visit, as it's home to some of the kindest and most generous locals I've ever met, and offers the most incredible hikes I've ever undertaken.

During my time there, I climbed a 1,000-foot-high cliff — without a harness or shoes — to reach Abuna Yemata Guh, a centuries-old rock-hewn church.

When I reached the top of the cliff, I could see for miles across the Ethiopian landscape.

Another standout spot was the Danakil Depression, often called "Mars on Earth." With a slew of active volcanoes and average temperatures consistently reaching nearly 90 degrees Fahrenheit, it's considered one of the most hostile places on Earth.

Regardless of the warm weather, these yellow-green and neon-orange landscapes are so beautiful and vibrant that photos don't do them justice.

Hiking in Guatemala is an experience I'll never forget.

Guatemala is filled with some of the most incredible landscapes I've ever seen.

After a long hike, I was able to see Volcán de Fuego — one of Central America's most active volcanoes — erupt right in front of me. It was a moment I'll never forget.

During my trip, I also traveled to Lake Atitlán, a stunning body of water surrounded by three volcanoes.

The peaceful scenery, which is surrounded by small towns full of yoga retreats and delicious food, was the perfect place to recover after one of the most intense hikes I've ever done.

I think visiting Nepal should be on everyone's bucket list.

As soon as I arrived in Kathmandu, Nepal's capital, I was greeted by pouring rain.

In spite of the weather, the city was so beautiful, with vibrant clothing and colorful stores brightening every street.

During my time in the country, I hiked to the Annapurna Base Camp, a multiday trek offering stunning views of the Himalayan peaks.

I was worried I wouldn't be able to see the peaks due to cloud coverage and poor weather, but I remained positive throughout the hike, and after six days, I was met with blue skies, a gorgeous sunrise, and breathtaking views.

I think South Korea is the perfect place for solo travelers.

As a female solo traveler, I felt very safe during my visit to South Korea, and I was amazed by how clean the streets were.

Plus, the shopping and food in this country are on another level.

I'm still dreaming about my iced latte from Malic Coffee in Seoul and am obsessed with the skincare and makeup at Olive Young, South Korea's leading beauty retailer.

Another highlight of my trip was visiting the Starfield Library, an open-concept reading area that houses roughly 50,000 books and is one of the most spectacular sites I've seen.

Uzbekistan offers a cultural diversity unlike any other country I've visited.

As soon as I stepped into Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, I felt pieces of Asia, the Middle East, and Russia blending into this one place.

What stood out to me the most was Uzbekistan's wide range of cuisines. I could find everything from Russian Borscht and Middle Eastern pilaf to lagman, a hand-pulled noodle dish influenced by Uyghurs.

Besides the cuisine, another highlight of my trip was traveling down the Silk Road, which was full of breathtaking squares and towns that felt like stepping onto a film set.

• My husband and I moved to Portugal, and then we were both laid off.
• We decided to start a business together even though I was nervous about it ruining our marriage.
• But we used the skills we learned in our relationship to build our business.

"Do you think we should get a work divorce?" I asked Cody, furiously scribbling in my notebook about a client meeting.

"What do you mean?" he said as he flushed and looked up at me. "Honey, we literally just got the LLC paperwork filed with the IRS. We can't quit now."

It was April 2025, and Cody and I were still living out of suitcases after moving to Lisbon.

Both of us had recently been let go from our previous jobs within days of each other. In a fit of sweat and panic, we decided to really make a go of being entrepreneurs of our own micro-marketing agency. I'd bring nearly 15 years of experience in content and brand development and strategy, and he'd bring his project management skills, as well as manage the business's finances. We'd be an unstoppable CMO/COO team.

It didn't take long for the cracks to show.

I wondered if we would work well together

I had my doubts about working together from the outset; Cody knew this.

When we had full-time corporate jobs in the US, we'd run to each other to complain about things that would happen at work, as partners do. Something awkward happened in a meeting? I'd spill the tea to Cody at dinner. Weird conversation with a boss? We'd chuckle about it on the weekend.

At the end of the day, we were each other's safe space. We would delight in what was happening in each other's professional worlds without the pressure of needing to be part of it.

I loved that balance. We kept work at work, and when work was over, it was all about us.

When we decided to move to Lisbon and start fresh, it was as partners who had built a decade-long marriage on a foundation of sharing everything but work.

We started building our business anyway

When we found ourselves jobless mere weeks after moving our entire lives across an ocean, we decided to bet on ourselves.

Most companies in the US wouldn't hire us in another country, so we set up our LLC and website. We then started letting close folks know we were available for hire.

We looked like a real business to the public, but inside, we were operating like fish flapping about on the forest floor.

This man, who before could read my every thought and finish my sentences, now didn't know how to handle all the requests we were getting. I hadn't a clue how to do taxes in two countries, and looked at him blankly whenever he asked me anything to do with numbers.

After 10 years, we knew our way around conflict as a couple. But owning our own business had us biting our tongues. Honestly, we hadn't a clue how to work together.

But we eventually found that the tools we'd used in our marriage actually work for building a business together. Primarily: communication — about what we needed, about the tasks we hated doing that the other person was better at, about the burdens we didn't want to name that we needed help with.

Once we figured out how to leverage each other's strengths in the business, as we did in our relationship, things really began to click.

Not giving up gave us a new spark

My husband and I were comfortable American DINKS: a dual-income, no-kid couple who'd worked for nearly a decade to climb into tech, allocating nearly 3k a month to pay off six-figure student-loan debt for our degrees. We'd take those salaries, invest as our financial planner advised, allocate a hefty percentage to local orgs, and, of course, travel.

But we'd still close our laptops at the end of the day and immediately grab our smaller screens, for two to three hours spent passively glancing at a larger screen after dinner.

Today, we're aware we'll never see those salaries again. I'm not a "director" of anything. He's not a "manager" of anyone. Instead, we're entrepreneurs. We're making less than half of what we made before, and even if we wanted to re-enter the search for full-time jobs in our fields, the job security we thought we had is no more. Layoffs have seemingly decimated the industries we previously worked in.

But what we get instead of those salaries is peace of mind in a new country as we create a deeper quality of life, plus the pleasure of seeing one another blossom into entirely new professional people, together.

Today, Cody and I have had 10 consecutive months of record revenue. Today, I serve as a fractional CMO for (two!) brands, and we both support four more on retainer and build brands for solopreneurs, too. We take every Friday off. We work from pubs in London and cafés in Paris.

Most importantly, we've learned to never let the pressures of work dull the shine of a hard-fought, beautiful marriage that we've been investing in from the very beginning. He's the only coworker I've ever loved, and I'm so proud of us.

• I took an 11-hour overnight train from Venice to Vienna in 2023 and booked a private cabin for $200.
• I took a 53-hour Amtrak train from Chicago to California in 2026 and booked a bedroom for $2,200.
• While the overnight train rides were completely different, both were worth the price.

One was a means to an end. The other was a destination in itself. I'm talking about two overnight train journeys I took three years apart.

In the fall of 2023, I spent 11 hours in a private cabin on a European sleeper train traveling from Venice to Vienna for $200. Then, in the winter of 2026, I took a 53-hour train journey from Chicago to Emeryville, California, in an Amtrak bedroom for $2,200.

While I had a room to myself on both rides, my experiences on each couldn't have been more different.

First, I took an 11-hour Nightjet train from Venice to Vienna.

In November 2023, I took an OBB Nightjet, a train that travels after hours between 25 countries, from France to the Netherlands.

Then I took a 53-hour Amtrak trip from Chicago to California.

I took the full route of Amtrak's California Zephyr, the longest rail journey in the US. It's a scenic ride through seven states. My three-day, two-night trip was on the Superliner, a double-decker train.

On the Nightjet train, I paid $200 for a 30-square-foot private cabin with three bunks.

I booked a sleeping car accommodation: a private cabin with an in-room sink and vanity, sleeping up to three people in top, middle, and bottom bunks.

It was a mid-tier option, offering more privacy than a bunk in a shared room or a seat in a standard seating carriage, but fewer amenities than the sleeping car plus, which includes a private full bathroom.

I thought the cabin was spacious enough to move around in as a solo traveler, but I imagine it would have felt cramped for three.

On the Amtrak train, I paid $2,200 for a 50-square-foot bedroom with two bunks and a full bathroom.

The Amtrak train had coach seating, roomettes (25-square-foot cabins for two), bedrooms (twice the size of a roomette and with private bathrooms), and larger family bedrooms that sleep two adults and two kids. I booked the bedroom, and again, I traveled solo.

I instantly noticed the room felt larger than my cabin on the Nightjet train. For a ride nearly five times as long, I was grateful for the extra space.

Both cabins had wash basins and vanities with toiletry storage.

On the Nightjet train, the sink and vanity were behind a set of double doors across from the lower bunk. One of the doors had shelving inside.

The sink and vanity were also across from the lower bunk in the Amtrak bedroom, though they were exposed. A cabinet next to the mirror had space for small toiletries.

Both mirrors were brightly lit, and I appreciated being able to brush my teeth without leaving my room.

But I only had a private bathroom on the Amtrak train.

Both trains had shared bathrooms and showers in the sleeper cars. But having my own toilet and shower on the Amtrak train was a game changer for a three-day ride. Sure, the toilet and shower were squeezed into a tight space, but at least it was my space.

The Nightjet train also has cabins with private bathrooms, according to the train line's website. None were available when I booked, but since my trip was only 11 hours, it didn't feel necessary to splurge anyway. I skipped a shower and only used the bathroom a couple of times, so I didn't mind going without this amenity.

Only the Amtrak bedroom had a daytime setup.

In the bedroom, there was a seat, a foldout table, a pullout couch, and an upper bunk that pulled down from the ceiling. I appreciated the flexibility to switch up my cabin on the three-day ride. It was like having a living room and a bedroom at the same time.

While my Nightjet room didn't have a table or couch, some of the train line's newer accommodations do. The new-generation Nightjet, which debuted in December 2023 and operates on select routes, features cabins with tables and wall cushions above the beds.

The beds on the Amtrak train were more comfortable.

Both beds were quite comfortable, but the Amtrak bunks felt thicker and cushier. However, while both had cozy blankets, I preferred the Nightjet bedding because it had a thick comforter.

A Nightjet representative told Business Insider that bunks on the newer trains are about 4 inches longer than those on the train I rode.

I slept well on both rides.

My Nightjet train ticket included a basic breakfast.

About a half hour before my train arrived in Vienna, a train attendant came by my cabin with my breakfast tray. There were two hard rolls with butter, jelly, and Nutella on the side. I also had a cup of strawberry yogurt and a hot coffee. It filled me up for my morning in Vienna.

My Amtrak ticket included six meals.

All meals were included with my ticket for the 53-hour Amtrak journey, and passengers could eat in the dining car. There were a variety of dishes, from French toast breakfasts to steak dinners. I was surprised by how delicious the dishes were, given that they were prepared on a train.

Only the Amtrak train had communal spaces to hang out.

The dining and lounge cars were great places to get to know other passengers and break up the days on the Amtrak journey. There was a sense of community on the train because it felt like almost everyone was on vacation and appreciating the dramatic views of the wild American West.

It's important to note that these cars are typically only on long-distance Amtrak routes, where many passengers might spend multiple days on board.

The Nightjet train, however, is designed specifically to get passengers from one city to another while they sleep. There are no communal cars, and to me, they didn't seem necessary. I was only there to rest on my way to Vienna.

Both were worth the price for the experiences they provided. And I would take both rides again.

I thought $200 was a fair price for a private cabin on an 11-hour train ride. All I wanted from this trip was to fall asleep in Italy and wake up in Austria. The Nightjet room was comfortable enough for me to do so.

For $2,200, my Amtrak trip was a cozy adventure. In addition to getting from Illinois to California, I had an exciting experience from the comforts of a moving hotel room with nonstop views.

• Alexandria Belton started looking for a home in 2025 and feels she missed the boat because of AI.
• Belton's budget rose from $1.2M to $1.5M, yet homes are still selling far above asking prices.
• She feels like she can't compete with buyers right now, but hopes the AI mania blows over.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Alexandria Belton, 33, who is in the market for a home in the Bay Area. She's been priced out mainly due to the AI boom. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

My fiancé and I started looking to buy a home around October 2025.

A lot of people opt for a condo just because, A, single-family homes are very expensive, and B, people like city life, and you can sometimes get a little bit more of it with a condo.

But for me, my apartment already serves that purpose, and if I'm going to buy something, I'd like to buy a single-family home with a yard and be suburb-adjacent.

Also, with the condos, the return on investment is not very great. We've noticed in this market that all the condos are selling at or below list price, whereas everything else is selling well above list price. If we're going to invest in something in the Bay Area, we want to have a good return on investment.

I currently live in a two-bedroom, two-bath in the Marina District, a pretty sought-after, expensive neighborhood, and I moved here in 2020 when I learned that rents were dropping.

At the time, it was priced at $3,695. In fall 2025, they sent us a letter saying that they were going to retroactively raise the rent. Now it's $4,378.

My fiancé is in construction, so we like the idea of a heavy fixer-upper. We started our budget at around $1.2 million; it's kind of unattainable in the city, which we were aware of — even before the AI boom or whatever's going on right now. But we did our research and saw that, within the last year, there were a lot of fixers on the market.

We thought that would be a good strategy for us, but we looked at some fixers, and the last fixer we saw was our final straw. We decided to expand out of the city, and found a fixer listed for around $700,000 or $800,000.

It was only 800 square feet, and it looked horrible, but we saw the vision. It sold for $1.3 million or so, and that was before any work was done.

We were shocked by that, since that was not reflective of what we saw happening last year.

I've expanded my budget, and it's still not enough

Basically, we learned very quickly not to trust the list price. At minimum, it would go for $300,000 over asking. We've seen a house sell for over $1 million over the asking price.

So we adjusted our search accordingly, and that's how our budget slowly crept up because we realized that $1.2 million wasn't going to get us anything, even if it was a fixer.

Now we're at $1.5 million, and that's after expanding our search outside the city. We started looking at an area called Marin, which is north of the Bay.

It's still the Bay Area, about a 15-minute drive from the city, but it has its own charm. It has nice downtown restaurants and shops, which was our same goal: not to be too far away from stuff like that when we were in the "suburbs."

We got a new agent who was more experienced in Marin, and we told her our experience in San Francisco, and she's like, "Oh yeah, you're not going to see that here in Marin. Things usually go for about asking, sometimes even below."

She said we weren't going to experience this craziness we've been seeing, and then, immediately, the first house we put a bid on was listed for I think $1.1 million and sold for $1.9 million. I think it was only 1,200 square feet and needed a lot of work done.

Our agent was like, "Unfortunately, now we are starting to see the things that are happening in the city as people are probably having the same idea as you to expand their search."

I have spoken to people who've said they experienced something similar to the AI boom, and eventually it bursts. Whether it's the tech boom or the AI boom, home buyers are able to spend an insane amount of money because they have to live in the city.

I don't really know what to make of it. It feels like it came out of nowhere. Still, I'm hopeful that there's an end in sight. I hope it's a phase.

I'm hoping this all blows over soon

I think we've put in like 10 bids at this point, and we did get close on a house in Marin, but in our gut, it already felt like we were overpaying for what the house was on paper. We didn't want to make an irresponsible decision just to get the house.

Ultimately, we've crunched so many numbers and spent a lot of time trying to figure out what budget makes sense for us, where we're not going to feel house poor, and where we're able to still do other stuff in life.

Funny enough, we used AI to help us with that, but $1.5 million is the maximum. We can't just add another $50,000. That's another couple of hundred dollars to the mortgage when we're already at our absolute most.

It's definitely exhausting mentally and very discouraging. I feel like on paper, we both make really good money. We can afford the 20% down payment, and we have all of our ducks in a row.

The competition feels unfair. It feels like we don't really stand a chance. I do think we definitely missed the boat.

Still, I don't think it's over for me.

• Deleting Instagram helped me feel more present and less distracted.
• I returned to slower rituals like postcards, wandering, and offline connection.
• Leaving social media changed how I relate to my children and my work.

On a recent trip, my sister asked her 14-year-old son if he wanted to send a postcard. "Why? I have Snapchat, TikTok, Instagram," he responded, listing all his social media apps.

When she shared this story with me, we laughed, but I felt a lingering sadness. Before everything became instant and shareable, connection required effort, time, intention, and the willingness to be alone with your thoughts.

When I turned 16, my parents gave me a bike trip through France. I vowed to keep in touch. I bought postcards, wrote them in cafés, and mailed them home, hoping they would arrive before I did.

I used Instagram as a gallery for my photography

I joined Instagram at age 36.

I was excited to have a digital platform to promote my work. As a professional documentary family photographer, the app became a marketing tool.

My friend Chantel, with over 24,000 followers, told me how to succeed: post three times a week, at optimal hours, only show my best work, and write captivating captions under 25 words. I didn't feel right sharing client images even with their permission; instead, I posted images of my children during their most quotidian moments — brushing their teeth, doing homework, practicing the piano. I agonized for hours deciding what to post and who liked it, distracting me from what I really loved, taking photos. My followers increased, but it rarely translated into more business. I stopped posting.

But I stayed on the app. I followed other artists. I took an interest in painting and collage and began following those accounts for inspiration. I was no longer seeing posts from people I followed as the algorithm bombarded me with tutorials, fashion, home design, art, nightlife, and products I didn't know I wanted.

I set time limits on the app, but I overrode those settings and stayed on too long. I fell for ads, like a pair of fuzzy loafers that never arrived, and ended with me canceling my credit card.

My kids joined the app as soon as they could

My two older children had permission to join Instagram when they were 13, and I gave up with the youngest; he joined at 12. The kids sent me clips: the dog they wanted, the things they wanted me to buy, the life they wanted us to live. The algorithm now fed me information for my teenagers: how to study better (15-minute intervals), how to become successful (make your bed every morning). I was feeding the machine — and rotting all of our brains in the process.

I was nauseated. At 49, I wanted my time back. I didn't need a stranger's recipe for success. I needed to be more present. First, I hid the app from my home screen, but I knew it was still there, and the lure was too compelling. The solution was to permanently delete it. I still wanted to know what my kids were up to, so I relied on my brother to send me screenshots of their IG feed.

Six months after deleting the app, my daughter was studying in Paris for a semester. My boys and I went to visit her. It was our first family trip since my divorce five years earlier. I bought postcards again and wrote them in cafés. When we were hungry, we wandered until we found a charming place to eat. I practiced speaking French and took recommendations from the waiter, not an influencer. I was prone to expectations, and everything felt like a discovery.

I had more meaningful connections

When my 21-year-old daughter came home from college, we spent an afternoon strolling through SoHo, shopping for her spring formal. We took fashion advice from the salesperson, not a bot. While eating lunch, we saw a group of preteens recording a TikTok dance. We smiled, agreeing we did not need to see the final version. Watching them try, fail, and laugh was enough.

A week later, when my daughter was back at school, I received a postcard from her. Written on the back in her meticulous printed handwriting, "Thinking of you, Mom. Had a great visit. I love you." That message is still taped to my fridge.

Without Instagram, my mind is quieter, and my material desires have softened. I am returning to what is important to me. I keep up with fewer people, and my clients don't seem to mind. I am experiencing the beauty of life the way I used to and the way I want to.

• My neighbor and I often help each other with cleaning during visits, which makes things easier.
• We planned to help each other with a dedicated deep-clean.
• Our plan fell through, but another friend was up for it, and it saved us time and money.

My neighbor entered my house one afternoon, greeted by the laundry mound on the family room floor. As her three kids scurried off in different directions to find mine, she plopped down next to me in the epicenter of clothes and picked up a tea towel to fold.

"You don't have to help," I said apologetically. "You're a guest."

"Nonsense, we're a community," she replied. "This is what we do."

I didn't disagree, grateful for the help. And when I was at her house next and discovered her laundry pile, I reciprocated.

Some people might be insulted by a guest inserting themselves like this, or particular about how cleaning is executed. But I've always appreciated friendships like these that lean into the belief that life is better when we enter into each other's messes and help bring a little order.

My neighbor and I already clean together

Neither of us can currently afford a house cleaner, thanks to replacing A.C. units and exorbitant dental bills. We both live in modest houses with three kids and have admitted that we feel overwhelmed at times trying to keep up with it all.

So last week, while I scrubbed her kitchen alongside her during a visit, we made a plan: One day soon, we'd spend time cleaning each other's homes. At first, we thought it would be novel to swap homes for a few hours, but then we decided half the fun was having someone to chat to while we worked. So, we resolved to do it together and give each home one or two hours of our dedicated attention.

It seemed like a win-win. We'd each walk away with a cleaner home — without having to pay anyone. My neighbor is more organized than me, so I'd have her dedicate her time to my craft closet.

Then life happened. My neighbor wasn't feeling well and had a busy week. Even though she needed to postpone our house swap, I still wanted to try it out, so I called another close friend, told her about our idea, and asked if she'd be willing to give it a try.

She was up for it.

We cleaned my friend's house, then she came to mine

I have a difficult time keeping up with everything. Life is busy, and the house often gets neglected and deprioritized due to our schedules. Besides, I do clean — all the time — but with kids it just never seems to stay that way.

I felt a little embarrassed at first that my friend would be taking a deeper look at my space and seeing how grimy some things were. She, in turn, worried I wouldn't like her slow, methodical cleaning style.

The day she came to help me, I'd started a new job and had neglected my house for a few days. I was overwhelmed by the clutter that had built up. We set a timer and cleaned with great focus and energy for an hour.

Neither of us really chatted as we worked.

At first, I felt self-conscious assigning my friend tasks, but she was willing to do whatever I needed done, so I got over myself and asked if she'd be willing to tidy the toys and craft closet. On her own, she also wiped down surfaces and swept.

I couldn't believe how much we could tackle in an hour with such dedicated focus. It looked like a whole new house. On my own, I would've never completed that much.

Then we went to her house and wiped the windows, the bathrooms, and vacuumed. Her house was tidier than mine to start, but she said cleaning together still gave her the motivation to get chores done that she'd been ignoring.

We liked the process so much that we agreed to try it again soon. And when my neighbor is better, I want to try it with her too, though I enjoy our impromptu cleaning sessions just as much.

As they say, many hands make light work — and this switch definitely lightened my load.

• Ukraine's arms makers have to split their work across multiple sites as Russia targets them.
• They don't want to create one large target that Russia can spot and hit.
• They say European firms need to start doing the same to be ready for a future war.

The Russian threat is real, and it's time for European defense companies to start copying Ukraine and break up production across multiple sites, a Ukrainian official and multiple defense firms told Business Insider.

Russia's drone and missile attacks are so widespread that weapons companies working in Ukraine typically can't afford to work in large factories and warehouses that are more easily detected and struck. Factories in Ukraine, including those of US firms, have been hit. It has pushed many companies to split their sites up and go underground, though that makes their work producing weaponry harder and more expensive.

Davyd Aloian, the deputy secretary of Ukraine's National Security and Defense Council, told Business Insider that the threat Russia poses to Europe is such that some allies need to start doing the same. "Some countries definitely should," he said.

This is standard practice for many Ukrainian defense manufacturers. The CEO of Ukrainian-Estonian technology and defense company and ground drone maker Ark Robotics told Business Insider that his company had to do it despite the drawbacks, and it should become the norm for European defense manufacturing.

The CEO, who asked to go by the pseudonym Achi out of concern for his safety, said his company's main strategy "is what we call distributed manufacturing: Breaking things up so that different components are made at different sites. It's necessary, but it's not ideal."

"We try to avoid building a gigafactory. I would love that to be honest, I think this is literally the best way to do it. You build a huge factory, everything is in there."

"We try to be smart about it and not create a big enough target for it to attract too much attention or to disclose where our operations are happening," the CEO said.

The company, headquartered in Estonia and with its R&D center in Kyiv, makes drones, ground robots, and software that enable thousands of different autonomous vehicles to work together.

It has more than 50 engineers and specialists across Europe, including teams in Ukraine that design communication software and test ground drones, including near the front lines, and engineers in Estonia who test and design electronics and electrical systems for drones and robots.

The company is branching out production into other parts of Europe due to "just insane amounts of destruction" in Ukraine, the CEO said. Attacks mean he worries about his staff, too: "It's really hard to even sleep with that. You know that you have tens of people working there constantly under danger, and you don't know when the strike is coming."

Nor are a company's risks limited to its physical sites. A NATO official confirmed that Russia plotted to kill the CEO of the leading German arms maker, Rheinmetall, which has produced weapons for Ukraine.

Other European countries are far safer from Russian missiles, as attacking them could spark a much wider war that Russia, at least for now, is not instigating. But Achi said that, to be ready for a potential future war, defense manufacturers need to prepare.

Dispersed production should be the "default for defense-based manufacturing going forward," he said. Even for any future sites his company has abroad, "we don't want to build a huge factory."

He said, "We believe one of the key lessons from Ukraine is that resilience cannot depend on a single site, a single supplier, or a single geography. Modern defense requires distributed capabilities that can continue operating under pressure."

Enduring the loss of a site

Mykyta Rozhkov, the chief business development officer at Ukrainian drone and weapons maker Frontline Robotics, told Business Insider that European companies "absolutely" need to start spreading things out. He said some European firms have asked his company for advice on changing their manufacturing.

He said his company has adapted so it "can endure the loss of any site." Any loss is still "painful," but the company can survive. And everything is set up so it's "as easy as possible to move."

But that makes the work harder: "It's all constantly moving parts and holding it all together demands a new approach." The company, which makes aerial drones and autonomous remote weapon turrets, has more than 400 employees, and its gear is used by more than 60 Ukrainian units. It operates teams of engineers, specialists, drone instructors, and warehouse staff in multiple locations in Ukraine, and is starting to produce in Germany with the German company Quantum Systems, forming a joint venture called Quantum Frontline Industries.

Estonian company Krattworks, which makes drones used by Ukraine, agreed. Karmo Saar, the head of sales, told Business Insider that in a war with Russia, if European companies don't disperse more, "I think we're going to be punished."

Some of Ukraine's major drone makers operate across more than 15 sites, he said, even though working out of a single large facility would be "a lot more economical, cheaper, and better."

Other Ukrainian companies have described breaking up their facilities. Misha Rudominski, the CEO of Himera, a secure communications systems firm, told Business Insider that his company has split its manufacturing across multiple sites and keeps its stock in another location to avoid becoming a big target that's "worth it" for Russia to hit.

He said that many companies split production into "5, 10, 15 locations" that often only have a few dozen people at each. He said bigger options are rare unless they are underground.

Aloian, the Ukrainian official, said that a challenge for much of Europe in doing this is the smaller size of many nations compared to Ukraine. Some European countries that border Russia and feel most threatened, such as the Baltic states, are among the continent's smallest.

He said that means they lack the "strategic depth" Ukraine has, with fewer regions and space to truly spread out and hide manufacturing. He said some could spread out manufacturing across multiple countries to solve this.

The West needs to disperse

The warnings for defense companies come as Western officials, Ukrainian officials, and analysts warn that the air threat has grown so much that Western militaries need to start breaking up and moving other strategic assets after decades of not having to do so.

Sir John Stringer, NATO's deputy supreme allied commander Europe, told Business Insider that Ukraine shows that after decades of relying on big air operations centers to plan its aerial missions, that is "no longer viable."

The change makes operations more difficult, but means there are fewer big targets that could be taken out in devastating blows.

Taras Berezovets, the head of the military cooperation department of Ukraine's Territorial Defense Forces, said the West must learn from Ukraine that drone units and command centers must be mobile or underground, because they are priority targets.

Western allies are also studying Ukraine's flexible strategy of dispersing its aircraft and often landing at different bases than they launch from — tactics that have kept their smaller air force from being wiped out.

• I balance multiple jobs and have four kids.
• Lately, things have been even more stressful than usual.
• I needed a break, and a solo trip helped me reset.

As a working mom of four, life is often stressful. I balance multiple jobs, and it seems like someone in the family is either sick, has a school project due, or is going through teenage travails, which makes it difficult to find a cadence that provides balance and calm. I normally handle the daily stressors of life by drinking too much coffee and binging mindless reality TV after the kids go to sleep.

However, over the past few months, life has been more stressful than usual. One of my children is dealing with a serious medical issue, and I am swamped with deadlines that require me to work longer hours, even later into the night. Plus, summer is looming. Although I am looking forward to spending more time with my children, I dread having even less time to accomplish everything that needs to get done.

My husband suggested taking a trip to focus on myself

The stress started to take its toll. I tried the typical suggestions: going to bed earlier, deep breathing, taking walks outside, and saying "no" more often. However, none of these techniques helped, and most were difficult to implement in daily practice.

When I wore a dress inside out for an entire day and then left the house a few days later with a shirt on backward, my husband noticed that I was barely holding it together. I was simply going through the motions of life, rushing from one obligation to another, while trying to keep the house running, and it was showing. My husband suggested that I take a few days away to reset. I wasn't sure how I would work time away into my schedule, but I was committed to making it happen.

I traveled to a bucket-list destination for a trip that was all about me

Although I travel frequently with my children, I rarely have the opportunity to plan a trip based solely on my interests and desires. This time, I planned a trip to connect with my roots, explore pop culture, and enjoy unparalleled relaxation, all things I love.

Although it's far from my home in Washington, DC, I chose to take a three-day trip to Romania. I had always wanted to visit because my grandmother immigrated to the United States from the Eastern European country. Romania also held another draw for me. I am a huge fan of horror and wanted to see Transylvania. Plus, it's home to Europe's largest bathhouse, where I planned to do some serious relaxing. Planning the trip felt indulgent, but it was just what I needed.

The trip helped me reset

Although it felt like a guilty pleasure, I loved everything about my time on my own. I slept in and spent a few leisurely hours at a coffee shop, sipping a caffeinated drink made with locally grown cherries. Although I still worked during my trip, knowing I had unlimited time to myself helped me rediscover joy in my job rather than feeling like I was in a sprint to check off one task before moving on to the next.

During my trip, I also got to tap into the old-world country of my grandmother. I watched traditional Romanian dancers at a restaurant dating back to 1899, a time when my grandmother still lived there. Although it's unlikely my grandmother visited the same restaurant, eating cabbage and other Romanian specialties nevertheless helped me feel connected to her.

Then, I spent a day exploring Transylvania. I was positively giddy wandering through Bran's Castle, where Dracula is said to have once lived. I pretended to enroll in Nevermore Academy from Netflix's "Wednesday" while visiting Cantacuzino Castle, which is the setting for the infamous school for outcasts.

Finally, and possibly the best part of my trip, was spending time at Therme, the world's largest thermal spa. There, I experienced a range of wellness offerings, from saunas to mineral baths and thermal waters, all under one roof. I loved immersing myself in European bathhouse culture. I saw a traditional Afguss performance, an interactive dance performed in a sauna, that was unlike anything else I have experienced. I felt my mind quiet and slow in a pink-salt sauna, where I was forced to put my phone away.

Although it's hard to leave my family, they did fine without me, and the experience not only gave me the reset I needed but also gave me a better sense of myself and a newfound commitment to making myself a priority.

Although I only had three days in Romania, the trip was effective. Putting my own oxygen mask on first is something I forget to do too often, and it's not good for me or anyone around me. I returned with a clear mind and a fresh start, much better for the experience.

• Disney wants its tech employees to use AI more often to boost productivity and speed.
• However, employees shouldn't be wasting AI tokens, a product executive recently said.
• Tech companies are scaling back on so-called "tokenmaxxing," and some are setting up monthly quotas.

Disney is encouraging streaming staffers to embrace AI while warning against wasteful token usage.

Streaming leaders at the Mouse House have recently been pushing employees to boost their velocity and productivity by using AI, two senior tech employees told Business Insider.

"The No. 1 thing is to increase velocity," or the pace of output, a high-level, AI-focused employee said.

However, Disney doesn't want its employees to be "tokenmaxxing," Andre Rohe, Disney's EVP of product engineering, said in a Wednesday meeting, according to two tech staffers in attendance. "Tokenmaxxing" refers to maximizing AI token usage, regardless of its impact on productivity.

One software engineer shared their three main takeaways from what Disney streaming leaders said on the call:

• AI token tracking is meant to identify inefficient usage
• Disney wants to increase velocity when shipping features or delivering code
• Disney is focused on code quality and product resiliency, not just speed, and hopes to minimize AI-coded products that fail after their release

Disney has warmed to AI in the last year, providing employees with coding tools like Claude and Cursor while creating an AI Adoption Dashboard for staffers to track token usage. Some managers have sent check-in messages to software engineers who don't use AI.

Disney has also made clear that employees should be intentional about their AI usage. For example, a person familiar with the company's strategy said the AI dashboard isn't meant to incentivize high usage but rather to help staffers use AI tools efficiently and effectively.

Other major US companies, including Microsoft, are trying to limit unchecked AI token usage. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella recently called tokenmaxxing "addictive." Firms are realizing that burning through AI tokens can be wasteful and may not incentivize the right projects.

One of Disney's Hollywood rivals, Paramount Skydance, informed tech staffers on Wednesday that it would implement "per-user monthly spend limits" on AI tokens. A Paramount exec said the cap would have a "high limit," though.

Out with the OpenAI deal, in with agentic armies and AI affection

Disney surprised the media industry by inking a billion-dollar deal with OpenAI in December that would have licensed its iconic characters to the now-defunct Sora AI video app, while opening the door to put AI-generated videos on Disney+.

The Mouse House got a shock of its own in March when OpenAI canceled its Disney deal and shut down Sora, less than a week into Disney CEO Josh D'Amaro's tenure.

While D'Amaro hasn't struck a major AI deal since its OpenAI arrangement fell apart, Disney spoke with "more than a dozen partners" about ways to implement AI, The Wall Street Journal reported in March.

Disney isn't sitting on its hands and waiting for an AI partner. Its top software engineers are using armies of AI agents to knock out coding projects, allowing them to accomplish far more than they could on their own.

Jason Cox, Disney's executive director of AI research and development and engineering, created an AI assistant he calls his "son" and said, in blog posts, that it had captured his "affection." It's unclear if Cox uses his AI chatbot for his work at Disney.

• Ukrainian company Wild Hornets initially designed its interceptor drone for higher speeds.
• During development, engineers decided to trade the drone's speed for increased loitering time.
• The interceptor is now one of the best-known in Ukraine's arsenal.

KYIV, Ukraine — At first, it was only a faint whine somewhere in the distance. Then the sound sharpened, swelled, and suddenly the drone was overhead, a high-pitched scream piercing the air as it flew past.

The aircraft was Sting, a Ukrainian interceptor drone purpose-built to hunt Russian Shahed-type attack drones. It tore over the ground-control station, an unassuming van loaded up with screens, before its pilot brought it around for a few more passes and landed it in the grass.

Business Insider observed the Sting in action during a rare visit to a training site at an undisclosed location near Kyiv last month.

Made by the Ukrainian company Wild Hornets, Sting is among the country's best-known interceptors, credited with shooting down some 1,500 Russian Shahed-style drones in April alone.

The screaming sound is a testament to its high speeds; Sting can reach nearly 175 mph. Early designs envisioned a weapon faster than that; however, Wild Hornets realized speed isn't everything and decided to dial it back to strengthen other characteristics.

Wild Hornets tested the first Sting prototype in late 2024 as Ukraine searched for solutions to strengthen its air defenses against worsening Russian drone attacks. By spring 2025, the interceptor had its first Shahed kill.

Sting's profile changed heavily during the research and development phase before it went into mass production, a Wild Hornets spokesperson told Business Insider. They spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive industry developments.

Engineers initially focused on speed; Sting had a different shape and could reach over 200 mph — significantly faster than Russia's propeller-driven Geran-2 drone (a top speed of 72 mph) and roughly as fast as its first jet-powered variant, the Geran-3.

However, after combat testing and consultations with the Ukrainian military, Wild Hornets discovered that the higher speeds compromised Sting's loitering time, and that wasn't necessarily the right solution.

The military said "speed is not always the main thing. Time in the air is also important," the Wild Hornets spokesperson recalled in an interview. The lower speeds also increase Sting's reliability in combat and make it easier to prepare for missions.

Even with that trade-off, speed remains what separates Sting from more common battlefield drones. And there are, of course, moments where high speeds are optimal, such as when chasing Russian jet-powered drones.

Nazar, a Wild Hornets instructor who goes by his call sign for security reasons, told Business Insider that the biggest difference between an interceptor drone and a common first-person-view (FPV) drone is how fast the former moves.

That speed changes the way pilots have to fly the interceptor, but the training pipeline can be short. Nazar said pilots who already know how to fly an FPV drone — a skill that can take up to a month to learn and effectively apply in combat— can learn to use Sting in about a week. A quick reaction time helps, he said.

The current Sting iteration can remain airborne for more than 20 minutes, depending on speed, altitude, and pilot skill. The drone can reach an altitude of roughly 23,000 feet, though it performs better closer to 16,000 feet.

One Sting unit costs less than $2,000 — a fraction of the price tag of a Shahed, usually worth tens of thousands of dollars, and significantly less expensive than an interceptor missile.

Ukrainian military feedback is informing other Sting upgrades; for instance, Wild Hornets developed variants with different cameras for various light conditions, as well as for daytime and nighttime operations.

Russia has also added cameras to its Shaheds for greater situational awareness, along with other modifications in recent months to make the drones more maneuverable — and survivable — when pursued by Ukrainian interceptors.

The Wild Hornets spokesperson said Sting has become more effective over time. Interception rate ultimately depends on experience and weather, but some teams can manage above 90%.

In March, the company announced a new remote-control technology, "Hornet Vision," that allows interceptor operators to pilot Sting hundreds of miles from the launch point in safe locations, away from Russian targeting, in a major breakthrough for Ukrainian air defense.

The Wild Hornets spokesperson said this development is significant. "It allows experienced pilots — the best pilots — to control a larger number of weapons systems, to use a greater number of drones, over longer distances," they said.

• This post originally appeared in the BI Today newsletter.
• You can sign up for Business Insider's daily newsletter here.

When the dress code is team spirit

It only takes a few glances around New York City's Financial District, where Business Insider's offices are located, to see how the city has gotten in on team spirit.

Whether it's the New York Knicks or their favorite World Cup soccer team, many professionals aren't confining their sports gear to the games; they're bringing it to the office.

However, there's a right way and a wrong way to show your allegiance, so you can still get the job done. I reached out to Alison Bruhn, an executive stylist for more than a decade, for advice on how to do this properly if you can't help but grab that jersey.

"Business is still going as usual, you're still meeting with important clients," she said, adding that wearing jerseys can often feel out of place in industries such as finance, banking, and the legal field.

For men, she advised grabbing "a quarter zip up that has a discreet logo or even a tie." And for women, Bruhn, who runs executive presence and image advisory firm The Style That Binds Us with her daughter, Delia Folk, suggested wearing a cashmere sweater in the team's colors or a polo top with a subtle team logo.

When I told Bruhn that I saw some professionals around FiDi sneaking in team pride through tennis shoes in the team's colors, she said that was understandable given how many offices are moving away from dress codes. Ultimately, Bruhn said, your company culture will help determine how much you can get away with.

"What I tell all of my clients is know your audience. Know where you work," she continued. "Work is work. You don't want to be a distraction."

Walmart is bringing back its weeklong Walmart Deals event from June 22 through June 28, offering shoppers an early-summer sale overlapping with Amazon Prime Day. The event will feature hundreds of deals across tech, home, beauty, and more, making it a can't-miss opportunity for deal hunters.

One of the biggest draws is that the sale is open to everyone, but Walmart+ members get a few extra perks. This year's event introduces member-only early access to select high-demand hot deals, giving Walmart+ subscribers a 24-hour head start on some of the most sought-after products before they're released to the general public. Shoppers without a membership can still access the broader sale from day one, an enticing angle for shoppers not interested in Prime or Walmart Plus.

What to expect from Walmart's Prime Day sale

It's not the first time Walmart has kicked off its own competing Prime Day sale to overlap with Amazon's event. In my years covering the summer extravaganza, I've gathered a good read on Walmart's promotions and expect this year won't deviate much from the past.

While yes, this sale promises an earlier start and later end, most likely the best deals will pop during Amazon's Prime Day sale between June 23 and 26. That'll be the sweet spot for scoring the deepest discounts on major brands like Apple, Ninja, Samsung, LG, and more. If you're worried the deals won't be as good as those locked to Prime members, you might be right about some products, but I expect we'll see a lot of price matching between the two retail giants.

While a Walmart Plus membership isn't necessary, I suggest signing up for a $1 trial before the sale if you're interested. It unlocks free shipping for your deal event purchases along with other sweet perks.

Early Walmart Prime Day deals

If you can't wait until June 22 for the sale to kick off in earnest, here are some great deals you can score right now from Walmart.

See more: Prime Day discounts worth waiting for | How to tell if a Prime Day deal is good | Is Prime Day the best time to buy a TV?

Follow our Instagram and WhatsApp channels for more deals and buying guides

• I took out student loans, believing public-service work would eventually make the debt manageable.
• Years of low wages, health issues, and unstable repayment policies left me in debt.
• Changes to the federal repayment SAVE program are making it even harder for me to achieve stability.

Student loans were supposed to be my ladder out of poverty. Instead, they are an anchor.

I did not have a stable or secure childhood, but thankfully, my parents emphasized the importance of education.

At 20, I left home, determined to build a stable future. I moved from the Catskills to Brooklyn and into an apartment I shared with six other women. I quickly found a full-time job.

Using Pell Grants and scholarships, I attended community college four nights a week and Sunday mornings while working 40 hours a week.

After five years, I transferred to Touro University in New York because its schedule and scholarship opportunities allowed me to continue working while earning my bachelor's degree.

At graduation, I had $14,000 in student debt. That felt manageable, but my debt ballooned after graduate school.

Graduate school was different

I worked temporary jobs for a year before enrolling at another NYC school, Fordham University, to earn a degree in social work and eventually become a social worker.

Trusted financial advisors told me that the loans I took out over two years would be manageable with the help of student-loan forgiveness programs.

Still, a two-year graduate program became a four-year program after a disastrous field placement experience forced me to redo months of work.

I left graduate school with $300,000 in student loan debt.

Like many borrowers, I took out my loans in good faith. I believed what I was told: Work hard, earn a degree, enter public service, and the debt would eventually become manageable.

That promise has not matched reality. Instead, I'm still in debt and struggling.

Student-loan debt has shaped my family's future

Since graduating from graduate school in 2021, I have worked with New York's homeless population, addicts who were also dealing with the penal system, and treated people struggling with trauma, domestic violence, ADHD, and severe mental illness.

Like most provisionally licensed therapists, I get paid only when clients come in. Due to epilepsy, a neurological disorder that includes seizures, I cannot drive, and a client's no-show means a negative cash flow.

There's only one bright spot to my low pay: I currently don't have to pay a monthly minimum on my student loans thanks to the SAVE program, which bases monthly payment on a borrower's salary.

I got married later in life, at 38. A few months after we married, my husband took on a second job to help improve our financial situation. We also used savings toward fertility treatments, which were successful, and I had a baby at 40.

We have savings, but nearly $300,000 in student-loan debt prevents us from being truly financially secure.

Repayment changes are increasing uncertainty

Recently, it was announced that the SAVE repayment plan would end, leaving me uncertain about what my future payments could look like.

That means my repayments can range from $0 to $10 a month to $4,000 a month, depending on the determination after I complete new forms required by the government.

For my family, these changes affect how we think about childcare, housing, medical expenses, and savings.

The debt I took on to become a therapist is difficult to reconcile with my current earning potential.

I'm trying to come up with a plan

At the moment, I need to get ahead of my student loan debt for when the SAVE program is repealed.

I have had many interviews that were promising until the companies insisted I come into an office at least twice a week, which burdens our family, as I cannot drive due to epilepsy.

I am focusing on non-clinical roles that will allow me to work from home and make money.

The loans I took out were my means of escaping poverty. Instead, they are a burden I may carry for decades.

• At 49, triathlete Dave Nitsche experienced sudden vision loss in one eye.
• He was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer and told he had a maximum life expectancy of 2 years.
• At 57, he surpassed the prognosis, thanks to treatment and a high VO2 max from his lifestyle.

At 49, Dave Nitsche was the picture of great health.

A project manager for a Toyota subsidiary, he spent his free time competing in ultra-running and triathlon events, such as Ironmans, and hiking in Calgary, Alberta.

"It was just a very active lifestyle — nothing unusual," Nitsche, 57, told Business Insider. Then, a few days before his 50th birthday, "everything changed — the engine light turned on."

Nitsche's vision suddenly became blurry in late 2019. Straight, vertical objects like telephone poles appeared wavy. He contacted his optometrist and was scheduled for an appointment a few days later. By the time he showed up, he had fully lost vision in the eye.

Three weeks later, he would learn that he had stage 4 lung cancer, which had metastasized to his eye, bones, liver, kidneys, and brain.

The optometrist, thinking Nitsche had a detached retina, had sent him to the hospital for ultrasounds. Nitsche had so much fluid buildup and pressure behind his eye that he would never regain his vision. His eye was removed and replaced with a prosthetic, and the fluid was biopsied.

Nitsche was sent to the hospital nearly every day to get bone scans and, eventually, to a lung specialist. That was when he was diagnosed.

"It was definitely a shock," Nitsche said, as he had never smoked a day in his life and had no family history of lung cancer.

Even more shocking was his doctor's prognosis: a 1- to 2-year life expectancy, despite Nitsche otherwise feeling normal.

To this day, "it's always in the back of my mind," Nitsche said. "'What do you do with the rest of your life in 1 or 2 years?'"

'No chance' with traditional treatments

Upon hearing the news, Nitsche's ex-wife, who came to the appointment with him, suggested he move back in with her. He started to get his finances and will in order.

Because his cancer had spread so far into his lungs, Nitsche was told he had "no chance" with traditional treatments such as chemotherapy or radiation at that point.

He could, however, try targeted therapies, which block specific molecules, genes, or cellular pathways that drive cancer growth, based on the specific EGFR mutation in his form of lung cancer.

First, he went on Gilotrif (afatinib), an oral medication that inhibits cell growth signaling in tumors. He went on another medication, Tagrisso (osimertinib), which targeted tumors in his brain. It works by binding to mutated proteins to stop them from signaling cancer cell division.

Nitsche remained on Tagrisso far longer than his expected survival date — six years. He's since had radiation to treat a small cancer area in his brain, and is now on Rybrevant (amivantamab), a targeted antibody therapy that blocks cancer growth signals and helps the immune system attack cancer cells. Because he lives in Canada, all of his treatments have been covered by national health insurance.

"The timing of all these drugs was great," he said. "As it turns out, I'm seven years in, so it's been a ride, that's for sure."

The most common form of lung cancer is often diagnosed late

In 2024, Susan Wojcicki, the former CEO of YouTube, died at the age of 56.

Like Nitsche, she had non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). She, too, had never smoked tobacco in her life and was super active — running, eating well, and getting good sleep. Wojcicki had no obvious symptoms and was ultimately diagnosed at 54 when she started experiencing hip pain.

NSCLC is the most common category of lung cancers, accounting for 85% of all cases.

Unlike in small cell lung cancer (SCLC), the cancer cells in NSCLC generally appear larger. Because common symptoms, like coughing, chest pain, or fatigue, can be mild, this form of lung cancer can be missed until it progresses to stage 3 or 4, when it's harder to treat.

While smoking still remains the biggest risk factor, other risks include exposure to radon, asbestos, metal and mineral dust, air pollution, and radiation therapy, as well as some infections and diseases, like HIV/AIDS and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

There are currently no annual lung cancer screening recommendations for non-smokers, as low-dose CT scans involve a small amount of radiation. In the US, the CDC recommends annual screenings for asymptomatic adults ages 50—80 who have a 20-pack-year history and either currently smoke or quit within the past 15 years.

He's stayed very active throughout treatment

Nitsche said the medications he's been on have been working very well. A recent CT scan showed that the tumors have shrunk significantly, with some nodules resolving and being replaced by scar tissue.

So far, the side effects have been manageable compared to those associated with chemotherapy, Nitsche said. Mostly, he's experienced skin issues such as acne and fingernail infections.

It's made it easier for him to keep up his active lifestyle. Nitsche, who is now retired, bikes 20 minutes each way to his appointments. "A lot of people meditate," he said. "A lot of people meditate. I go out on my bike and ride."

Nitsche believes physical activity helped in his recovery process. From the very beginning, his oncologist told him that he had higher than average VO2 max levels, or the amount of oxygen the body can use during aerobic exercise. While a high VO2 max can't prevent or reverse lung cancer, some research shows it can signify stronger heart, lung, and muscle function, potentially making it easier to endure cancer treatments.

"It's definitely helped me in this journey, for sure," he said.

To Nitsche, who lives with his ex-wife and their dog, his cancer experience shows the importance of perseverance and taking things day by day. He's currently training for his second BC Epic 1000, a bike race that spans nearly 700 miles across British Columbia.

"I joke that I live three months at a time, between scans and MRIs and CTs, but three months is better than no months," he said.

In the long run, those months have added up. "It's kind of surreal: You get past that first year and go, 'Oh, well, prove them wrong,'" he said. "Then you get past the two years and go, 'Oh, I'll prove them wrong again.'"

• Celina Tolbert threw a fantasy-themed 30th birthday at a French chateau for $2,500.
• Guests' costumes and the party's decorations followed a "magical fantasy forest" theme.
• Celina celebrated with 21 friends, and saw the party as her version of a wedding.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Celina Tolbert, 31, a social media manager from North Carolina who is based in Paris. This piece has been edited for length and clarity.

It started off as a joke. I'm not rich, so I didn't think I'd be able to afford to host a 30th birthday at a French chateau.

Then I started browsing Airbnb and realized there are hundreds of small chateaux throughout France, some of which were pretty affordable to rent.

So, in February 2025, I decided to spend about $2,500 hosting a three-night fantasy-themed birthday celebration for 21 friends at a chateau about 80 miles southeast of Paris.

I thought: if I can afford it, why wouldn't I?

I had a budget of 2,000 euros for the chateau

I'm a whimsical person who has always loved fantasy. I have a collection of fun costumes, and for my 30th birthday I wanted to do something just for me, as an act of self-love. That meant putting on a silly fantasy costume and renting out a chateau.

When I started looking at chateaux on Airbnb, I knew I didn't want to spend more than 2,000 euros, or about $2,301, on the property itself. But finding something in my price range that could accommodate more than seven people was a challenge.

Expanding my search beyond the Paris region helped. Eventually, I found a chateau accessible by train from Paris that could accommodate up to two dozen people for 1,318 euros.

I was surprised that for under 2,000 euros, I could find somewhere that hit the sweet spot: affordable, beautiful, and big enough for everyone.

I then spent roughly 800 euros more on food, alcohol, and decorations, bringing the total to a little over 2,100 euros.

I saw it as my version of a wedding

I justified the expense by thinking of it as the kind of money other people my age might spend on a wedding or kids.

I don't plan to have kids. My partner and I had a civil union instead of a wedding because he doesn't believe in marriage, and I have my own hangups around it. In 2023, we held a small celebration at his parents' house. At the time, we couldn't afford to hire a venue, but I still had this itch to one day rent an entire place and throw a big celebration.

By 2024, I realized I could either spend the money I'd saved on something like a really expensive dog, or on renting a chateau. I chose the chateau.

The theme was 'magical fantasy forest'

The chateau had two dining rooms, a ballroom, and a living room.

The theme was "magical fantasy forest," so a friend and I decorated it with glitter, moss, leaves, and wooden details.

For our guests' arrival, we set up a make-your-own potion station, a pre-party playlist of medieval covers of modern music, and laid out food on a table my friend had beautifully tablescaped.

Guests wore chainmail, and several of my friends were excited to finally have an excuse to buy cute corsets.

Throughout the weekend, we partied, drank Champagne, and danced. I'm a pretty simple girl at heart. I love snacks, drinks, and dancing with my friends.

I'm really happy I spent my money on this birthday party. My only regret is not paying a local to take better photos. I couldn't afford a professional photographer or videographer, but I wish I'd at least hired someone nearby to capture the weekend properly.

It was a magical experience, and I would 100% do it all over again.

• Compensation coach Sara Perelli-Minetti advises job seekers to use live calls to get context about an offer.
• Perelli-Minetti said candidates should then follow up with an email when making their ask.
• Job seekers should never accept an offer over the phone without full context, she said.

If you've ever frozen mid-salary negotiation, you're not alone.

Sara Perelli-Minetti, who leads executive compensation coaching firm Hellos & Goodbyes, told Business Insider that receiving an offer call is one of the "most critical moments in a negotiation," and many candidates feel overwhelmed and pressured in the moment.

"For so many people, it goes wrong," she said.

Perelli-Minetti, who previously worked as an HR leader at Wayfair and Capital One, said that while recruiters often add a sense of urgency for candidates to say "yes" in the moment, job seekers should never accept an offer over the phone without full context. Even if a number sounds good, it may not be fair for the role, she said.

She said the live calls should be used to gather context, but candidates should make their asks in a written follow-up. The coach said that job seekers are in a better spot if they make a request in writing, given that recruiters have significantly more experience negotiating in the moment.

"Laying things out in writing makes it much easier for you to be clear-headed, stand firm, and negotiate holistically," Perelli-Minetti said in a follow-up email.

Key questions

Perelli-Minetti recommends starting with two questions: "How did you arrive at this offer for me?" and "Where does this base salary fall in the range for this role?" She said salary ranges listed in job postings are often broader than the actual budgeted range. She said these two questions — especially the first — are helpful to ask live.

She said the way an employer responds to these questions says a lot about them. If it feels awkward or if there isn't rapport, she suggests asking follow-up questions over email instead.

Candidates should also get clarity on incentive compensation, if offered. Perelli-Minetti said many people hear about a "$50,000 bonus" without asking whether that figure represents the target bonus or the ceiling.

She said they should always ask if the number is the target and there's a floor or ceiling. She also suggests asking about the payout history for any company portion, saying they want a grounded expectation of what compensation realistically looks like.

To better understand how bonuses work, Perelli-Minetti said candidates should ask questions like, "How is my bonus determined?" That can help clarify whether compensation is tied to individual performance, company performance, or both, she said.

She added that it's equally important to understand how equity compensation works, including vesting schedules and how stock grants are refreshed for employees receiving RSUs.

Candidates should also ask about benefits packages, as they reflect the company's overall compensation approach. Candidates at the VP level and above should discuss non-compete agreements and exit packages, both of which may be negotiable, she said.

"If you're going to negotiate any given element of your comp package, make sure you understand the whole darn thing," Perelli-Minetti said.

Striking a balance

The goal is to return with a thoughtful, strategic counteroffer that focuses on three to four terms most important to the job seeker, she said.

Perelli-Minetti added that recruiters may not want to answer in writing and may ask to get on a call and have a follow-up conversation. In those scenarios, candidates should send questions in advance to keep the conversation organized. Then, candidates should stay neutral on the phone and close out the call by saying thank you and providing a timeline for their response.

"Don't let the recruiter's need for instant gratification get in the way of your thoughtful negotiation," Perelli-Minetti said.

In both formats — phone and email — Perelli-Minetti said candidates should approach negotiation conversations collaboratively. She said many people go wrong by coming in with the mindset that the negotiation i's a fight. They should also have a mindset of curiosity and seeking to understand.

"One of the first things I say is for a job-offer negotiation: These are your future colleagues," Perelli-Minetti said.

• Retail traders were watching the fireworks as SpaceX began trading on Friday.
• Despite catering to the retail crowd ahead of the IPO, not all day traders seemed wooed by the mega-deal.
• The cohort seems divided on the company, the valuation, and the trajectory of the stock.

SpaceX made its historic debut on the Nasdaq on Friday, popping 30% in early trading and vaulting the company above a $2.2 trillion market cap.

Ahead of the offering, SpaceX made a point to court retail traders, setting aside more shares than usual at the IPO price in a bid to get regular folks excited about getting in early on a stock with the potential to soar.

Recent data shows that retail traders have been selling many of their favorite stocks across AI and chips sectors, building a cash pile ahead of SpaceX and other expected mega-offerings this year. But, not every retail trader is rushing to start buying.

Here's some of the highlights from retail traders Business Insider connected with around the internet.

Noor Al, WallStreetBets moderator

Al, known on r/WallStreetBets as u/opinionisunpopular, has been helping moderate the popular trading forum since before the Gamestop short squeeze of 2021.

He was upbeat when reached by Business Insider, saying that he had a good feeling about the stock as trading got underway on Friday.

"I've never seen an IPO generate this much discussion and excitement... and hate," he said. "Despite all odds, I have a feeling this is going to be great trade for those successful in getting IPO allocation because there is every incentive for this to go well. We are truly in unprecedented times."

"Elon Musk is a modern PT Barnum"

Elon Musk's has become a more divisive figure in retail circles in the past few years. While he still has his superfans, others aren't sure about his lofty promises, like human robots or data centers in space.

A user posting on Reddit, who revealed his name to be Aaron, compared Musk to PT Barnun, often remembered as a talented showman as well as a politician and a perpetrator of various hoaxes.

"Elon Musk is a modern day PT Barnum. He has actually put maybe 4 viable products on the table (a few cars and a rocket that can get to orbit and land, and a C-tier AI that nobody wants)."

"I see no downside in investing in a monopoly"

There were bulls on the forums though, as well.

Some said that they are "all in" on the SpaceX IPO, adding that they're trading "purely off vibes," and that they simply like rockets.

"I see no downside in investing in a monopoly which SpaceX currently has on rockets," retail trader Casey Dyer, who goes by u/BIGpoppaPUMP42069 on Reddit told Business Insider. "The untapped market of data centers in space, they aint going away anytime soon and I would much rather see them orbiting earth than sucking up resources here on earth."

Bailing out the original investors

Reddit user u/Dangerous-Quality-79 raised the concern that investors who already had SpaceX equity through investments in X or xAI will take the opportunity to offload it, ultimately compromising the IPO momentum.

"The retail play is to hope that the Elon stans have enough dry powder to bail out the original investors and give retail a nice profit while smiling knowing they will make a fortune once data centers in space are operational (sometime after Tesla releases the roadster)," the user shared in a comment on r/SpaceXBets.

"Here to see if this is the Hindenburg we think it'll be"

Some of the most bearish voices said they were following along simply to watch if the stock cratered.

"Honestly, many of us wouldn't touch this with a ten foot pole but we're here to see if this is the Hindenburg we think it'll be," a user who goes posts under u/msnrcn, said.

Another user, u/datrnerd, responded to their comment, adding: "Not touching the stock. Discouraged family and friends from considering it for portfolios."

• Vintage Coach briefcases are having a moment.
• Anne Hathaway carried one in "The Devil Wears Prada 2," and Coach fans are bringing them to work.
• Shoppers say the bags, which can be 40 years old, are timeless, practical, and of superior quality.

Simone Chavoor was tired of walking into work with an "ugly backpack from Amazon" on her shoulders.

So the 43-year-old media professional went looking for an upgrade on eBay. She found one in a vintage Coach Beekman briefcase in the British tan colorway.

It wasn't perfect, by any means. Its leather was dry, and its hardware had become dull. The "project bag," as collectors would call it, needed work. But Chavoor — who said she bought the bag for "less than a dinner for two at a mid-range restaurant" — was happy to take it on.

In the end, Chavoor got more than a bargain. "Now I look more put together and professional," she told Business Insider.

And she's not the only one. Coach's resurgence, paired with shifting workwear trends, has collectors and office workers alike scouring secondhand sites for decades-old briefcases from the brand.

The history of Coach briefcases

Between the 1950s and 1980s, briefcases were the "it" bag of the workplace. In the earliest days of the trend, attaché cases — or rigid, box-like briefcases — were the desired style.

Coach took a different approach. The Metropolitan bag, released in 1986, was the brand's first foray into briefcases. The messenger-style bag had a long shoulder strap, a flap-over design, a top handle, and the brand's signature brass hardware. A similar — but more refined with a rounded flap — briefcase called the Beekman was introduced in 1991.

Over time, these pieces began to lose their appeal. Laptops replaced stacks of papers, and more casual dress codes made backpacks the go-to work bags.

Now, workwear trends are shifting again. Even as some office dress codes remain relaxed post-pandemic, workers are seeking ways to add more polish to their wardrobes without sacrificing comfort and practicality. Briefcases are one way to do that.

Coach's resurgence among Gen Z and millennials in recent years has made its vintage briefcases especially appealing. The brand's parent company, Tapestry, reported a 19% revenue rise in Q3, which it said was led by gains from Coach.

The brand sells a modern version of its Metropolitan bag for $595, but it's often sold out. Vintage versions of both briefcases also sell on secondhand sites for upward of $150 each.

On TikTok, shoppers are sharing their secondhand briefcase finds from thrift stores and Facebook Marketplace. Some are even seeking vintage briefcase styles and their modern counterparts to compare.

The 'Devil Wears Prada' effect

A spokesperson for Lyst recently told The New York Times that demand for women's purses was "down 5.5% in April 2026 compared to April 2025."

Searches for briefcases, however, were up 14%, and Coach remained on its "Hottest Brands" list for Q1 2026. Briefcase searches also rose on Google in May of this year.

The latter is likely, at least in part, the result of Anne Hathaway carrying a Coach Metropolitan briefcase in "The Devil Wears Prada 2," which was released that same month.

For Ryan Newhouse, a 32-year-old office manager from New York, seeing Hathaway carry the Coach bag was validating. He got his first Coach bag — a brown 1999 Beekman briefcase — about 10 years ago. It was gifted to him by a friend who was clearing out items left behind by her ex-boyfriend.

Newhouse was just starting his career and thought the vintage bag would be the perfect addition to his wardrobe, even if it had some wear and tear. Three years ago, Newhouse finally restored the bag to its former glory (with the help of TikTok tutorials). Now he carries it to work at least twice a week.

Newhouse said he loves seeing Coach in pop culture, though his love for the brand's briefcases goes beyond any TV show or movie that features them.

Newhouse and Chavoor both said that carrying a briefcase from the brand instantly helps them feel more confident and professional, elevating their outfits.

"Coach is so timeless," Newhouse said. "And with the pricing being so affordable, you really can't beat it."

Chavoor also said she appreciates the sustainability aspect of vintage Coach briefcases.

"I have really fallen in love with the quality, the leather, and the history of these bags," she said. "We should be moving away from fast fashion."

"Social media has accelerated our trends cycle, but if you have a nice piece and you take care of it, it'll last for ages. You can always make it look fresh," Chavoor continued.

Maybe most importantly, though, this new era of briefcases might shift the accessory's cultural significance.

"Briefcases are so gendered; we expect to see men carrying them," Chavoor said. "But I kind of like that masculine energy and reclaiming it as a woman."

"I'm in a professional setting. I'm a woman, and I'm wearing a dress, but also, I have this badass briefcase because I mean business," she added.

• The dietitian Josie Porter only takes supplements if and when she needs them.
• Porter was no longer working out to failure so reasoned she didn't need to supplement creatine.
• She advocates for "sensible" supplement use and shifts her stack when her routine changes.

Josie Porter is always reassessing her supplement stack.

The dietitian and author of "How Not To Take Supplements," which promotes a food-first approach to health, takes them as needed.

That's why she stopped taking creatine around three years, when she started going to the gym less around a year ago.

Creatine, once a secret weapon of athletes and bodybuilders, has gone mainstream in recent years as strength training has overtaken cardio as the workout du jour. The body naturally produces creatine, a building block of the molecule ATP that gives our cells energy. We can also get creatine from eating protein, like red meat and seafood. Creatine is one of the most well-studied supplements, and research suggests that, if taken correctly, it can help the body find the energy needed to do an extra rep or two in the gym, leading to bigger gains.

As a supplement, it typically comes in the form of a white powder. For it to work, research suggests you need to take 5mg a day for four weeks, and maintaining that daily dose to see the benefits.

"The idea is that you want to saturate your muscles if you're taking it for gym-related benefits," Porter told Business Insider.

Porter loves strength training, but is currently prioritizing flexibility in her workout schedule over optimization due to some mental health struggles. "I'm trying to remove pressure where I can," she said.

"Often the benefits come from when people are really having big bursts of energy and hitting that one-rep max," Porter said of creatine. "I'm not really doing so much of that lately, so I just figured there wasn't really a need to take it."

Emerging evidence suggests that creatine offers health benefits beyond the gym. Early-stage studies have found that taking the supplement at higher doses could boost brain health and cognition, but Porter doesn't feel the evidence is strong enough yet to warrant her taking it daily if she's not focusing on building muscle.

"Until I start training differently, I probably won't bring it back in, but I do think it's got some good evidence behind it," she said.

• Rank-and-file SpaceX employees are about to get very rich thanks to the company's blockbuster IPO.
• But massive liquidity events are not without their pitfalls.
• Here's what wealth advisors suggest SpaceX's new millionaires do — and what to avoid.

If you work at SpaceX, or ever have, congratulations. You're about to get very rich.

On Friday, Elon Musk's Space and AI company debuted on the public markets in the largest initial public offering in history, with the rocket company's valuation surpassing $2 trillion.

While mom-and-pop investors are just getting in on the action, SpaceX employees already have a piece. The company puts "heavy emphasis on equity compensation to provide employees with a financial stake in our business and an ownership mindset," it said in its S-1 securities filing.

For employees who have held on to their shares, it's paid off. Andrew Benson, the founder of pre-IPO trading platform Hill Markets, estimated the SpaceX IPO will mint 4,400 new millionaires; 400 of those will be centimillionaires.

"You're going to have the single largest wealth event potentially in the history of the world," Matthew Fleissig, the CEO of investment advisory Pathstone, told Business Insider.

That's good news, of course, but don't expect a new fleet of superyachts or private jets with SpaceX employees at the helm.

Once lockup periods are out of the way and employees can sell their shares, nice homes, charter flights, and luxury vacations are more common and smarter ways to spend the money, wealth advisors told Business Insider.

"The biggest mistakes we see is people spending down their money," Fleissig, who has guided clients through major liquidity events, said. "We have seen plenty of scenarios where a client tried to build a home with 13-foot-thick cement walls for a nuclear bomb, and it might have had a waterfall for the batcave, and it ended up costing $40 million to $50 million, and it got out of control."

Mo money, mo problems

Wealth advisors told Business Insider that sudden liquidity can come with several pitfalls. There are wealth advisement fees, taxes, and, of course, the sirens' call of shiny toys.

"You get this unbelievable sticker shock when you get new wealth that it's actually really expensive to be wealthy," Fleissig said. His firm has a program for pre-liquidity clients, including "a nice amount" of SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI employees and investors.

One point they hammer home: Everything involving money is about to cost more.

Wealth managers charge clients a fee, typically 0.5% and 1% of the money they manage. Some SpaceX employees are trying to get ahead of that, with an employee group negotiating favorable terms with one Chicago wealth management firm, two sources familiar with the plans told Business Insider.

Taxes, too, are about to become more complex and expensive — and not just the total paid to Uncle Sam. Someone used to uploading a tax form to TurboTax may now spend $25,000 on an accountant to navigate a return involving various types of investments.

Then there's the impulse to blow the new cash.

"The minute people identify you as being somebody that is a SpaceX centimillionaire, everybody's going to be coming at you," Michael Cole, a former wealth advisor and the cofounder of R360, a membership group for centimillionaire and billionaire families, told Business Insider.

When it comes to big-ticket items, advisors say: buyers beware.

Yachts are infamous money pits, with annual maintenance costing about 10% of their new-build price, according to industry standards.

On the low end, private planes can cost $1 million a year to maintain. Francis advises clients not to spend more than 10% of their net worth on a private aircraft and to do their homework on the seller and operating crew.

"You need 1,500 hours of experience to be a barber," he said. "The training you need to become an aircraft sales broker, an aircraft charter broker is zero."

'Slow down to speed up'

When it comes to liquidation events — SpaceX had several ahead of its IPO — Cole's motto is "slow down to speed up."

The first thing to do is diversify, he said, and the next is to think.

"It makes really good sense to start to liquidate a concentrated holding because your risk is all of your wealth is in one stock," Cole said. "The markets can be fickle around different things, and right now SpaceX is the flavor of the month."

Put that money into short-term treasuries, he said, and take six months to make a plan that takes into account risk tolerance, taxes, objectives, and time horizons.

Beyond investments, wealth can open a new way of seeing your life.

Fleissig suggests clients ask themselves how they want to spend their time, whether that be with their families, on vacation, or taking up hobbies.

Of course, life can very well involve a little luxury. There's nothing wrong with upgrading your home or splurging on a sports car or a new watch.

"You may want to buy a plane, you may want to buy a yacht, those can all be really fun," Cole said. "Take your time."

• In 2002, Elon Musk founded a dark-horse company to make rockets reusable, and thus more affordable.
• That company, SpaceX, went public on Friday at a $1.8 trillion valuation, with shares popping out of the gate.
• BI pieced together some of SpaceX's most iconic — and visual — moments since its founding.

Nearly 25 years ago, a mariachi band played at a SpaceX party while Elon Musk posed for a photo. The rocket company's head count was single digits back then. Today, it's over 22,000.

SpaceX started with two long-shot goals: make rockets cheaper to launch and, eventually, send mankind to Mars.

More than two decades later, Elon Musk's space company has decisively accomplished the first, and went public on Friday at a historic $1.8 trillion valuation. The trading milestone followed years of fiery explosions, reusable-rocket breakthroughs, astronaut flights, and the rise of Starlink, its golden goose satellite-internet business.

From the scrappy startup days to fiery launches (and plenty of explosions) and catching a returning rocket in giant mechanical pincers, these photos and videos show SpaceX's rise to IPO juggernaut.

2002: SpaceX is born

Using part of the fortune he made from PayPal, Musk founded SpaceX in 2002 in an El Segundo, California, warehouse. The company sought to challenge entrenched players in the rocket industry — including Lockheed Martin and Boeing — and make space travel less expensive.

Those dreams had a meager beginning.

"SpaceX was less than 10 people back then," Musk wrote on X. "We didn't even have office furniture."

2002-2006: building the Falcon 1

SpaceX developed its first space-bound rocket, the Falcon 1, between 2002 and 2006. It cost about $100 million for the company to design and build.

2003: A Washington DC display

SpaceX trucked its first Falcon rocket across the country and displayed it outside the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC, in December 2003.

The rocket display on Independence Avenue was one of the first stunts that introduced the fledgling startup to federal lawmakers.

2006-2008: The first three launches fail

The Falcon rocket's maiden voyage in March 2006 ended in failure because a fuel-line leak caused an engine fire. The ill-fated flight lasted around one minute.

The Falcon's next two attempts also failed at liftoff, pushing the company to the brink of collapse.

2008: First successful Falcon launch

On September 28, 2008, Falcon 1 became the first privately developed liquid-fueled rocket to reach orbit. SpaceX flew Falcon 1 once more, successfully launching RazakSAT on July 14, 2009, its final Falcon 1 mission.

2010: Falcon 9 and Dragon

SpaceX followed Falcon 1 with the much larger Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon, a spacecraft developed first to carry cargo to orbit and later adapted to carry astronauts.

2012: Dragon reaches ISS

SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft reached the International Space Station on May 25, 2012, becoming the first commercial spacecraft to rendezvous with and berth at the orbiting laboratory.

2015: First successful landing of a Falcon 9 after an orbital launch

SpaceX landed a Falcon 9 first-stage booster at Cape Canaveral in December 2015 after launching satellites to orbit.

2016: Falcon 9 explosion

A Falcon 9 rocket exploded on a Florida launchpad during a preflight test in September 2016, when methane propellant was ignited. The blast destroyed the rocket and its payload, including satellites from Facebook.

2016: First successful drone ship landing

SpaceX had already proven it could land a Falcon 9 booster back on solid ground. In April 2016, it pulled off a harder trick: landing one on a floating platform in the Atlantic Ocean after launching a Dragon cargo spacecraft toward the International Space Station.

The landing on the drone ship Of Course I Still Love You showed SpaceX could recover boosters, even on missions where the rocket did not have enough fuel left to return to land.

2018: Falcon Heavy and Starman

The Falcon Heavy rocket tugged a Tesla Roadster carrying a driver-side mannequin nicknamed "Starman" (named after the David Bowie song) into space.

The cherry-red 2010 Roadster was once Musk's daily driver before it was launched out of Earth's atmosphere.

2019: Starlink satellite launch

SpaceX launched its first large batch of Starlink satellites in May 2019, sending 60 internet-beaming spacecraft into orbit aboard a Falcon 9 rocket.

2019: Starship reveal

In September 2019, Musk first revealed a towering stainless-steel Starship prototype in Boca Chica, Texas. Starship, paired with its Super Heavy booster, was designed to be a fully reusable transportation system.

SpaceX hopes the vehicle is capable of carrying people and cargo to orbit, the moon, Mars, and beyond.

2020: First crewed launch

SpaceX hurled NASA astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to the International Space Station in May 2020, marking the first time the company had sent people to orbit.

The Demo-2 mission also restored NASA's ability to launch astronauts from US soil for the first time since the space shuttle retired in 2011.

2021: First private SpaceX customers go to space

In September 2021, SpaceX launched Inspiration4, a three-day orbital mission crewed entirely by private citizens. Billionaire Jared Isaacman (now the NASA administrator) commanded the flight, joined by Sian Proctor, Hayley Arceneaux, and Chris Sembroski aboard a Crew Dragon capsule.

The mission circled Earth. You can watch their journey in the Netflix documentary "Countdown: Inspiration4 Mission to Space."

2024: Move to Texas

Musk, increasingly frustrated with California politics, moved his rocket company to Texas in 2024.

The announcement underscored how central South Texas had become to SpaceX's future. What began as a remote testing ground for Starship had grown into the company's main hub, with launch towers, production facilities, and a rapidly expanding local footprint.

2024: Starship booster catch

In one of SpaceX's most audacious moves yet, the company caught a returning Super Heavy booster with the launch tower's mechanical arms for the first time in October 2024.

Seriously, watch the video for this moment — it's worth it.

2026: SapceX acquires xAI

Earlier this year, SpaceX acquired xAI, Musk's artificial-intelligence startup. The move folded several major pieces of his business empire — also including X, formerly known as Twitter — into the rocket company.

May 2026: Starship's first V3 test flight

SpaceX launched Starship Flight 12, the upgraded version of its Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy booster, from Starbase, Texas, on May 22, 2026. The test marked the first test flight of the company's V3 vehicles and Raptor 3 engines. SpaceX describes Starship as the world's most powerful launch vehicle ever developed.

The flight showed SpaceX was continuing to push toward a fully reusable giant rocket system. The Starship upper stage reached space and completed a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Still, the flight had problems. The Federal Aviation Administration required SpaceX to conduct a mishap investigation after an issue involving the Super Heavy booster during its return over the Gulf of Mexico after stage separation. A return to flight depends on the FAA determining that any system, process, or procedure related to the mishap does not affect public safety. The FAA said there were no reports of public injury or damage to public property.

June 2026: SpaceX IPO

The once-nearly bankrupt SpaceX hit the public market with a valuation of $1.8 trillion.

"It is certainly hard to believe that a little company that started in a warehouse in El Segundo is now going public with the largest IPO ever," he said during a speech on Friday. "If people had told me this was going to happen, I was like, 'Man, you must be smoking some really good crack, because I think this company is going to fail.'"

He said he gave SpaceX a less than 10% chance of succeeding.

• Dollar General is adding more $1 items to its shelves.
• It's part of the retailer's strategy as inflation picks up steam again.
• I went to a Dollar General store to see what kind of groceries I could buy for $1 apiece.

Dollar General is going back to its roots.

The discount retailer is leaning into its selection of $1 items, from potato chips to trash bags, to draw in customers as fuel prices have risen this year. It harkens back to the chain's early years, when everything on its shelves was $1.

Customers are responding to the move. Those on limited budgets are buying more $1 items, CEO Todd Vasos said on the company's latest earnings call earlier this month.

"I can't emphasize this enough, that $1 price point has turned out to be a real savior for our core customer," the CEO said.

The strategy helped push Dollar General's net sales 3% higher to $10.8 billion in its most recent quarter that ended May 1.

The price point is also attracting more affluent customers who have been shopping at Dollar General more often over the last few years, Vasos said.

Rival Dollar Tree, meanwhile, has gone in a different direction. In 2021, it raised its base price point to $1.25 and has since started charging more for some items.

Dollar General said it carries about 2,000 items that cost $1 or less. More are coming to stores, Vasos said on the earnings call, including an entire freezer door with food options priced at $1 each.

I wanted to see Dollar General's $1 selection for myself. I was curious about whether I could buy most of what I needed for my weekly grocery haul, aside from fresh items like meat and produce, since most Dollar General stores don't carry them.

Dollar General has been expanding its grocery selection. The chain grew its share of grocery visits between 2019 and 2025, according to foot-traffic data from Placer.ai.

It also operates some DG Market stores, which sell produce and other fresh foods, though they represent a small fraction of the chain's roughly 21,000 locations.

I visited a Dollar General store in the Washington, DC, metro area to find out. Here's what I saw.

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I visited this Dollar General store in Hyattsville, Maryland.

Located in a strip mall, this Dollar General is next to an independent grocery store and two fast-food restaurants — a McDonald's and a Popeyes.

The front of the Dollar General was filled with products that cost more than $1 each.

I saw two-liter bottles of soda that cost between $2 to $3, bags of chips, and other grocery items as I walked in the front door.

I started finding $1 items toward the back of the store.

This store didn't have a full freezer section of $1 items, but I found a few at that price, such as these chicken pot pies.

Some $1 items were stocked next to name-brand equivalents.

Lots of dry groceries, such as these jars of spices, were $1 each. Often, they were from Dollar General's own Clover Valley store brand and stocked next to more expensive name-brand versions, such as the $2.50 jar of Lawry's chili powder.

Others were part of an entire aisle dedicated to $1 items.

Dubbed "Value Valley" by Dollar General, this aisle included everything from rubber cleaning gloves to potato chips.

There was a lot of signage advertising the $1 price point.

I saw lots of useful items here, especially cleaning supplies. There were air fresheners, scrubbing brushes, rubber gloves, sponges, and lots of other cleaning tools — each costing $1.

The selection varied from Epsom salts…

Some $1 items weren't store-branded, such as these Yardley Epsom salts.

… to bags of flavored popcorn.

Snacks were one of the product areas with a variety of $1 options.

In general, though, there wasn't as wide a selection of food as I expected. Maybe Dollar General's expanded frozen food selection hasn't arrived at this store yet.

Dollar General did not respond to a request for comment.

In other aisles, I saw full-priced versions of many $1 items.

These Glad trash bags were almost $6 a pack at Dollar General and were in a separate aisle from the $1 trash bag alternatives.

There was a wide selection of sweet snacks for $1 a bag.

If you're a fan of sweet treats, such as Sour Patch Kids or coconut macaroons, there was quite a selection at this Dollar General.

Overall, I didn't see enough $1 stuff to fulfill my weekly grocery haul.

Overall, there was a reasonable selection of store-brand household goods, frozen foods, and dry groceries available for $1 each. That might make Dollar General a decent place to shop for consumers on a budget.

I could see stopping by regularly for a few pantry staples and some cleaning supplies. As long as there were other grocery options nearby, though, I probably wouldn't go out of my way to make it a stop on my weekly grocery run.

This store didn't quite have everything most people would need on a weekly basis — at least, not without buying a lot of items above $1 each.

And, of course, there was no fresh food, though I didn't expect it at this store.

The $1 price point seems to function as a loss leader for Dollar General.

From the frozen pot pies to trash bags, many of the $1 items at this Dollar General were located toward the back of the store, meaning that you had to walk past full-priced equivalents to get there.

That made me think that $1 items act as a loss leader for the chain. Supermarkets have done this for years by putting essentials like milk toward the rear of their stores and pricing them competitively. The theory is that you'll stop by for cheap milk — then pick up other, full-price items as you walk there and back.

The same could be true at Dollar General. The $1 items seem to be a draw for many shoppers, but they're not the only items most shoppers buy.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Wolfgang Puck, a 76-year-old chef based in Los Angeles. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

I've spent more than 60 years building my restaurant business after coming to the US from Europe and opening Spago in West Hollywood in 1982.

I oversee more than 100 fine dining and casual eateries around the world, from Beverly Hills and Las Vegas to London, Singapore, Istanbul, and Shanghai.

Even now, as we work on new projects in places like Abu Dhabi and Malibu, I still spend most nights in my restaurants — tasting food, talking to guests, and paying attention to the smallest details.

Here's a day in my life.

I wake up around 6:30 a.m. each morning

Beyond my wakeup time, no two weeks really look the same. One week, I'm home in LA every day. The next week, I'm flying to New York, London, Istanbul, Budapest, Singapore, or Shanghai.

No matter where I am, though, my mornings usually start with a double espresso.

Then I go for a 45-minute to hourlong walk. If I'm home in LA, my two dogs come with me. After that, I work out with weights, stretching, and the elliptical.

For years, my mornings also included driving my younger children to school. One of my sons started listening to the same music I love — Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, all the old rock bands — and those drives became one of my favorite parts of the day. I miss them now.

I have a light breakfast around 8:30 a.m.

Right now, we have great fruit in LA — peaches, nectarines, cherries, blueberries, and strawberries.

I also love yogurt with olive oil, salt, and pepper with toasted whole-grain or seeded bread from Spago. Sometimes I'll make avocado toast with jalapeño, mustard, and an egg sautéed in olive oil.

Another important part of my mornings is reading the newspaper. I get printed versions of The New York Times, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and California Post, and I flip through the pages and read the opinion sections with my coffee.

I usually head to my office at the Pacific Design Center around 10 a.m.

Sometimes I stop at the farmers market in Santa Monica or the fish market first because I still enjoy seeing ingredients in person. I always tell my chefs that if I can still go to the fish market, they can, too.

At the office, I spend time reviewing financials. It's not the most exciting part of the restaurant business for me, so I'm having Byron, my son who works with me, handle more of the financial calls these days.

When I made Byron president of the company in June 2025, I knew some people around me probably imagined they might get that role themselves because many of them had worked with me for decades. Over time, though, people saw how seriously he took the work. He works from morning until night, listens well, leads by example, and holds people accountable.

I've learned that if you want great people to stay, you have to share your success with them. I've given longtime chefs and partners stakes in restaurants because I want them to feel ownership, too. To me, we're building something together, not working for one person.

I eat a simple lunch from 1 p.m. to 2 p.m.

Sometimes Byron and I eat together at the office — maybe a sandwich or soup — but I generally eat more in the evening.

I also keep a big bag of Valrhona 80% dark chocolate in my office that gets me through the workday — and coffee, naturally.

My afternoons are usually full of phone calls. I talk with chefs and managers from restaurants around the world about menus, staffing, food quality, and new ideas. I don't enjoy emails very much. I like talking to people directly. I think you understand people better that way.

I finish work at the office by 4 p.m. and visit the restaurants to see what's going on

What frustrates me most is when people stop paying attention to details. In restaurants, the smallest things matter.

I get frustrated when things don't get done properly because it often comes down to laziness. I can't stand when chefs don't taste the food before serving it.

I always tell my teams that you have to taste everything. If you don't taste the pasta before it leaves the kitchen, how do you know if it has enough or too much salt?

I still spend most nights in restaurants

When the kids were younger, we used to have dinner together around 6 p.m., before I headed out to my restaurants. Now, I'll spend an hour or two at home with my wife, Gelila, before stopping by CUT or Spago later in the evening.

Even after 60 years in restaurants, I still love being there at night. The restaurants give me energy. I'll check in with chefs, talk with guests, and sometimes sit down with friends or Byron for a glass of wine and a few small dishes the chefs prepare for us.

Most nights, I'm out until 11 or 11:30 p.m., and then I head home

Travel is constant. Recently, I traveled to Las Vegas, New York, Washington, and Beverly Hills for a series of dinners with Byron alongside Austrian winemakers.

At night, if I'm not tired yet, I'll read before bed and take a melatonin spray. I mostly read nonfiction and biographies because I want to understand what makes people do what they do. It could be books about Elon Musk, Mick Jagger, Abraham Lincoln, or famous French chefs. I'm always curious about how successful people think, build things, and lead others.

I go to sleep around 1 a.m.

Family became more important as I got older

When I was younger, I could spend every night in a restaurant and think only about work. Over time, I realized balance matters much more. I watched people in the restaurant business lose relationships with their families because they never made time for anything outside work.

I still spend plenty of time in restaurants, but I also make time for my family. Every summer, I try to take at least one month off to travel through Europe with them.

Recently, I also started taking painting lessons because I enjoy the creative process and the focus it requires. I never really think about retirement because I never wake up thinking, "I have to go to work."

Being optimistic helps. I've always been an optimist. Even now, when people ask me why I'm still opening restaurants or taking risks in my 70s, I don't spend much time thinking about the downside. New projects and new ideas are what keep me excited.

The Japanese have a word called Kaizen, which means continuous improvement. If you think you've already arrived, then you stop growing. I still want to learn new things and hopefully open more restaurants for many more years.

• Joby, Archer, and Beta are racing to make flying cars a reality, each with unique aircraft designs.
• They envision eVTOLs one day regularly carrying people to airports or to work.
• Flying taxis face hurdles like certification, infrastructure, and public acceptance.

Three US aerospace startups are in a high-stakes race to bring the "Jetsons'" dream of flying cars to life — and each has a different vision of what that future looks like.

Aerospace companies Joby Aviation, Archer Aviation, and Beta Technologies have spent the past few years showcasing their flying taxi prototypes at industry events around the world. They're pitching them as an environmentally cleaner, cheaper alternative to helicopters.

I've seen all three — either on static display or in flight. I've gotten a glimpse of how these vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, or eVTOLs, could be used on a regular commute or skip traffic to the airport.

The wide-winged, trunky aircraft are quieter than fuel-powered planes and helicopters, and they fly surprisingly smoothly. How would they work? Imagine a web of low-altitude air taxi corridors connecting airports, neighboring towns, conferences, and events like the Olympics.

Still, none have been certified by aviation authorities, so they'll not be regularly carrying passengers just yet. Joby and Archer aim to launch commercial service as soon as this year; Beta's timeline is several years out. They're all actively participating in a US Department of Transportation program that would aim to integrate electric air taxis into the national airspace system as quickly as possible.

And each is demonstrating a markedly different approach, with distinct aircraft designs, certification strategies, and business models. Each is publicly traded in the US: Joby had a recent market capitalization of around $9 billion; Archer and Beta are each around $4 billion.

The companies are facing tough sledding so far this year: Their stocks are down between 30% and 40% since January. Wall Street analysts have said investors are shifting their focus away from technological milestones toward proof of certification and commercialization. In other words, they want these things to get off the ground.

Air taxis indeed still face myriad hurdles, including securing those regulatory approvals, raising capital, building out infrastructure, and convincing the public to embrace a new type of aircraft. Affordable fares and vast infrastructure changes are likely to be needed to achieve even a modest future of traveling around a city for errands or work.

Here's a closer look at how Joby, Archer, and Beta's futuristic flying taxis compare — and what potential commuters might expect if these aircraft reach commercial service.

Each eVTOL use its rotors differently.

Joby's "S4" and Archer's "Midnight" eVTOLs share a similar design approach, with six tilting rotors mounted above the aircraft that transition to support both vertical and forward flight. Midnight also has six additional fixed lift propellers used only during takeoff and landing.

Beta's "Alia 250" uses four fixed vertical-lift propellers and a rear pusher propeller for forward flight. None tilt. Clark says the design is simpler with fewer moving parts.

All 3 are building custom engines. Beta's has the most range.

In general, each eVTOL is powered by rechargeable batteries that supply energy to multiple electric motors, with redundancy built in so the aircraft can continue flying safely even if a component fails.

Beta's Alia 250 has the longest range at about 250 miles per charge and can reach 176 mph. Joby's aircraft can fly up to about 200 mph over roughly 150 miles, while Archer's Midnight reaches speeds of around 150 mph with a range of about 100 miles.

The companies have completed public demos.

I recently saw Joby demonstrate a passenger shuttle flight from New York's JFK to downtown Manhattan. The 10-minute trip was barely audible as it cruised up the Hudson River, only becoming louder on approach to the vertiport.

I also saw Beta's eVTOL fly over Burlington, Vermont, during a media day in June, showcasing its quiet profile, stability, and vertical flight performance.

Separately, Business Insider's Lloyd Lee observed Archer and Joby flights over California in October, describing both as little more than a faint hum overhead.

Joby and Archer have fewer passenger seats.

In theory, more seats help spread operating costs and could translate into lower fares. The startups have said their eVTOLs cost just a few dollars per passenger mile, with Joby and Archer saying their fares would be roughly in line with Uber Black car service.

But the economics remain uncertain, with pilot costs, maintenance, and other operational expenses also factoring into future fares. Even if eVTOL fares are cheaper than helicopter fares, that doesn't mean they'll be affordable for the average traveler or convenient for their needs.

Beta has a longer certification timeline.

The startups aim to begin commercial air taxi flights by the end of the year, though any certification hiccups or delays could push that to 2027.

Beta president and CEO Kyle Clark said the Alia 250 is looking at a few more years. Its slower timeline reflects the company's stepwise certification approach based on its cTOL, the Alia CX300.

All 3 have secured support from big-name airlines.

In 2021, United Airlines placed a $1 billion order for up to 200 Midnight aircraft. Joby made a $60 million deal with Delta Air Lines in 2022 to operate codeshare airport transfers to the airline's hubs.

UPS has placed an order for up to 150 of Beta's eVTOLs. Beta also secured orders from Air New Zealand for its cTOL.

Beta and the airline already demonstrated the Alia CX300's real-world application, with test pilots flying cargo to a dozen airports across the islands, covering about 7,000 miles.

The ultimate goal is autonomous air taxis.

Eventually, the US startups hope to create autonomous versions that can fly without a pilot — essentially the Waymo of the skies.

It's an ambitious long-term goal that raises questions regulators would need to address before approval, including safety, certification, cybersecurity, and public perception. Labor unions are also likely to strongly oppose efforts to allow pilotless passenger aircraft into the national airspace.

Still, China proved it can be possible. In late 2023, the nation certified a fully autonomous two-seater eVTOL from the Guangzhou-based UAM company EHang, which is now being used for sightseeing tours.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he thought AI would have impacted entry-level white-collar jobs more.
• "I'm delighted to be wrong about this," Altman recently said.
• Altman isn't the only AI leader shifting how they talk about job displacement, with Microsoft's AI boss clarifying a viral remark.

AI CEOs and tech leaders are trying to find the right way to talk about the labor market.

Increasingly, they are moving beyond the sweeping statements about a white-collar job wipeout that may have fueled the growing AI backlash.

"I'm delighted to be wrong about this," OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at a recent event hosted by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. "I thought that there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar work jobs being eliminated by now than it's actually happened."

The OpenAI CEO said his views began to change when he briefly tried to let AI write emails and Slack messages for him, an experience he said was "dehumanizing" to watch.

"It's the human part of the roles, and it really in both positive and negative ways updated me to thinking that the jobs picture is likely to be very different than we thought," he said. "I don't think we're going to have the kind of jobs apocalypse that some of the companies in our space advocate or talk about."

Altman may be the most direct, but he's far from alone in trying to turn the page on warnings about significant white-collar unemployment.

"I think that people are scared because it's poorly defined and it's often framed as an inevitable, threatening gray cloud over people's heads," Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman recently told The Verge's "Decoder" podcast.

In February, Suleyman told the Financial Times, "White-collar work, where you're sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person — most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months."

Suleyman told the "Decoder" that his quote was misunderstood and that he's not actually changing his view. He said he was talking about the tasks workers do, like reading emails, not the job of actually being a lawyer.

"Sending an email, having a conversation with a colleague, putting together a PowerPoint — sub-tasks will increasingly become digitized, automated, and we can basically generate more and more of them," he said. "That does not necessarily mean that the role goes away at all."

The shifting tone and clarifications come at a pivotal moment in AI. On Friday, SpaceX made its Nasdaq debut. OpenAI and Anthropic have both confirmed they are taking steps toward their own IPOs.

At the same time, political backlash is growing. Data centers are quickly becoming a hot-button issue.

In June, Seattle passed a one-year moratorium on new data centers. Overall, the industry is grappling with a stark reality that the technology they say is one of the biggest advancements in human history is massively unpopular in the US. A May Economist-YouGov poll found that 71% of Americans think the pace of AI development is moving too quickly.

Microsoft President Brad Smith called the recent booing of speakers who talked about AI at prominent college commencements "a powerful wake-up call for the tech sector."

In a lengthy blog post, Smith wrote that AI "will displace some jobs," but the compressed timeline for some predictions would be unlike that of similar technological breakthroughs.

"There are some who look at the power of AI and predict its massive diffusion in just a few years," Smith wrote. "It's always possible that this time will be different, but the world has never previously seen technology diffusion at that pace."

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has become the industry's leading voice on AI job displacement. Last year, he warned that AI could wipe out up to half of all entry-level white-collar jobs over the next 1 to 5 years. Amodei said there's a reason he's sounded the alarm.

"I have warned about job displacement in interviews and essays because I want both policymakers and the private sector to have the best chance to adapt and respond, not because I am trying to be a 'prophet of doom,'" Amodei wrote in an essay published on Wednesday.

At the same time, Amodei said, "AI will enable a number of new economic opportunities."

"I've predicted that AI will enable single individuals to create billion-dollar companies, and we're already seeing teams of only a few people build businesses with hundreds of millions in revenue," he wrote.

• Investors say the SpaceX IPO could become a "watershed moment for the space industry."
• Those who made fortunes in SpaceX's IPO are expected to invest some of their windfall in the next generation.
• Here's Business Insider's list of 18 startups helmed by SpaceX employees-turned-founders.

After eBay acquired PayPal in 2002, the PayPal mafia went on to reshape Silicon Valley. Now, after Musk's blockbuster SpaceX IPO, employees and investors who made fortunes are expected to redeploy some of their massive windfalls into the new wave of space companies, many of them founded by the so-called SpaceX mafia.

"Many of today's leading technology investors and entrepreneurs, including Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, and David Sacks, came out of the PayPal ecosystem and went on to shape the next generation of technology companies," Justus Parmar, CEO of Fortuna Investments, a venture capital firm that invested in both SpaceX and Tesla, told Business Insider.

"A SpaceX IPO could become a similar watershed moment for the space industry."

Members of the SpaceX Mafia have raised funding from top venture capital firms such as Andreessen Horowitz, 8VC, and Founders Fund. A handful also passed through Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's famed funding and mentorship program for nascent startups.

Thousands of former SpaceX employees have been waiting for the IPO for years.

"The SpaceX IPO will trickle down to the SpaceX mafia startups in a variety of ways," Jamie Gull, a former SpaceX engineer turned deep tech investor, told Business Insider.

"The most obvious way is providing liquidity for angel investing into SpaceX peers," he said, referring to the thousands of employee millionaires the IPO has created who can soon write checks to other employees for their nascent startups.

Spencer Jackson, another former SpaceX engineer, says he is not sure going public was the right decision for SpaceX. Still, he hopes it will boost startups like the one he founded in 2024, Critical Energy, which is making modular power plants that convert heat into electricity.

"The space industry and every startup in it has benefited heavily from SpaceX's rising star, with incredible amounts of capital flowing into the space and a willingness to take big risks," Jackson told Business Insider. "That will only accelerate if the IPO goes well."

Collectively, SpaceX Mafia companies have already raised billions in venture capital funding, according to data from analytics firm PitchBook and the founders. Here's Business Insider's list of 18 startups helmed by SpaceX-employees-turned-founders, first published in December, in alphabetical order by company name.

Nikita Ermoshkin, cofounder, CEO, and CTO of Airhart Aeronautics

Total raised: $5.06 million, according to PitchBook

Founding date: May 2022

Key investors: Y Combinator, Liquid2 Ventures, Soma Capital, and angel investors

Number of employees: 8, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Ermoshkin was at SpaceX for three years and last served as an avionics systems responsible engineer.

Airhart Aeronautics says it is building an easy-to-fly personal airplane to "give everyone the freedom of flight."

"At SpaceX, I learned the value of extreme ownership," Ermoshkin said. "As a responsible engineer, I was expected to understand and drive every part of a project — from early design through production and launch. That experience was instrumental in preparing me to be a founder and CEO."

Max Benassi, cofounder and CTO of Apex Space

Total raised: More than $500 million, according to the company

Founding date: September 2022

Key investors: Andreessen Horowitz, Interlagos, Point72 Ventures, 8VC, XYZ Ventures, Toyota Ventures.

Number of employees: Over 230, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Benassi worked at SpaceX for six years, and last served as a senior propulsion engineer for Raptor turbomachinery and dynamic balancing.

Apex mass-manufactures satellite platforms that can serve a wide range of customers.

"It was an intense training ground where we tackled the most difficult problems by breaking them into manageable parts," Benassi said of his tenure at SpaceX. "My advice to engineers: Think harder, go faster, challenge requirements, simplify first, optimize next."

Robert Carlisle, Ryan Carlisle, and Kirby Carlisle, cofounders, Argo Space

Total raised: Over $10 million, according to the company

Founding date: 2022

Key investors: Crosslink Capital, Boost VC, Type One Ventures, Stellar Ventures

Number of employees: 22, according to the company

Roles at SpaceX: Robert Carlisle, director of commercial launch sales and national security sales (five years); Ryan Carlisle, director of engineering (nine years); Kirby Carlisle, integration and test engineer (four years)

The Carlisle brothers cofounded Argo Space, which is working on technology that could use water from the moon to propel space transportation. "My time at SpaceX showed me real value is created not by the incremental advances most companies pursue, but by paradigm change," Robert Carlisle said. "My cofounders and I also learned firsthand the myriad benefits of aggressively and urgently getting to hardware build and operation, which we're applying at Argo."

Laura Crabtree, cofounder and CEO of Epsilon3

Total raised: $18.92 million, according to PitchBook

Founding date: February 2021

Key investors: Lux Capital, MaC Venture Capital, Moore Capital Management, Y Combinator, Village Global, Stage Venture Partners.

Number of employees: 27, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Crabtree was at SpaceX for nearly 11 years, last serving as a senior missions operations engineer.

Epsilon3 builds software for managing engineering, assembly, and testing, primarily in the space industry.

"At SpaceX in the early days, you were given a problem to solve, without much direction on how to solve it," she said. "That environment helped people develop a scrappy attitude and a low ego when it came to doing whatever was needed, no matter the task."

"We're also incredibly loyal," she added. "There are many people I've worked with in the past who are now using Epsilon3 at the companies they started (or joined) after SpaceX."

Karan Talati, cofounder and CEO, First Resonance

Total raised: $32 million, according to the company

Founding date: 2019

Key investors: Blue Bear Capital, Craft Ventures, Third Prime, Fika Ventures

Number of employees: 45, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Software and manufacturing engineer (three years)

Talati now runs First Resonance, a Los Angeles-based startup that makes manufacturing software for hard-tech companies building things like air taxis and nuclear reactors. Talati found that SpaceX's unique talent pool and hard-charging disposition led to results. "The mindset wasn't if something could be done, but when," he said.

Tom Mueller, founder and CEO of Impulse Space

Total raised: $525 million, according to the company

Founding date: 2021

Key investors: Linse Capital, DFJ Growth, Valor Equity Partners, Founders Fund, Lux Capital, RTX Ventures, DCVC, Airbus Ventures, Spring Tide, First Principles Group, Balerion Space Ventures, Tamarack Global, Trousdale Ventures.

Number of employees: More than 350, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Mueller was at SpaceX for nearly 19 years and last served as propulsion CTO.

Impulse Space builds spacecraft that move satellites and other cargo between different orbits.

SpaceX paved the way for many innovations in the space industry today, Mueller said. Among the lessons he learned: "the importance of building a great team and the value of an optimistic mindset — being willing to push beyond what people think is possible is the best way to break new ground and advance the industry."

Neel Kunjur, cofounder and CTO of K2 Space

Total raised: $450 million, according to the company

Founding date: June 2022

Key investors: Altimeter Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, First Round, Alpine Space Ventures, Redpoint, T. Rowe Price

Number of employees: 200, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Neel Kunjur worked at SpaceX for about 5 ½ years, mostly recently as a senior avionics systems engineer for Dragon 2.

K2 Space builds large satellites that can operate across multiple orbits. Neel Kunjur cofounded the company with his brother, Karan.

"In many ways, SpaceX was an 'engineering bootcamp' where I was able to rapidly take on more responsibility than I ever thought possible," Neel Kunjur said. "That level of ownership translates well to being a founder, and the exposure to extremely high-caliber engineers helps with building talented teams."

Josh Clemente, cofounder and CEO of Levels

Total raised: $57 million, according to the company

Founding date: 2019

Key investors: a16z, Trust Ventures, Shrug.

Number of employees: 42, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Clemente worked at the company for about 5 ½ years as a lead life support systems engineer.

Levels lets users track their metabolic health with real-time glucose monitoring, labs, and personalized coaching.

SpaceX ingrained a mindset of accountability, said Clemente. "The zero-jargon environment encouraged clarity of thought and communication, so people at every layer can follow context and contribute."

Harry O'Hanley, founder, chairman, and president of Long Wall

Total raised: $500 million, according to the company

Founding date: 2017

Key investors: Venrock, Lockheed Martin, Lynett Capital, T. Rowe Price, Fidelity, and others.

Number of employees: About 75, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: O'Hanley was at SpaceX for about four years and last served as manager of Falcon 9 integration and test.

Long Wall builds missile defense systems. The company started out as ABL, and was focused on commercial launch before pivoting to missile defense in 2024, O'Hanley said.

"The takeaway I appreciate most from SpaceX was learning to be a live player and quickly take on large challenges I'd never seen before," he said. "By constantly being put in this position, you develop a framework, intuition, and disposition to do so confidently. Building a company is exactly this — continuous novel challenges that you can't always anticipate."

Jonny Dyer, cofounder and CEO of Muon Space

Total equity raised: $136.2 million, according to the company

Founding date: 2021

Key investors: Congruent Ventures, Activate Capital, Radical Ventures, Acme Capital, Costanoa Ventures, Space Capital, ArcTern Ventures.

Number of employees: Around 200, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Dyer was an engineering intern at SpaceX in the early 2000s.

Muon Space builds satellite fleets to collect and deliver data about the Earth, including climate and security data.

"When I was there in the super early days (2003, 2004) it really was existential for the company and we didn't know if we'd make it," Dyer said of his time at SpaceX. He added that the team was "executing violently to try and make it."

"As a founder, you're constantly context-switching, whether it's hardware, software, team dynamics," he continued, "and SpaceX helped train me to be fluent in all of it."

Troy Astorino, cofounder and CTO of PicnicHealth

Total raised: More than $100 million, according to the company

Founding date: 2014

Key investors: Amplify, Felicis, B Capital, Y Combinator.

Number of employees: About 100, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Astorino was at SpaceX for about five months, working as a software engineer on guidance, navigation, and control.

PicnicHealth centralizes medical records, helping patients manage their care and also providing life-science companies with anonymized data for research.

"It's hard to pinpoint exactly what makes [SpaceX] uniquely successful — rapid build-test cycles, first-principles thinking, relentless efficiency, and obsessive focus come to mind," Astorino said. "It's a north star for how I think about PicnicHealth. Healthcare is notoriously hard to change, but so is getting to space."

Nathan Silvernail, cofounder and CEO, and Huade Tan, cofounder and CTO, Plantd

Total raised: $42 million, according to the company

Founding date: 2021

Key investors: American Family Ventures

Number of employees: 70, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Silvernail, engineering manager for crew and Cargo Dragon (seven years); Tan, senior life support systems engineer (five years, 10 months)

Plantd is a startup in North Carolina that turns perennial grasses into building materials that the company says are carbon-negative and rival traditional plywood.

"SpaceX was basically when school really started," Silvernail said. "In university, you really only get to learn fundamentals with some hands-on stuff that you do in your free time. SpaceX gave me the opportunity to focus on developing my engineering skills while getting a massive amount of responsibility right off the bat."

Sunghyun Park, cofounder and CEO of Rebellions

Total raised: About $460 million, according to the company

Founding date: September 2020

Key investors: Arm, Samsung, Kindred Ventures, Top Tier Capital Partners, Saudi Aramco (via Wa'ed Ventures), SK Hynix, SK Telecom, Pavilion Capital, Korea Telecom, and others.

Number of employees: More than 270, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Park worked at SpaceX for over a year as a Starlink ASIC design engineer.

Rebellions makes energy-efficient chips and software to run AI systems.

"At SpaceX, I learned the value of being uncompromising when it comes to engineering excellence and ambition," Park said, adding that "we believe real progress starts with those willing to take on what others avoid."

Robert Rose and Juerg Frefel, CEO and CTO, Reliable Robotics

Total raised: $134 million, according to the company

Founding date: 2017

Key investors: Coatue Management, Eclipse Ventures, Lightspeed Venture Partners

Number of employees: 150, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Rose, director of flight software (5½ years); Frefel, senior hardware development manager (about 9½ years)

Reliable Robotics makes software that automates aircraft flight, from taxi and takeoff to landing. Rose says his experiences working on government certification processes at SpaceX and Tesla taught him to operate in highly regulated industries.

"Reporting directly to Elon," he said, "taught me a lot about business and management, but it really was my extended time spent navigating a complex government bureaucracy (and enjoying it) that uniquely qualified me for starting Reliable."

Ryan Westerdahl, cofounder and CEO, Turion Space

Total raised: $57 million, according to the company

Founding date: 2020

Key investors: Washington Harbour Partners, Giant Step Capital, Forward Deployed Venture Capital, Veterans Ventures, Aurelia Foundry, Y Combinator

Number of employees: 125, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Dynamics engineer (eight years)

Turion Space makes micro-satellites with seniors to monitor objects in space. The company has been awarded a $15 million contract from the US Space Force. At SpaceX, Westerdahl learned to "be like water, learn fast, operate hardcore — and to keep going."

Will Bruey, cofounder and CEO of Varda Space Industries

Total raised: $329 million, according to the company

Founding date: January 2021

Key investors: Founders Fund, Also Capital, Natural Capital, Shrug Capital, Caffeinated Capital, Lux, Khosla Ventures.

Number of employees: More than 170, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Bruey worked at SpaceX for almost five years, and last served as a spacecraft operator and systems officer.

Varda is a space manufacturing company that takes advantage of the benefits of microgravity to process materials in orbit — including pharmaceuticals and fiber optic cables — then brings them back to Earth.

"It is helpful to think of your company as a living organism," Bruey advised other aspiring founders, adding that "you don't control every aspect of its nature or environment, and it needs the nurture and guidance to be healthy, happy, and effective."

Robert Pinkerton, cofounder and CTO, Vori

Total raised: $27.9 million, according to the company

Founding date: 2019

Key investors: Greylock, South Park Commons, YCombinator

Number of employees: 55, according to the company

Role at SpaceX: Vehicle systems engineer (one year)

Vori makes software that manages analytics for small- and mid-sized supermarkets.

Launching the demo of the Falcon Heavy rocket and deploying 21 satellites at SpaceX taught Pinkerton "what a focused, mission-driven team can achieve when the bar is set extremely high," he said.

Brian Manning, cofounder and CEO, Xona Space Systems

Total raised: Over $150 million, according to the company

Founding date: 2019

Key investors: Craft Ventures, Future Ventures, Trimble, Toyota Ventures

Number of employees: 69, according to PitchBook

Role at SpaceX: Responsible engineer, thrust structure (two years)

Xona Space Systems makes hyper-precise satellite navigation software. In June, the company raised $92 million in a Series B round led by Craft Ventures.

SpaceX challenges commonly-held assumptions that limit progress, Manning said. "That mindset stuck with me. The most impactful companies are able to take things that seem impossible and change the world's perception to believing it is not only possible but inevitable."

New York City's swag (democratic) socialist renaissance has arrived.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled an affordable Big Apple-themed World Cup jersey — going for about $50 while FIFA's are topping $150 — this week, and people lined up for it in the thousands. Available only at the city-government-run NYC City Store location in Manhattan on June 12, residents woke up at dawn, played hooky from work, and spent hours outside for a chance at the merch. Most were also fans of the mayor.

"Our computers are kind of overheating," Colleen Litchfield, a 30-year-old actor who works in the theater industry, told Business Insider while they waited in line Friday morning. Litchfield and their coworker, Cameron Wycoff, 23, had been in line since 7:45 a.m. The two held their laptops in their hands and took customer service calls, using the fans City Hall gave out to cool down their computers — and themselves — in the nearly 90-degree weather.

Peter Bowman, 26, got to the line relatively "late," a little after 10 a.m. In his tote bag, he's got his work computer, ready to clock in to his software marketing gig at any minute. He described himself as a pop-up "veteran," used to waiting in long lines around the city, and then showed off his new Oura Ring, which he got at a recent pop-up.

Making ends meet in New York City is "tough," Bowman said, but there's opportunity. Maybe, just maybe, if you get in line at the right time, you can get hold of something you ordinarily couldn't afford.

The long, humid wait for a piece of the NYC World Cup

In true New Yorker spirit, LizaBanks Campagna, a content creator and tour guide for the city's Metropolitan Museum of Art, was unfazed by the line. She got in line around 7 a.m. on Friday, and it took three hours to claim her jersey. She took a photo in her new jersey with her line mates, whom she'd met that morning, adding that the "vibes were immaculate."

The line wrapped around the block hours after the store opened at 9 a.m. A security guard managing the line estimated it could have been thousands of people in total. At around 11 a.m., we spotted at least four people with open laptops attempting to work remotely. Several people tried to cool off with soccer-themed paper fans, while others pulled out sun umbrellas and reapplied sunscreen. City employees handed out water.

Designed by local artist Arsh Raziuddin and manufactured in a Brooklyn factory by Mazzi Sports, the jerseys were produced on a limited run — with only 1,500 total available. There are 500 of each colorway, a red-and-blue, black-and-white, and black-and-yellow version, all with the signature NYC World Cup logo on the chest and a "26" on the back. The primary color palette and font style is strikingly similar to the branding on Mamdani's videos, social media, and posters.

Several of the jerseys have since been posted on resale websites for $900 or more. A bundle of two was listed for $1,400.

"Jerseys represent more than just the team you support," the mayor said in a press release. "They are about pride in where you come from and who you are." He added that "nobody is priced out."

Robin Blosvern-Ruddy, a native New Yorker, was pretty far back in the line when Business Insider spoke with her: "I would have gotten here earlier, but I had to drop my kids off."

Two women who were lucky enough to get jerseys each arrived shortly after 7 a.m. Jessica Nguyen — who picked the black-and-yellow jersey — said she could wait in line for so long because she didn't have a work call until the afternoon. Her friends, who joined her in line, had to re-arrange their work schedules, she said.

"We are all really privileged to work from home," Nguyen, a 34-year-old who works in biotech, said. "Maybe he'll do another drop that feels a little more equitable," she added, hoping that Mamdani offers up another chance for New Yorkers to get jerseys, perhaps on a weekend.

The other lucky line-waiter, Saku Gopinath, 28, left with two red and blue jerseys for her and a friend, feeling ecstatic. "It feels good to actually walk away with something," she said, adding that she's waited in lines before only to be told there's nothing left.

After scoring a jersey, Gopinath said she was off to her work shift.

Beyond the merch, City Hall has made efforts to make the World Cup more accessible to residents and visitors. Last month, Mamdani announced the release of 1,000 $50 game tickets through a lottery system. Bowman, who said he voted for Mamdani and is an avid soccer fan, didn't get his hands on World Cup tickets, but said he was "glad" City Hall was "doing that."

Mamdani has been all-in on fitting NYC's sports summer into his broader affordability agenda and messaging. He has worked with local businesses to organize free programming, pick-up games, and watch parties around the five boroughs. It comes alongside ongoing efforts by the mayor's team to organize free NBA Finals watch parties for Knicks fans in parks and centralized streets.

"Affording New York? That's an oxymoron," one 24-year-old New Yorker — who didn't share her full name because her job didn't know she was clocking in from the line — told Business Insider.

She was a long way from the front, but held on to hope.

"If the Knicks can come back from 30 points, anything's possible," she said, referring to the historic 29-point comeback in Game 4 of the Finals on Wednesday.

• Mayor Zohran Mamdani launched COGE, New York's new government efficiency effort.
• The commission is hosting hearings where New Yorkers can testify on city spending.
• Attendees in Brooklyn spoke about AI, benefit programs, the local job market, and their affordability concerns.

Jessica Ariel-Wamala told representatives from New York City's government that she's used to sitting in traffic. She typically rises early and rushes to feed her daughter breakfast before driving to a Brooklyn preschool, but they always end up waiting in the same jam.

The 30-something said it's because a crowd of her neighbors must line up at their local civic office each morning, spilling into the street as they wait to prove their SNAP eligibility.

The city recorded tens of thousands of cases last year in which missed calls or incorrect contact information caused a family to lose access to SNAP — a situation that is sometimes best rectified with in-person meetings. "Sitting in traffic has become a monument to this inefficiency every single day," Ariel-Wamala told NYC's new Commission on Government Efficiency. Ariel-Wamala argued that administrative issues like this, which she believes can be prevented by AI, are causing people to go hungry.

In a Brooklyn Law School lecture hall, she was among about four dozen New Yorkers gathered at one of the hearings that COGE — which Mayor Zohran Mamdani created last month to reduce the city's "outdated bureaucratic barriers"— is hosting across the five boroughs. Forums like this have become a signature of the Mamdani administration, with the mayor also encouraging tenants to testify at "Rental Ripoff" and housing authority "In Your Neighborhood" hearings.

The commission asked attendees their opinions on government operations and how the city should be spending its money. Those attendees, living in a place where childcare costs rival rent payments and affordability is a top concern, wanted to know their tax dollars are being allocated thoughtfully — and efficiently.

New Yorkers spoke lots about efficiency, less about cuts

In three-minute testimonies, Brooklynites of all ages told COGE leaders their thoughts on AI, the job market, the budget, land use, and wasteful spending. Many took notes and nodded along as others spoke. A few suggested streamlining the city's contract process with private companies, spoke about ways to improve local elections. There were AI evangelists, skeptics, and naysayers.

One attendee said the city should be fully running its own websites and digital infrastructure: "Every licensing fee paid to an external software company is a dollar diverted from more critical services," she said. Another said that some of the police department's funding should be diverted to harm reduction and rehabilitation programs, adding that "My neighbors and I deserve to be able to call for medical help without fearing a misunderstanding by the police."

A third said the government should only hire for positions that directly fit into five-year policy goals — which might look like "title combination reforms and hiring process and management reforms."

Mamdani doesn't want people to confuse COGE with DOGE, the White House's now-defunct efficiency effort that sparked widespread firings and funding cancellations across the federal government. Leader Elon Musk "used that as a justification to simply slash and burn so many of the city services that Americans rely on," he said. Earlier this year, the Mayor's Office asked all city departments to appoint savings officers and suggest concrete ways to cut costs. Agencies suggested downsizing office space, reevaluating leases, and upgrading outdated technology.

Savings so far are a drop in the bucket for a city with an annual operating budget of over $116 billion. But Mamdani hopes that — aside from dollar savings — an efficiency push in NYC will give residents stronger faith in their government.

At Thursday's three-hour hearing, a handful of the speakers were policy advocates or government employees. But most were completely outside politics. They were parents, small business owners, college students, teachers, and artists who care about NYC.

"I'm inspired that you are as excited about a chapter of the city charter as some of us are about the Knicks," a commission leader joked after one testimony. "It's a really cool thing."

Still, despite dozens of passionate testimonies from residents about everything from AI applications to benefit access, one hallmark of efficiency (and the DOGE mission) was noticeably missing. There wasn't much talk about actually slashing spending — a point one of the last speakers clocked.

"We won't have COGE unless we talk about cuts," the man said. He spoke for just two minutes. "In the spirit of efficiency, I will yield my time."